ROOTS & BRANCHES

Diligent readers of this article no doubt are aware that your “Roots & Branches” columnist gets of inquiries. And while many of them deal with my German genealogy specialty—particularly people trying to locate the village of origin for an immigrant ancestor—it can be truthfully said that there are nuances to each and every question I …

Last week’s “Roots & Branches” column made it seem probable my former colleague Katy Barnes’s Bodenhorn lineage (her maiden surname ancestor) stemmed from a Hessian soldier named Ludwig Bodenhorn, who was found on a 1783 tax list for what’s today Bethel Township, Lebanon County. So, I went on visits to the Pennsylvania State Archives and …

I had the pleasure of working with Katy Barnes, a senior researcher and editor at Legacy Tree Genealogists, but it was only toward the end of that time that I found out she had some Pennsylvania roots. And not just any Pennsylvania roots but her maiden surname line (Bodenhorn) spent at least a couple of generations …

Retired professor John V. Richardson Jr. contacted me a couple of years ago about a notation in Pennsylvania German church baptismal entry that had made it difficult for him to get a supplemental application to Sons of the American Revolution accepted. I think Richardson is much like myself, interested in joining lineage societies for the …

Under current law, U.S. Census returns are released 72 years after they are taken. That makes April 1, 2022, a key date for genealogists because it’s when the 1950 enumerations will be available to the public. When I began my genealogy in the mid-1980s, the 1910 census was that latest one released. I was still …

I’ve often said, “We are all products of our experiences.” Which is my way of saying that to understand many things about a person, you need to think about their background in a multitude of ways. This all occurred to me in thinking about family traditions as we approach the holidays. And what spurred that …

I think some of my friends in the larger genealogical community do the virtual equivalent of camping out on the doorstep when waiting for AncestryDNA or MyHeritage (or whichever other services they’ve tested at) release new ethnicity percentages. I’m not one of those people, which is probably one of the reasons I’m only writing about …

We all have blind spots. And I’ll admit to plenty of my own … as well as understanding that I have more waiting to be discovered. For the past the decade, I have occasionally marketed framed pieces under the brand of “From the Penns to the Present.” The signature for the product is taking a …

People have been quoting, misquoting and taking out of context the saying, “There are no second acts in American life,” ever since it was first used by F. Scott Fitzgerald in his essay called “My Lost City” about his beloved New York. But despite the caution contained in those words, I’m about to embark on …

I’d heard that the Family History Library in Salt Lake City, Utah, had reopened with much of its physical layout changed, so when I had the chance to safely travel earlier this month, I jumped at the chance to try it out. And before I even had a chance to look at much of it, …

Sure, I’ve written in “Roots & Branches” about Katherine Schober before but the translator, author and educator has renamed her business and continued to create an inviting and vibrant community based on what could be a dry subject—the archaic German cursive script used in old church records. The center point of her community is her …

Sure, it was 4:30 in the afternoon on a holiday weekend. And I was away from home at that. But when a professional colleague comes looking for help about records of the county in which you live .. well, you try to help out. The colleague was Catherine Becker Wiest Desmarais from Burlington, Vermont, and …

It’s a rare genealogist who isn’t at least a bit of a pack rat. I’m the type who goes through periodic “binge and purge” cycles, but somehow I come out of each “purge” with a little more mass of paper and books than I started the previous “binge.” And I’m imagining that will I continue …

Over the years, I’ve intentionally stayed away from doing heavy research on my Civil War ancestors. It’s always seemed that there’s such a great volume of information that it’s a rabbit hole into which I might fall … from which I might make my way back. Well, thank goodness for people such as Laurie Snyder …

In the “Roots & Branches” column published last week, we talked about how we are nearly always left with more questions than answers when we do genealogy. Some wags might say that family historians are never satisfied—the more they know, the more they want to know. Well, that’s fine in and of itself … and …

Last week’s “Roots & Branches” column summarized what the publicly available U.S. Census enumerations had to say about my longest-lived ancestor, great-great-grandfather Wellington B. Machmer. At the end I noted that it surprised me that his occupation was never listed as mason, even though I’ve been told credible family stories about him working as a …

I suppose we all have special affinities for particular ancestors. For me, my great-great-grandfather Wellington Bickel Machmer (1849–1943) has always fascinated me, not in the least for the reason that I now own the home that he first bought into the family 101 years ago. He’s also my longest-lived direct-line ancestor, having reached the age …

