Traveling through New Bern on Martin Luther King Jr Blvd or to Chocowinity on Hwy 17 or Greenville on 43, we can take for granted how easy it is to get from one place to another — and in about a half hour or less to or from any of these places if Vanceboro is your...
https://youtu.be/Njxpxpbmjx4 I love technology and I'm always up for trying new things. Last month, I used ChatGPT — a site I have used many times since its launch — in an attempt to do some creative genealogy research. The results are nothing short of a bad trip by...
A lot of people have all kinds of questions about DNA tests and family tree research. Genetic genealogy has exploded over the last 15 years or so. In this video, I talk about ethnicity reports and some of the different types of tests available to genealogy...
The best free genealogy resource online is FamilySearch.org, and in particular, their free online catalog. A lot of people get intimidated by it or they don't even know it's there. In this video, I explain how to get to the catalog and then how to drill down to find...
If you're like me, you spent more time watching YouTube in 2020 than you had previously. Some of those months when so many things had seemed to grind to a halt, there was a limited selection of things to do. And regular TV is just boring to me. Most of the time,...
I've had to take a break from research for the past few months because I've been so busy with work, but knowing we'll all be hunkering down for much of the coming weeks, I thought last night was a perfect time to get back to research. I was thrilled to see the...
I logged in to AncestryDNA today and was greeted by a new feature called ThruLines™ where the DNA Circles used to be. I'm always excited to see new features and this one was no exception until I saw what was coming up in my ThruLines. The Perpetuation of Family Tree...
(Get $10 off the AncestryDNA test! Link is below.) Thanks to many modern advances, such as the internet and genetic testing, we can now break through genealogy barriers that have stumped our forebears for generations. In the past, East Carolina Roots has recommended...
Next to genealogy and history research, my second favorite obsession is watching MeTV. I love those old shows, from Andy Griffith to Macgyver, and I especially love courtroom and mystery shows, like Perry Mason and Matlock, Diagnosis Murder and Columbo. Perhaps that's...
The following is a transcription of a letter from Turner Nelson to James Roach dated July 19, 1825. This is of particular interest to me because there is a section at the bottom that mentions my ancestor, Laban Morris. Turner Nelson is mentioned elsewhere on this site...
If you’re ever in the Old Burying Ground in Beaufort, NC and see this sign, just know it’s wrong. The “Tuscarora War,” which was actually an Indian War that included militants from multiple tribes, wasn’t fought anywhere near the town of Beaufort. On September 22,...
Have you ever wondered what day of the week a historical event happened? Or what about what kind of moon was in the sky during that blustery February in eastern North Carolina when the Battle of Moore's Creek Bridge was fought? Well, now you can have your answers. I...