Blog

Tribute In Light of World Trade Center

No One Is Exempt From History

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 […]

Tree roots growing over building foundation

So What Does A Genetic Genealogist Do?

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 […]

LivingDNA Announces New “Family Networks” features

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 […]

Invisible Women and Asians in 1920s Sacramento

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 […]

hands holding gift box

Holiday Gift Guide

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 […]

distant matches graph

Baby Versus Bathwater: Distant Matches

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 […]

For Mother’s Day: Deep Matrilineal Ancestry

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 […]

question mark

Why Genealogy? Why Now?

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 […]

Sunrise over globe

Hello world!

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