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The Huge Surprise on Contrary and Northeast Creeks in Louisa County, Virginia
Google maps has been such a gift to genealogists. Today, we can look at the deeds of our ancestors, and if they have landmarks, especially multiple landmarks, we can then check Google maps and...
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Finding Hidden Treasure in Estate Inventories
Recently, I spent an entire day in Richmond at the Library of Virginia, also known as the State Archives. Like always, I prepared a research list. While most of my research procured nothing, which...
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Talking to Yourself aka E-Mail Spoofing
Have you ever gotten an e-mail from yourself that you didn’t send? Here’s an example from my inbox. Yep, there are 4 messages to myself from myself that I never sent. The modern day version of talking...
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Giving the Gift of Memories
The holiday season is so chocked full of memories. We don’t realize as we celebrate these seasons, as children and young adults, that we’re making memories, but we are. They will come back to warm us...
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Frank’s Ring Goes Home – 52 Ancestors #106
Sometimes the rest of the story is still unwritten, even 70 years later – seven decades after an untimely death. Sometimes we don’t even know there is a “rest of the story.” Sometimes we are granted...
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Rachel Barbara Estes, The Invisible Child, 52 Ancestors #118
It was an oppressively hot summer day on a Midwestern farm. There was no breeze and the sun was baking the corn on the stalks. We hadn’t seen rain in weeks but the humidity level felt like water...
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Just One More Summer Sunday….
I wasn’t able to work on my 52 Ancestors story this week, so instead, I’m sharing something different with you. I started writing “Sunday Stories” years ago. This is my way of sharing history with my...
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Memorial Day – All Gave Some, Some Gave All
For Memorial Day, I wanted to take a look at my ancestors and see just how many served our country, or the colonies that would become our country. I was surprised, and a bit overwhelmed, to discover...
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The Death Watch and Harkening Back
Have you noticed that I’ve been a little quiet lately? My publishing goal is for one genealogy related DNA story each week, typically a 52 Ancestors article, and one other technical article as well....
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9/11 at 15 Years
I don’t want to remember, but I can’t forget. Those arches and palisades that would be beautiful architectural pieces in a cathedral but are horrific in the rubble. I didn’t want those images seared...
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Sarah’s Quilt, 52 Ancestors #141
In 1870 in Kentucky, if a man died, the entire estate was presumed to be his, legally, with his wife having a “dower right” of 30% of the value of the estate. By the way, this also included anything,...
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New Year’s Genealogy Resolution – Hey, Look, ANCESTOR
As genealogists, we love genealogy, right? So we certainly don’t need to be encouraged to work on genealogy. Often, we have to be encouraged to stop working on genealogy – like to do bothersome things...
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LeVar Burton’s Keynote at RootsTech 2017 – From Kunta Kinte to Star Trek and...
Not only is LeVar Burton an incredible actor, portraying Kunta Kinte in 1977 in Alex Haley’s roots, followed by Lt. Commander Geordi La Forge in Star Trek, but he’s an unbelievably insightful man with...
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Sadowski WWII Scrapbooks Salvaged From Trash Heap, 52 Ancestors #149
In the 2015 Memorial Day article, Frank Sadowski, My Almost Father, I shared the story of the man my mother was engaged to before his untimely death in WWII, killed in action on April 19, 1945. I...
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Thomas Dodson’s Estate Inventory, A Tallow Sort of Fellow, 52 Ancestors #153
We met Thomas Dodson in his original article, and we know that he was born in 1681 and died in 1740. What we didn’t have then, and have since acquired, is Thomas’s estate inventory. On April 6, 1741,...
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Smokey Robinson – Who Do You Think You Are – “Overcome with Joy”
Courtesy TLC On this Sunday’s episode of Who Do You Think You Are? at 10/9c on TLC, Motown legend and icon Smokey Robinson dives into his late mother’s family history. He searches for answers behind...
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WWI – 100 Years Ago – Thou Art Gone, 52 Ancestors #155
World War I was billed as The War to End All Wars, except, of course, it didn’t. This past week saw the commemoration of 100 years since the United States entered WWI. 100 years, a century…and to think...
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Eleven Years of Silence, 52 Ancestors #158
My mother, Barbara Jean Ferverda Long, passed away 11 years ago, today. Some events and the surrounding snippets of time are indelibly burned into your memory, forever, like a movie for replay on your...
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Frank Sadowski Jr. – Bravery Under Fire, 52 Ancestors #162
Your name is Frank Sadowski Jr. You were born on May 8, 1921. You are the consummate all-American boy, a member of the science club in high school in Chicago, then on to Northwestern University...
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The Last Father’s Day
The heat was oppressive. The air wasn’t moving, hanging like a hot wet blanket, engulfing you, making it difficult to breathe. In the days before air conditioning, you woke up hot and sweaty, and that...
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