Vita Brevis

The big, green Buick we had when I was a child was named “Betsey.” Like all cars she needed maintenance. So with Betsey in mind, I have scheduled a “tune up” of the Early New England Families Study Project to be done after I finish the second volume of Early New..

If you do family history long and broadly enough (searching out..

I grew up with an understanding that I had German and Irish roots. My paternal grandfather would often pull out a few German phrases he learned from his grandparents. On my mother’s side my cousins and I all took great pride in being “Kiley girls.” While these..

When writing my last post, I missed an event that Granduncle Fred (Ross W. McCurdy, that’s for you!) mentioned briefly..

On 7 May 2018, my maternal grandmother Eleanor Margaret (Buckle) Sadlow passed away at the age of 89. She was born 22 August 1928 in Arlington, Massachusetts, the daughter of William and Frances (Mulcahy) Buckle; in 1947, she..

Are godparents part of one’s family? The church I grew up in doesn’t “do” godparents, so I don’t have any first-hand experience, but I know that my..

[Editor's note: A version of this post originally appeared in Vita Brevis on 7 November 2016; its contents have been updated by Molly Rogers.]

The genealogy column in the Boston Evening Transcript newspaper has been one of the more heavily used resources at the NEHGS..

Vita Brevis readers may remember from some of my older posts that my husband is an attorney who happens to be blind (he who I have disparaged occasionally with all love and affection). Recently he has been qualified as a..

Last week I had the opportunity to explore something completely different in genealogy. The hunt was to identify when and where a family came from to the U.S. The information was minimal and second-hand, but since this was the paternal ancestry of my grandnephews and..

Immigration case records from the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society (HIAS) often involve siblings, parents, spouses, children, or other relatives, but in some circumstances people reach out to whomever..