ROOTS & BRANCHES

My first in-person memory of Rudolf “Rudi” Daub was when he arrived at Dulles International Airport in 1991.I had seen a photograph of him so we knew he looked like a quintessential German with a salt-and-pepper beard typical of a man who was then 54 years old.Of course, it seemed that every man getting off …

The conversation began as many such interactions do.I was at a weekly appointment and the man at the checkout desk said he’d noted my last name was the same as his grandmother’s.He also told me that he and his mother had visited the home of Conrad Beidler, an 18th century–vintage stone miller’s mansion in Robeson …

He’s no longer known only as “America’s Unknown Child” or simply as the “Boy in the Box.”He is Joseph Augustus Zarelli and he lived only four short years in the 1950s.When he was found in 1957 in what was then the semi-rural area of Fox Chase, on the edges of Philadelphia and far from the …

One of the most faithful Blair County “Roots & Branches” readers is Steve Kleiner. And one of the things I like about him is that he’s not afraid to speak his mind, especially when your columnist writes something about which Kleiner has more information. What I wrote a few weeks ago, in my two-part column …

Those of you who know me personally know that your “Roots & Branches” columnist prides himself in not being an early adopter—or sometimes an adopter at all—of the latest trends in genealogy. TV shows dealing with celebrity roots make me shrug my shoulders. Some advances in automating searches or animating photos of ancestors leave me …