Few things can split apart families like war, and for Jewish families World War II was akin to a tornado: a whirling vortex that broke apart structures and families,..
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I have a distinct memory of my dad picking me up from daycare and presenting me with two of the loveliest books I had ever seen: The World of Christopher Robin and The World of Pooh, by A.A. Milne. At the time, my dad was a member of..
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A recent example of using transcribed records reminded me that many genealogists who wrote turn of the century family histories were using the same original records that were later transcribed – and thus the records that are often..
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I had never been to New England before my summer internship; truth be told, I had barely touched foot in the eastern half of the country. So when I packed my bags and flew to Boston, I was ecstatic about the..
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Above, left: Eugénie Vallée. Above, right: Marie Trottier.
This blog post, a sequel to “The widow of St. Casimir,” contrasts the lives of two women, Eugénie Vallée (1880–1973) and Marie Trottier (1855–1928), first cousins born in St. Casimir, Québec a generation..
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[Author's note: This blog post originally appeared in Vita Brevis on 23 February 2017.]
As I complete publishing excerpts from the 1865 volume, the final year in..
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As I have mentioned in other blog posts, the focus of my research has been on my maternal ancestry from Ireland, Germany, and Italy. While researching my Italian heritage, I have come across various places listed as my ancestors’ places of birth, from tiny frazioni..
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I grew up on this long-time family-owned property next door to my paternal grandparents, Rex Church (1883–1956) and Winifred Lee (1884–1980). I saw them almost every day until their deaths, ate lunches and holiday meals with them, slept overnight there with my cousins,..
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Much of my attention over the last eighteen months has been focused on creating the online database Mayflower Families Fifth Generation Descendants, 1700-1880. It was great to make this resource available to help people research their Mayflower ancestry.
Now we have a..
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