ROOTS & BRANCHES

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 …