A few days ago at Vita Brevis, we heard from Andrew Krea on genealogical research running up against natural disasters. The consequent uptick in valuable family information appearing in periodicals..

This week I gave a webinar on different ways of sharing family history findings with your family. (It was originally broadcast 18 November 2014.) While preparing for it, I became fascinated by the idea of creating a genealogical photo calendar.

I was inspired by a..

I am fortunate in that my parents and grandparents took photographs and preserved the..

In genealogical research, discovering the names of ships on which immigrant ancestors came to the New World is interesting not only as a discrete fact, but because it can often be a clue for further research. As there was a tendency for members of communities to travel..

While natural disasters are terrible, and frightening to contemplate, it is important when researching genealogy to be mindful of the sometimes terrifying events through which our..

While writing my blog focusing on archaic medical terms a few months ago, I began thinking about other aspects of everyday life that appeared in records used by genealogists. One element of an individual’s life which appeared on everything from wills to land deeds to..

Every November 10th my sister and I call my father to say Happy Birthday. Sometimes my mother buys a small cake to mark the occasion. However, November 10th is not my father’s actual birthday. It is the “birthday” of the United..

It is difficult to imagine leaving everything you have ever known behind. Yet millions of our..

I have written here before about the family of my maternal grandmother, Pauline Glidden Bell (1903–1968), who died when I was a small boy – I only just remember her...

When I was in elementary school, my class went on a field trip to the Old Village Cemetery in Dedham, Massachusetts, my hometown. I remember running around trying to complete tasks, such as finding the earliest death date and the oldest age listed on a headstone, as..