A Twist of Stones

 

Dover Castle Aerial Panorama by Chensiuyan, Wikipedia Commons, 26 Jun 2017.

Sometimes genealogy has a strange sense of humor.

I was recently working on the medieval lines of my family tree when I found myself repeatedly returning to one place: Dover Castle in Kent, England.

This was not a new discovery. Various branches of my family had connections with Dover over several generations. Some held land requiring service for the guard of the castle. Sir John Grey served as its constable. Another John Grey held land of the king in chief in 1312 by service connected with the guard of Dover Castle. The Badlesmere family also had longstanding obligations associated with its defense.

Then there was my ancestor Bartholomew de Burghersh. His connection was particularly strong. He served as Constable of Dover Castle and Warden of the Cinque Ports, and he died at Dover Castle on 3 August 1355.

With so many family connections extending over generations, I have come to think of Dover Castle almost as an ancestral family residence. No, my ancestors did not privately own the great royal fortress. They were there because of obligations to the Crown and appointments made by the king. Nevertheless, generation after generation of the family was connected with the place.

Then the family story moved forward two centuries, to the court of Henry VIII.

One of my later ancestors was William Brereton, a prominent courtier during Henry’s reign. In May 1536, Brereton became caught in the spectacular downfall of Queen Anne Boleyn. He was accused of committing adultery with the queen.

Whether Brereton was actually guilty is another matter entirely. The case against Anne and the men accused with her has long been questioned by historians. What is certain is the outcome.

On 17 May 1536, William Brereton was executed on Tower Hill along with George Boleyn, Henry Norris, Francis Weston, and Mark Smeaton. Anne Boleyn followed them to the scaffold two days later.¹

Henry VIII, meanwhile, continued building.

Concerned about the possibility of invasion, in 1539–1540 Henry constructed a series of coastal defenses. Among them was Sandown Castle in Kent, one of three fortifications known as the “castles of the Downs.”²

Unlike Dover Castle, Sandown did not survive.

Coastal erosion eventually took its toll. By the nineteenth century, Sandown Castle was largely demolished and disappearing into the sea.

And that might have been the end of the story.

Except that in August 2026, an article appeared in my news feed.

Researchers at the University of Kent had uncovered archival and architectural evidence showing that masonry from Henry VIII’s lost Sandown Castle had been reused elsewhere. One of those places was Dover Castle.²

I had to laugh.

An 1883 report records that materials from Sandown were being sent to Dover. In 1883–1884, they were incorporated into an extension at Constable’s Gate, the part of Dover Castle historically associated with its constable. The new addition provided quarters for the castle’s commanding officer.²

Of all the places Henry VIII’s stones could have ended up, they went there.

Back to Dover.

The same Dover Castle where generations of my ancestral families had performed castle-guard service.

The same Dover whose constables included my ancestors.

The same Dover Castle where Bartholomew de Burghersh died in 1355.

And centuries after Henry VIII ordered the execution of another of my ancestors, William Brereton, pieces of one of Henry’s own castles were dismantled and incorporated into Dover.

There is, of course, no actual connection between William Brereton’s execution in 1536 and the Victorian reuse of building materials nearly 350 years later. The people hauling those stones to Dover in 1883 certainly weren't settling an old family score.

But genealogical research occasionally produces coincidences too delicious to ignore.

I spend much of my time following people through records, births, marriages, deaths, land transactions, court proceedings, wills, and inquisitions. Usually, I am tracing people through places.

Every once in a while, however, it feels as though the places are following the family.

And maybe even electronic media...I subscribe to Kindle's free monthly book and this month one of my options was The Queen's Witch by Nancy Kress. You guessed it; it's historical fiction fantasy about a witch who worked with Anne Bolyen and my ancestors are all named in the book. Perfect Halloween read!

Dover Castle has appeared again and again in my ancestral story. Then, while I happened to be working on those very families, a twenty-first-century news story told me that pieces of Henry VIII’s vanished castle had ended up within its walls.

Henry took William Brereton’s life.

Time took Henry’s castle.

Dover got the stones.

Kindle offers me a free book naming my ancestors.

Sometimes history delivers justice in very peculiar ways.

And sometimes, apparently, it delivers it by the cartload.

1. Historic Royal Palaces, “Medieval and Tudor Poets at the Tower,” Tower of London, accessed 23 September 2026. Historic Royal Palaces confirms that George Boleyn, Mark Smeaton, Sir Henry Norris, William Brereton, and Sir Francis Weston were executed on Tower Hill on 17 May 1536; Anne Boleyn was executed two days later.
2. Georgina Mear, “Hidden in Plain Sight: New Evidence Links Henry VIII’s Lost Castle to Dover Castle,” University of Kent, 21 August 2026. The research identifies an 1883 report documenting the transfer of material from Sandown Castle to Dover and connects the reused masonry with the 1883–1884 extension at Constable’s Gate.

When the Past Reaches Into the Present

 

Photo by Author showing the works of the 2 German Colleagues Discussed in the Blog

Genealogists often speak of connections. We search for them in records, reconstruct them through evidence, and celebrate them when we discover how families intersect across time and place. Occasionally, however, those connections seem to take on a life of their own.

In June I had the opportunity to present at a conference devoted to Palatine migration and German-American history. My presentations examined the experiences of German immigrants and their descendants to America and experiences they endured during times of war and discrimination. As I prepared for the final lecture, I had no idea that I was about to experience one of the strangest and most memorable moments of the entire conference.

The previous afternoon, I had been browsing through a collection of journals that were being offered to attendees. As I flipped through one issue, I was delighted to discover an article written in 1999 by a distant cousin in Germany. The find made me smile. It is always rewarding to encounter the work of family members who share a passion for history and genealogy.

At that very moment, the conference announcer introduced a representative from an exhibiting organization. To my surprise, the speaker happened to be the spouse of another cousin of the article's author.

The coincidence made me smile, but the story did not end there.

As I continued paging through the journal, my phone chimed. A text message had just arrived from our shared cousin in Germany. He wished me well and said he hoped my presentation was going successfully.

Before I could finish reading the message, my phone chimed again. This time it was a colleague in the Palatinate with a question about American Revolutionary War research.

I looked at the journal in my hands, listened to the cousin’s spouse speaking before the audience, and glanced at the two messages that had just arrived from Germany.

Three connections. Three individuals. Three entirely separate events occurring within moments of one another.

As genealogists, we spend our lives connecting people across time and distance. Yet every so often, those connections seem to converge in a way that reminds us just how small our world can be.

The following day, during my final presentation, I spoke about the collaborative nature of genealogy. No researcher works entirely alone. We depend on archivists, translators, local historians, distant cousins, and fellow researchers who generously share their knowledge and expertise.

