Content warning: imagery of 9/11 terrorist attacks. It may seem strange to hear a professional genealogist say that she never used to be particularly interested in history, but that’s the case for me. I had the privilege of studying with great teachers, but history was never my favorite subject in school. (Sorry, Mr. Z!) I […]

When I tell people what I do for a living, I get a lot of questions. Genetic genealogy is a new field, and not many people seem to have met someone who does the type of work that I do. Here’s what I do: I use a combination of DNA data and historical records to […]

Today was the start of RootsTech, a huge genealogy conference that happens each year in Salt Lake City, and one of the highlights of the first day was an announcement by LivingDNA: later this year they will be releasing new “Family Networks” features that look really exciting! Not only will you be able to review […]

Usually genealogy is really satisfying. Sometimes it just makes me angry and sad. I spent my Saturday morning reading city directories from Sacramento, California from the early 1920s. I was looking for clues about a couple of my ancestors. City directories are the precursors to phone books (remember those?), and since they were often published […]

Are you looking for truly personal holiday gifts? What if you could give your loved ones insight into where they fit into history? Here are some ideas:   DNA Tests Are you thinking about giving a DNA test as a gift? Check out my resources page to learn more about your testing options, or schedule a free consultation with […]

If you’ve done an autosomal DNA test for genealogy (e.g. AncestryDNA, 23andMe, FamilyTreeDNA’s Family Finder, or MyHeritage), you may have gotten a bewildering collection of DNA matches that the testing company suggests are some sort of cousin. For example, when I downloaded my full set of AncestryDNA results last week, I had 14,435 matches. That’s […]

Both in my personal research and in work for clients, I spend most of my time looking at the fairly recent past: the last few hundred years and the most-recent eight to ten generations. With Mother’s Day approaching, I decided to dig into the deeper history of my maternal line by looking closely at my […]

Launching a practice as a professional genealogist specializing in genetic genealogy might seem to be a big departure from other work that I’ve done. People have asked me why I’m launching Borgerson Research. Here are three reasons: The first reason feels a bit selfish: I am insatiably curious. Making my living by helping people find […]

And so it begins. Watch this space for more on genealogy, (epi)genetics, social justice, trains, and whatever else I decide to write about.