A common story among Americans is that their immigrant ancestors changed their names (or had their names changed) upon arrival to the United States in order to make their names sound more “American.” This can make researching..

A common rule for genealogists is that spelling does not count: usually, entering an alternate spelling of a surname into a..

Before the internet and the digitization of some Irish records, one needed patience, persistence, and problem-solving skills to connect the lives of Irish immigrants here..

Today marks the one-thousandth Vita Brevis post since the blog launched in January 2014. The blog’s pages have been accessed more than one-and-a-half million times, and by my (not very scientific) count the following eighteen posts have led the field, read by more than..

Recently I was researching my Holland surname line and ran into an interesting problem. I found two men named William Holland, each of whom..

Inspired by the Persian fairy tale The Three Princes of Serendip, Horace Walpole gave us the word serendipity. The following three tales shine among my past treasures as..

[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..

[Editor’s note: This blog post originally appeared in Vita Brevis on 29 June 2015.]

Over the years I have had the chance to discuss the subject of ethnicity (and identity) with avid genealogists and..

At Easter 2016, Ireland commemorated a seminal event in its struggle for independence, the Easter Rising of April 24–30, 1916. Led by men and women from the Irish Republican Brotherhood, the Irish Volunteers and Cumann na mBan, about 1,200..

Many Americans are familiar with the popular and scenic Ring of Kerry in Ireland. They might be less familiar with a peninsula just to the south, in County Cork, called Beara. Those who are attempting to trace their roots to the Beara Peninsula are among the most..