As I concluded my remarks, I displayed a photograph taken at a Christmas market in the Palatinate. The image included several individuals who have contributed to my research efforts over the years. I briefly introduced them and described the unique role each has played in helping me better understand the lives of our shared ancestors.

I held up my phone and showed the audience the timestamps as I described what had occurred the previous afternoon.

The audience laughed and applauded, but many also seemed to appreciate the deeper significance of the moment. These folks clearly understood as one of their lifetime members, Hank Z. Jones, has written two books on Psychic Roots.

Genealogy is often described as the study of the dead. I have never believed that.

Genealogy is fundamentally the study of relationships.

Some relationships connect us to ancestors who lived centuries ago. Others connect us to cousins we have only recently discovered. Still others link us to archivists, historians, translators, and researchers who help us reconstruct the stories of those who came before us.

Most of these connections develop slowly and quietly.

Occasionally, however, they reveal themselves in ways that feel almost magical.

No, I do not believe the texts were supernatural. Nor do I believe fate was orchestrating a dramatic conference finale.

But I do believe that genealogy teaches us to recognize the invisible threads that connect people across time and distance.

On that day, those threads became visible.

A journal article written decades earlier. A conference attendee related through marriate to its author. A photograph taken months before in the ancestral homeland. Messages arriving from Germany at precisely the right moment.

What are the odds?

Perhaps that is the wrong question.

The better question may be this: How many connections surround us every day that we simply fail to notice?

Genealogists spend their lives looking for connections.

Sometimes, if we are fortunate, the connections find us.

Hidden Way: A Genealogist's Mystery

 

Last October, I wrote about an extraordinary wedding record I discovered for my maternal grandmother, Mary Koss. This year, Grandma Mary, who we called Non, managed to do it again and the unsettling circumstances surrounding it make this one a perfect example of synchronicity.

In April, I contacted a Croatian court-appointed translator to handle the translation and apostille process for my family’s vital records as part of our dual-citizenship applications. The translator had originally been recommended by the Croatian consulate, and we had corresponded briefly the previous fall.

Then…nothing.

After three unanswered emails over the course of three and a half weeks, I contacted the consulate again requesting another recommendation. Their reply was brief: they were no longer providing names. After being thoroughly ghosted, I could understand why.

Fortunately, a former client who had completed the process a year earlier gave me the name of a translator in Split. The response this time was immediate and professional. The pricing was reasonable, the turnaround time was clear, and after a few emails back and forth, I sent payment through an international bank transfer.

About a week later, I received an email from DHL Express containing a waybill tracking number for the return shipment of my documents. (See above)

That’s when things became strange.

The shipment notification listed the wrong street address, the wrong zip code, and typed in ominous capital letters, the city of GARY.

I do not live in Gary, Indiana.

I’ll admit it: I panicked.

My original documents were apparently somewhere in international transit headed to the wrong place. I immediately searched online maps to see whether the mysterious street existed either in my own city or in Gary. It did not.

The zip code error at least made sense. I had accidentally mistyped it in an earlier email but quickly sent a correction afterward. The translator later admitted she had overlooked the follow-up and used the earlier message instead. That explained the zip code.

It did not explain the street name.

And it certainly did not explain GARY.

I contacted the translator, who was just as confused as I was. Her paperwork showed neither the incorrect street name nor the city of Gary. Concerned, she returned to the DHL office in person. The clerk checked their system and was equally baffled. According to DHL’s records, the strange address information simply did not exist in their computer system.

Yet it certainly existed in the email I received.

For privacy reasons, I removed the house number and waybill information from the image above, but the bizarre street name and city remain exactly as they appeared.

Sure, technology glitches happen. Addresses become corrupted. Autofill creates odd errors. But what makes this incident feel especially unsettling is the particular combination of the street name and the city itself.

My grandmother moved to Gary in 1919 as a teenage bride and lived there until 1973, when she relocated to Florida after her oldest daughter was transferred there for work. Grandma never cared much for Florida, so two years later she moved again, this time to Arizona, where her youngest daughter lived. The desert climate didn’t suit her either, and eventually she returned once more to Florida.

A few years later, she developed Alzheimer’s disease.

Her children had promised they would never place her in a nursing home, so she moved in with her middle daughter in Pennsylvania. When that daughter became ill, Grandma was relocated once again to Arizona, where her youngest daughter left her job to care for her full time.

Grandma died in Arizona.

But her body was brought home for burial in, you guessed it, Gary.

As for the mysterious street name? Hidden Way Drive.

There is no such street connected to my city, nor to Gary. Yet somehow those words appeared in connection with documents tied directly to my Croatian ancestry and my grandmother’s family line.

“Hidden Way.”

Honestly, that is just creepy enough to make the hair stand up on the back of your neck.

Was it merely a bizarre technological glitch? A random collision of data somewhere deep in DHL’s system? Perhaps.

Or maybe Grandma was finding one more way to remind me that genealogy often refuses to stay neatly inside the boundaries of logic.

Sometimes the past nudges back.

And sometimes, I like to think, our ancestors let us know they approve.

When the Past Finds You

 

Jim and Lori on Kos Island, Greece

Last week, I shared my husband’s strange encounter with the universe. This week, it’s my turn.

Ever since I had my mtDNA test in 2010, I’ve wanted to visit Kos Island in the Aegean Sea. The results confirmed a family story my grandmother, Mary Kos Koss, told me years ago.

As a child, I had asked her where our family came from. “A village outside of Zagreb,” she said.

Something made me ask again, where had they lived before that? She paused, then told me that long ago, around the time of Christ, the family had been grape farmers on an island to the south. They left due to overpopulation and drought, moving inland.

At the time, the only “island” I knew was from Gilligan’s Island. Still, I made a quiet promise to myself: one day, I would find that place.

It took nearly sixty years.

My only regret is that my grandmother wasn’t here to hear the result.

DNA revealed that my maternal line had crossed the island of Kos. What makes that extraordinary is this: the surname had been there all along. Kos.

They had forgotten the place but carried its name for generations.

I suppose it shouldn’t surprise me that when I finally planned the trip, the universe didn’t make it easy. My husband found a great deal to travel to Greece on September 11. In hindsight, perhaps the date should have given me pause but it didn’t.

Two travel agents couldn’t figure out how to get us there, so I booked the flights myself. Then I added two extra days after the tour so I could finally visit Kos.

A week before departure, we were told the trip might be canceled. The cruise ship was stuck in the Strait of Hormuz due to the Iran conflict.

Three days later, a new plan emerged: instead of visiting Turkey, Rhodes, and Santorini, we would spend four days in Crete. Not ideal but I still had my eye on Kos.

What I didn’t realize was that this detour would make the most unexpected moment of the trip possible. On our third day in Crete, the sky changed.

