ROOTS & BRANCHES

When you’re a genealogist, it can be said that you have an affection for cemeteries that others may find to be a bit off. I’ll take my lumps on that score. I found cemeteries to be fascinating even before I was a genealogist. In part that was because growing up I lived within walking distance …

Correspondence between average people is one of the backbones of social history, but it’s often the case that such letters are not preserved or stay in private hands and not available for researchers. At least as far as “Second Wave” German immigrants are concerned, there’s a great movement afoot called “German Heritage in Letters,” which …

Another “Roots & Branches” column on newspapers? Yes, another column on newspapers! That’s because I recently learned about a new project from the folks who run Chronicling America, a leading website with free, searchable scans of millions of pages from historical newspapers. A joint effort of the Library of Congress and the National Endowment for …

My high school classmate Pete Engel is an absolute wizard when it comes to things mechanical, especially car engines. As a matter of fact, he occasionally posts photos on Facebook of the screwy situations he runs into fixing vehicles that have obviously neglected by their owners. Well, I probably should place an asterisk next to …