A happy coincidence came together for me this year to revisit a couple of my previous writings about Pennsylvania genealogy. For a couple of years, I had known that a second edition was due for Pennsylvania: A History of the Commonwealth, a book from Penn State Press and the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission first …

There are many ways to skin a cat. I’m not sure where that old saying comes from—and not curious enough even to Google it and try to find out—but it definitely applies to genealogy. “Say what?” you say. Well, bear with your “Roots & Branches” columnist. When we try to track down documents about our …

Last week, my mask went back on. Since my second vaccination in March and more so once various restrictions in my state eased, I had stopped wearing my mask unless an indoor place I was visiting required it. And since I don’t like crowds in the best of circumstances—and get virtually all of my shopping …

I hope your “Roots & Branches” columnist is going to be forgiven if he indulges in a little humblebrag. And, yes, it’ll probably be a lot more brag than it is humble. The just completed all-virtual International German Genealogy Partnership wasn’t perfect, but it was darn close. And, yes, your “Roots & Branches” columnist had …

Over the years my interests in lineage societies have waxed and waned as I’ve gotten involved with various other genealogical activities. But I did successfully apply to a number of them over the years; if nothing else, they were good opportunities to “get my ducks in a row” and make sure I had adequate documentation …

A couple years ago, a church friend of mine (and distant cousin—aren’t we all, right?) Jeanne Cocuzza and I were having a glass of wine to debrief after a meeting. Cocuzza is a writer herself and she knew that I had written some commercially published books but didn’t know about “Roots & Branches” when she …

Don Yoder—the late, great godfather of many things Pennsylvania Dutch—pretty much started the academic study of ethnic folklore. Which he expanded to include the terms “folklife” and “folkways.” Which led to a term that I like a lot, “foodways,” since I’m definitely someone for who the path to my heart runs through my stomach. I …

As many of us begin to emerge from various states of pandemic isolation—or at least shrug off some of changes in routine the last year-plus hath wrought—I know I’m looking forward to many “back to normal” things. I’m yearning for road trips to several libraries and repositories. Beyond that, I’m looking forward to October and …

My first memory of a religious group called the Moravians is more than a little idiosyncratic. I was helping to plan a road rally in which much of the fun was coming up with challenging clues to mark turnoffs. I came up with “Right at the Central European religious group” for a turn at what …

There was a time—a time that doesn’t seem like it was too awfully long ago, reality to the contrary!—when I inevitably was the youngest person in a roomful of genealogists in a meeting or at a conference. Starting hardcore family history at age 24 will do that to you. Because while I’m far from the …

Let me get this out of the way: I am not anti-Find A Grave. True, I’ve had my differences with some of the more competitive aspects displayed by people who create memorials for the recently deceased with whom they have no relationship. But it’s also true that this database of “final dispositions” accompanied by a …

It’s a committee of the National Genealogical Society that decides on nominees for the National Genealogy Hall of Fame. I’ve been somewhat acquainted with their process for a couple of decades because during my four years as executive director of the Genealogical Society of Pennsylvania we helped make the case for two people who had …

Last week’s “Roots & Branches” column took a look at the efforts of FamilySearch.org, the free genealogy website owned by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, to avoid a “dark archives” in which digitized images of records are simply plopped up on the Internet without further description. FamilySearch already has some 4.5 billion …

Just a couple of months ago, your “Roots & Branches” columnist trumpeted a reinvention of the Salt Lake City-based Family History Library into a repository of true global reach. The impetus for that column was a virtual get-together at which the top folks from the library revealed their plans, including starting a book look-up service, …

After more than 30 years doing genealogy, you might think I have all the answers. You’d not only be wrong, though, you’d way wrong—since I’ve come to the realization that in a lot of cases “answers” are merely vehicles for more questions. And, in many cases, my role is not to actually know the answer, …

I wrote some weeks ago in “Roots & Branches” on the upcoming online program from the Pennsylvania State Archives titled “Preserving Your Congregation’s History.” The program, part of the Archives’ Community History Dialog series inspire a variety of social communities to collect and preserve their own history, had more than a hundred attendees eager to …

When you come across an anomaly in genealogy—and, let me tell you, if you don’t come across anomalies, you’re not trying hard enough—it helps to check your assumptions about such seeming contradictions. In a recent social media conversation, a person asked about one of these situations—in this case a date for an ancestor’s birth that …

One of the many changes to my life in this last Pandemic year has been trading the traveling life—going to in-person genealogy conferences as aa guest lecturer and often as vendor of my book—for participating in virtual events instead. A year on into this shift, I’m seeing both trends to this online experience as well …

