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DNA strand.

Finding Our Roots? History and DNA

DNA tests have become popular tools to rediscover lost ties to the past, but the links they forge do not always stand up to historical scrutiny.
by James H. Sweet via Perspectives on History on March 22, 2022
Joe Biden

How Joe Biden Became Irish

The president has skillfully played up his Irish roots, but the story of his ancestry is more complicated.
by Ben Schreckinger via Politico Magazine on September 14, 2021
Hungerford Deed

New Analysis Reveals More Details About Smithsonian Founder's Illegitimate Family Tree

The newly recovered 1787 Hungerford Deed, detailing a contentious squabble over property and prestige, can now be viewed in a new virtual exhibition.
by Alice George via Smithsonian on August 10, 2021
FDR's cabinet and descendants

The Unusual Group Trying to Turn Biden into FDR

In a city of ambitious influencers, a shadow cabinet hopes it can summon a new New Deal.
by Ruby Cramer via Politico Magazine on August 1, 2021
Family register sampler sewed by Abigail Barnard, Pittsfield, Massachusetts, 1833.
Exhibit

Finding Ancestors

The many ways of knowing those who came before us.
Illustration of the Salem Witch Trials, with a "witch" appearing to levitate books

My Witch-Hunt History, and America's: A Personal Journey to 1692

Revisiting America's first witch hunt — and discovering how much of it was a family affair. My family, that is.
by Andrew O'Hehir via Salon on July 4, 2021
Statue of "Freedom" on top of the U.S. Capitol

Philip Reed, The Enslaved Man Who Rescued Freedom

The ironies abound in the story of Reed, who made it possible to erect the statue that remains on the top of the Capitol dome today.
by Megan Smolenyak via Medium on January 10, 2021
A mural of a woman cleaning a turnstile.

How to Remember a Plague

2020 was full of efforts to archive photos and artifacts of the pandemic — an impulse born of a sense of witnessing history, and a desire to speak to the future.
by Laura Bliss via CityLab on December 31, 2020

Aaron Burr — Villain of ‘Hamilton’ — Had a Secret Family of Color, New Research Shows

The vice president is best known for killing rival Alexander Hamilton in an 1804 duel. But he was also a notorious rake, historians say.
by Hannah Natanson via Retropolis on August 24, 2019

Beyond Romantic Advertisements: Ancestry.com, Genealogy, and White Supremacy

On Ancestry's dangerous move to make it harder to discern which white families owned slaves.
by Adam H. Domby via Black Perspectives on May 10, 2019

Our Twisted DNA

A review of "She Has Her Mother’s Laugh: The Powers, Perversions, and Potential of Heredity."
by Tim Flannery via New York Review of Books on February 22, 2019
Bearded civil war soldier.

Who’s Behind That Beard?

Historians are using facial recognition software to identify people in Civil War photographs.
by Erica X. Eisen via Slate on November 15, 2018

Ancestry.com Is In Cahoots With Public Records Agencies, A Group Suspects

A nonprofit claims its request for genealogical records from state archives was brushed aside in favor of Ancestry’s request.
by Katie Notopoulos via BuzzFeed News on October 22, 2018
partner

How Pocahontas—The Myth and the Slur—Props Up White Supremacy

The roots of the attacks on Elizabeth Warren.
by Honor Sachs via Made By History on October 16, 2018

How Our Grandmothers Disappeared Into History

A historian turned novelist ponders the absence of women from America's historical archives.
by Katy Simpson Smith via Zócalo Public Square on June 8, 2018

The Liberal Delusion of #ResistanceGenealogy

The effort to dig up information about the immigrant ancestors of prominent Trumpsters is doing more harm than good.
by Rebecca Onion via Slate on May 15, 2018

Haunted by History

War, famine and persecution inflict profound changes on bodies and brains. Could these changes persist over generations?
by Pam Weintraub via Aeon on April 18, 2018

Slavery and the American University

Determined researchers are finally drawing the lines between higher education and America's original sin.
by Alex Carp via New York Review of Books on February 7, 2018

'This Is Surreal': Descendants of Slaves and Slaveowners Meet On US Plantation

At Prospect Hill, people came from as far as Liberia for an unlikely gathering that led to a scene of visible emotion – with ‘a lot to talk about.'
by Alan Huffman via The Guardian on November 16, 2017

For New Mexico Families, Connecting the Dots of an Ancestral Disease

A genetic mutation in some New Mexico communities can be traced to a common ancestor who came to the area more than 400 years ago.
by Sara Van Note via UnDark on October 10, 2017

White Nationalists Flock to Genetic Ancestry Tests. Some Don't Like What They Find

With the rise of spit-in-a-cup genetic testing, white nationalists are turning to science to "prove" their racial identity.
by Eric Boodman via STAT on August 16, 2017

She Thought She Was Irish — Until a DNA Test Opened a 100-Year-Old Mystery

How Alice Collins Plebuch’s foray into “recreational genomics” upended a family tree.
by Libby Copeland via Washington Post on July 27, 2017

Why Do So Many Americans Think They Have Cherokee Blood?

The history of a myth.
by Gregory D. Smithers via Slate on October 1, 2015

The Ledger

In researching his family's past, the author learns of his ancestors' efforts to thrive despite the confines of racial oppression.
by Lawrence Jackson via n+1 on June 14, 2012
Cartoon of crooked Oliver Hartzell with his arm around an apprehensive Sir Francis Drake.

The Mythical Fortune That Fuelled America’s Greatest Fraud

Oscar Hartzell convinced thousands of Americans that they could get a piece of the Sir Francis Drake estate—a multibillion-dollar inheritance that didn’t exist.
by Richard Rayner via The New Yorker on April 15, 2002
Lee Pattie Registrar's Report

Trouble with the Brothers: Booze, Divorce, and Madness in the American West

The past really is a foreign country, as historian Jonathan Ablard finds when piecing together the turbulent history of his ancestors in the West and Midwest.
by Jonathan Ablard via Tropics of Meta on June 23, 2025
Tamara Lanier

Harvard Relinquishes Photographs of Enslaved People in Historic Settlement

Tamara Lanier, who sued the school over daguerreotypes of her enslaved ancestors held in its museum, called the outcome “a turning point in American history.”
by Valentina Di Liscia via Hyperallergic on May 28, 2025
Pope Leo XIV in front of a crowd.

Pope Leo XIV’s Link to Haiti is Part of a Broader American Story of Race, Citizenship and Migration

Repelled by American racism, thousands of free people of color bounced between New Orleans and Haiti in the 19th century.
by Chelsea Stieber via The Conversation on May 14, 2025

‘This Land Is Yours’

The missing Black history of upstate New York challenges the delusion of New York as a land of freedom far removed from the American original sin of slavery.
by Nell Irvin Painter via New York Review of Books on March 9, 2025
Harrison Williams holding a Camera.

Seeking Clues in Cabinet Cards

The poignant images, at once banal and intimate, in the Lynch Family Photographs Collection contain mysteries perhaps only the public can solve.
by April White via JSTOR Daily on February 17, 2025
Rows of shelves in a historical archive.

Archival Shouting

Silence and volume in collections and institutions.
by Karin Wulf via Perspectives on History on April 10, 2024
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