ROOTS & BRANCHES

Off and on for more than a decade, I served on Pennsylvania’s State Historic Records Advisory Board or SHRAB and every few years we’d be briefed on plans for a new building to house the State Archives. But like the Easter Bunny and Santa Claus, those plans would get to a certain point and then …

I’ve probably not referenced my favorite genealogy book nearly enough in this column.And that’s probably because, technically speaking, late Charles H. Glatfelter’s 1980 book on the Lutheran and Reformed ministers and churches of the 18th century is not a genealogy book.Titled in full Pastors and People: German Lutheran and Reformed Churches in the Pennsylvania Field, …

Just a couple of weeks ago “Roots & Branches” shared some musings from relative genealogical newbie Laura Wolf. She’s been perusing the older columns and as someone with a background in social science research, she has loads of questions that I wish more budding family historians would ask (like how to better engage students and …

I’ve heard the saying “you learn something new every day”—and on the day of writing this installment of the “Roots & Branches” column, that was supplied by Jeffrey D. Sherbondy of the Sherbondy Family Association. Sherbondy describes himself as an experienced family researcher and publisher and his initial inquiry bore that out—he’s obviously grabbed more …

The conversation began about a month ago when Laura Wolf emailed me with some welcome words of praise for my book The Family Tree Historical Newspapers Guide.“I learned a lot from your book and wanted to take a moment to thank you,” Wolf wrote. “The book was packed with information, but yet very accessible and …

Who doesn’t like a birthday? OK, I’ll admit as the number of my birthdays has stacked up into a seventh decade, I get a little bit less enamored with all-out celebrations. But when it comes to institutions, I think we’d all agree that “the more, the merrier” is a great way of looking at it. …

Last week’s “Roots & Branches” column focused on so-called “union churches.” I defined this phenomenon as “Two or more congregations of different religious denominations sharing ownership of a church building.” It was often found in the more rural areas of the mid-Atlantic among the mainstream Lutheran and Reformed denominations of the German-speaking people. While these …

There are few terms applicable to Pennsylvania German genealogy that tend to confuse beginner family historians as much as “union churches.” For example: “What’s that—a church that favored the North in the Civil War?” Well, no. My best shot at a definition would be “Two or more congregations of different religious denominations sharing ownership of …

When I recently researched and recorded a presentation on the 1798 U.S. Direct Tax, nicknamed the “Window Tax” because in part the assessment of that tax was based on glass windows in homes, it took me back to the days when I was researching the Daub family of Lebanon County. Immigrant Johan Daub lived in …

More than a dozen years ago, I had the experience of helping coordinate (and some weeks even teach) an adult Sunday school class at the church I formerly attended. I clearly recall one unit that I personally taught on the biblical book of Acts, the curriculum for which used some clever phrasing about accounting for …

As this column is published, your “Roots & Branches” columnist will be speaking for the Cecil County Public Library system’s Genealogy Symposium on “What’s Hot and What’s Not in 21st Century Genealogy.” It’s a bit of a lofty topic, but as faithful readers well know: I’m never short of opinions on such things. There’s no …

In the last 20-something years, it’s been a rare genealogy event at which I haven’t had some sort of extra role. I’ve chaired a few major conferences. I’ve spoken at loads more. Sometimes I’ve been a vendor. And other times I’ve been the official representative of one or another organization. But for last weekend’s hybrid …

If you know anything from reading “Roots & Branches,” you know how much I’ve relied on church records not only for my own genealogy but recommend them for use by others, especially in times before a particular area adopted civil registrations of birth, marriages and deaths. The city of Reading, county seat of Berks County, …

It’s not for nothing that Shamele Jordon, show runner of the biweekly “Genealogy Quick Start” program on which I appear as a regular, can motivate me to participate in just about any event. She was the one who got me involved in “PARK(ing) Day Philadelphia,” first in 2017 as a project related to an earlier …

Here’s a reminder that a lot of genealogy research is dependent on knowing the history of an area … and it helps when you overcome your sense of thinking that the history of different area will be the same as that to which you are accustomed. I had an email forwarded to me from Mike …

“My jaw is on the floor … gobsmacked!! Wow!” Even after all but 40 years of doing genealogy, your “Roots & Branches” columnist never tires of enthusiasm such as that expressed by Karla Kirchman-Gray about finding documentation about one of her German immigrant ancestors. Kirchman-Gray have a little bit of history that’s relevant. She and …

When I met Simon Davies earlier this year at the RootsTech conference in Salt Lake City, he was doing what’s quickly becoming a time-honored tradition of “making the rounds” in the Salt Palace expo hall to spread the word about a new product or service ready to hit the market in the genealogical community. Now …

