ROOTS & BRANCHES

What interests you the most about your ancestors? Is it simply just that they are your ancestors? Or does it go to something deeper than that? And if it does go deeper than that, well, in what directions does that depth of research take you? What about the ages at which your ancestors died? I …

For a long time my umbilical line—that is, the bottom line of the pedigree chart, tracing the mother’s mother’s mother’s, etc., line—was stuck on a third-great-grandmother who married a Miller, one of the most common surnames, even with the geographic area narrowed down to the Tulpehocken region of Berks County. My friend and correspondent Brian …

Due to a quirk of the calendar, Memorial Day weekend comes a little early this year. Are you ready, genealogists? While technically Memorial Day was specifically designed to remember those who’ve died while in the U.S. Armed Forces, long-time readers of “Roots & Branches” know that I’ve always taken a more expansive view of the …

I recall in my days as a beginning genealogist some decades ago that family history books—often just dry listings of names, dates, and occasional locations—would frequently punctuate a person’s individual entry in the book as “N/I.” “N//I” meant “no issue.” Which is a terse but somewhat fancier way of essentially saying, “This person has no …

For someone who’s often too literal a thinker, a book that’s all about abstract thinking may not seem like a natural fit. And to be sure, it took me a little bit of re-reading of Darcie Hind Posz’s Ancestoring: Understanding Records, Family, and Ourselves (Baltimore, MD: Genealogical Publishing Company, 2026; 179 pages) before I warmed …

It was just three years ago, while I was still interim executive director of the Genealogical Society of Pennsylvania, that we put together the first statewide conference in the Keystone State that had been held in almost two decades. We called it PaGE—Pennsylvania’s Genealogy Event—and led by GSP’s Kathy Donahue, it received rave reviews from …

I’ll put my conflict of interest right out front here: I’m good friends with Stephen Nicholas “Nic” Stoltzfus, son of Elman Stoltzfus. This is going to matter because I’m reviewing in this “Roots & Branches” column the new book from Masthof Press by the elder Stoltzfus titled Amish Family Records, Lancaster, Pennsylvania: Fraktur & Needlework—1800 …

A little more than a quarter century ago, a substantial inheritance helped put the Blair County Genealogical Society on the map as the largest library strictly for family history in the wide swath of Pennsylvania between Harrisburg and Pittsburgh. As many from the area already know, the society just enhanced its Roller-Hojeth Memorial Library’s footprint …

As described in the last two installments of “Roots & Branches,” when I accidentally made my way into the professional genealogy world, my pursuit of my personal family history took a bit of a back seat. But even though I was fortunate enough to have four books on genealogy commercially published in the 2010s—as well …

Last week’s “Roots & Branches” column examined the beginnings of my genealogical journey and my initial—and still!—goal of proving all my families back to the point of immigration. As I pointed out in that column, one of the reasons that I’m still short of achieving that goal even after 40 years is the sheer volume …

As I write this, I’m going to go to what I’d call a “history-adjacent” conference at which I’m likely to run into far more non-genealogists than at the gatherings I normally attend. Which got me to seriously thinking about why I do this. “This” meaning genealogy. While it’s not the first time in the 40-plus …

There are a lot of ways that the dating of events in history can go off the rails—and I’ll admit I’ve taken a few rides away from the tracks myself over the years! But a recent post in the Facebook group Lehigh County Genealogy had me re-examining some of my assumptions, which is always a …

The Southern California Genealogical Society, an organization that’s been a stalwart in the Los Angeles area for decades, recently put out the word that its large volume of so-called vertical files would not be moved when it changes to a smaller library site.The society was allowing interested researcher to have files of their choice but …

I’ve previously related the tale of how an Unruh-Kintzer family Bible naming a total of seven direct-line ancestors of mine came into my possession. The skinny on that is that more than a dozen years ago, my good friend the late Corinne Earnest had alerted me to the existence of this Bible, which was printed …

I came to the conclusion, much to my horror, that I never appear to have mentioned my long-time friend and old journalism colleague Edward Mason “Ted” Anthony IV in the “Roots & Branches” column. Which is a shame on so many levels since even back when he was a somewhat wet-behind-the-ears police reporter for The …

I finally expect to being going to the Sharonville Convention Center north of Cincinnati, Ohio. I say “finally” because I was originally planning to be at this venue for the 2021 International German Genealogy Partnership conference. But many of you likely remember what happened to that conference … COVID-19 caused it to be morphed into …

I’ve mentioned Glenn Riegel, an award-winning photographer and boyhood acquaintance of mine, in “Roots & Branches” a couple of times previously. That’s because he’s also interested in his family’s history and occasionally tosses some anomalies he encounters my way. Like the one he recently asked about on New Year’s Eve. “So, I was just looking …

The first genealogy conference I ever attended was in Lancaster, PA, nearly 40 years ago. In just a few months, I’ll be going to the Lancaster area again from June 18 to 20 when Palatines to America’s biennial national conference comes to the DoubleTree Resort by Hilton, 2400 Willow Street Pike, Lancaster, PA 17602 with …