As a kind of sequel to my post on “kinbot,” the medieval Scottish practice of making amends after slaying a kinsman, I can offer two stories of Livingston family murderesses … and the very..

This is a tale of how curiosity, knowledge of local Italian sources and conditions, and focused research strategies uncovered an error in church records and solved a genealogical mystery. Last year I..

As I work on a genealogy of the Livingston family in Scotland and America, I am roughing out appendices covering..

As any genealogical researcher with French ancestry knows, if you ever bring up those French forebears, the first question you’ll inevitably be asked is “Were they Huguenots?” But who exactly were the Huguenots? Where did they come from? And..

As part of my research on the Livingston family in Scotland and America, I have been looking at allied families – who sometimes turn out to be Livingstons themselves. One such case is John Bruce of Stenhouse..

All summer, I have been waiting for the release of the Digital Atlas of Dungarvan, a project spearheaded by the Royal Irish Academy. For more than 30 years, the Royal Irish Academy has published the Irish Historic..

The executions of the Earl of Douglas,[1] his brother David Douglas, and Sir Malcolm Fleming[2] for treason in November 1440 mark an important moment..

[Author's note: This blog post originally appeared in Vita Brevis on 20 November 2019.]

As I work at reconstructing the environment in which the Livingstons of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries lived, I have been struck by the..

Now that a few of our shelter-in-place orders have been lifted, my wife Nancy and I have started to get back to the more ‘normal’ side of life. I have to admit, it’s been pretty nice not having to treat toilet paper like some new form of..

[Editor's note: This blog post originally appeared in Vita Brevis on 28 April 2020.]

While I was researching and writing “The Early..