An era in New England has ended. The last person born in the region during the nineteenth century died 3 January 2015 at the age of 115. Bernice Marina (Emerson) Madigan was born on Hill Street in West Springfield, Massachusetts, on 24 July..

Over the last year or so I have had some interesting matches amongst “DNA Relatives” on the website 23andme.com. I manage the profiles of my parents, my mother’s brother, and my wife’s parents. So far, the most interesting results have all come about from my mother and..

Seven new sketches were recently posted to the Early New England Families Study Project database on americanancestors.org:

Andrew Lane of Hingham, a feltmaker and farmer who had nine children with his wife Trypheny.

George Lane of Hingham, Andrew’s brother, a..

The Wing family of Cape Cod has had a great amount of genealogical information published about it over the years. Beginning with Rev. Conway P. Wing’s A Historical and Genealogical Register of John Wing, of Sandwich, Mass. And his Descendants, 1632-1888, the list..

In yesterday's post, I covered some of the more than 250 blog posts published in Vita Brevis during the first half of 2014. The series concludes with a post from each of the last six months of the year.

At the end of July, Katrina Fahy solved a genealogical puzzle..

As I write this, a few days before the New Year begins, Vita Brevis is nearly a year old; it has had more than 300,000 page views since its first post on 2 January 2014...

Most families have one: the family historian. Whether or not the focus is genealogical, there is usually at least one family member who keeps track of siblings and cousins, sometimes to the nth degree. My father's family had one..

Municipal annual reports provide a breakdown of various city and town department budgets and expenditures for the year. At first glance it may seem that these publications would not be useful for genealogical research, but taking the time to search these reports for..

In this season of giving, sometimes the most enjoyment comes from sharing items you forgot you had instead of those newly received. Three years ago, I celebrated Christmas at the mountain home of my..

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..