ROOTS & BRANCHES

When I started devoting a column now and then to what a “core collection” of German genealogy resources looks like, I though that some of the “Roots & Branches” installments might be about a single book and that others might deal with several concerning one subtopic of the field. But then there’s the bibliography of …

On a day last week that when the weather was predicted to included a snowy mist worthy of a mythological landscape—a legendary archivist took a bow into retirement. Jonathan R. Stayer, head of reference at the Pennsylvania State Archives, is that legend. Stayer got to the State Archives in the first half of the 1980s, …

Some genealogical learning experiences don’t start out as such. Recently I decided to go on the Centre Park Moonlight Tour of house in the Centre Park Historic District of Reading, an energetic city neighborhood with many Victorian-style homes and examples of other classic architectures. While I had been at a couple of previous events in …

A couple of weeks ago I took a step back to what a “core collection” of Pennsylvania German books looks like and promised to explore those resources in “Roots & Branches” sporadically over the next few months. Probably the most needed skill for those with Pennsylvania German ancestry is language. And, no, not for the …

When I began my genealogical journey in the 1980s, I benefited from a correspondence network of many Berks County genealogists who already had been plying the fields for years. One of those people was Beulah Stoudt Follmer, who at the instance of John Grimes (one of the very earliest people who had helped), wrote to …

I’m no Luddite. But I am still, at least in part, a Gutenberg man. Give me the choice of reading something on a screen or printing it out and—if I wasn’t dissuaded more and more by “consider the environment” rejoinders—my preference would be to print it out every time. It’s just the way I roll …

When it comes to DNA and genealogy, I generally try to stay at least one step behind the news to give me time to absorb it. I also wait to get a read from my friends—people such as Diahan Southard, Blaine Bettinger, Angie Bush and Judy Russell (and many others!)—who are gurus in this field …

One of the more intriguing things about my first career in newspapers was that we called the newspaper library “the morgue.” Likely this came about primarily because it was the repository of actual obituaries as well as old newspaper clippings from which future obituaries would be compiled about the area’s prominent people. He computer age …

I wrote in “Roots & Branches” two weeks ago—in the first of what now has become three columns on the website Find A Grave— “I continue to have difficulty wrapping my head around the psychology of someone who would be such a clod as to intrude on people’s grief by hastily putting up a memorial …

Last week’s column on Find A Grave generated a bunch of responses and, as always, your “Roots & Branches” columnist learns some valuable things. The crux of the column was that in some cases those creating Find A Grave memorials do so by ingesting online obituaries and create the memorials within hours of a person’s …

There are likely few genealogists who don’t know about the Ancestry.com-owned website Find A Grave, which started as a way for people to share inscriptions from and photos of, well, graves … gravestones, in particular. But a not so funny thing has happened on the way to the website becoming a sort of “one stop …

 Last week’s “Roots & Branches” column included the welcome news about Dirk Weissleder that he had shared recently. He’s the chair of the German genealogy umbrella organization DAGV and the second vice president for the International German Genealogy Partnership and has become the first German to be elected as general secretary of the World Federation …

German-language translator Katherine Schober, who trades as SK Translations, has been quickly developing a well-deserved reputation as a “go-to” person for translating genealogy documents. And now she’s making a name for herself in the curriculum field by creating courses that aim to let students get inside her knowledge of the language and especially the old …

Over the last 20 years, I’ve been on virtually every side of the desk for genealogy conferences. I’ve been a rank-and-file attendee. I’ve been a speaker. I’ve been a vendor. I’ve co-chaired a national conference. I’ve planned programming. So when I tell you that lecturing at the Montana State Genealogical Society’s 30th annual conference earlier …

Since the mid-2000s, the Pennsylvania German Cultural Heritage Center on the campus of Kutztown University has had a fall genealogy conference every other year, usually featuring three or four speakers. The edition of the conference held earlier this month deviated from pattern of the previous seven conferences in two respects.  First, the Pennsylvania Chapter of …

Roger P. Minert has added much to the canon of German genealogy research. His books on language and old German script are the definitive classics of the field, and the continuing series German Immigrants in American Church Records that he directs has unearthed thousands of European village origins. Minert also brainstormed an innovative tool for …

I’ve been going to nationwide genealogy conferences for a couple of decades now, which can leave you a little jaundiced when you (once again) listen to a vendor’s pitch about how her or she has the newest, greatest, etc., item that will set the family history world on fire. But once in a while—you are …

