ROOTS & BRANCHES

When I spent a column describing my probable itinerary for a trip to Germany a month ago to the “Roots & Branches” readership, there was one stop I left off the list because it was “iffy” at best. That was the village of Helmershausen in Thuringia, the hometown (in German, Heimat) of the Bardorf family, …

The maiden surname of one of my great-great-grandmothers was Dehart. And since that woman, Emma Rebecca Dehart, was (along with her husband Wellington B. Machmer) the first family member to inhabit my current home, I’ve always been a little more interested in the Deharts than my average ancestral line. With relative ease, I traced her …

Long before I volunteered to do a webinar titled “Pennsylvania German Enslavers: Initiating a Re-Examination” for the Historical Society of Pennsylvania last month, I knew that Joseph Hiester, my “first cousin, six times removed” who was a congressman and later governor of Pennsylvania, was an enslaver. Some years ago I had come across a copy …

When I volunteered to do a webinar titled “Pennsylvania German Enslavers: Initiating a Re-Examination” for Katy Barnes, the Historical Society of Pennsylvania’s genealogy director, I knew I was tackling a topic with the potential for fraught conversation. But with encouragement from both Barnes and Justina Barrett, the society’s director of education and programs, we were …

As you read this, I’m expecting to be either in my final preparations for or actually on my way to Germany for a sixth time—my first visit in a dozen years. After arriving in Frankfurt, I’m planning to see Rudi and Helga Daub, my longest lasting German friends, who I met when I was historian …