In lineage societies, the frequently-used term ‘gateway ancestor’ refers to an ancestor who has a known lineage which can be traced back to a person of prominence...

[Editor’s Note: Alicia’s series began here and continues here.]

Contested will

It is not often that a will is contested, but in the case of John Dickson, we have a nice, brief example.

John died on 22 March 1736/37, and by 4 April 1737 a formal petition had been..

In September of 2014, I wrote a blog posted entitled “My ancestor was born ... where?!” about my family’s unexpected ties to Saint Helena, a remote volcanic island in the South Atlantic Ocean. My..

Long before I loved genealogy, I fell head-over-heels for oral history. My great-grandfather, Everett Eames, died in 2005. By that time, I was nineteen, and had been regaled with stories of his years in the logging camps of..

Have you ever played the game telephone? If you don’t know the game, it is when one person whispers a message to another, which is passed through a line of people until the last player announces the message to the entire group. If you have, then I am sure you..

A recent Google search brought me to a page of links to various Baltimore city directories, and I thought it might be useful to make some..

Part One appears here.

The parts of a will

Identification of testator: The first sentence will state the testator’s name, residence, and occupation. There is usually a comment about being old and weak, but of sound mind – for those who might argue otherwise [and later..

Whenever I, in another frenzy of research, dive into the bins of my family documents, artifacts, heirlooms, and memorabilia, I usually know what I’m looking for with little idea of what I’ll actually find, like my paternal grandmother’s herbal..

As I’ve mentioned before, genealogical research favors the resourceful -- and the patient. One of my outstanding brick walls, a man who has defeated generations of researchers..

Recently, I moved from my hometown of Dedham to Medford, Massachusetts. I never really thought about it, but I had always assumed my family had no connections to places north of Boston. My mother and her siblings grew..