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When Neighbors Become Family: A Duplex Love Story
In 1940, the Dowling family lived upstairs in a Brooklyn duplex while the Panchak family lived downstairs. Two young people, Gwendolyn Dowling and William Panchak, grew up one staircase apart. By 1950, they were married with three daughters, still living in the same house. This post traces their story through…
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You Ache for One Ordinary Day of Theirs. Take Mine.
I spend my days reconstructing the lives of people who left me almost nothing. A name, a date, if I am lucky a single line in a parish register. So this week I flipped it around and wrote down one ordinary day of my own, on purpose, while I still…
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My Growth Opportunity – An Advanced Genealogy Course
Week 30 of the 52 Ancestors challenge is Free Space, so I am writing about a work still in progress: me. I am 39 percent into an advanced genealogy course, the National Genealogical Society’s Advanced Skills in Genealogy, and it is reshaping how I research, analyze, and write. In this…
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An OMPF Mini Reconstruction File – A Source I Want to Understand Better
When most of your grandfather’s military file burned in the 1973 NPRC fire, what you get back is not a personnel file at all. It is an OMPF reconstruction file: a mix of imaged original records, statistical extracts, and later derivatives, each created for a different purpose and each deserving…
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Leisure Time: Twelve Strikes and a Lifetime of Memories
When I think about leisure time in my family, I think of bowling. This is the story of my dad’s love of the game: Friday night leagues, a junior bowling ball engraved with my nickname, Peanut, and the perfect 300 game he bowled in April 1985. It’s about the trophies…
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A Birth Announcement I Once Took at Face Value
A 1929 newspaper birth announcement seemed ordinary: a proud father, a healthy baby boy, nothing more. For most of my life, I read it through the family story I’d been told, that this father had died before his son was born. Genealogy research revealed something else entirely. The record never…
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A Hard Choice When Your Heart Wants Everything
This week’s #52Ancestors theme is “A Hard Choice,” and for once, the hard choice isn’t my ancestors’ story, it’s mine. Between a thirty-year paralegal career, genealogy certification coursework, building KMD Genealogy LLC, and a family that needs me present, I’m constantly choosing what gets the next hour. I used to…
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Great Aunt Ida – The Ancestor Who Stays With Me
Some ancestors stay with you. Ida Svensson is the ancestor who stays with me. In 1998, a letter arrived from Sweden. An attorney in Kristianstad was settling the estate of a woman I had never heard of: Ida Svensson Bengtsson, my grandfather’s sister. As a newly minted probate paralegal, I…
Our Growing Family Tree
Adding family, one branch at a time.
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