It shifted from bright blue…
to white…
to pewter…
and then to red.

Breathing became difficult. My eyes burned. Some people whispered about the apocalypse.

I suspected a Sahara dust storm. We probably should have stayed at the hotel that evening. Instead, we kept our plans to meet a group of University of Crete students at a taverna. As educators, neither my husband nor I felt right canceling.

The drive there was… questionable. Imagine a bus navigating mountain roads with no guardrails, in near-whiteout conditions except the sky was red.

Still, we pressed on and we arrived safely.

At dinner, one of the students sat next to me and asked what had brought me to Greece. I told her my story. She listened carefully, then stood and said, “I’ll be back.”

A few minutes later, she returned with someone else.

My husband later said it best: “She looked like you… fifty years ago.” Her name was Argy. She was from Kos.

We spent the evening talking about her future, my upcoming visit to her homeland, and the strange coincidence that had brought us together. We laughed. We sang. We danced. At one point, we looked at each other and simply agreed, we must be related. Thirty generations back, perhaps.

Of course, with European ancestry, that’s not unusual. But the resemblance… that was something else entirely. Even her academic interests mirrored my own.

And it struck me:

If the cruise ship hadn’t been delayed…
If the itinerary hadn’t changed…
If we hadn’t gone to Crete…
If we had stayed in the hotel that night…

I would never have met her.

More than that, I likely would have missed Kos entirely.

The original itinerary would have placed us on a small island that day, one without a proper port. We would have relied on ferries to return to the ship, and due to the storm, those ferries had stopped running.

We would have been stranded. On the wrong island. Missing my connection to Athens and my flight to Kos.

Sometimes, in genealogy, we’re told to be patient. What we’re not told is why patience matters.

This is why.

And the story didn’t end there.

When we arrived on Kos, I had trouble reaching the tour company I had booked for a half-day excursion. The hotel staff tried as well, no response. It appeared I had been scammed through Travelocity.

Disappointed, not just in the lost money, but in the missed opportunity, I mentioned it to the hotel clerk. She smiled and said, “If no one shows tomorrow, I will find someone for you.”

She did.

His name was George and he was extraordinary.

George had an interest in archaeology and took us beyond the typical tourist stops, to the area where vineyards had grown two thousand years ago.

Today, it’s a Roma encampment.

I couldn’t help but laugh. My grandfather was of Roma descent. His surname? Kos, later Anglicized to Koss.

Standing there, I had to wonder: Had his line once lived here, too? I don’t have the YDNA to prove it. Two cousins could test, but neither is interested.

For now, it remains a question.

But I’ve learned this much: In genealogy, we follow the paper trail. Sometimes, if we’re lucky something else leads us the rest of the way.

Some journeys take sixty years to begin.

Others have been waiting for thousands.

A Special Offer for Genealogists

 After reading my recent open letter concerning NARA Notice 2026-037 and the proposed closures of the Chicago and San Bruno facilities, the folks behind AncestorOS reached out with an offer for my readers.

AncestorOS, created by Michael L. Strauss, AG, and his son, includes research logs that record not only what you find, but also partial, not found, and pending results, something particularly important when researching records that may never have been digitized. It also includes a database search log and Evidence Explained citation templates.

They are offering a 7-day free trial with no code required. Nothing is charged until day 8. After the trial, plans begin at $15 per month; the $40 Pro plan adds client and invoicing tools for professional genealogists.

AncestorOS runs in a web browser and is also available as an Android app.

Learn more or try it here:
https://ancestoros.com

I have not been paid to share this offer. I’m passing it along because the developers reached out after reading my NARA post and thought the research-tracking tools might be useful to my readers.

By the way, I was fortunate to be able to tour behind the scenes at the newly opened Indiana State Archives in Indianapolis last Friday. Here's their QR Code. Are you stumped with an Indiana brickwall? Contact them for help:

When the Universe Almost Got it Right

 

AI Image

It’s October, my favorite time of year for sharing the synchronicities I’ve experienced over the past year.

I think I may have finally found a clue to what triggers these odd experiences if “channeling” is even the right word. For me, it seems to be travel.

Last year, we stayed close to home due to my husband’s surgery. This year, now that he’s recovered, we’ve been on the move again and with that movement came two unusual moments. One for him, one for me.

This week, we’ll talk about his.

On my mother’s 108th birthday, I made the three-hour drive to Chicago to have the last of our dual citizenship documents apostilled.

The date wasn’t intentional. I had planned to go the week before, but I was still recovering from the Sahara dust storm I encountered in Crete. April 14th simply became the most practical option.

The drive was anything but smooth; pounding rain, a major accident, closed exits, heavy traffic, and no convenient parking. What should have taken three hours stretched to nearly four.

At the clerk’s office, things went surprisingly well.

I had expected an issue with my mother’s record. Her official “birth record” was, in fact, a no record found document something I knew might happen. Family history and church records I obtained confirmed that her birth had been registered through a Roman Catholic parish, which at the time was acceptable. Later changes in the law complicated that.

What I didn’t expect was that the county would issue an official vital record stating the absence of a record. Several colleagues have since told me that shouldn’t have happened, that it should have been a simple letter.

The apostille clerk hesitated. Paused. Looked again.

Then approved it.

Some might call that a gift from the universe. I call it something simpler: common sense.

We didn’t linger. Severe storms were forecast, and we wanted to get home.

Crossing into Indiana, as we passed through Gary, my husband suddenly said:

“I’d like to drive by my old house.”

This was… unusual.

I’m the one who detours for old homes, cemeteries, and ancestral land. He’s the one who prefers the direct route. And we had already agree, get home as quickly as possible.

I nearly made the exit but couldn’t get over in time.

I asked if he knew another way. He did.

Then he said something that stopped me: “I don’t know why I just said that. I have no idea why I want to go there.”

We had just returned from Greece, where he had patiently followed me to a remote ancestral location tied to my mtDNA from two thousand years ago. So, naturally, I was willing to return the favor. Fifteen minutes out of our way seemed more than fair.

As I moved toward the next exit, he spoke again: “I didn’t know we had to pay a toll here. Forget it. Just go home.”

I asked if he was sure. He was.

Again, he said: “I don’t even know why I wanted to go.”

We made it home just before the storms hit. As we walked in the door, his phone pinged. An email.

He opened it, paused, and said: “Oh… you won’t believe this.”

The message was from his childhood friend, Bill, who now lives in California.

Bill had traveled to northwest Indiana to visit his mother who, as it turns out, shares the same birthday as my mom's. Her 91st.

While in town, Bill decided to visit his old neighborhood. He stopped at their former elementary school now an antique mall.

And there, on the wall, were class photos. Not from every year. Not from every class. Just his class, grades 1 through 5.

At that exact moment, while we were passing through Gary on the interstate, Bill was standing there, looking at those photos, thinking about my husband.

