This post marks the 250th blog post at Vita Brevis. To mark the occasion, I have asked some of our peerless contributors for suggestions on the theme of  “jump starting“ genealogical research (and publication) for the holidays – with an eye toward 2015!

Consider sending..

Ask any baseball fan who the first African-American major league player was, and nearly all will tell you it was Jackie Robinson. Ask anyone familiar with the game’s long and storied history before Robinson’s..

Thomas Hutchinson (1711–1780) was the last crown-appointed civilian governor of Massachusetts. During his term of office, he dealt with the aftermath of both the Boston Massacre and the Boston Tea Party. The Colonial Society of Massachusetts has recently published the..

Regimental histories can provide a lot of information regarding our Civil War ancestors, and are often overlooked in research. Compiled by many Civil War veterans in the years after the war, these histories can provide new insight into their..

I wrote in American Ancestors last year about the fascinating discovery of the remains of King Richard III in a Leicestershire parking lot, and the use of mtDNA via matrilineal relatives over many generations to get a positive match. Now, in another twist to this..

World War I Draft Registration Cards can be filled with useful and pertinent information about our ancestors. They can show us birthplaces, birthdates, parents’ nationalities, height, weight, hair color, and eye color. 

This Thanksgiving, I spent the holiday at the home of my girlfriend’s family in Little Compton, Rhode Island. It’s a beautiful home that dates back to the eighteenth century. Among the many historical elements of the place that fascinated me, there was one which left..

As part of his schoolwork, my nephew is working on a family tree showing his forebears. The assignment seems fairly flexible: Show as many ancestors as you can, or, if you don’t have much..

On Wednesday, we took a look at the books that are part of the Great Migration Study Project, which are key resources for genealogists and for people researching their own early New England ancestors. Just where did Robert Charles Anderson find the data to undertake..

Today, as most of us here in the United States enter our kitchens to cook, prepare, or bake our contributions for Thanksgiving dinner, many of us will reach into our bookshelves and pull out the recipe for those tried-and-true dishes that our families request (or..