Finding My Roots (Part III)
This past April (2018). I took myself on a little vacation. Perhaps a vacation is not the best word, for the primary purpose of my trip was to visit my father’s grave, something I...
The Original 13
Growing up, from time to time, I would stay with my aunt and her family in Germantown, Pennsylvania. I won’t mention how many years ago that was, but I will tell you those visits...
Help! my ancestor’s name is John Smith (or how to find relatives with very common names)
Suppose you are on a quest for information about your relative, John Smith. You then discover that there are an astounding 31,139 John Smiths listed in the 1900 U.S. census! This might seem...
Surnames: Peter Herrick or Petrus Heurich?
For some time, while doing research to create my family tree, I had a very hard time figuring out what my ancestors’ last names were originally. In a couple specific cases, I was wondering...
Playing the Name Game with Your Scottish Ancestors
Up until the mid 1700s, Scotland, and its culture and customs, was cut off from the rest of the British Isles by a language barrier and by the wall of mountains that is the...
Discovering Names
What does your name mean, where does it come from, how else could you spell it? They are questions I have been trying to ask some of my long deceased ancestors. They generally don’t...