He wrote that he wished he had thought to reach out. That they could have met.

We had been minutes away.

One exit.

One decision.

And yet we drove on.

I can’t help but think of the FAN Club in genealogy: friends, associates, and neighbors. The people who surround our ancestors and, in many ways, become extensions of family.

We trace them on paper. We follow their movements. We reconstruct their connections.

But sometimes those connections don’t stay in the past. Sometimes, the connection is still there.

We just don’t take the exit.

I’m Heading Across the Pond Virtually! All About That Place 2026

 

I’m delighted to share that I’ll be taking part in an international genealogy event this October with the Society of Genealogists’ All About That Place 2026!

Running from 07–16 October 2026, All About That Place brings together more than 150 speakers for almost 200 FREE, bite-sized presentations devoted to genealogy, local history, research techniques, archives, social history, technology, and the places that shaped our ancestors’ lives.

And I’m involved in more ways than one this year!

My presentation is titled “When a Town Changes.”

Genealogists naturally spend a great deal of time looking for people. But sometimes the place itself is part of the evidence.

Towns change names. Boundaries shift. Communities disappear. Streets are renamed. Industries arrive and vanish. Populations move. The place we find on an ancestor’s record may look very different today and occasionally understanding what happened to the place is exactly what we need to understand what happened to the people who lived there.

That is the idea behind my 10-minute presentation.

My talk is part of the “Changing Places” theme of All About That Place, and I hope it encourages researchers to look beyond the names and dates in their family trees and ask another question:

What was happening to the place where my ancestor lived?

WATCH PARTY — 13 OCTOBER 2026

I’ll also be holding a Watch Party at noon Eastern Time on 13 October. If you’d like to watch “When a Town Changes” with me, mark your calendar! I’d love to have some familiar faces joining genealogists from around the world.

AND THERE’S A PRIZE! I’ve donated a short private genealogy consultation as one of the prizes for All About That Place.

That means one participant will have an opportunity to Zoom with me and talk through a genealogy problem, research question, brick wall, or next step. I’m looking forward to meeting the winner and seeing what mystery they bring me!

I’M ALSO ON THE FAMILY HISTORIES PODCAST. There’s one more part of this adventure that I’m especially excited about. I recently sat down with the host of The Family Histories Podcast to record a special All About That Place episode. We talked about my research and some of the stories and challenges that come with trying to reconstruct the lives of people who can no longer tell us what happened themselves.

The episode is being released worldwide through Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, Audible and other podcast platforms, and it will also be available directly from The Family Histories Podcast website.

Listen here:

The Family Histories Podcast

COME JOIN US! IT’S FREE!

One of the things I love about All About That Place is its format. These aren’t hour-long lectures. The presentations are just 10 minutes each, which means you can explore a subject, discover a new researcher or technique, and then move on to something completely different.

Best of all, the main All About That Place program is FREE.

You can learn more about the event, see the speakers and explore the program through the Society of Genealogists:

All About That Place 2026 — Society of Genealogists

I hope you’ll join me on 13 October for “When a Town Changes.” And while you’re there, take a look through the rest of the program. With nearly 200 talks, I suspect most of us will discover more than a few we simply have to watch.

See you there!

RE: NARA Notice 2026-037 — Closure of the National Archives at Chicago and the National Archives at San Francisco (San Bruno)

An open letter to my Indiana Congressman and Senators:

I am writing as a professional genealogist, author, educator, and researcher to express my deep concern about the announced closure of the National Archives at Chicago and the National Archives at San Francisco in San Bruno.

For those of us who work with historical records, an archive is not simply a building in which records are stored. It is the place where evidence becomes accessible.

That distinction matters.

I have spent years researching families whose stories cannot be reconstructed from records found online. Despite the extraordinary growth of digitized collections, anyone who conducts serious genealogical or historical research knows that enormous quantities of federal records remain available only in their original form. NARA itself holds billions of pieces of paper. Moving an undigitized record hundreds of miles away may preserve the document physically, but it can place that document effectively beyond the reach of many of the people who need to consult it.

That is particularly troubling to me as an Indiana researcher. The National Archives at Chicago serves Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Minnesota, Ohio, and Wisconsin. Its records document the lives of people throughout the Midwest through federal court files, naturalization and immigration records, Bureau of Indian Affairs materials, maritime records, federal agency records, and countless other collections.

These are not merely records about government. They are records about people.

They contain the immigrant seeking citizenship, the sailor working the Great Lakes, the family appearing in federal court, the Native American interacting with a federal agency, the worker whose life intersected with federal law, and ordinary men and women who may have left very little evidence of their lives anywhere else.

Genealogists understand something particularly important about records such as these: we often do not know what we need until we see it.

A catalog description cannot tell us everything contained in a box. An index cannot reproduce marginal notes, attachments, correspondence, photographs, affidavits, or neighboring documents that provide context. And a digitized image cannot help when the record has never been digitized.

I recognize that NARA faces legitimate challenges involving aging facilities, declining storage needs for temporary paper records, and the federal government's transition to electronic recordkeeping. NARA has explained that these considerations contributed to the decision to close Chicago and San Bruno. But the changing needs of the Federal Records Centers should not automatically determine the future accessibility of the permanent archival records housed alongside them.

Those are two different questions.

Before permanent archival holdings are dispersed, I urge NARA and Congress to consider whether regional public access can be preserved, even if maintaining the present buildings is no longer practical. If these particular facilities cannot reasonably remain open, then suitable alternatives within the regions they serve should be seriously explored.

I also urge NARA to provide researchers with clear information about what will happen to each collection, where it will be housed, when it will become unavailable for research, when access is expected to resume, and what provisions will be made for researchers who can no longer reasonably travel to the new location.

For a researcher in Indiana, moving a record from Chicago to Kansas City is not simply changing its shelf location. It changes whether that record can realistically be examined.

The National Archives has an extraordinary responsibility. It preserves the documentary evidence of the federal government, but preservation alone is not enough. Records must also remain meaningfully accessible to the American people whose history they document.

Once regional archival infrastructure disappears, recreating it will be extraordinarily difficult.

I therefore respectfully ask NARA to pause the closure and relocation process long enough for meaningful consultation with researchers, genealogical and historical organizations, tribal nations, educators, affected communities, and members of Congress. I also ask Congress to examine whether adequate alternatives exist for maintaining regional access to these permanent federal records before the present facilities are closed.

Our nation's records belong to all of us. Their value lies not simply in keeping them safe, but in ensuring that future generations can find them, examine them, question them, and use them to understand the people who came before.

As a genealogist, I see every day what happens when a record survives.

I also know what happens when access to it disappears.

