One of the features of this anniversary year – the four hundredth since the Mayflower’s landing at Plymouth as well as the 175th anniversary of the Society’s founding in 1845 – has been a focus on early members of the Society, people no one alive today can have known...

[Editor's note: The following blog post appeared in Vita Brevis on 6 December 2019.]

Having been occupied with a project these last few months, not only have I been away from Vita Brevis for far too long, but I’ve allowed issues of the Weekly Genealogist to pile up in..

[Editor's note: This blog post originally ran in Vita Brevis on 11 March 2020.]

I have most recently been concentrating on “clustering” research for the Early New England Families Study Project around Watertown, Massachusetts. Six new sketches – John Bigelow, Richard..

[Author's note: This blog post originally appeared in Vita Brevis on 25 March 2016.]

A frequent theater-goer and enthusiastic pedestrian in the 1860s, by the early 1880s – following the death of her husband – Regina..

[Author's note: This blog post originally appeared in Vita Brevis on 5 January 2017.]

Thanks to a timely message alerting me to a collection of letters for sale at eBay, I recently acquired one side of the genealogical correspondence between Regina Shober Gray[1] and..

[Author's note: This blog post originally appeared in Vita Brevis on 26 May 2015.]

[Editor's note: This blog post originally appeared in Vita Brevis on 24 March 2014.]

While the majority of the immigrants to New England between 1620 and 1640 were Puritans of some variety, a minority were conventional, conforming members of the Church of England, or..

[Editor's note: This blog post first appeared in Vita Brevis on 20 March 2017.]

Following up on correcting the charts in my Seeing double blog post, the chart showing my ancestor Anna (Salisbury) Slade was a recent disappointment and involved removing some ancestors..

[Editor's note: This blog post originally appeared in Vita Brevis on 22 May 2017.]

I recently traveled to Michigan to watch my cousin, Scott, graduate from Michigan State University (Go Spartans!) with a law degree. And like any good..

[Editor’s note: We mourn with the nation the passing of the distinguished journalist, historian, and bestselling author Cokie Roberts. We fondly recall her presence with us in 2016 as we honored her with the NEHGS Lifetime Achievement Award in History and Biography at..