My third lesson follows on from the events of the second – explorations into family history can result in rich and rewarding personal relationships.

So who was this man in Hotchkiss? His..

My recent post on "Retroactive surnames" prompted a few comments on the topic of “retroactive middle names,” something that has happened in my own matrilineal ancestry and that of my father’s, as well as with a great-great-grandmother being given a second middle name..

As the branches on my paternal grandmother’s family tree grew, they filled in with names like Hierlihy, Urquhart, and Milliken, and I was quite intrigued to..

When Mom’s father died, a trove of photographs was discovered in his basement. They had been put there, out of sight, many years before. They were mostly in the form of glass plate negatives – pictures taken by my grandfather when he was a young man, between 1905 and..

Interest in genealogy has increased dramatically since the introduction of DNA testing. With the United States long being considered a melting pot society, Americans have turned to DNA testing to discover what other ethnicities they can claim. DNA testing has also..

Jeff Record’s recent post on his relative Evan Evans reminded me of similarly named persons in colonial Connecticut aptly named Christopher Christophers. While I am not related to these individuals, the fact that these men shared my first name twice is surely a reason..

[Editor’s note: This series began with Part 1 and Part 2.]

Until recently, unless you were lucky enough to know the names of your immigrant Irish ancestors’ parents and/or the place(s) where they were born or resided in the Emerald Isle, such information was often..

When I began researching my paternal ancestors as a high school student, I had many questions about Barbara Shakshober, the oldest sister of my great-great-grandfather, Jacob Shakshober. Because the 1860 and 1870 censuses report her birthplace as New York,[1] I..

Following on my previous post on Paines of northeastern Connecticut, this post relates to the most recent relative of mine with the Paine surname, Lieut. John Merrick⁸ Paine (John^7-6, Daniel^5-4, Samuel³, Stephen^2-1), a Civil War veteran, who has a more immediate and..

“He was not a very tall man”: words I read in a message associated with my great-great-great-grandfather Henry Poor of Newburyport, Massachusetts. Henry was born in Newbury on 20 June 1769, a son of Captain..