Dale J.J. Leppard didn’t just fall off the turnip truck yesterday. But some managers of Find A Grave memorials treat him like he did. Find A Grave, owned by Ancestry.com, is a free online service that aims to document headstones worldwide and is uses volunteers who provide tombstone photos, biographies, and other information about burials. …

Your “Roots & Branches” columnist may be finished promoting PaGE but he’s not done with genealogy conferences in general. That’s because there’s a major hybrid event in a month and half that is a great opportunity. It’s the second annual East Coast Genetic Genealogy Conference from Oct. 6–8, to be held in person at the …

Even the most fervent readers of “Roots & Branches” might be tired of hearing about Pennsylvania’s Genealogy Event or PaGE, the all-virtual event that concluded (sort of—see later in the column!) on Aug. 12. Well, there’s still more to tell so I hope you’ll bear with me as I report a bit on how PaGE …

Some years ago the church to which I belonged went through a time of reflection, and the interim minister who led that effort often used as a catch phrase, “Speak Your Truth Without Blame or Judgment.” As I contemplated the concluding keynote I was to present this weekend to “Pennsylvania’s Genealogy Event” or PaGE, the …

It was billed as a gathering of cousins, but not all cousins through the same ancestry.That’s because the nexus was Cindy Cruz from Kansas, who was visiting Pennsylvania to be part of the 300th anniversary of the Tulpehocken settlement in what’s today Berks and Lebanon counties, and her relationships to other people with whom she’d …

OK, so this is your last chance. Really. Truly. Your “Roots & Branches” columnist has devoted a number of columns to the all-virtual “Pennsylvania’s Genealogy Event” or PaGE, sponsored by the Genealogical Society of Pennsylvania, which runs from this coming Saturday through Aug. 12. I’ve highlighted quite a number of features about this innovative event, …

With the just two weeks to go before the beginning of “Pennsylvania’s Genealogy Event,” this virtual get-together continues grow in unexpected directions. Event sponsor Genealogical Society of Pennsylvania reached out to those already registered to find out what topics to offer as “Gatherings,” which are less formal roundtables centering on anything from ancestral foods to …

The subject of “What do I do with all this research after I’m done with it?” is something that plagues genealogists from casual hobbyists to the most esteemed of professionals. Henry Z “Hank” Jones Jr. is among the latter. And while in my time in the smaller (and then larger) genealogy community, I’ve seen some …

First, the big news: Since the upcoming all-virtual “Pennsylvania’s Genealogy Event” has been swamped with registrations, sponsor Genealogical Society of Pennsylvania has extended the early bird discount pricing through next Saturday, July 15. But possibly the bigger news is how many features of the event, which will run on the highly interactive Whova event platform …

There are lot of things people don’t tell you when you begin doing your genealogy at age 24. They don’t tell you—although you soon find out—that you’ll likely be the youngest in the room (Maybe even for decades … in my case it was until I was in the presence of either Jeremy Lutz or …

When I finished chairing the 2021 International German Genealogy Partnership’s online conference—a wildly successful event that literally “brought back from the dead” an event originally scheduled as an in-person get-together before COVID-19 hit—I was left with a sense of “what’s next?” in my professional life. Little did I know that Kathryn Donahue, then Board secretary …

Genealogy is first and foremost a lot of names and dates. But if you start taking your immediate family history to the next level, right behind those names and dates are a lot of “stuff.” Stuff like family Bibles. Stuff like furniture. Stuff like heirloom antiques. Stuff like baptismal certificates. Stuff like ancestral clothing. Stuff …

I recently caught up with a fascinating book titled Covered With Night: A Story of Murder and Indigenous Justice in Early America, which was written a couple of years ago by Nicole Eustace, a history professor at New York University. The book won a Pulitzer Prize and profiles an episode in 1722 when a Native …

There are many opportunities for genealogists to get together either in person or virtually. There’s mammoth RootsTech in Salt Lake City, the National Genealogical Society’s rotating annual conference, regional get-togethers such as the one sponsored by the Ohio Genealogical Society, and host of other smaller occasions. But there have been precious few statewide Pennsylvania get-togethers …

It’s Memorial Day weekend. Begun as a holiday to remember the sacrifices of Civil War soldiers, it’s morphed into the unofficial start of summer and a time to remember soldiers of all wars. And in less strict terms, I’ve always looked at as an opportunity to memorialize all those who have died. What are my …

Genealogists sometimes find that they don’t need to have an ancestral connection to a family to help out another genealogist. They just need to know someone who does. A few weeks ago I helped coordinate a workshop at the Ohio Genealogical Society’s conference called “Nuts & Bolts, Bells & Whistles: Pennsylvania Genealogy Boot Camp” along …

