Kaffeeklatsch, a very gemütlich, cozy gathering. It translates as ‘coffee chit-chat’

English, Dutch and German are all related languages - the languages diverged - you can see it in how the same original words now differ.-

Why do some family names end in -son and some in -sen?

We’d talked about how much the German dialects vary, looking at dialect forms of the Lord’s Prayer. Let’s compare High German and Dutch.

AUGH! It’s not just a cry of distress, it’s an anglicization. Why do we see lots of names ending in -augh? Baugh, Grumbaugh, Brumbaugh?

Why were there piles of Christmas cards from 1960 sent from around the world to a young girl in Virginia?

Sewing, in addition to laundry, used to be a responsibility that almost every woman had. And yet it can be tough to get insights into this p

The tribes that coalesced into Germans spoke 'the people’s/ popular language’ as opposed to Latin

Here are a couple tricks to help decipher old German handwriting, Kurrent or Suetterlin, especially important with old family letters.

German and English both mostly use h the same, as that puff of air at the start of a word: hello/hallo, here/hier, horn But what’s that h do

Figuring out the day of the week that something happened can be important in genealogy. Here are a couple approaches.

It's amazing how curious you can get about people in no way related to you. I've written before about Olof Harrison, a Swede who mov

Our family has a photo of the framed wedding invitation of my 2nd great aunt and uncle. It's a charmingly simple one. When I first came

When you’re tracing an ancestor to Central Europe from a century or more ago, you need to find out which state they were from. Here are some

A series of correspondence to and ​​from the same people opens up a whole new understanding about them. Old Swedish postcards from greater

When learning about ancestors who immigrated to the US decades or centuries ago, you get a double challenge. Not only is there the translati

Eliese Trede, my mother's grandmother, immigrated in 1908, leaving her loving parents on a journey across the Atlantic. This is her 1925

1843 letter in old German handwriting from my 3x great grandfather, to his son telling him to hurry from the army before his mother dies.

Civil War 1862 Diary: Looking at just the week of August 26 highlights his experiences: rebels attacking, burning railroad bridges, fighting

Day 2 to highlight the Art of Handwriting and your Family through January 23rd, National Handwriting Day. Share a favorite family hand-writt