Our European ancestors often did genealogy as propaganda. Nowadays it’s sometimes hard to convince new genealogists, people who might have only a limited historical education, that there wasn’t some secret, oral, underground stream of tradition that has been suppressed by clumsy academics. No. It was pure propaganda, and today we can see through it easily….
Preserve First, Scan Second
This blog post stopped me in my tracks. I’m doing a huge scanning project right now. Drawers and drawers and more drawers of old paper files. All my genealogical correspondence and papers from the 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, and early 2000s. A lifetime of work, and omg I was active. And now I’m helping Mom…
Royal Fakes
One of my main academic interests is the way genealogical fakes are created and preserved. For many years I was active on Geni.com, working with other volunteer curators to round up and fakes, get them corralled, and so improve the quality of the medieval tree there. In the end it turned out to be a…
Re-Surnaming
How would it be if we all had double surnames, one from our paternal line and one from our maternal line. Sort of like the Spanish do, but modified slightly so the maternal surname really is a surname that passes along the maternal line and not just the mother’s paternal surname. That’s the idea thrown…
Holy Cross Lutheran Church
Yesterday I wrote about living in Mantua, Utah. I mentioned joining Holy Cross Lutheran Church in Brigham City. That memory sent me off to do some research. I was curious about the church’s history, and also about dates. I found a little potted history (see below). Founded in 1959. We were there early in its…