Respectfully,

Lori Samuelson

READERS: You have my permission to forward or alter this letter in anyway you'd like. Contact your representatives. They are SUPPOSED to listen to us. Here's the link to find your Congressperson and Senators.

Book Review: Echoes in the Blood

Dick Robinson’s Echoes in the Blood: How the Past Lives On in Us is an unusual combination of genealogy, family memoir, history, and reconstructed narrative.

Robinson’s research led him to connections, by blood and through marriage, with a collection of historical figures, including Abraham Lincoln, Helen Keller, Martin Luther King Jr., Winston Churchill, William Shakespeare, Isaac Newton, and Elvis Presley. He presents these discoveries as something more than famous names, looking for patterns of struggle, resilience, loss, service, and family influence that seem to recur across generations.

What makes the book particularly interesting to genealogists is Robinson’s approach to storytelling. He openly explains that while the relationships and historical framework are documented, some scenes are reconstructed and dialogue is imagined. He identifies those passages through gray shading and tells readers that artificial intelligence assisted with organization, clarification, and editorial refinement.

I appreciated that transparency, although it raises an important question: How far can a family historian go in reconstructing a scene before genealogy becomes historical fiction?

Robinson tells us the difference, but his scenes can be vivid enough that the boundary becomes surprisingly easy to cross as a reader.

The book is written in an intentionally unconventional style, using short sentences, fragments, and sometimes individual words to create rhythm and emphasis. That works particularly well during dramatic moments.

Interestingly, the famous historical figures were not always the people I found most compelling. Robinson’s own relatives, including Augusta Burnett, Elizabeth Robinson, and his father, Francis Robinson, often interested me more. His discussion of a family member's prejudice is particularly thought-provoking because Robinson recognizes that families can transmit attitudes and fears along with the more admirable qualities we prefer to celebrate.

That, for me, is where Echoes in the Blood becomes most successful.

Genealogy is not simply about discovering whom we descend from or which famous person appears somewhere on our tree. It is also about asking what families carry forward and what later generations choose to preserve, change, or reject.

Family history offers wonderful opportunities for storytelling, but storytelling cannot substitute for evidence. Robinson states that the relationships presented in Echoes in the Blood have been verified and later discusses the Genealogical Proof Standard. For me, that makes the documentation especially important. The online compiled trees cited in the endnotes may provide useful clues, but they do not, without evaluation of their underlying evidence, demonstrate the relationships claimed. Readers should therefore approach the genealogical connections in this book as avenues for further research rather than as proved relationships.

Echoes in the Blood left me with a question that genealogists increasingly need to consider, particularly as AI becomes part of our writing process: How do we make our ancestors live again on the page without inadvertently creating lives they never lived? That question alone makes this an interesting book for genealogists to discuss.

Disclosure: I received a complimentary digital copy from the author; no conditions were placed on this review

Source: Dick Robinson, Echoes in the Blood: How the Past Lives On in Us (Boynton Beach, FL: Legacy Scribe Books, LLC, 2026).

3. Building Your Genealogy AI Assistant

 

For the past two weeks I’ve been blogging about the importance of personalizing your AI. Last week I wrote how to accomplish that with ChatGPT. Even if you only have a free version, it’s important for you to customize. I also strongly encourage you to have a free account with all of the AIs so you can check their work as some are stronger in one area than another.

Here’s how to personalize with

CLAUDE:

Click on the lower left circle that is your profile icon. Select Settings. Click General. In the box, tell Claude your instructions to use every single time you being a chat.

GEMINI:

Click on the lower left profile icon. Then click on the right setting icon for new pop up window seen above, look for Personal Intelligence. Next click Instructions for Gemini. Insert your instructions in the box.

PERPLEXITY:

Like, ChatGPT and Claude, click on the lower left profile icon then click Account. Next click Personalization. Complete the information under Custom Instructions

CHATGPT:

Information can be found here.

Now you've saved yourself from having to retype the same instructions repeatedly. Remember, if you provide a conflict in an instruction in the chat box from what you've written under personalization, no worries! The prompt box will override what you have in personalization. If you do find yourself having to give the AI repeated instructions, then go back to the personalization setting and update. Happy Researching!

2. Customizing ChatGPT: The Five Minutes That Will Save You Hours

 

In my last article, I explained why every genealogist should customize their artificial intelligence assistant before asking it to help with research. Think of it as introducing a new research assistant to your way of working.

Now let's put that idea into practice with ChatGPT.

The entire process takes only a few minutes, yet it can dramatically improve the quality and consistency of the responses you receive.

Step 1: Open Your Settings

Sign in to ChatGPT.

Select your profile icon in the lower left corner of the screen, clicking on the circle.

From the dropdown, select Personalization. This is where you'll find the options that allow ChatGPT to adapt to the way you work.

Click on Personalization and scroll down to the box under Custom Instructions. That's where you will put in your directions.

Step 2: Tell ChatGPT About Your Work

Don't write a biography.

Instead, tell ChatGPT what it needs to know in order to work effectively with you.

For example, you might include:

• I am an intermediate genealogist researching families in Ohio and Pennsylvania.

• I prefer Chicago-style source citations.

• Always distinguish between facts, evidence, assumptions, and hypotheses.

• Never invent missing information.

• State clearly when evidence is inconclusive.

• Use military-style dates such as 21 March 1850.

• Write in a conversational but professional tone.

Notice that none of these instructions reveal private information. They simply describe how you want your AI assistant to approach its work.

Step 3: Explain How You Like Information Presented

Formatting matters.

If you frequently ask ChatGPT to create timelines, research plans, proof summaries, tables, or blog posts, mention that in your instructions.

For example:

"I prefer timelines arranged chronologically."

"Separate proven facts from working hypotheses."

"Use headings and short paragraphs for readability."

The more consistently you work, the more useful these instructions become.

Step 4: Don't Try to Tell It Everything

One mistake I often see is people creating pages and pages of instructions. My research assistant, Geni, informed me that someone uploade 60 pages here.

Resist the temptation.

Long instruction lists often include information that is rarely used or eventually becomes outdated.

Instead, include only those preferences that affect most of your conversations.

You can always provide additional instructions for a particular project when needed.

Don't forget to hit SAVE!

Step 5: Update Your Settings Over Time

Your settings should evolve.

Whenever you notice yourself making the same correction repeatedly, consider adding that instruction to your saved preferences.

Perhaps you always ask ChatGPT to avoid speculation. Maybe you repeatedly remind it to cite sources or to identify conflicting evidence.

If you're saying the same thing over and over, your settings probably need an update.

Remember: Settings Are Not Magic

Custom instructions improve consistency, but they do not replace careful review.

I still verify every citation, read every record myself, and evaluate every conclusion before I publish or share it with a client.

AI is an assistant, not a substitute for genealogical judgment.

