Following up on my prior post on retroactive suffixes, I’ll now discuss the other practice of retroactive surnames. This frequently occurs in publications relating to royalty in the medieval period, the best example being the..

[Editor's note: This blog post originally appeared in Vita Brevis 12 April 2019.]

In early 2015 I had just completed work on The Great Migration Directory: Immigrants to New England, 1620-1640, with abbreviated entries for each known head of household or isolated..

[Author's note: These blog posts originally appeared in Vita Brevis between December 2017 and February 2018.]

To..

While watching the recent broadcast of “Atlantic Crossing,” it took me a minute or two to remember the parentage of protagonist Crown Princess Martha of Norway as well her siblings. Making those connections began with stamps...

Sometimes one loses perspective on one’s researches, so when I say that the identity of Master James Livingston, a younger son of the 4th Lord Livingston, is a problem for the ages – a quandary for which many await resolution – I..

In 1982, when I discovered my mother’s great-grandfather, Azorean immigrant Marion Sylvia (ca. 1847–1924), Mom asked me, “How much Portuguese ancestry do I have?” Marion remains my only identified maternal..

[Author's note: This blog post originally appeared in Vita Brevis on 10 May 2019.]

Sunday night's interview with Oprah Winfrey included statements by the Duke and Duchess of Sussex on their son Archie's title usage. As I note in the post, Archie Mountbatten-Windsor..

The point of this brief post is to inspire and frustrate. Mostly inspire.

I have been working on a few research cases lately where the clients’ ancestors were from the historical region of Galicia – part of the Austrian Empire until the..

With Boston mayor Marty Walsh expected to be confirmed as United States Secretary of Labor, our city will have a new acting mayor with our city council president Kim Janey, who will be the first female and African-American to serve in this position (acting or..

More than fifty years ago, when I first saw the musical Oliver!, I could not have imagined the discovery of an ancestor living in a Victorian-era workhouse in England. Robert Rhodes, my great-great-great-grandfather, died..