This past June, I was excited to attend the first workshop ever offered by NEHGS in Seattle. It was a bit of a drive from my home in Salem, Oregon, but definitely worth it, and the most useful thing..
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By now followers of my Vita Brevis posts are well aware that no genealogy is perfect. Period. No matter who wrote it.
The old mindset that a work published in a book or an article is automatically complete and completely accurate should be dead by now. The problem has..
Continue reading61 Bowdoin Street, Boston,..
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She was not pleased to see me – this paternal first cousin of my (biological) great-grandmother, Opal Young.[1] Her name was Grace,[2] and we had arranged our meeting through the mails, never having..
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In a recent meeting here at NEHGS, the conversation turned to the ease with which visitors to our Newbury Street building could fill out a three-, four-, or five-generation family chart, listing..
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Blame it on expediency and not paying attention, but I’ve misrepresented myself. Yes, I know occasionally we all do such things, but in this instance I need to clarify and correct – so as to set..
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Some of my ancestors are just plain pesky. We all have them, those ancestors who refuse, for seemingly no good reason other than to annoy us, to cooperate with our efforts to document them. For years I had tried to verify the parents of my maternal great-grandfather,..
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[Editor’s note: This series began here.]
When I begin organizing a collection, I start with a quick survey to help determine what types of material are in the collection. For me, this involves listing the formats in the collection, identifying the creators (if it is a..
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Recently, I had the opportunity to drive through the breathtaking Pennsylvania countryside to teach a group of middle schoolers about family history and genealogy at Penn State University...
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Sometimes in the course of studying family history it helps when the right sort of inspiration knocks at our door. Blog sites like Vita..
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