ROOTS & BRANCHES

When I wrote the curriculum for a continuing ed course in 1991 that I’ve seen analyzing during the last few “Roots & Branches” columns, I know that I was building up to a “big finish.” And that “big finish” I called “Making the Trans-Atlantic Connection.” There was more than a bit of conceit and Euro-centrism …

As I’ve been writing this series of “Roots & Branches” columns as reflections on my first stab at teaching genealogy in the early 1990s, I’ve been thinking that I got a fair bit right in my curriculum for that continuing ed course. But one thing I got very wrong was not introducing my students to …

One of my all-time favorite icebreaker anecdotes is the will of a woman named Kate Daub, who disinherits two of her children – with the claim that one of them had tried to kill her! – and left a life estate for a live-in boyfriend. She was truly a woman ahead of her time, since …

As this “Roots & Branches” series comparing the genealogy basics from a quarter century ago with today continues, it’s time to wax a bit nostalgic about one of my first entrees into serious genealogical research. My mother’s mother, Luella Emma Frederick, was born illegitimate, though thankfully she was given her reputed father’s surname. When I …

We’ve spent the last couple of “Roots & Branches” columns talking about some of the massive changes in the genealogy world since I first taught a continuing ed class on family history in 1991. One of the things that hasn’t changed – though it’s no longer the first thing that most people do as a …