ROOTS & BRANCHES

For the last half century, the Palatines to America Genealogy Group has been a major force in helping people research their German-speaking ancestors. The organization’s name stems from the designation of immigrants from the German states by British authorities in colonial times as “Palatines,” whether they actually came from the states known as the Palatinate …

I did a “lunch and learn” webinar last month on behalf of the State Library of Pennsylvania about online German genealogy basics and as is often case, I received some interesting inquiries in response. Among those emailing me was Tim Scheidler, who had a question about the origins of his surname line’s immigrant. His great-great-grandfather …

There’s truly been a run on the market when it comes to making new Beidler connections, and possibly some others in my personal genealogy. At the 45th reunion of my Schuylkill Valley High School class a couple of years ago, another member of the “class of ’78” Teresa Schultz Mohler told me that her daughter …

I first encountered the difference between mere stories and actual history from the late Charles H. Glatfelter, when I read his classic study of early mainstream Lutheran and Reformed ministers and congregations titled Pastors and People, which documented the beginnings of individual 18th century churches.Glatfelter took a pretty sharp knife to congregations that relies solely …

The idea of the Pennsylvania Dutch / Pennsylvania German identity is something of more than passing interest to me.So when I heard that Kutztown University’s Pennsylvania German Cultural Heritage Center was having an event on Nov. 14–15 that it dubbed “Pennsylvania German Futures,” I knew I wanted to attend (as it turned out, I had …

When the email came in from Michael Braunger, my expectations of an interesting conversation were somewhat limited. “I researched my surname back to my fifteeenth-great-grandfather (born late 1300s), who may have been the first surnamed ancestor,” Braunger wrote. That piqued my interest, but a lot of people have theories that aren’t backed up by documents; …

I’ve been in touch with Greg Biehl ever since I happened to bump into him when he visited the Genealogical Society of Pennsylvania a few years ago during my time as interim executive director there. It didn’t take much conversation then for us to realize we were distant cousins, both descendants of a Peter Biehl …

Richard K. Miller of Provo, Utah, developed genealogy research software Goldie May to help automate the keeping of a research log, and you may recall he wowed your “Roots & Branches” columnist a “coupla three” years ago at a National Genealogical Society conference. Well, I had the opportunity to catch up with Miller last month …

Last week’s “Roots & Branches” started working through Cindy Cruz’s rundown of her recent first trip to the FamilySearch Library in Salt Lake City. One of her best finds (at least for me, because it’s a family we have in common!) was a 1953 German genealogical society periodical article that was mentioned in a 1995 …

 After I wrote a “Roots & Branches” column last month on my distant cousin Cindy Cruz’s plans as a first-time visitor to the FamilySearch Library in Salt Lake City, I gave her a mission to place on top of her genealogy quests for the trip: Bring back a summary of how she made out. Well, …

I know it from the way my hair has balded with just a little tag remaining in the front center. I know it from the way I can get angry pretty quickly, but also can cool off quickly, too. And I know it, most scientifically, from the way my DNA results show me to be …

I spent a couple of columns recently musing about people who affected my life so profoundly that I call them “chosen family.”But what about my blood relatives, particularly my parents?Well, I’m fortunate to say—and it’s taken me well into adulthood to realize that what I considered “normal” is actually pretty abnormal—that both my parents gave …

My cousin Cindy Cruz reached out to me earlier this about an important impending trip she was taking: Her very first research trip to the FamilySearch Library in Salt Lake City. “Since you have lots of experience in the hallowed halls there, I thought I would ask if you have any sage advice?” Cruz asked. …

I recall 40-something years ago when I was cutting my teeth as a genealogy hobbyist—which for me turned out to be “Pennsylvania German farmer stacked atop another Pennsylvania German farmer”—that I had a lot of ideas common to greenhorns in family history. I thought that spellings of surnames would have a neat and tidy evolution. …

Last week’s “Roots & Branches” profiled the great advice I received from Richard C. “Old Pete” Peters, the managing editor of the Reading Times, the first daily newspaper at which I worked. My premise is that our chosen family of people who affected our lives—for the good; it’s not worth remembering anyone who affected for …

I was barely 18 and filled all the knowledge of someone who didn’t know what he didn’t know. I’d graduated high school a couple of months before and was still reveling in having been able to clerk at my hometown newspaper, the Reading Times, in the sports department. For a kid who was planning a …

