ROOTS & BRANCHES

There are a lot of “small world” moments in genealogy and the 38th annual Lancaster Family History Conference offered one of those moments. Among the sessions I was involved with at the conference was German cursive script workshop, one of the participants in which was Pernell Staudt, whose surname immediately had my attention. That’s because …

Give me a choice between text and a live phone call, I’ll text you every time since a text you can just send – whereas a call can often lead to “phone tag,” If you give me a choice between text and e-mail, I’ll e-mail because I learned the “home keys” many years ago and …

There’s been no more faithful reader of “Roots & Branches” than Eric “Rick” Bender, now of New Mexico but with long Pennsylvania roots. And now he’s turned to DNA to try and disentangle – and maybe even extend – those roots. Bender had tested with Family Tree DNA some years ago (in what must seem …

Occasionally when people find out that I’m a hard-core genealogist, they ask something along the lines of “So what’s more fun about it – the finding? or the searching?” (Well, at least this used to be a very popular question – now the response I get is often an observation about them having taken a …