ROOTS & BRANCHES

I’ve written any number of “Roots & Branches” columns about cemeteries and tombstones. And I’ve written a fair number of columns reviewing books about genealogy in the last three decades. But I’ve never read as perfect a book as The Family Tree Cemetery Field Guide: How to Find, Record, & Preserve Your Ancestors’ Graves by …

It’s a not infrequent experience for me to encounter a genealogist – at a conference, by e-mail or even an occasional “cold call” on the phone – who utters the magic phrase, “Well, I’ve searched everything.” Sometimes these folks are talking about a website. Or a library. Or a courthouse. Or one particular type of …

Even though I offer research-for-hire as part of my genealogy business, I’m not super-aggressive about promoting it since I’m often busy traveling to lecture as well as writing columns such as this one. But when a high school classmate of mine named Peter Engel posted an ancestral tombstone on Facebook – in reply to a …

Some people are still avid readers of each day’s newspaper obituaries. I’ve never been a word-for-word, everyday reader … but I do scan over them. Some days it’s seems that everyone dying is over 90 – and that brings a bit of smile to me at the thought of so many having decades in their …