In my very first post for Vita Brevis, I mentioned that I’d learned a wonderful tip from NEHGS staff: many..
Continue reading
“You know, there is a shortage of beautiful, old theaters left in this country and this is one of them…” – Daryl Hall
At some point during the first decade of 2000s, I went to see Hall and Oates at the Orpheum Theater in Boston. They were on a tour to promote a..
Continue reading
I truly went down a rabbit hole recently, and all the credit goes to NEHGS’s Chief Genealogist, David..
Continue reading
As we begin the countdown for 2019 – and look forward to the blog’s fifth anniversary in January – I have selected some posts from the first half of 2018 to showcase the range of subjects covered in Vita Brevis during the last year.
Alicia Crane Williams started the..
Continue reading
In my post earlier this year, regarding preliminary research into the future Duchess of Sussex's matrilineal ancestry, I indicated that I had ordered several additional twentieth-century records that might..
Continue reading
With Mother’s Day last Sunday and the wedding tomorrow of Miss Meghan Markle and Prince Harry of Wales, I thought I would write a post on some of her maternal ancestors. Often on Mother’s Day, genealogists consider their matrilineal..
Continue reading61 Bowdoin..
Continue reading
This is a big year for honoring Fred McFeely Rogers, who – if not a family member – was a virtual neighbor to millions of us. The United States Postal Service is issuing a stamp in his memory this..
Continue reading
I want to love the husband of my favorite ancestor, Hepsibah, as much as I love her … but I can’t. When I first began researching George Athearn,[1] he seemed to be the very model of an eighteenth-century gentleman: a 1775 graduate of Harvard and judge of probate in..
Continue reading
Many genealogists will tell you that they get absorbed into the world of the ancestors they are researching...
Continue reading