ROOTS & BRANCHES

I’ll note at the outset that I have a conflict of interest with this book review. That’s because Michael John Neill is a friend of mine. He and I met some years ago when we were both serving on the board of the now-defunct Federation of Genealogical Societies, and for the past four years we’ve …

This “Roots & Branches” column is one that I’ve been dying to write for almost the entire existence of “Roots & Branches.” That’s because way back during my first stint as executive director of the Genealogical Society of Pennsylvania, I noted that a genealogy guidebook publication called the Pennsylvania Line had gone out of print. …

I’ve been to New York state’s capital city of Albany a few items over the years, starting in 2004 when I went to my first National Conference of the Palatines to America. That year I arrived just in time for a bus tour leaving for Schoharie County, New York, to take in the landscape where …

When you’ve been around the larger genealogy community for a quarter century as your “Roots & Branches” columnist has—you get a little skeptical at any announcement that claims to be the biggest or greatest … when often it’s just the “newest.” I used to say a lot about such announcements “well, that’s going to be …

During a random scroll around Facebook the other day I had a group named Descendants of Andersonville Prison. Attracting my attention was that DNA genealogist Blaine Bettinger, a Facebook Friend, was a member of that group. I didn’t know whether Bettinger’s interest was academic or personal, so I reached out to him with that question, …