It always great to hear from engaging “Roots & Branches” readers such as Thomas R. Liszka, who’s an associate professor emeritus of English for Penn State Altoona.He pinged my in box recently with a question on the column published a couple of weeks ago in which I talked about my visit the Leesport Area Historical …

Ever read a book that you feel you need to recommend in spite of—or even because of—its flaws? Well, that’s the way I feel about Karin Wulf’s book Lineage. The author and her book were put on my radar screen when Wulf appeared at the Historical Society of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia last month. She’s the …

Who’s heard the one about the traveler who’s spent time all around the world … but neglected to see what’s in his or her own backyard?Well, that’s the way I felt last month when I had the occasion to speak at the Leesport Area Historical Society, in the borough of Leesport in Berks County.As in …

It was when the late, great Federation of Genealogical Societies conference was in Pittsburgh in 2017 that I met David Hill.Since then we’ve bumped into each other at a few conferences and stay in touch on Facebook and I daresay have become friends. My admiration for him has grown since he’s a genealogist who I’d …

As the end of summer approaches, genealogists have interesting opportunities to participate in the New York State Family History Conference. First, your “Roots & Branches” columnist’s mandatory “conflict of interest” statement: I’m going to be a speaker, both virtually and in person at this conference. Yes, I said “virtually and in person” because event sponsor …

It seems like I’ve written this column before. And truth be known, in my more than a quarter century of writing “Roots & Branches,” I’ve returned to the topic of the value of historical newspapers several times. I guess that happens when your “Roots & Branches” columnist is both: a) the author of the only …

Last week’s “Roots & Branches” noted that after many years of off-and-on effort I had pinpointed exactly where my immigrant surname ancestor Johannes Beydeler’s land was in what’s now Upper Providence Township, Montgomery County. But I ran out of space in the column to say why this was particularly important to me, given that nothing …

Some years ago I first was contacted by “another” Jim Beidler, this one who lives in Ohio, and eventually we became Facebook Friends. As a matter of fact, one time I ham-fistedly “tagged” him in a picture of myself while on vacation at Bryce Canyon in Utah. We’ve talked electronically now and again over the …

At the very beginning of my genealogical journey, I was armed with a few sketchy family trees written down by my mother and my Gramom (dad’s mother). What Gramom knew about her husband’s Beidler ancestry terminated with his grandfather Henry W. Beidler (1820–1871). When I made my first visit to the State Library of Pennsylvania, …

“But that’s a story for another column!” was what I enthused at the end of last week’s “Roots & Branches” column. That edition talked about my first foray into the reprint of Topographia Germaniae, the mid-1600s compilation of illustrations and descriptions of German towns, that I’ve recently bought.  I had used as an example of …

If you’ve been reading “Roots & Branches” the last couple of weeks, you’ll realize that the arrival of the post-Medieval gazetteer of German towns put me on a “Gruber jag” … that is, I found a couple of additional generations of my Gruber family, who came from the town of Sinsheim near Heidelberg in the …

7 June 2025 Suggested headline: Engravings bring 1600s German towns to life You never know what type of knowledge you may pick up when you take a weeklong German genealogy course at an institute. I’ve reported previously in “Roots & Branches” and German Life on different books, websites, and resources I gained from taking the …

It’s become a truism in the Internet era that books about anything online are out of date before they’re even printed. So you can understand that I’ve been itching to update my book Trace Your German Roots Online, first published in 2016, for some time now. I’ll spare you all the machinations that prevented a …

“Now paging number one thousand four hundred.” Yes, this “Roots & Branches” column is No. 1400 since it debuted in the fall of 1998 as a weekly feature in the then-daily newspaper, The Patriot-News of Harrisburg, PA. Hard to believe that 27 years later, I’m still typing out a column on genealogy every week. Oh, …

As someone who’s just old enough to recall when Memorial Day was on May 30, not some floating date in late May to accommodate a Monday holiday, it sure seems like the holiday is coming around way too fast this year. Since I’m one of the many genealogists who live for visiting cemeteries, placing flowers …

Every so often in my 27 years of writing “Roots & Branches” every week, I think back a man who was briefly my newspaper colleague, the late Bill Lumpkin, who was sports editor for the Birmingham Post-Herald when I was a copy editor at the paper in my first job after college. When I was …

Have I mentioned that longtime “Roots & Branches” reader (and friend) Eric “Rick” Bender lately? Well, even though this Vietnam War veteran was just back from a visit to Indochina—including Angkor Wat in Cambodia!—he kept up with his reading had something to say about the recent column on fraktur, the Pennsylvania German folk art often …

