Category Archives: Icymi

ICYMI: Middlesex County court records

[Editor's note: This blog post originally appeared in Vita Brevis on 8 March 2016.]

Some of Roger Touthaker’s testimony.

When researching a family, one can quickly become focused on names, birthdates, and death dates. It is easy to get caught up on going as far back..

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ICYMI: Tracing your African roots at NEHGS

The Old Plantation. Courtesy of Wikimedia.org

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

From tracing free people of color in New England to identifying former slaves in the deep south, NEHGS can help you tell your family..

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ICYMI: A thousand words

[Editor's note: This blog post originally appeared in Vita Brevis on 6 January 2016.]

Alice Selig Harris and friends

Coming from a family of active amateur photographers, the (still) new digital age of photography has significantly changed the way I look at and..

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ICYMI: On with the dance

“What a joy it is to dance and sing”

[Author's note: This post originally appeared in Vita Brevis on 8 December 2015.]

As genealogists, we tend to focus on the more remote past, rarely pausing to consider our parents’ or grandparents’ times in a rush to get back to..

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ICYMI: Consider the siblings

[Editor's note: This blog post originally appeared in Vita Brevis on 27 November 2015.]

For the last several months, I have been trying to determine the origins of each of my mother’s Irish ancestors. In a previous post, I mentioned my success in locating the origins..

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ICYMI: Family plots: Part Two

[Author's note: This blog post originally appeared in Vita Brevis on 19 October 2015.]

Riffing on something Chris Child wrote about collecting photos of family members in July, I thought I might do something similar with information about family burial plots. Such an..

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ICYMI: The Philadelphia box

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

Hedwiga Regina Shober Gray diary, entries for 5-7 February 1864. R. Stanton Avery Special Collections

In 1860, when Regina Shober Gray began keeping her diary, gift-giving was..

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ICYMI: Loyalist ancestors

[Editor’s note: This blog post originally appeared in Vita Brevis on 10 September 2015.]

"Encampment of the Loyalists in Johnstown, a new settlement on the banks of the River St. Lawrence, in Canada West," courtesy of Archives Ontario.

Mabel Winters, my..

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ICYMI: Family papers

[Author's note: This blog post originally appeared in Vita Brevis on 19 August 2015.]

My grandfather died almost 25 years ago, and sometime before that he gave me a box of “family papers.” The box itself is rather striking: a metal strong box, easily portable, with my..

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ICYMI: Researching famous people

The first page of George Herman Ruth’s 1920 passport application.

[Editor's note: This blog post originally appeared in Vita Brevis on 2 July 2015.]

Census records, passport applications, draft cards: many people are familiar with these resources because of their..

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