Archive page 5 of 73
Dec 5, 2025
Ever since I wrote about Thomas Arundell of Wardour and followed it with a look at Matthew Howard of Virginia and Maryland, it has been impossible to avoid the story that links…
Nov 10, 2025
On November 10, 1975, the SS Edmund Fitzgerald disappeared from radar during a violent Lake Superior storm. At 7:10 p.m., the ship's captain, Ernest McSorley, radioed another vessel with what seemed like…
Oct 25, 2025
The early Chesapeake was shaped by a wide cast of settlers, from landed gentry and indentured servants to Puritan merchants and opportunists. Among the names that recur in seventeenth-century Virginia and Maryland…
Oct 20, 2025
When most people think about how churches organize themselves, they tend to imagine one of three familiar patterns. There is congregational polity, where each congregation governs itself. There is presbyterian polity, where…
Oct 16, 2025
I am pleased to say that I have recently been accepted into the Order of Americans of Armorial Ancestry (OAAA). For those unfamiliar, this is a lineage society devoted to Americans who…
Oct 8, 2025
When people talk about the Great Lakes in the late twentieth century, they often do so with an air of despair. By the 1960s, the lakes were badly polluted. Industrial waste, agricultural…
Sep 12, 2025
When Sabaton sings "when the winged hussars arrived," they are not exaggerating the drama. The image of armored riders, wings rattling in the wind, thundering downhill to save Vienna, is pure heavy…
Sep 7, 2025
Few English nobles of the early seventeenth century lived lives as perilous or as fascinating as Thomas Arundell (c. 1560–1639). Born into the ancient family of Arundell of Wardour, he endured shifting…
Sep 5, 2025
"The Thane of Cawdor lives: why do you dress me in borrowed robes?" -- Macbeth , Act I, Scene 3 We remember Macbeth for his ambition, his downfall, and his uninvited dinner…
Sep 3, 2025
Hypothesis testing for inter-rater agreement sounds like something you might find buried in the appendix of a methods textbook, but it shows up in more of our lives than we realize. Any…
Aug 11, 2025
Heraldry sits at the crossroads of law, art, and family history. It is a visual language with its own syntax and grammar, a system of signs that records lineage, property and alliances.…