ROOTS & BRANCHES

It’s not often as a genealogical speaker that you get to meet someone who you’ve admired from afar never met in person. The 2024 Palatines to America National Conference (June 6–9 in Albany, New York), however, is affording me that opportunity because the event’s keynote speaker is Philip Otterness, Ph.D., and emeritus professor of history …

I’m not quite of the age to directly remember President John F. Kennedy (although my mother would remind me that after his assassination when I was 3 years old and some months, she brought me out to the television to see Lee Harvey Oswald … just in time for Jack Ruby to shoot him!). But …

Last week’s “Roots & Branches” gave some of the details about my long personal history about the Bern Cemetery Company’s Historic Graveyard and the wooden marker that had been there all my life. As a result of some publicity about the installation of a replacement wooden marker, Marvin P. Stamm Jr. emailed Patrick Donmoyer (Kutztown …

Steady readers of the “Roots & Branches” column know I have a special affinity for the burial grounds of Bern Reformed United Church of Christ, now owned by the Bern Cemetery Company, of which I am a trustee. I was raised in this Berks County church—almost literally, since my mother was often there “until the …