A few years ago, I began to look every so often at the two Census reports where my one known ancestor from Maryland appears: 1870 and 1880. I’m always hoping to discover something I missed—about ...

Old newspaper ads are serving as a window into the hopes and histories of hundreds of individuals who were newly emancipated. By Rachel L. Swarns This article is also a weekly newsletter. Sign up for ...

Tracy Morgan's third great-grandfather lived as a free man prior to The Civil War. Surprisingly, Tracy Morgan's third great-grandfather, Wiley Warton, was listed by name in the 1860 census, indicating ...

Microbes that look like strange deep-sea creatures are turning out to be a missing link in the story of how we got here. There’s a mystery at the roots of the tree of life. There is a hole in the ...

The picture shows a furry rodent-adjacent creature about the size of a shrew and with a very long tail. Contained within said creature are likely to have been a two-horned uterus, a brain with a ...

The mysterious common ancestor of all life on Earth may have been more complex than before thought — a sophisticated organism with an intricate structure, scientists now suggest. The last universal ...

Brendan Fraser was taken aback by the surprising way his ancestor handled a work dispute in the latest episode of "Finding Your Roots." The actor, who has starred in hits like "The Mummy" and "The ...