Last week’s “Roots & Branches” column showed how Kevin Kelleher of Hollidaysburg made contact with John Kelleher from County Cork in Ireland. The men on birth sides of the Atlantic knew the story of an uncle who died without children and made siblings, a nephew and nieces his heirs. John told Kevin the four heirs …

It’s not unusual for your “Roots & Branches” columnist to offer a bit of advice here and there to questions that I field and I customarily will ask for feedback if researchers have a breakthrough regarding their query. And it’s gratifying that a fair number of people replay and indicate success in their missions. What’s …

Early this year, I took the opportunity to give a rundown on the institutes in the genealogy world in “Roots & Branches.” I didn’t reveal one of my motivations for doing that: This was the first year I was attending one of those institutes. Last month, I attended the Genealogical Research Institute of Pittsburgh, held …

I had never been to California for more than quick trips to conferences over the years. So when the opportunity presented to spend some time there ahead of June’s international German conference in Sacramento, it was a no-brainer whirlwind that included San Francisco, Redwoods, Napa Valley and driving the Sonora Pass at almost 10,000 feet. …

There are times when the good news is finding a family artifact is still around—but the bad news is its fragility. That’s the situation Keith Crownover of Hollidaysburg finds himself in. “I read your column in the Altoona Mirror and I was wondering if you could help me with what is probably a common problem,” …

When you’ve written 1,100 columns over a span of more than 20 years—and, OK, kept an imperfect archive!—there’s going to be some times when you return to the same subjects. One topic that has fascinated me a bit is a concept that I call “origination” and “destination” records (I’m certain that I’m not the first …

The first time I ever read a trilogy—OK, truth be known, it was also the first time I had encountered the word!—was three comic book stories on witches. Since then I’ve read trilogies of books, seen movies and watched television. But the most massive trilogy I’ve ever come in contact is the one compiled by …

For the first time in 42 years, a history of the German-speaking Staudt-Stoudt-Stout families in eastern Pennsylvania is being published. This is a common name—your “Roots & Branches” columnist counts himself among the thousands of descendants of multiple immigrants of the surname in the 1700s. Led by Ellen Kramer, the national family historian of the …

With the possible exception of my own commercially published books, I don’t think I’ve ever been as excited to receive a copy of a new book as the one that showed up in my mailbox last week. That’s because co-author Sunny Jane Morton had given me a heads up that she was working on How …

Genealogy hobbyists often start their searches today with merely a name. And many databases and family history websites today have advanced to the point of serving up potential records that match those names. Even more specific questions—such as “Where do I find my great-grandfather’s birthplace?” or “Which port did my great-great-grandmother use to enter the …

Every inactive cemetery should have someone as interested in the people who are or were buried there as Joseph F. Harrison III is about the St. Stephen’s Catholic Cemetery in the Nicetown section of Philadelphia. Harrison has family connections to St. Stephen’s Roman Catholic Church—his father was baptized there in 1925—as well as a great-great-grandmother …

Keen readers of the “Roots & Branches” column will likely remember that your columnist likes pride himself as a “half Gutenberg, half digital” guy who always makes sure he’s at least two iPhone models behind the current one. So, a couple of words that tend to make me a flinch are “app” and “the cloud”—the …

Recently I needed some airplane reading so picked up a Life magazine edition titled “Anne Frank: The Diary at 70: Her Life and Her Legacy.” Anne Frank, of course, is the Jewish teenager who died in a Nazi death camp along with her entire family—save her father, Otto, who returned to where they had hidden …

It’s likely the case that pretty much any field of endeavor looks more complicated when you analyze it more closely, whether it’s something done strictly as a profession like medicine—or something like genealogy, whose practitioners span a gamut from hobbyist to researcher-for-hire. I recall one instance some dozen years ago when I was in the …

You’re just going to have to pardon the “humble brag,” or at least I hope you will. That’s because it turns out my fourth commercially published book, The Family Tree Historical Atlas of Germany, is proving to be quite a hit. My first book, The Family Tree German Genealogy Guide, came about because former Family …

Since Kutztown University in Berks County, Pennsylvania, is about as a close to the true geographic center of the so-called “PA Dutch” culture, it’s no wonder that the university became home to the Pennsylvania German Cultural Heritage Center some years ago. And in addition to that center’s many other activities, it began biennial get-togethers more …

