[Editor's note: A version of this post originally appeared in Vita Brevis on 7 November 2016; its contents have been updated by Molly Rogers.]

The genealogy column in the Boston Evening Transcript newspaper has been one of the more heavily used resources at the NEHGS..

[Editor's note: This blog post originally appeared in Vita Brevis on 3 October 2016.]

One day, when searching through the town records of New Haven, Connecticut, I..

[Author's note: This blog post originally appeared in Vita Brevis on 9 September 2016.]

One of the trends in my ancestry is the curious one whereby, when given the..

[Editor's note: This blog post originally appeared in Vita Brevis on 30 August 2016.]

My maternal grandparents were born in 1932: they were just nine years old at the beginning of World War II. They grew up..

[Editor's note: This blog post originally appeared in Vita Brevis on 22 July 2016.]

Growing up in Westerly, Rhode Island, a town in which more than 30% of residents identify as having Italian ancestry, I was always surrounded..

[Author's note: This blog post originally appeared in Vita Brevis on 9 June 2016.]

I am fortunate in having photographs of many of my relatives, and more fortunate still in that I can identify so many of them. Often the work has been done for me, as to names; sometimes..

[Editor's note: This blog post originally appeared in Vita Brevis on 2 May 2016.]

When I was..

[Editor's note: This blog post originally appeared in Vita Brevis on 22 April 2016.]

Genealogists and historians of Massachusetts are indebted to the works of..

On Friday, I wrote about some of the most widely-read Vita Brevis posts of 2017. To mark the beginning of the next year, here are six more popular posts showcasing the range of subjects covered in a blog that publishes about 250 posts a year. (In fact, Vita Brevis..

As the old year winds down over the next few days, I hope that dedicated Vita Brevis readers will spare a few moments to (re)read some of the most popular posts of 2017. (The second part of this omnibus post will run on New Year’s Day 2018.) The following twelve posts..