ROOTS & BRANCHES

A couple of weeks ago FamilySearch.org, the world’s largest free family history site, announced that use of many of its online collections will require a sign on. The genealogical world greeted the news with a collective sigh … with some putting an extra helping of “sturm und drang” into that sigh. As for me, I …

One of the most profound “good news, bad news” situations of German genealogy is finding an American record that mention a village of origin in the old country. It’s good news, of course, because so many people searching German roots are stuck with documents that say only “Germany” or the only slightly more helpful “Prussia.” …

If you’re not familiar with faithful “Roots & Branches” reader Eric “Rick” Bender from New Mexico, well, then you’re obviously not a faithful “Roots & Branches” reader. Bender was reacting to the column a couple of weeks ago in which I talked about my first trip to the Family History Library in Salt Lake City. …

I’ll be reporting on a number of things from my recent trip to Salt Lake City (via a wonderful weekend of lecturing in Denver, Colorado) in the next few weeks’ worth of “Roots & Branches” columns. There’ll be an update on the digitization status of the Family History Library’s huge cache of microfilmed records from …