The headstone — as you can see in the photograph I’ve included here — stood alone, at least thirty paces from any other marker in the little one-acre graveyard. Still, it was there, intact and still upright, and I was grateful for […]
In the summer of 1973, about six weeks after I had graduated from high school, one of my friends from elementary school, Danny Lopez, was shot dead on the main street of my hometown in the San Joaquin Valley. It was a […]
The reason I got involved in family history research was the standard reason. I wanted to know more about not just the forebears I personally knew, i.e. my parents and grandparents, but those who had lived in earlier times, before I was […]
We’re so familiar with the phenomenon of information spreading ultra quickly and widely that we have a metaphor for it. We say the news item (or the joke or gossip or cat video) has gone viral. Good metaphor, I think. Colorful. Clever. […]
People have been talking about DNA for quite some time now. I’m approaching seventy years old, and yet the accepted model of the structure of the molecule — the double helix — is older than I am. Anyone of my generation, and […]
When my great great great grandparents Rachel Starr and Jacob Strader reached Vermilion County, Illinois in the autumn of 1822, they had multiple households of family members there to help them found their farm. By then, Vermilion County as a whole was […]
Once I had delved into genealogy thoroughly enough, I began enjoying one of the rewards I would have missed if I had invested myself in the process in a more casual fashion. Not only was I gaining insight into forebears and relatives […]
