ROOTS & BRANCHES

A well-known designation for people who came of age during World War I is the “Lost Generation,” for whom the catastrophe of that globe-spanning conflict left their spirits stripped of the 19th century’s credo of never-ending progress. A group of American expatriate writers living in Paris during the 1920s was looked upon as the epitome …

 A couple of months ago “Roots & Branches” commented on the “easy come, easy go” aspect of genealogy conferences in the midst of a pandemic. In addition to all the dislocation caused by the Coronavirus, it has been a silver lining to see genealogy groups, both big and small, rise to the occasion of bringing …

You never know what rabbit holes you’re going to fall down into when you do genealogy. Last summer I finally joined the “DNA generation” of genealogists by taking several tests, including the autosomal one from AncestryDNA. After a little initial playing around—including breathing a sigh of relief that a paper trial “first cousin, once removed” …

Tom Liszka, an emeritus English professor at Penn State’s Altoona campus, had some interesting questions that he posed to your “Roots & Branches” columnist about immigration during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Now those of you who’ve been hanging around the “R&B Bar & Grille” for awhile know that I’m pretty conversant with …

I get occasional review copies of books from publishers such as F. Edward Wright’s Heritage Books imprint, which includes a large catalog of church and vital records. One of the more recent efforts, Early Church Records of Dauphin County, Pennsylvania ($22, 140 pages), came me the other day and it seemed like a good time …