A few minutes spent customizing ChatGPT today can save hours of rewriting tomorrow.

In the next article, we'll compare how Gemini, Claude, and Perplexity allow you to personalize their responses and discuss which features are most useful for genealogists.

1. Before You Ask AI a Question, Teach It Who You Are

      AI Image  

When someone tells me they've tried artificial intelligence and "it wasn't very good," my first question is simple:

"Did you customize it?"

Most people answer no.

That's a little like hiring a brand-new research assistant, handing them a box of family papers, and expecting them to instantly know your research methods, writing style, citation preferences, and standards of proof. Of course they won't.

Artificial intelligence works much the same way.

Think of It as Training a New Research Assistant

Every genealogist develops habits over time.

Perhaps you always cite your sources in Evidence Explained style. Maybe you write dates as "21 March 1850" instead of "March 21, 1850." You might insist that every statement be supported by evidence, or refuse to identify someone as a parent without a convincing proof argument.

None of that is obvious to an AI unless you tell it. The more it understands your expectations, the less time you'll spend correcting its work.

What Should You Tell It?

Each AI platform has a place where you can save instructions that will be used in future conversations. Although every platform calls it something slightly different, the idea is the same.

Consider including information such as:

• Your experience level in genealogy.

• Your preferred citation style.

• How you like dates written.

• Whether you want the AI to distinguish clearly between facts, assumptions, and hypotheses.

• Whether you prefer concise answers or detailed explanations.

• Your preferred writing tone.

• The kinds of records you most frequently research.

• Any formatting preferences you use consistently.

Think carefully before adding information. These instructions should describe how you want the AI to work with you, not every detail about your personal life.

My Own Instructions

Over time I've taught my AI assistant quite a bit about how I work.

It knows that I expect evidence-based genealogy rather than speculation. It knows I prefer military-style dates and Chicago citations because Evidence Explained is under copywrite. It understands that if a record doesn't support a conclusion, it shouldn't invent one. It also knows I write for an educated audience and prefer engaging narratives instead of dry reports.

As a result, much of what it produces already looks remarkably close to something I would write myself.

Is it perfect? No. I still verify every fact, examine every citation, and edit every piece of writing before anyone else sees it. That's exactly what responsible genealogists should do.

Your Instructions Will Change

Don't think of these settings as permanent.

As you discover new ways to work with AI, you'll probably update them.

I add new instructions whenever I notice I'm making the same correction repeatedly. If I find myself saying, "Please don't use em dashes," or "Always distinguish evidence from inference," that's usually a sign the instruction belongs in my saved settings.

Over time your AI becomes a better research partner because you've taken the time to teach it how you work.

One Important Reminder

Customizing your AI does not replace critical thinking.

AI can summarize records, organize timelines, suggest research strategies, draft narratives, and help identify conflicts in the evidence. It cannot determine whether a conclusion is genealogically sound.

That responsibility remains yours.

Think of AI as an exceptionally fast assistant, not an expert witness.

Teach it well, supervise it carefully, and you'll likely discover that it becomes one of the most useful tools in your genealogy toolbox.

In my next article, I'll show you exactly where to find these settings in ChatGPT, and I'll also compare the equivalent features in Gemini, Claude, and Perplexity so you can customize whichever AI assistant you use.

The Mystery of Mary Harbaugh

 

Jim Samuelson in front of Mary Harbaugh’s grave, Harbaugh Church Cemetery, Rouzerville, Franklin, PA Photo by Lori Samuelson 16 June 2026.

Every genealogist knows the thrill of finding a gravestone that has been hiding in plain sight and every genealogist knows the disappointment that sometimes follows.

Recently, while visiting Harbaugh family cemeteries in Pennsylvania and Maryland, I experienced both emotions on the same day.

The discovery began in Harbaugh Church Cemetery in Rouzerville, Franklin County, Pennsylvania.

I had visited the cemetery nearly ten years earlier while researching my husband's Harbaugh family. During that visit, I failed to notice a weathered stone marking the grave of a woman named Mary Harbaugh who died in 1843.

This time, however, my husband Jim spotted it. I should not have been surprised.

Over the years, Jim has developed an uncanny ability to notice things I overlook. Whether it is a partially hidden gravestone, a faded inscription, or a clue buried in plain sight, he often finds what I miss.

Standing in the cemetery, I was delighted by the discovery.

The stone was difficult to read, weathered by nearly two centuries of exposure to Pennsylvania winters and summer heat. Yet enough remained visible to identify the woman as Mary Harbaugh and to establish that she died in 1843.

Naturally, my mind immediately began searching for an identity.

Genealogists are problem-solvers by nature. When presented with an unknown individual, we instinctively begin fitting pieces together. Who was she? How did she fit into the family? Why was she buried here?

Almost immediately, I convinced myself I had the answer.

I recalled that my husband's third great-grandmother, Mary Garver, had died in 1843. She and her husband had lived in nearby Waynesboro. The dates seemed reasonable. The location appeared plausible.

For a brief moment, I thought the mystery was solved.

Then I looked more carefully. Genealogy has a way of humbling us. The Mary I had in mind was not Mary Harbaugh at all. She was Mary Garver Eyster.

Her gravestone still survives, not in Pennsylvania, but across the state line in the Harbaugh Family Cemetery near Sabillasville, Frederick County, Maryland.

The woman in Rouzerville was someone else entirely. Back to the drawing board.

At first, I was frustrated. After all, identifying an unknown individual is much more satisfying than admitting uncertainty. But the more I reflected on the experience, the more I realized it illustrates one of the most important lessons in genealogy.

A wrong answer is not better than no answer. In fact, one of the greatest dangers researchers face is the temptation to accept a convenient explanation simply because it appears to fit.

Dates align. Locations seem reasonable. Family names match.

Before long, a theory quietly transforms into a fact. Then the mistake gets copied. And copied again. And copied again. Eventually, nobody remembers where the conclusion came from. All they know is that everyone else believes it.

Fortunately, I caught myself before making that mistake.

The truth is simple. I do not know who Mary Harbaugh was.

Not yet.

She does not appear to have a memorial on Findagrave. No immediately obvious record identifies her. The weathered stone provides only a name, a death year, and a question. Yet that question may prove valuable.

Who was she? A wife? A daughter? A widow? A sister? Why was she buried in Harbaugh Church Cemetery? What relationship did she have to the surrounding families?

Somewhere, the answer may still exist. Perhaps a church register survives. Perhaps a probate record remains hidden in an archive. Perhaps a distant cousin will recognize her story. Or perhaps the answer will emerge from a completely unexpected source years from now.

That possibility is one of the reasons I love genealogy.

Not every cemetery visit produces a breakthrough. Not every mystery is solved before we leave the gate.

Sometimes we return home carrying more questions than answers. And that is perfectly acceptable.

