ROOTS & BRANCHES

A few years ago I took Henry Louis Gates and his TV program “Finding Your Roots” to task for his role in obscuring that actor Ben Affleck had ancestors who were enslavers. If the show had operated under traditional journalistic ethics, Gates would have been canned, but of course this was TV and ethics are …

When “Roots & Branches” reader and my fellow Altoona Mirror columnist James Eugene Wentz reached out to me earlier this year in an attempt to continue his long-sought attempt to verify his surname line into Germany, I had good news and bad news. The bad news first: Wentz wondered if I was still doing research …

Last week’s “Roots & Branches” column  talked about Our Pennsylvania German Families: A History and Genealogy of the Ancestors of Eva Minerva Baer Barnett Who Settled in Berks County, Pennsylvania, and Her Descendants by Edna Barnett Chelson. As I noted, this 600-page compendium has loads of good information on a variety of families, many of …

Is there a genealogist out there who’s going to turn down a free family history book? Well, not me … especially when it’s one that’s titled Our Pennsylvania German Families: A History and Genealogy of the Ancestors of Eva Minerva Baer Barnett Who Settled in Berks County, Pennsylvania, and Her Descendants. The offer came from …