Genealogy

When a relative told Marjorie Sholes-Higgins of her grandfather's vast family, she decided it was time to explore her past and dig deeply into her African American roots. Sixteen years and 1,379 relatives later, she is amazed at the complexity of what she found. It is both an epic tale that unfolds on three continents and a personal story of struggle and survival. "All that from one man," she said.

Researchers hope to use DNA to link people with no recorded family history to their ancestral homelands. Brigham Young University's multimillion-dollar "molecular genealogy" project aims to blend traditional genealogy with cutting-edge DNA technology. To do this, researchers at the university are taking blood samples from 100,000 volunteers. Along with those genetic fingerprints, volunteers are asked to provide a family tree stretching back at least four generations.

The search for the past can require the patience of a gold miner, swirling and sifting the silt. Then, suddenly, there's a glint of precious material. Carmen Brussard's hundreds of hours hunched over microfiche ultimately led to this stunning discovery: She and her husband, who met at a dance in Los Angeles 34 years ago, are not the first joint love story from their respective families.

These are the Zeiglers, a typical American family: Theresa's parents and grandparents emigrated from Italy to California by way of Colorado. Her husband Arthur's great-grandparents both came from Germany, married in Pennsylvania and settled in Michigan. The Zeiglers' three sons are native Californians.

In her younger days, she was a political radical who couldn't hold a job, a civil rights lawyer's daughter who was disgusted by the oppression of American blacks and intrigued by their stories. Now 71 and a retired history professor, Gwen Midlo Hall is on a mission to shed light on America's slaves and their personal histories through thousands of pages of handwritten, colonial-era documents salvaged from courthouse basements across Louisiana and as far away as France and Spain.

Cozkacuauhtli Zenteotl was once known as Eduardo Rivera. For 18 years, he didn't think much about his name until one day he realized that, unlike many of his white and African American classmates, he knew very little about his family's history. "Their roots went back to Europe and Africa," he said. "But me? I did not know how I came about."

Cozkacuauhtli Zenteotl was once known as Eduardo Rivera. For 18 years, he didn't think much about his name until one day he realized that, unlike many of his white and African-American classmates, he knew very little about his family's history. "Their roots went back to Europe and Africa," he said. "But me? I did not know how I came about."

Blame it on the Girl Scouts. More than 20 years ago, Doug Miller was asked to guide his daughter's Girl Scout troop through a badge called Your Family History. The result was that Miller tumbled to the sometimes obsessive pleasures of genealogy (his daughter Lynn sewed on her badge and showed no further interest in the subject). His curiosity piqued, Miller sought out the closest archive of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.