Vita Brevis

It has taken me a while to find a short and simple enough example of a will to use for this basic introduction to probate records. The will of John Dickson of Cambridge, yeoman, illustrated here, meets the short qualification although..

The names my parents ended up giving their children – Christopher, Carolyn, and Katherine – are names that most people would probably consider not that unusual. But there were several other names my father had in mind. For a boy, he liked the..

Editor’s Note: NEHGS Senior Research Scholar Emeritus Gary Boyd Roberts continues his series of articles updating entries to his Ancestors of American Presidents, 2009 Edition, and its 2012 reprint; the previous entry appears here.

4. William Howard Taft ancestor William..

[Editor's note: This post originally appeared in Vita Brevis on 6 June 2014.]

Over the last five months, Vita Brevis has featured a number of blog posts about the Great Migration Study Project and related subjects. Robert..

On 6 November 1869, in New Brunswick, New Jersey, the Rutgers Queensmen[1] defeated the College of New Jersey[2] Tigers by a score of 6 to 4 in what is regarded as the first college football game ever played.[3] College..

In addition to its vast collection of genealogical materials, the New England Historic Genealogical..

From tracing free people of color in New England to identifying former slaves in the deep south, NEHGS can help you tell your family story. We have a number of guides and tools in our library and available through our..

If you descend from French-Canadians, or your ancestors spent some time in Québec, notarial records will be an important source to examine in your..

When I first began working on my genealogy, I quickly had aunts and uncles setting me to work on brick walls that had stumped them for decades. Overwhelmed by distant dates and unfamiliar names, I..

One of the resources every family historian hopes to find and treasure is a family Bible full of handwritten notations of births, marriages, and deaths. These Bibles are often beautiful in themselves for their illuminated pages, or for the well-worn leather covers..