ROOTS & BRANCHES

I first encountered Dr. Jim Tibbitts some 25 years ago when he was the town doctor (charging something ridiculously old fashioned like $8 for an office visit) in Jonestown, where I lived at the time. Fast forward the quarter century and “Doc” is a widower and living in Cornwall Manor, getting along as comfortably as …

Dick Eastman has become one of the leading lights of the world’s genealogy scene, in no short measure because of his “Eastman’s Online Genealogy Newsletter.” The electronic newsletter – a free blog published daily and also collected as a “Plus Edition” for a nominal subscription price – recently celebrated its 21st birthday. Eastman notes that …

It was my dad, the late Richard L. Beidler, who first told me about the vigilante in the family. Of course, I’m using the phrase “in the family” extremely loosely. As I later learned from a long out-of-print book titled X. Beidler: Vigilante, the Montana pioneer John X. Beidler stated he was born in Mount …

“Roots & Branches” gave a shout-out to the late Floyd Hoenstine, one of the giants of Pennsylvania genealogy of the 20th century. Hoenstine (1895-1990) had been brought to mind when I went to a seminar at the Blair County Genealogical Society’s library, which is where his enormous rental library of genealogy books ended up some …

“This beginning is made in the name of the Lord.” So begins the translation of family information recorded by hand in a German prayer book by members of the Daniel Hiester family, collateral ancestors of my mother Mildred Hiester Beidler. In last week’s “Roots & Branches” column, I talked about how this translation was included …