ROOTS & BRANCHES

What was once proven and then unproven—is now proven again! I’ve corresponded with and written a couple of columns over the years about Kathy Williams’s attempt to restore the patriotic dignity of John Peter Weaverling in the Revolutionary War. The story in brief is this: Weaverling had fought in the American Revolution and was considered …

It’s either my blessing or my curse—or probably a bit of both!—that for reasons unknown to me that some of the genealogy topics to which I’m most attracted as a researcher are ones that don’t resonate as deeply with other family historians. Take historical newspapers. Oh, sure, every genealogist uses them now that so many …

OK, let’s get the name thing out of the way. Trappe is a Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, borough with an evocative name. It took that name from a tavern called “the Trap” that was operated by the town’s founder Jacob Schrack Sr., with the spelling altered over time as often happens. I have an affinity for …

The Western Pennsylvania Genealogical Society was founded in 1974, which makes this year the organization’s golden anniversary. And what could be more appropriate for a 50th anniversary than a two-day hybrid conference, which will be held for in-person participants at the historic University Club in Pittsburgh. The conference carries the theme of “The Journey of …

Last week’s “Roots & Branches” took my readers to my home library’s bookshelf, particularly the books I keep on the “top shelf.” Apparently, it struck chord with some of those readers, who made comments about the column as well as talking about their own bookshelves. Trey Kennedy gave this list: “Elizabeth Shown Mills, Tom Jones, …

I had just hit upon this week’s “Roots & Branches” topic when Facebook showed me a shot of Germanology Unlocked’s Katherine Schober rightfully crowing about the fact that Brigham Young University uses her two books as texts in their paleography course. The irony of this is that those two books—Tips and Tricks of German Handwriting …

When I was first cutting my teeth in the genealogy world some four decades ago, there were some conferences with one-off lectures and just a few weeklong institutes for intensive study. Those latter opportunities have greatly expanded in the last decade or so, and one of them—the Genealogy Institute of Pittsburgh or GRIP—is now in …

There was a collective sigh from many in the family history community when the National Genealogical Society announced at last year’s conference in Richmond, Virginia, that the 2024 event would be fully virtual. After two COVID-19 years of virtual-only NGS conferences in 2020 and 2021—the former of which was turned on a dime from in-person …

It was about two-and-a-half years ago that I became interim executive director for Genealogical Society of Pennsylvania. There was a familiarity to the territory. I had been GSP’s executive director for four years in the early 2000s. Earlier this month, I finished that “interim-cy” and have moved back to being a freelance genealogical writer, researcher, …

A couple of year ago I had the honor of being the guest speaker for the 2022 Dillman Genealogical Conference and was impressed by the sponsoring organization, the Dillman Family Association. It was one of the relatively few instances in which I’ve given in-person presentations since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, and maybe that’s …

Regina Kelly of Plymouth Meeting, Pennsylvania, didn’t know she was going to be tipping me off to a new way of looking for German records on the mammoth genealogy website FamilySearch.org. Kelly was using Genealogical Society of Pennsylvania’s FamilySearch Affiliate Library to access some records she couldn’t get from her home computer desktop (due to …

What’s a “Hep Cat?” That was the questions posed in comments on my Facebook feed after the Ohio Genealogical Society conference dubbed as such in promoting its upcoming annual event, which has been a consistent spring gathering for decades. Truthfully, I was a little late to the party, only becoming a speaker for the first …

I’ve spent the last couple of “Roots & Branches” columns talking about an open records lawsuit and I understand that some probably have been left with the impression that I’m a curmudgeon who’s in favor of keeping records from genealogists. Well, I won’t dispute the curmudgeon part. But, no, I’m not “in favor” of closed …

I’m from a generation that doesn’t think “move fast and break things” is the coolest slogan ever created. Last week’s “Roots & Branches” gave some of my thoughts about a suit involving New York professional genealogist Alec Ferretti, a director at “Reclaim the Records,” a group that specializes in suing government entities to force access …

It’s rare that genealogy makes newspaper headlines but the second half of December is usually a “slow news cycle” so I guess it’s not surprising that an article appeared on Christmas Day with a blaring click-bait title of “Ancestry.com says it owns copies of PA historical records.” That misstated the issue a bit—copies of the …