Good genealogy is not measured by how many mysteries we solve. It is measured by how honestly we evaluate the evidence.

For now, Mary Harbaugh remains a mystery.

Her weathered stone stands quietly among the graves in Rouzerville, waiting for someone to tell her story. Perhaps one day that someone will be me.

Until then, I am content to leave her where she belongs. Not in the category of "solved." But in the much more honest category of "still researching."

Thus ends my cemetery series for the summer. Next week I've got some important info to share with you on making your AI experience more effective and efficient. 

When My Genealogist Brain Met a Hacked Website

 

AI Image

Yesterday, I received one of the strangest genealogy emails I have received in a long time.

It came from an AI genealogy blog I have followed for years. The post was titled “Coronavirus disease 2019.”

That was pretty much what it was about. COVID-19 symptoms. Transmission. Testing. Vaccines. Prevention. Treatment.

I stopped reading.

What in the world did this have to do with genealogy? Or artificial intelligence? More importantly, this did not sound remotely like the person whose work I knew.

It was late, so I decided I wasn't dealing with it. This morning, I looked at the email again. It was still weird.

Then My Imagination Got Involved

Unfortunately, I had recently read a news article about AI agents behaving in unexpected ways during testing. Claude was mentioned. OpenAI was mentioned. There was even discussion about whether some AI behavior constituted “cheating,” although I wasn't entirely convinced that was the right word. Perhaps the AIs were simply working very hard to solve the problems humans had given them.

So there I sat with two completely unrelated pieces of information:

1. AI agents had reportedly done some unexpected things.
2. An AI genealogy website had suddenly sent me an inexplicable article about COVID-19.

My genealogist brain immediately performed the following calculation:

1 + 1 = 100,000.

Had some rogue AI agent taken over the genealogy website? Had the machines finally escaped? Were my devices now infected because I had read an article about a virus?

Okay, probably not. But something wasn't right.

Stop. What Do I Actually Know?

This is where being a genealogist finally overcame my imagination.

I had a hypothesis. I did not have evidence.

The article itself wasn't necessarily the problem. The problem was its provenance and context. It simply didn't belong where I found it.

I knew the person behind the site and was familiar with his work. This didn't sound like him. It wasn't the type of material he normally published. There was no apparent genealogy connection. There was no obvious AI connection.

There was another complication. The author had moved his work to a new website months earlier. The old WordPress site was no longer supposed to be his active publishing platform.

Now I was genuinely curious. I decided to contact him.

That turned into another small adventure. The WordPress notification had come from a no-reply address. I couldn't immediately locate the email address I had used to correspond with him several years ago. Then I discovered that the contact-email link on the old website wasn't working.

Eventually, I located a current email address elsewhere. I sent him a simple message. I did not mention rogue AI. I did not tell him I thought someone had taken over his website. I simply explained what I had received, told him it seemed completely unlike his usual material, mentioned the broken contact link, and asked whether he had intentionally posted it.

Then I waited.

The Answer Arrived

He responded. I had been right to be concerned. His old WordPress site had been hacked.

The hacker had gotten in through an outdated version of WordPress. The COVID article was not his. He removed the false post, rebuilt and secured the site, and told me he would repair the broken contact link.

He was startled by what had happened, too.

So no, as far as we know, a rogue AI did not take over a genealogy website. My imagination had gotten considerably ahead of my evidence. But someone really had taken over the website. I was wrong about the culprit. I wasn't wrong about the anomaly.

Why Did I Notice?

This is the part of the story that I think matters to genealogists.

There was nothing about the appearance of the email that immediately screamed “fake.” It came through the expected WordPress system. It pointed to the expected website. The website was real. What was wrong was the content in context.

I knew the creator. I knew the type of material he produced. I knew what his website was about. The new information didn't fit what I already knew about the source.

Genealogists encounter this problem constantly.

A document may be authentic while information contained within it is wrong. A record may appear in exactly the repository where we expect to find it while referring to a different person. A perfectly reasonable fact may become unreasonable when placed alongside everything else we know.

Provenance matters. Context matters. Knowing your source matters.

And perhaps most importantly, recognizing an anomaly does not give us permission to invent its explanation. My “rogue AI” hypothesis was entertaining. It was also unsupported.

So I did what genealogists are supposed to do. I went looking for better evidence. In this case, I went directly to the person who could answer the question.

There's Another Lesson Here

The incident also made me think about something genealogists don't discuss nearly enough: what happens to our old websites after we move on?

The owner of this site had already moved his material to a new platform. The old WordPress site was no longer needed as his primary home.

But the old software was still there. That distinction matters.

An abandoned website isn't necessarily an abandoned file. A WordPress installation is software running on a server. If it remains online, it still needs security updates and maintenance even if nobody has written a new post in months.

If you move your genealogy website somewhere else, finish the move.

If the old site no longer serves a purpose, take it offline. If it needs to remain available, keep the software updated and secured. If you want visitors redirected to your new home, consider replacing the old installation with a simple static page rather than leaving an unnecessary content-management system running indefinitely.

And if you still actively use WordPress, keep WordPress itself, your themes, and your plugins updated. Remove what you no longer use. Maintain backups. Protect administrator accounts.

I will be checking my own WordPress installation today. I already back up my site and duplicate my posts on another blogging platform because I have long believed in redundancy.

Or, as I prefer to put it:

Paranoia doesn't destroy ya.

One Last Thought

This entire episode began because something simply didn't feel right.

That feeling wasn't evidence. But it was a reason to investigate. There's an important difference.

Genealogists develop instincts after years of working with records. We notice names that don't quite fit, dates that seem slightly wrong, sources appearing where we wouldn't expect them, and stories that are almost—but not quite—consistent with everything else we know.

Those instincts are valuable. They are not conclusions. Use the instinct to formulate the question. Then find the evidence to answer it.

Yesterday I received an inexplicable COVID-19 article from a genealogy website. For a brief moment, my imagination supplied a rogue AI. Reality supplied an ordinary hacker exploiting outdated software.

The hacker was less exciting. The lesson was considerably more useful.

And thankfully, my computer did not catch COVID.

The Empty Spaces in the Family Plot

Antietam Church Cemetery, Waynesboro, Franklin, Pennsylvania showing the Harbaugh family burials with spaces for graves missing stones; photo by Lori Samuelson 22 June 2026.

Some discoveries are made by finding something. Others are made by noticing what is missing.

During a recent cemetery-hunting trip through Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Ohio, I visited numerous burial grounds connected to my husband's Harbaugh family and my own Duer ancestors. Some visits led to new discoveries. Others answered long-standing questions.

One stop left me with neither.

Instead, it left me staring at several empty spaces in a family burial plot and wondering whether the answers had been there all along.

