This year marks Nancy’s and my 30th wedding anniversary. On our honeymoon, we travelled through the mid-Atlantic states, visiting sites associated with our respective family histories. In April and May of this year, we returned to some of these places, especially Baltimore, Annapolis, and St. Mary’s City, the first capital of Maryland in the seventeenth…
For the past 18 months, I’ve been plugging away at a “writing project” with my mom, recording her memories about every photo in her 25 albums. These conversations are then transcribed – raw material for a family history. It’s a monumental undertaking. Here’s a short list of the stumbling blocks. Mom’s impaired hearing and poor…
Heraldry is the study of coats of arms. The somewhat grim picture here shows the arms of a noble family that occupied ecclesiastical offices in various places in central Germany. Notice how the so-called “ironhead” motif on the escutcheon (the shield) reappears in the crest above the helmet. I believe this is a sign of…
My Dutch Canadian friends and acquaintances tell stories of how, in 1811, Napoleon compelled residents of the Netherlands to adopt surnames. Prior to that year, many people in the Low Countries had gone by patronymics based on their respective fathers’ first names. Assuming that surnames were a passing fashion, many Netherlanders adopted humorous names, with…
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