ROOTS & BRANCHES

Another Memorial Day weekend is here. Yes, I know it’s technically designated only to remember those who died while serving the U.S. military. Without demeaning those instances of “the last full measure of devotion,” to use Abraham Lincoln’s words, I think many of us have informally expanded that designation and use the holiday as a …

I’ve given a lot of advice over the years—much of it free, some of it unsolicited, often appreciated, but many times never acknowledged beyond a thank you. A burning question often remains: Did the person actually take the advice and (drum roll, please!) did it work out for them? Well, sometimes you do get validation …

Commercially published author David DeKok, who’s also probably the world’s leading authority on the mine-fire-plagued ghost town of Centralia, had a welcome surprise recently. A few months before the Pandemic ground the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services to a halt, DeKok had ordered his grandfather’s naturalization file, documenting the arrival of John Kilian (1901–1995) in …

A little more than a week ago, I had my first opportunity to step beyond the virtual genealogy world since the Pandemic came crashing down more than two years ago. The Ohio Genealogical Society’s conference returned as an in-person event for the first time since 2019. I had the opportunity to speak at Great Wolf …

In the 20-something years that I’ve been writing this weekly column, I’ve taken a riff from an acquaintance of mine from early in my journalism career—Bill Lumpkin, who for years was titled sports editor at the now defunct Birmingham Post-Herald, my first stop after college. “Lump,” as a I recall, wrote three columns a week …