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News Clipping from the Salem Evening News, June 3, 1938 (a Massachusetts Newspaper).

Old houses in Essex Of Historical Interest

“To start this series of articles on Old Houses in Essex, which will appear in this paper every Friday for a period of several weeks, there can be no more fitting house to start with than the first house over the line in Essex from Hamilton, on the main road from Beverly to Gloucester through Essex.

This house is known by the old settlers of Essex as the “Joe Gill Allen” h

I previously wrote "Searching For Me" but have come to an additional afterthought. I look like my father, Cecil Boyd.

Out of his six children that's what everyone said. Then I thought of his father, Frank Boyd. Frank died when I was five, so my recollection is not that keen but I remember that his complexion was a reddish bronze. He had high cheekbones and shiny soft hair, known to African American's as good hair. But there were his eyes. His eyes seemed to have the ability to look through you as

We recently completed a video that we were hired to do by Bright Sky Press, a Houston-based publisher of fine books for national and international trade distribution. The video explores the message of Venerable Master Miao Tsan, abbot at Vairocana Zen Monastery in Garden Grove, CA, lecturer and author of several books including his newly published, “Just Use This Mind.”

We have mothers and fathers and think that's enough. It's not. You look at their faces searching and wondering how theirs made you. Finding an ancestor says that's where my eyes come from. I like wearing socks and loafers. My parents didn't but someone in my past does. I know this because I don't know a name, and haven't seen a face, I know their walk. They walk like me, or I walk like them.

I successfully researched my mother's father side and was able to obtain information back to 1825, Bob and

To celebrate Family History Month we are announcing our next three webinars:

• Blogging for Beginners with DearMYRTLE on Wednesday, October 20, 2010
• New Family History Technology with Paul Larsen on Wednesday, October 27, 2010
• Organize, Share, and Publish Your Digital Photos with Heritage Collector Suite with Marlo Schuldt on Wednesday, November 3

Join one or join all three! Registration for every webinar is free and open to anyone. Register at www.LegacyFamilyTree.com/webinars.asp.

Hotel Windham

Bellows Falls, Vermont

Bellows Falls, Vt Oct. 31^st 1929

Dear Eunice,

We left North Adams in a snow storm yesterday morning for Troy N.Y. at 9.43 A.M. got to Troy at 11.55 A. M. Took N. Y. Central train to Albany at 12.50 got a room at the Stanwix Hotel right near the Union Station had dinner at Woolworths 5 & 10 cent store took a walk around wonderful store and buildings & we saw here in Albany, went to the Albany Theatre at 2.15 P.M. until 4.30 P.M. went out to supper at 6.40 went up

There are many spiritual elements to writing the book In Wake of a Following, and with them, comes fear. I worry that stirring up memories from the 1950s Virgin Mary sightings will release a measure of bad karma. My investigation is a lot like descending into a dank, unlit basement. Deep down, I’m troubled. With each bad thing that happens to my loved ones – my sister’s cancer, financial stress, a recent car crash – I wonder. Is my writing obsession a catalyst of doom?

I search for strength to co

I started looking for my Rufkahr ancestors about 15 years ago. Since then, I have discovered where we came from (Algermissen, Hannover, Prussia, Germany) and that there are 3 branches of the family. The Ohio branch spells their name as Rofkar (pronounced Rafker), the Missouri branch (my direct line) who spells it as Rufkahr (pronouced Roughcar) and an Arkansas branch spelled Rofkahr (pronounced Rofker). There is also an off-shoot spelling of Roughcore from my Missouri line. The family gossip is

This website link from Boston.com was recommended on a listserve that I subscribe to and I wanted to share it with my readers. I can’t believe how haunted I am by these photos.

They were taken between 1909 and 1912 by a photographer, Sergei Mikhailovich Prokudin-Gorskii, who was commissioned by Czar Nicholas II to do a photographic survey of the Russian Empire. What is really fascinating to me is that there was no color film back in that time. So what he did is he captured three black and white

• Personal Family History and Family News. This blog, on Wordpress, is a log of our family history research, and also has snippets of information about our family, either family news in the present, or anecdotes from the past.
• General Genealogy Research: This is a more general blog (on Blogger) on family history and genealogical research, discussing sources and resources, method, technique and theory, including software tools for research.

Sometimes I play around with search engines to see which might be best for genealogical purposes. This is not a scientific study, but just some observations. My usual method is to take a name and try it out in the search box, first without quotations (for example, John Smith), then with quotations (“John Smith), and then “John * Smith” to see what the variations turn up. If I get too many hits, sometimes I’ll add in a town or state name as a limiter.

The other day I was trying out some of the mor