For years, I have searched for the final resting places of Elias Harbaugh and his wife, Mary Magdaline Weaver Harbaugh.

Elias presents a challenge because his probate file no longer exists in Franklin County, Pennsylvania. Based on surviving records, he likely died about 1874. Mary appears to have died around March 1877, her death inferred from a deed recorded by her grandson, George Henry, in 1885.

Like many genealogists, I have spent years piecing together fragments of evidence to reconstruct their lives. What I hoped this trip would provide was something more tangible. A tombstone. A burial record. Some confirmation of where they were laid to rest.

For a long time, I have suspected that Elias and Mary were buried in Antietam Church Cemetery in Waynesboro, Franklin County, Pennsylvania.

The theory is not without support. Their only child who remained in Pennsylvania, Frederick Alexander Harbaugh, was buried there in 1894. The cemetery contains several members of Frederick's family, suggesting that the Harbaughs used this churchyard for multiple generations.

Ten years ago, I spoke with the church minister regarding burial records. Unfortunately, the surviving records do not extend back to the 1870s. If documentation once existed identifying Elias and Mary's graves, it has not survived.

Still, I hoped the cemetery itself might provide clues. Cemeteries often tell stories that records cannot.

Families were frequently buried together. Parents, children, spouses, and siblings often occupied adjoining plots. Even when records disappear, burial patterns sometimes survive.

Walking among the Harbaugh stones, I was struck by how weathered many of the markers had become. Time has not been kind to them. Some inscriptions are difficult to read. Others have deteriorated significantly since photographs were taken years ago.

Yet something else caught my attention. Several empty spaces appeared within the family row. Not random gaps. Places that seemed as though stones might once have stood there.

I found myself studying the spaces as carefully as the surviving markers.

Could Elias and Mary have been buried there? Had stones once marked their graves? Were the markers lost to weather, damage, or neglect?

There was no way to know for certain.

My husband, Jim, has an uncanny ability to spot things that others miss. I hoped he might discover a sunken marker, a fragment of stone, or some overlooked clue hidden among the grass.

We searched carefully. Nothing appeared. No broken fragments. No buried marker. No evidence beyond the empty spaces themselves.

We left without answers. Yet I could not stop thinking about what those gaps represented.

Genealogists are trained to focus on evidence we can see and document. We seek records, photographs, inscriptions, and artifacts. We want proof.

But absence can sometimes be evidence, too. An empty place in a family plot may tell a story. A missing probate file may tell a story. A burial record that should exist but doesn't may tell a story.

None of these pieces alone prove that Elias and Mary rest in Antietam Church Cemetery. Together, however, they create a pattern that is difficult for me to ignore. Sometimes all that remains is a possibility.

I left Antietam Church Cemetery without finding Elias and Mary. Perhaps resting quietly among their family members, their identities lost but their presence still remembered.

Genealogy is often portrayed as a series of discoveries and breakthroughs.

In reality, much of our work involves living with uncertainty.

Not every mystery is solved. Not every ancestor leaves a marker. Not every story reaches a neat conclusion.

For now, Elias and Mary remain missing.

But every time I look at the photograph of that family row, my eyes are drawn not to the stones that remain.

They are drawn to the empty spaces and to the possibility that sometimes what is missing can tell us as much as what survives.

When the Tombstones Disappear

 

Genealogists spend much of their time searching for things that have been lost.

Missing records. Forgotten stories. Unmarked graves. Destroyed courthouses. Faded photographs.

We become accustomed to loss because loss is woven into the very fabric of family history research. Yet nothing prepared me for returning to a cemetery and discovering that the evidence I had once photographed had disappeared.

Ten years ago, I visited Green Hill Cemetery in Waynesboro, Pennsylvania, in search of several members of my husband's Harbaugh family.

Their tombstones had not originally stood there.

The family had first been buried in Old Union Cemetery adjacent to a church. In 1923, after the property changed ownership, the graves were disinterred and reinterred at Green Hill Cemetery. According to cemetery staff, efforts had been made to notify descendants through notices published in local newspapers. Whether family members living elsewhere ever learned of the move is unknown.

By the time I visited in 2016, the stones had already endured one relocation.

They were worn; no longer standing they were placed flat on the earth. I photographed each one carefully.

At the time, I viewed the images as routine documentation. Like many genealogists, I had become accustomed to photographing tombstones whenever I encountered them. The task felt important, but not urgent.

After all, the stones had already survived for more than a century. Surely they would remain there for future visitors. Or so I thought.

This summer, while returning from a genealogy conference, I decided to revisit Green Hill Cemetery. I wanted to see the stones again.

Perhaps I would notice details I had overlooked a decade earlier. Perhaps advances in photography would allow me to capture inscriptions more clearly. Perhaps I would simply enjoy reconnecting with ancestors whose stories I had spent years researching.

Instead, I found an absence.

The hillside where the stones had once stood had been altered. The markers were gone. Completely gone. For several moments I simply stared at the space where I expected them to be. Had I remembered the location incorrectly? Had the stones been moved again? Had they been damaged? Had they been placed in storage?

I had no answers.

The cemetery office was closed, leaving me with questions and a growing sense of unease.

What troubled me most was not simply that the stones were missing. It was the realization that physical evidence we often assume will remain forever can disappear without warning.

Genealogists sometimes treat cemeteries as permanent repositories of history. In reality, they are vulnerable places. Weather damages monuments. Trees fall. Floods occur. Maintenance priorities change. Ownership changes. Records are misplaced. Occasionally, markers simply vanish.

The experience reminded me of the countless records I have searched for over the years that no longer exist. Probate files that disappeared from courthouse shelves. Church registers lost to fire. Family Bibles discarded during estate sales. Letters thrown away by descendants who did not recognize their value.

Every generation inherits responsibility for preserving the evidence left behind by those who came before. Sometimes we fulfill that responsibility. Sometimes we fail.

Fortunately, I had photographed the stones during my earlier visit. What once seemed like routine documentation now feels considerably more important.

Those photographs preserve information that may no longer be accessible in the cemetery itself. That realization changed the way I think about every cemetery visit.

Take the photographs.

Record the inscriptions.

Capture the surrounding landscape.

Document the location.

Don't assume someone else already has.

Don't assume the information will still be there next year.

Most importantly, don't assume that stone is permanent simply because it has already survived for generations.

Family history exists in a delicate balance between remembrance and forgetting. As genealogists, we often focus on discovering the past. Perhaps an equally important task is preserving it.

The missing stones at Green Hill Cemetery reminded me that our ancestors' stories are not guaranteed to survive. Their preservation depends upon ordinary people who care enough to record them before they disappear.

Sometimes we search for evidence. Sometimes we become its last caretakers. And sometimes, without realizing it, the photograph we take today may become tomorrow's only surviving record.