Month: October 2025
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The 1973 NPRC Fire – When Flames Destroyed Military History
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On July 12, 1973, flames tore through the National Personnel Records Center in St. Louis, destroying 16 to 18 million military personnel files in a four-day inferno. No duplicate copies existed. No microfilm had been made. For genealogists researching World War II and Korean War veterans, this fire remains one…
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Diving Into the Names That Built Our Family Tree
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My family tree reads like a passenger manifest from Ellis Island’s busiest years. The Marcisak and Hurkala families fled Slovakia’s mountain villages for Pennsylvania coal towns. The Dubnianski and Knyz families left Polish Galicia behind, though not all found happy endings in America. Swedish ancestors remain partially mysterious—my great-grandfather claimed…
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Unlocking Family Histories: The Power of Cemetery Research
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Cemeteries hold a special place in every genealogist’s heart, preserving not just our ancestors’ remains but their stories carved in stone. From Brooklyn’s Holy Cross Cemetery to Queens’ Calvary Cemetery to Pennsylvania’s Byzantine Catholic burial grounds, multiple branches of my family tree found their final resting places in three states.…
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Finding the Lost Daughter: The Search for Letitia Plunkett
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Every genealogist has that one ancestor who simply vanishes from the records. For me, it was Letitia B. Plunkett—my great-great-grandfather’s youngest daughter. I had census records showing her as a child and young woman in Brooklyn, and then nothing. She seemed to disappear into thin air after 1910. But people…