Sabrina Riley
Family Heritage Adventures in American History
I love to discover new ways to integrate family history with my sons' homeschool history lessons. The first time this happened naturally...
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Sabrina Riley
- Jan 18
- 5 min
The Best Grandma Ever
My sister, Erin, said it best. We stood on her front porch watching fireworks on New Year’s Eve after learning that Grandma Lois had just...
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Sabrina Riley
- Jul 22, 2021
- 5 min
A Colorful Life
Ruth Bates Harris may be one of the most significant people of which you have never heard. I discovered her story as I researched a story...
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Sabrina Riley
- Mar 29, 2021
- 3 min
Holding Hands With the Past
As I write, I'm preparing to teach a class about World War II to a group of homeschooled third through fifth graders. Using picture...
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Sabrina Riley
- Jan 29, 2021
- 4 min
Little House on the Prairie as Family History
Laura Ingalls Wilder's beloved Little House on the Prairie series is an amalgamation of memory, fact, and fiction. As recorded in Little...
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Sabrina Riley
- Aug 2, 2020
- 5 min
Making a Genealogical End Run
Brick walls. Every genealogist runs into one sooner or later. The dead-end of a trail of evidence with no obvious solution in sight. When...
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Sabrina Riley
- Mar 2, 2020
- 4 min
Great-Grandpa's Vaudeville Days
As I was growing up, I frequently heard about my great-grandfather William "Bill" Morris's days as a vaudeville stagehand in Muskegon,...
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Sabrina Riley
- Aug 12, 2018
- 7 min
Storing Your Family Treasures for Preservation
Over the past several weeks on Facebook I have been chronicling my progress in organizing my grandparents' collection of family...
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Sabrina Riley
- Jun 13, 2018
- 4 min
Lessons From My Grandfathers
"Matriarchs" established that the women in our family are the storytellers. That doesn't mean the men have taught us any less. Their...
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Sabrina Riley
- May 11, 2018
- 3 min
Matriarchs
What makes one family a clan and another family a loosely connected network of households–if they even know each other? Is it simply a...
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Sabrina Riley
- Mar 21, 2018
- 6 min
Mystery of the Missing Native American DNA Part II
It was Wayne Winkler's observation about the fluidity of Melungeon race identity in the United States Federal censuses that prompted me...
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Sabrina Riley
- Nov 19, 2017
- 5 min
David Stevenson's Civil War
Fort Foote occupied what felt like a remote place four miles south of Alexandria and eight miles south of Washington, D.C. With no access...
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Sabrina Riley
- Aug 28, 2017
- 10 min
The Stories Your Grandparents Don't Talk About
We all have them. The stories at which our grandparents only hint and won't satisfy us with answers, usually because they are too painful...
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Sabrina Riley
- May 16, 2017
- 7 min
Deep Diving in Church Archives
One of the most important reasons for researching family history is to create a deeper emotional connection to family by better...
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Sabrina Riley
- Mar 19, 2017
- 5 min
A Case of Patronymics and Variations
This blog post is for my mother who has been suffering a twinge of inferiority complex since the discovery of my father's illustrious...
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Sabrina Riley
- Sep 18, 2016
- 3 min
DNA: A Corrective Tool
Since I last posted about my own DNA results, a number of my family members have participated in our family DNA project. The results are...
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Sabrina Riley
- Jun 11, 2016
- 8 min
Mystery of the Missing Native American DNA Part I
The deeper I dig into DNA genealogical study the more convinced I become that race is an artificial construct of the human imagination,...
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Sabrina Riley
- Apr 17, 2016
- 6 min
Forgotten Life of Significance
Old College View Seventh-day Adventist church about 1945-1946, corner of South 49th Street and Prescott Avenue. Today I feel compelled...
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Sabrina Riley
- Apr 1, 2016
- 4 min
Conflict of Interest
Often just identifying ancestors back to the 1600s or earlier is a major achievement. Understanding something about the time period and...
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Sabrina Riley
- Mar 18, 2016
- 6 min
Convergence
After all of the time I spent on my Nantucket Origins post, I hadn't planned to write again so soon about my New England ancestors....
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