Vita Brevis

A month or so ago, I knew comparatively little about one of my great-grandfathers, a Baltimore architect. Most of what I knew was genealogical in nature, but I had – and have – no photographs, and I did not know much about his oeuvre, which was mostly apartment houses..

For me, the whole point of genealogy is the challenge of reconstructing families and providing them with context.  Not just names, dates and places, but the real lives people led. That’s why I’m enjoying my job with the Early New England Families Study Project so much...

Welcome to Vita Brevis, the blog of American Ancestors, a national nonprofit center for family history, heritage, and culture based in Boston, Massachusetts, that has been setting the gold standard for family history research since its founding in 1845. Today, American..