Vita Brevis

After a week of researching in Washington, D.C., with the NEHGS tour, one of the many things I have learned is that genealogy is more of a sport than a hobby. It takes physical and mental strength and endurance to pursue the..

As a librarian at NEHGS, I love stumbling across items in our research library collection that bring the past to life in an unexpected way. I recently had one such happy “stumbling” experience when we discovered a work called ..

One of the most attractive characters in the Gray diary is Mrs. Gray’s youngest son, Morris Gray (1856–1931), later a Boston lawyer and president of the Museum of..

To distract myself from the horrible winter weather that has been thrown at Boston recently, I spent some time trying to research the family of my paternal grandfather, Richard Archibald Brown,[i] in..

Although I am descended from some good seamstresses, the talent did not descend to either my mother or me. My grandmother’s home was filled with remnants of cloth, lace, trim, etc., passed down to her. I still have some of this..

Recently I sifted through a box that turned out to be a treasure box because it yielded some great information about a recent ancestor. The ancestor was my father, George Rohrbach (1909-1999), and I was the..

With all the snow flying in Massachusetts these past few weeks, I nearly forgot that now is the time of the “orange wars.” At the beginning of every year, I must also mind the lunar calendar as..

Black History Month is a great time to get inspired to research your family’s unique contributions to American History. African American genealogical research has distinctive challenges but can also produce..

When the RootsTech/FGS conference opened Thursday morning at the Salt Palace in Salt Lake City, February 12, close to 22,000 attendees were there to learn, mingle, and teach other passionate genealogists from around..

Last week a group of NEHGS staff members joined 22,000 attendees at the 2015 RootsTech Conference in Salt Lake City, Utah, for four days of learning, research, and fun. At the keynote session..