If you’re a week-in and week-out reader of “Roots & Branches,” you’ll remember the name Lisa Minardi. Minardi’s the human dynamo who has turned Historic Trappe and its Center for Pennsylvania German Studies into a major repository and events center in the borough of Trappe in Montgomery County, Pennsylvania. Minardi is the executive director of …

For a “Roots & Branches” column being published just before the current Federal income tax deadline of April 15, it seems appropriate to talk about some things I’ve learned about taxes, some of which relate to their use as genealogical records. Admittedly part of my rationale for writing the column is that in addition to …

Genealogy has been a fairly large part of my identity for the last 40 years, but I still think it’s interesting the responses I get when I introduce myself as having a business “doing genealogy; that is, family trees.” So, herewith are the top 10 replies I get to that introduction: 10. “Oh, it must …

While we’re waiting to see if March lives up to its “go out like a lamb” reputation weather-wise, there’s also one other distinction that the end of the month will have.That’s the finale of a special discount for the International German Genealogy Partnership conference near Columbus, Ohio, to be held June 12–15.If you are registering …

Whether it’s animating photos or adding search capabilities to some of its databases, worldwide genealogy subscription service MyHeritage adds a lot of sizzle to the family history world with its innovations.One they announced a month ago called Ancient Origins has caught my fancy. Well, almost.Ancient Origins is a genetic genealogy product that complements MyHeritage’s DNA …

Back in the “old days”—you know, that time pre-COVID that was 5 years ago but seems like a generation!—a multiday conference with many simultaneous tracks of lectures meant making many on-the-spot choices for which presentations to attend and which to skip. There often were audio-only recordings of the presentations, but that didn’t include the fair …

Last week’s “Roots & Branches” talked about the research I’ve done on my own Pennsylvania German ancestry thought the lens of how many were enslavers. I found three direct-line ancestors to be enslavers who were among the largest real estate owners in my pedigree and talked about the details in a presentation for Historic Trappe …

When I was a teen-ager, one of my annual “buys” as far as books was the Guinness Book of World Records. I was fascinated by the tallest, oldest, shortest, biggest—all the superlatives that the book profiled. And ever since then, my ears always prick up when I hear someone’s feat has been recognized by the …

An occasional research and lecture topic of mine for the last couple of years has been what I call “The riddle of the Pennsylvania Germans as enslavers.” It started with hearing and reading vastly different assessments that tried to quantify the involvement of Pennsylvania Germans in enslavement, and gained momentum when I gave a webinar …

My friend and fervent “Roots & Branches” reader Eric “Rick” Bender of New Mexico often has some words to say about the column. When I noted a couple of months ago that one of my New Year’s resolutions was to learn more about what ethical uses of artificial intelligence there are to help with my …

It was about three decades ago that Elisa Scalise Powell, a Certified Genealogist of some note from the Pittsburgh area, passed the good word on to me at what a great annual conference the Ohio Genealogical Society put on. She also enthused about how many folks who came to the conference had Pennsylvania ancestors. Since …

If there’s one genealogy conference that I consider to be a “can’t miss,” it’s the biennial event that was started by the International German Genealogy Partnership in 2017 and has survived and thrived through the COVID-19 pandemic and the changing world that has wrought. This year’s edition is under the auspices of the IGGP Partner …

RootsTech, sponsored by FamilySearch. Org and clearly the world’s largest genealogy gathering, will offer some 200 speakers over three days in Salt Lake City, Utah, from March 6–8. A bunch of readers are likely to see where this is going: I’ll be one of those 200 speakers at the conference—which carries the simple theme of …

If you’re a regular reader of “Roots & Branches,” you’ll likely remember my reverence for the late Corinne Earnest, who was a leading authority on the illuminated certificates, usually of baptism, known as fraktur. She also frequently hounded auctions in search of family Bibles with registers and copied the information that often was found nowhere …

One of the most time-honored genealogy activities is a group trip to a repository. And one of the best practitioners of such an activity is the guy we call “Mr. Genealogy Tip of the Day” after the blog posts he makes under that name. He’s Michael John Neill, and I might as well get my …

It was a Facebook post last month that put me on the trail of one last Christmas present to myself. The post was touting a book titled The Pursuit and it didn’t take long to realize it had been written by a distant cousin about a mutual German immigrant family—in his case, his surname line!—that …