ROOTS & BRANCHES

“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 …