ROOTS & BRANCHES

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 …