I’ve mentioned—well, more than just mentioned, sometimes!—Lebanon County expatriate and Florida resident Ken Weaver in the “Roots & Branches” column before because he has a knack of bringing questions to the fore that would benefit other readers. This exchange began innocently enough, with Weaver asking: “Are there lists of passengers who entered through the port …

For a video advertisement that runs 30 seconds, the reviews from the “Twitterverse” were lengthy and seem to be unanimous: Ancestry’s Canadian subsidiary laid an enormous egg in putting out an ad titled “Inseparable” showing an antebellum interracial couple planning to flee north. Because … well, that’s what I’m trying to figure out, realizing at …

Let no one think that digitization of historical newspapers is in any way abating. And leave it for folks in the Penn State area to be doing a project that has some cutting-edge aspects to it. The hot news about old news is that L. Suzanne Kellerman of Penn State Libraries has teamed up with …

Late last month brought an e-mail to my inbox with the screaming headline of “We Won Our Lawsuit!” The e-mail was from a group called “Reclaim the Records” and they were touting having won their fourth Freedom of Information lawsuit to gain free public access to various vital records in New York, in this case …

Centuries of emigration have planted Germans on every continent on earth. And most of those continents will be represented at the International German Genealogy Conference in Sacramento, Calif., from June 15-17 at the Hyatt Regency Hotel. The conference theme is “Strike It Rich! with Connections 2 Discoveries.” Hundreds of attendees have already registered for the …

There are many people more qualified than me to write about DNA and genealogy—so take everything you’re going to read here with a grain or two of salt. I was already in the larger genealogy community (that is, organizations and independent professionals doing more than just personal trees) when DNA started hitting the scene in …

I’ve written previously in “Roots & Branches” about how much I love maps and that this passion has culminated in my latest book. Well, that book is The Family Tree Historical Atlas of Germany and it is available for pre-ordering, with an expected shipping date in the second half of May (People who are attuned …

It’s not often that I’ve used the “Roots & Branches” pulpit to talk about something political. But the ongoing controversy over whether to put a citizenship question back in the U.S. Census questionnaire for the first time in more than half a century is worthy of comment, especially because it pulls me in some opposite …

When Patti Hobbs posted on Facebook a copy of a survey from an 1829 court file showing several property lines in what’s now Warriors Mark Township in Huntingdon County, she did it mainly because she thought it was a great map. And while that was certainly true – the survey was detailed enough to show …

It’s just a little more than a month until one of the rites of passage into spring in the Pennsylvania genealogical world – the Lancaster Family History Conference. Stretching from March 28 to 30 when pre-conference trips and workshops are included, the main event on March 30 will be held at Farm and Home Center, …

For years the genealogy world suffered from a reputation as a kind of semi-scholarly weak sister to the study history at best—and mere ego filled with a lot of unverifiable family lore. There was time, not particularly long ago, when genealogists seeking to hone their craft—to become either a professional or an academic-level amateur—had really …

In case you wonder what type of communications that your “Roots & Branches” columnist likes to receive, let me share one with you that shows someone going about genealogy in a credible, methodological fashion as well as needing some guidance going on from there. The e-mail came from Tess Byers in Johnstown. She attached “three …

I’ve written quite a number of “Roots & Branches” columns telling people that one of the best ways to make sure your genealogy is as complete and credible as possible is to find the local experts—ones who sometimes only know one particular township or borough, but know their territory and the people who lived there. …

Even before I was interested in genealogy, I was captivated by maps. Political maps with country and state borders, physical maps with the greens for plains and reds for mountains, road maps with all their symbols – it didn’t matter, I would examine them, trace them, even freehand them. What got me thinking again about …

Back in the days when printed things were the primary source of information for people, there was an outfit named Halbert’s that “specialized” (in strange twist of that word) in the most generic family histories possible. These volumes would feature a coat of arms or crest on the cover (which indeed would be related to …

I first encountered the encyclopedia of German genealogy knowledge that is Baerbel Johnson at the Family History Library in Utah when steered she me, as she has many times since then, to just the right resource to solve my problem. To meet up with independent researcher and Anabaptist expert Michael Lacopo, it was listening to …

I’ll admit to being a big fan of datestones on buildings. And I’ll admit further that I’ve found that they must be examined critically just like any other piece of historical evidence – sometimes in ways that I never would have anticipated. The “default version,” so to say, is that you’ll find a datestone either …