Vita Brevis

[Editor's note: This is the first of a two-part series of interviews with David Allen Lambert.]

Question: You joined NEHGS in 1993 and currently are its Chief Genealogist. What roles have you held in your 25-year tenure?

Answer: When I first joined NEHGS in 1993 I had..

Kate had questions. Her father’s family history, with its many connections to the Stone family of Hollywood, had been shrouded in mystery for years. She explained that it had been covered up through old family..

I am not sure why my family decided to elect me – maybe because I majored in History? – but I am the “family archivist.” What does that entail exactly? I have the responsibility to decide what is kept and what is thrown..

The 31 October edition of NEGHS’s Weekly Genealogist ran a quiz asking readers whether they had any ancestors who participated in organized sports as adults. It..

Not long ago, when two names popped up on my Churchill family tree, they had the ring of familiarity. I probed my memory as to where I might have encountered them but just couldn’t place them until I noticed that this husband and wife are buried in Hingham’s High..

Here on the web team, Rachel Adams (Database Services Volunteer Coordinator at NEHGS) is always working to recruit new volunteers for our major projects. As she tries to think creatively about where to find new volunteers, she often hears apocalyptic pronouncements..

Every few months, we have a “Staff Research Night” at NEHGS, where staff members stay in the library after closing and work on their genealogy. Several of the staff genealogists assist staff members in other departments who might be new to genealogy or would like some..

Sometime in 2014 in eastern Finland, Toivo “Topi” Pränny was researching his great-great-grandfather, Juho Matalamäki. As a boy, Topi lived in what was once Juho’s house and had heard many stories about him,..

When the time comes for me to plunge into my Boston Irish Catholic ancestry – my Tierneys, Quinlans, Sweeneys, and Kellards – I intend to make full use of the Catholic parish records that are currently being digitized by the historic..

The 2020 commemoration for the 400th anniversary of the arrival in New England of the ship Mayflower and her passengers is fast approaching. In the next two years we will be hearing a lot of words quoted from Gov. William Bradford’s first-person account of the..