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In the News: David Sten’s American Life Through Newspaper Headlines
When Swedish immigrant David Svensson Sten arrived in America in 1926, he probably never imagined his life would be so thoroughly documented in local newspapers. Over 29 newspaper…
4 min read
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Education: It’s More Than Just a Report Card
When I examine my family’s educational history, I see more than report cards and diplomas—I witness the dramatic transformation of American education itself. From Slovak and Polish great-grandparents…
4 min read
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Hidden in Plain Sight: The City Directory Advantage
City directories offer genealogical gold beyond census records, providing annual snapshots of ancestors’ working lives from the 1800s through 1930s. These published guides documented not just occupations and…
4 min read
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Forged by Mystery: How Childhood Playtime Shaped My Genealogy Obsession
I blame Nancy Drew. And Encyclopedia Brown. And every cryptic puzzle in Martin Gardner’s Codes, Ciphers and Secret Writing. Growing up in the mid-1970s, I devoured mystery books…
4 min read
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When Shakespeare Couldn’t Save My Family’s Money
When I discovered newspaper clippings about my Irish ancestors’ encounters with Brooklyn’s legal system in the 1860s and 1870s, I uncovered stories that reveal the harsh realities of…
4 min read
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From Wide Open Spaces to New American Lives
The story of American immigration is fundamentally a story about sky—trading the endless horizons of rural homelands for narrow urban canyons and industrial smoke. Between the 1840s and…
4 min read
