One of my ancestors was named Daniel Axtell. Until recently, I understood that he was Daniel Axtell the regicide. A regicide is one who kills a monarch; in this context, the regicides were the 59 judges who signed the death warrant for the execution of King Charles I..
Continue readingBack in 2018, when I had the good fortune to be added to the Vita Brevis family of writers, one of my first posts was about my maternal grandfather, John Joseph Osborne,..
Continue reading →Four books rest next to me whenever I am researching in seventeenth-century New England. These are the first items I check for any previous treatment of a family:
- Martin E. Hollick, New Englanders in the 1700s: A Guide to Genealogical Research..
When the genealogy bug hits, one of the earliest field trips a budding genealogist makes is to a cemetery. Cemeteries are rich in history. The grave marker inscriptions reveal our ancestor’s death date, and perhaps age at death or date of birth. If we are fortunate, we..
Continue reading →On occasion I look around my living room, at the lovingly collected and curated family photos on (almost) every flat surface, and wonder how I will pass along the identifying information on the subjects. (No unidentified photos for..
Continue reading →A new year offers a new chance to look at old problems with a fresh eye – and to consider fresh methods for breaking through well-established brick walls. Here is a chance to put the word out: What are your..
Continue reading →[Editor's note: This blog post originally appeared in Vita Brevis on 18 January 2019.]
Like Alicia Crane Williams, I have been inspired by the fifth anniversary of Vita Brevis to think about the writing of essays. When I first began contributing to this blog, I wasn’t..
Continue reading →My father’s Irish-born grandfathers, Patrick Dwyer of Newport, Rhode Island, and Patrick Cassidy of..
Continue reading →Recently, I wrote about the search for my great-great-great-aunt Minnie (Hickok) Wilcox, and the rewards and pitfalls of what I like to call those Delayed Messages from “beyond.” While I was happy to put the mystery of Minnie to rest (and to collaborate with my new..
Continue reading →My last post discussed how corresponding with autosomal matches may add additional ancestors to your research when family names or places have been forgotten. This post builds on that idea..
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