ROOTS & BRANCHES

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, …