Genealogy isn’t just about digging for facts. It’s about telling stories — our stories. Sometimes curiosity about those stories alone is enough to drive us into researching our family histories. But sometimes it’s more than that — something specific we wanted to learn about ourselves, a particular connection that drove our passion to know more, or maybe … Read more
Growing up, if you asked me what my ancestry was, I would have simply said “German and Irish.” My father’s side of the family was German. My grandfather on that side was a German immigrant after WWII, and my grandmother’s family came to New York from Germany a few generations earlier. My mother’s side of … Read more
Sometimes when conducting family history research, we can come across amazing coincidences, finding that we’re tied to others in ways we never would have expected. This happened to me and one particular colleague and friend. We realized years ago that the two of us (her from Pennsylvania and me originally from New York) had a … Read more
I’ve long since hit a dead end researching my family’s history in Germany — my namesake line no less. Family believed most records there were lost when a key town was pretty much destroyed by the Russian military in WWII. The family was forced to leave their home and most of their belongings behind, and … Read more
I’ve talked about my issues proving my German citizenship. And I may have figured out a part of the problem. While we know the basic history of my family and their locations, the officials might be struggling to find documents on their end due to a potential name change (not covered in what they actually … Read more
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Learn about my discovery in 2011 of being a dual US-German citizen, my 3-year journey into getting proof of German citizenship, and later getting my German passport. Then explore the 13 years of comments with readers sharing their own journeys through this process of dual German citizenship (in the US and elsewhere), and get their tips on figuring out if you’re eligible for a German passport and working with German consulates and missions to help you through the process.
Of all the branches in my family tree, the most difficult to research has been my namesake’s. I hit a brick wall early on in that research, and to this day I can’t track that line beyond my great grandparents. In this case it’s a German line. My grandfather came here as a young man … Read more
One of the reasons I got into family history research as a teen was the sheer excitement of it. I’ve always enjoyed a challenge, and I love to learn new things. So why not learn new things about me and my family? Over the years I’ve learned about many interesting things. Here are five that … Read more