ROOTS & BRANCHES

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 …