This past summer, the release of images and data discovered in the burials beneath the Jamestowne Colony’s first parish chancel attracted nationwide interest. These were remarkable for their antiquity, the prominent positions the interred colonists had occupied, and..

Editor’s Note: NEHGS Senior Research Scholar Emeritus Gary Boyd Roberts makes his Vita Brevis début with a series of articles updating entries to his Ancestors of American Presidents, 2009 Edition, and its 2012 reprint.

The subject matter of Ancestors of American..

When the season turns to Thanksgiving, we often think of the first Pilgrims arriving on these shores aboard the Mayflower. And lately at NEHGS, when we think about the Mayflower, we think specifically of the Mayflower Descendant, of which NEHGS will be the steward for..

That pile of photocopied original documents you have sitting on your table looks especially mountainous when you start compiling genealogical text. How much of it needs to be included? How should it be presented? What is important and what is not?

Before you can..

Readers have asked how to cite Internet sources. Confession, I don’t really know the answer – and I don’t think many others do, either. It is a new, still-evolving discipline complicated by the transitory nature of the beast, where links to pages get changed and/or..

Some Vita Brevis readers have sent me really nice samples of what they are doing using the Early New England Families Study Project format model. Thanks, you are all “on point” and doing a great job. Plenty of questions have been sent, too, so let’s address some of..

[Editor’s Note: Between June and August of this year, Alicia wrote two series on her research and writing methodologies. In the interest of bringing them together, and sharing them with a fresh audience, they are offered again, with some of the author’s commentary. The..

Every family history researcher hopes diligence and persistence will bring forth enough details of an ancestor’s life to fill out a void on the family tree. There is always hope that serendipity will produce unexpected history gold in..

Six new sketches have been posted in the Early New England Families Study Project database:[1]

John Dunham (c. 1615–1692), son of John Dunham (GM); married Mary ___; settled in Plymouth; farmer; 7 children.

Richard Newton (c. 1606–1701) married Ann/Hannah Loker alias..