I’ll tell you the honest truth: I never really wondered too much about how people wanted information on Beidler families find me.Even I don’t advertise per se, I do have a website and the activities in which I’ve engaged (such as lecturing and authoring commercially published books) leave enough internet breadcrumbs for people to find …

I’ve been a longtime speaker at the Ohio Genealogical Society’s annual conference and have made the circuit several times of its major host cities of Cincinnati, Columbus, Cleveland, and Toledo. It had become a rite of spring for to be scheduled for a couple of lectures and on several occasions came to the rescue by …

It was a true “back to the future” moment for me earlier this month when I attended a kickoff party for the 50th anniversary of the organization now known simply as PA Humanities. My own association with the group dates back more than two decades to when it was known as the Pennsylvania Humanities Council …

I’ve previously profiled in “Roots & Branches” the efforts of my distant cousin Pernell Staudt to get a handle on the ancestry of one of our mutual ancestors, Anna Margaretha Gräter Lieb Staudt.I’m descended through her first husband Hans Michael Lieb and Pernell through her second husband Matthias Staudt, and was dazzled to find out …

I did a webinar for the German Interest Group of the Eastside Genealogical Society in Washington state last year, which Julia Westerberg watched and as often happens with virtual speaking gigs, she hit me up with a question after the fact. “In a 1871 New York City marriage license, the bride to be states she …

As I close in on a quarter of a century of writing “Roots & Branches” for various newspapers and my own blog, I can count on the fingers of one hand the times I’ve strayed into political territory … and this column won’t add to that count. I will occasionally say, both in my role …

Some recent nice weather spurred me to visit one of my favorite places, the Historical Old Graveyard of Bern Reformed United Church of Christ in Berks County.Regular “Roots & Branches” readers will recall that last fall correspondence with my distant cousin Pernell Staudt led me to conclude that despite having trod through this burial grounds …

When Lynn Broderick, the blogger known as “The Single Leaf,” asked me to be part of a panel on ethics at the RootsTech conference in Salt Lake City earlier this month, I readily agreed. I’ll admit however, that I was reminded of an old joke about ethics: “Everyone has them but no two people agree …

Genealogy programming has gone through several phases in the last few years as a result of the COVID-19 Pandemic. First there was the cancellation—like a string of dominoes one after another—of conference after conference in spring 2020. Then came the “Great Age of Virtual” in which every society from local outfits and their monthly meetings …

RootsTech 2023, smaller than in the past but still the world’s largest genealogy conference by far, is just a week in the rearview mirror. This year’s theme was “Uniting” — uniting people, traditions, stories, memories, technology, innovation, communities and families. The conference itself was a great opportunity to reconnect with many people in the family …

The National Genealogical Society’s conference returns to Richmond, Virginia, in just a few months, and is designed for family history researchers at all levels—beginner, intermediate, and advanced. Presentations by local experts and nationally known speakers is one of the hallmarks of family history conference, and the Richmond event (which runs from May 31 to June …

I serve as a trustee on the Bern Cemetery Company’s board, the arm’s length entity for the burials grounds around Bern Reformed United Church of Christ, the congregation in Berks County of which I was once an eighth-generation member. One of my fellow trustees is Ron Bair, who has a passing interest in genealogy and …

The Ohio Genealogical Society bills itself as the “largest state genealogical society in the United States” and while I’m not sure what metric they use for that designation, I can certainly vouch for them as a well-organized group. From publications to county chapters to a library, OGS really checks all the boxes expected of a …

After two years of virtual-only events, this year’s mammoth RootsTech conference will be hybrid, with a variety of online offerings as well as three days of sessions and exhibits at the Salt Palace in Salt Lake City, Utah, from March 2–4. RootsTech is produced by FamilySearch.org, the genealogy mega-website owned by the Church of Jesus …

“Does this give the names of the people? Or is that the place they were from?” asked a visitor to the Genealogical Society of Pennsylvania’s library recently.She had a couple of pages of data clipped from the family Bible that were written in German cursive script, found in a Lutheran church in Philadelphia.“No,” I said, …

It began with a Friend request on Facebook that I almost deleted since I thought it might be one of the increasingly annoying situations in which someone’s account has been kidnapped by someone else.I recognized Laura Muha’s name from having worked with her a few decades ago at what was then the newspaper in Harrisburg …

There are some programs of which genealogists never tire.Presentations on Irish research are one of those “evergreens,” probably because there are so many people with ancestry from Ireland—estimated at more than 30 million people in America today!With that in mind, Genealogical Society of Pennsylvania’s Winter Seminar titled “Records and Background on Researching Irish and Scots-Irish” …

I’ve crossed paths with Kerry Scott, who resides in New Mexico but still has a portion of her heart squarely in the Midwest, a number of times over the years.She was one of my editors at Family Tree Magazine for a brief time, but I’ll always remember her for turning me on to what was …