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The Rewards of Tenacity: A New Clue to an Old Mystery
The so-called "Gettysburg Flag" in the Lora McMahon King Heritage Room at Union Adventist University has been a part of my life for over...
Sabrina Riley
Jul 16 min read
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Remembering Eldon Laverne Morris
Man with a monkey…Barracks…Japan? The words are fuzzy. The memory is vague. I am not even sure how old I was at the time. Uncle Eldon...
Sabrina Riley
May 23, 20245 min read
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Great-Grandma's Handwriting
Privately-owned community business colleges were the for-profit educational institutions of the late nineteenth and early twentieth...
Sabrina Riley
Mar 2, 20243 min read
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The Grand Old Dames of Bristol High School Class of 1938
Dora Belle Keller and my grandmother, Lois Eleanor Morris, were not exactly friends at Bristol High School in Indiana. After graduation...
Sabrina Riley
Jan 19, 20245 min read
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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...
Sabrina Riley
Aug 15, 20223 min read
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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...
Sabrina Riley
Jan 18, 20225 min read
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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...
Sabrina Riley
Jul 22, 20215 min read
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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...
Sabrina Riley
Mar 29, 20213 min read
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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...
Sabrina Riley
Jan 28, 20214 min read
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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...
Sabrina Riley
Aug 2, 20205 min read
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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,...
Sabrina Riley
Mar 2, 20204 min read
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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...
Sabrina Riley
Aug 12, 20187 min read
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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...
Sabrina Riley
Jun 13, 20184 min read
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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...
Sabrina Riley
May 11, 20183 min read
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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...
Sabrina Riley
Mar 21, 20186 min read
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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...
Sabrina Riley
Nov 19, 20175 min read
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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...
Sabrina Riley
Aug 27, 201710 min read
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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...
Sabrina Riley
May 16, 20177 min read
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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...
Sabrina Riley
Mar 19, 20175 min read
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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...
Sabrina Riley
Sep 18, 20163 min read
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