ROOTS & BRANCHES

I’ve attended nearly all the annual National Genealogical Society conferences over the last 20 years. A fixture, a “North Star” if you will, of those conferences—someone who was already a legendary figure when I started going to them—was Robert D. “Bob” McLaren, who passed away recently There are some folks who “play dress up” for …

I generally write “Roots & Branches” about one week ahead of when it “goes live,” so there have been rare instances in which it has become outdated during that lag time. Likely you know where I’m going with this. Like just about everything else, the Coronavirus is stalking the genealogy world. Specifically, live genealogy events …

I consider it to be one of the perks of being a columnist—in addition to this weekly “Roots & Branches” column I also have different bimonthly column in German Life magazine—to receive mail, now mostly electronic but occasionally through the post office, from readers. And as careful readers of this and the magazine column know, …

For some 40 years, possibly the annual biggest spring date on the Central Pennsylvania genealogy calendar was the Lancaster Family History Conference. This year, that event has been rebooted as “Family History Heyday” from 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. May 16, sponsored by and to be held at the Lancaster Mennonite Historical Society, 2215 Millstream …

There are sometimes when I get a real kick out of how items end up being displayed on my Facebook feed. Like when there are consecutive comments from a high school friend, a colleague from a former job, a college buddy, and then a genealogy acquaintance … people who’ve never met in the real world …