ROOTS & BRANCHES

Last week’s “Roots & Branches” column gave a nod to a correspondent of mine, Brian S. Miller. His information had extended my “umbilical” line – that is, my mother’s mother’s mother and etc. – a generation, breaking through what had been one of four Miller brick walls in my lineage. In this case, information from …

When I was relatively new to genealogy – this was the 1980s, before Internet and way before DNA – a researcher who was somewhat of a mentor to me said that he especially liked tracing “umbilical lines.” In its strictest sense, this is what we now call the mitochondrial DNA line (mtDNA for short) because …

“You should have known better.” I heard that a bunch of time growing up since it was my mother’s favorite way to rebuke me. I thought of the phrase again – for the first time in a long time! – when looking at a blog post by Dick Eastman a couple of weeks ago. Under …

Faithful readers of the “Roots & Branches” column will know that Eric “Rick” Bender of New Mexico is probably the column’s most prolific correspondent. I’ve met Bender in person, too, a few times over the years – most recently at the Lancaster Family History Conference a couple of weeks ago. Bender says he had a …