Life has a funny way of putting you where you *need* to be versus where you necessarily *want* to be. When we moved to New York from Ohio, my genealogy had not expanded far past the Ohio/Kentucky borders. It had
The Scourge of Bad, Dirty Trees
I’m going to channel my inner Sophia Petrillo here for a moment. Picture this: you’re researching your family tree on one of the “big name” sites. You don’t know much about your family to begin with so you can’t really
Hidden in Plain Sight
On the back of my great-uncle Dale’s World War II draft card was a complete hidden gem that I had completely overlooked. I had assumed it was just a plain old WW2 draft card where the goodies are all on
The Fighting Stewarts
When I first started documenting my Stewart grandparents, I didn’t realize how much of their story would occupy a space in my brain. Some people might have found a murder/suicide in their family, noted its tragedy, and moved on but
The Eccard Family Tragedy Explained
One of the more outrageous family stories I share with my genealogy students is the double suicide of my 3rd great-grandparents, the Eccards, in 1915. I had used their tragic deaths as a way to illustrate how to be prepared