Just after 5:30 a.m., last October 9, I got a text from my half-sister letting me know that she and her children..

A few years ago, as I was looking into what NEHGS’ collection held on Italian research subjects, I came across a manuscript that was created in 1954 by a woman who was interested in documenting the Italians of Kingston, Massachusetts. The Coming of Italians to Kingston..

While researching family stories for verification (and, let’s face it, amusement), I began to think that we all face the same questions: “Huh?” turns into “Why did he/she/they do that?,” which morphs into..

Immigration to the United States has often been a difficult and time-consuming process, and never more so than during the first half of the twentieth century. The immigration laws of the 1920s established a..

In my last Vita Brevis post, I mentioned that an enormous wild fire had swept through the area where my maternal grandmother’s family has..

Several years ago my mother gave me a family picture that is unlike most family pictures; in fact, without the identifying information on the back, it doesn’t seem to be a family picture at all. Thank goodness for the label, which gives a ton of information, not only..

I was recently on holiday in London and Prague, and in the latter city I had a rather serendipitous encounter, as it seemed – but perhaps was not! While touring the Lobkowicz Palace at Prague Castle – an impressive..

A time of major transition – I just retired from teaching after a wonderful run of thirty-five years. No one who knows me well asks: What will you do [more of] next? While genealogy, per se, was not part of the prescribed..

If you do family history long and broadly enough (searching out..

When writing my last post, I missed an event that Granduncle Fred (Ross W. McCurdy, that’s for you!) mentioned briefly..