Among the prizes in my grandfather’s box of family papers is a small double daguerreotype case containing images of my great-great-grandparents, Gilbert Livingston Beeckman (1824–1874) and Margaret Atherton Foster (1832–1904)...

One of the envelopes in my box of family papers turns out to contain material on my great-grandfather Campbell Steward (1852–1936) as a boy, as well as a letter written to his married daughter in Europe shortly before his death. Another item caught my eye: a vivid..

My grandfather died almost 25 years ago, and sometime before that he gave me a box of “family papers.” The box itself is rather striking: a metal strong box, easily portable, with my great-great-grandfather John Steward’s name stenciled on top in fading paint. Inside..

I was fascinated by the story released in The New York Times last Wednesday regarding the DNA research to help establish that Warren..

Ben-Hur:  A Tale of the Christ (1925) was one of the great spectacles of the silent period; it was also one of the first movies to be produced by the newly amalgamated Metro–Goldwyn–Mayer film corporation. The uncredited cast list reads like..

A frequent refrain here at Vita Brevis is that genealogists should consider not just their direct ancestral lines, with a glance at collaterals like siblings or..

My cousin Neil recently shared some family albums with me: the oldest one belonged to his grandfather, Frederick Ayer (Jr.) (1888–1969), who kept it in 1905 and 1906. Over time, the images and the..

The announcement Tuesday of the (probable) identification of the remains of four men buried under the chancel of the first parish church at..

When I contemplated the subject of my first post, I decided that I should write about the person who sparked my genealogical interest in the first place: my paternal grandfather, Adrian Sidney Todd. Adrian died young, and I never had..

The map

Many people enjoy fishing, but not as many enjoy cleaning the catch. That is why we all have piles of research sitting waiting to be compiled into finished accounts. In some cases we may have entered our data into a genealogical database, but as nice as they..