ROOTS & BRANCHES

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 …