Having been raised a “church person” in a mainstream Protestant congregations in the mid-20th century, I don’t need convincing that religious beliefs can be crucial to an individual’s sense of community. So learning about an upcoming online program from the Pennsylvania State Archives titled “Preserving Your Congregation’s History,” to be held from noon to 1:30 …

I’ll freely admit there are some “do as I say not as I do” aspects to what I preach about genealogy. I’m very much a backer of what some call “whole-family genealogy,” meaning that you don’t just identify your own direct-line ancestry but also delve into collateral relatives. There are a number of reasons for …

So, who has some time to hear your “Roots & Branches” columnist vent a little bit? Thanks for that hearty response of “yes,” readers, so here goes. I spend more of my life on Facebook than I probably should admit—sure, there are some business reasons for that, but a lot of it has been allowing …

Life in the Pandemic world of 2020 and 2021 has caused many dislocations along with opportunities. Something on the opportunity side of the ledger is July’s virtual conference of the International German Genealogy Partnership, the early bird discount deadline of which will be Wednesday. Already hundreds have registered for this event, which I am co-chairing …

A highlight that debuted at the recent mega-conference RootsTech Connect was MyHeritage’s Deep Nostalgia, a technology for animating photos that was licensed from D-ID, a company specializing in video re-enactment using deep learning. MyHeritage integrated this technology to animate the faces in historical photos and create high-quality, realistic video footage, and releasing it during FamilySearch’s …

I’ll call Brian Miller an “Internet cousin” of mine since we’ve only met virtually. He occasionally shares information not only about family we have in common but also about other searches he makes and the hypotheses that result. “I am researching my great-great-grandmother, Anna May (Bender) Tolbert (1868–1938),” Miller wrote recently. “Her death certificate indicates …

I started using genealogical assets collected by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints more than 30 years ago, just a few years after beginning my genealogy quest in the mid-1980s. First it was a database called the International Genealogical Index, then accessible on microfiche cards, which led me the church’s microfilms that at …

It was little more than a year ago when I last mentioned Annette K. Burgert in this column. At that time, I was working my way through what constitutes a “core collection” of Pennsylvania German genealogy resources and I called Burgert “a real-life water dowser for finding the European villages of origin for immigrants.” This …

The many faithful readers of “Roots & Branches” have may tire of the fact that I never tire of writing about German genealogy. But with a pedigree that’s overwhelmingly German … I can’t help but get excited about this specific ethnicity. And that’s also probably why my two favorite conferences in the two decades I’ve …

FamilySearch.org, the genealogy mega-website owned by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, has a mega-conference upcoming in a couple of weeks. The Mormon organization has sponsored a large in-person wintertime conference in Salt Lake City called RootsTech for a decade with celebrity keynote speakers, hundreds of live genealogy presenters, and a vibrant exhibit …

Last week’s “Roots & Branches” column reviewed the late Corinne P. Earnest’s third edition of Papers for Birth Dayes: Guide to the Fraktur Artists and Scriveners. It’s a massive four-volume compilation of Earnest’s life work, again amply securing her reputation as the “Queen of Fraktur.” As I noted last week, Earnest helped me on many …

Fraktur, the Pennsylvania German folk art often in the form of baptismal certificates, has been a fascination of mine for a long time. There’s the practical aspect to it: Such certificates—which also exist for marriages and sometimes other life events—are sometimes the only extant recording that exists for that birth, baptism or marriage. And there’s …

It was some six years ago when “Roots & Branches” reader and adoptee Holly McGroarty of Clearfield was first looking around for information on her birth family. With the deaths of her adopted mother and stepfather in the last couple of years, McGroarty’s interested in finding out more on her birth Elizabeth Hull, who was …

One of the best things a genealogy speaker can do is listen. Especially when thinking about topics for the future. And especially in our current world in which much family history programming is delivered in a virtual environment, it pays to the fully engaged with what is being said. I found this to be the …

S. Nicholas “Nic” Stoltzfus has authored an inviting family history titled German Lutherans to Pennsylvania Amish: The Stoltzfus Family Story (Morgantown, PA: Masthof Press, 2019; order from Masthof.com). The family’s story is a compelling one. While they came to America as persecuted Amish headed by immigrant Nicholas Stoltzfus, just a few decades deep in Europe …

It’s not uncommon that I find ideas for columns either at or through publications of the Lebanon County Historical Society. And that’s only somewhat fitting because that society’s archives is the first place I researched when I started doing genealogy back in the mid-1980s. At the time, I lived in Harrisburg and had off Sundays …