Digging for Your Roots

"Digging For Your Roots" was a weekly column published in the Herald and Tribune newspaper's Genealogy & History page. The column was written by JGS volunteers as part of the Jonesborough Genealogical Society's mission to promote, study, preserve, and document the family heritages of Jonesborough, Washington County, and Northeast TN.

On August 22, 1990 the Herald and Tribune published the first “Digging for Your Roots” column written by members of the Jonesborough Genealogical Society. The column was comprised of two parts, “Serendipity” by Loraine Bennett Rae and "On the Trail of Tombstones in Carter County" by Elaine Scott Cantrell, the column’s first editor. In 1992, Judge John L. Keiner became the second and longest serving editor of the column.

The weekly Jonesborough Herald and Tribune was first published in August 1869 by two prominent local physicians, Christopher Wheeler and Mathew S. Mahoney. The last issue of the Herald & Tribune was published August 13, 2025 bringing to a close the  the 156 year history of the newspaper and end of a 35 year partnership between JGS and the newspaper to publish the weekly "Digging for Your Roots" column.