I wear several hats at NEHGS. In addition to editing Vita Brevis, I am the Society’s Editor-in-Chief, with advisory roles in the Publications, Library, and Website divisions; I write and edit books, including a..

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One of the delightful things about genealogy is that it often leads us to learn, and re-learn, our history lessons in unexpected ways.

I have struggled for many years trying to find any New York documents on my immigrant ancestor John LeClear. He came from France..

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One day, when searching through the town records of New Haven, Connecticut, I was struck by one of the entries. The writing appeared like nothing I had ever seen..

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Bob Anderson has a “Phantom File” at the end of his Great Migration Begins series (3: 2097–2104), with names that have been misread or misconstrued (e.g., John Allen for John Alden), meaning that no real person by the mistaken name existed.

An example of a phantom in..

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[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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I have been diddling with the sketch for Samuel Green of Boston for over a year and I’m still confused. Samuel² Green, son of Bartholomew¹ Green, was of the famous family of printers who operated the only printing press in the English colonies until 1665, and over..

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[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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For the last few months I have been working with Judi Garner of the Jewish Heritage Center, here at NEHGS, on an exhibit of twentieth-century Jewish photographers and their subjects, and we are finally finished. The photos are framed and hung; the labels have been..

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My photography collection recently took a decided step into new territory when I started acquiring vernacular photographs – images characterized, generally, by their lack of provenance and offering..Continue reading →

While researching the provenance of a family portrait, I recently revisited the research problem posed by my ancestress Martha (____) (Naden) Mortier, an Englishwoman who came to New York before the American Revolution with her second..

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