Okay, so now we have a pile of bricks. Are we ready to start building our genealogical house? No. We need to know what the house is supposed to look like (blue prints) and the regulations about how the house should be constructed (codes). If we were really building a..

My actual hometown is seventeen miles south of Boston; I have called Stoughton my home since birth, and as a genealogist I can claim a variety of ancestral home towns or villages. Genealogically speaking, however, I feel most at home in Nova Scotia, Canada.

My paternal..

We often learn from our mistakes. A promise that “I won’t do that again” can be a valuable tool. And, if repeated enough times, it becomes known as experience.

A decade ago I had a luncheon talk entitled “My Ten Worst Mistakes in Genealogy.” When the title appeared,..

A master mason can “butter” a brick and add it to a straight and true wall in a matter of seconds. He learns to do this through repeated practice, laying thousands of bricks in hundreds of walls.

In genealogy we deal with bricks that we call primary, secondary, and..

The seventy-ninth anniversary of my parents’ marriage falls on 30 March 2014. They were married for 71 years before my mother’s death at age 99 years, 6 months, and 9 days in 2006.  Mom was my connection to genealogy. Her mother was the last of her branch of the family..

As a follow-up to my first post at Vita Brevis, back in early January, I am happy to report that a likely photograph of my..