I recently met with the widow of my father’s first cousin Dexter, who died in 2022, to look over some family documents. I had already seen and scanned most of these items, sharing them with relatives through online cloud storage. One item which I hadn’t seen before is..

My great-grandmother Kathleen never spoke much about her childhood, but she always wondered what happened to her little brother Joe.

Death certificates can add depth to a family tree, but when the parent names for the deceased are documented incorrectly, it can lead research down the wrong path—especially..

Sometimes it starts with that picture in the attic. It falls out of its black corners and yellow cellophane as if to say, look at me, I’m here for a reason—challenging you to rediscover its past, to make the voice of its subject heard.

I think it must have happened..

I recently went searching through newspaper records for information about the family of John Doane of Eastham for the next Early New England Families (ENEF) sketch. Newspaper resources about 17^th- and 18^th-century families are rare, but do exist for larger cities such..

Anyone who lived in Fall River, Massachusetts more than fifty years ago would..

As anyone who as ever spent time doing genealogical research can tell you, searching through historical records can oftentimes feel like a little bit of a treasure hunt. When I noticed an unusual headline..

Groucho Marx:"Well, whaddya say girls? Are we all gonna get married?"

Woman: "All of us? But that's bigamy!"

Groucho: "Yes, and it's big-a-me, too."

Researching the collateral relatives of my great-great-grandfather John Henry O. Record has brought a host of..

In early July I was given the opportunity to attend an online educational event, “Women in the Gilded Age,” with guest speakers Laura Thompson and Betsy Prioleau, part of the American Inspiration series at NEHGS. The draw was my interest in women’s history, and this..

When Scott Steward told me about his forthcoming departure from NEHGS, he asked if I could send him one more Vita Brevis post “for the road.” The posts I have written have largely been when I need a mental break from whatever genealogy I am working on or go down a..