The Movement to Resettle Russian Jews in the American West, 1905-1914

Speaker: Jeffrey Veidlinger   In the aftermath of the 1903 Kishinev pogrom, the British-Jewish writer Israel Zangwill embarked upon a quest to find a territory that could accept millions of Jewish refugees from the Russian Empire. When the New York banker and railroad financier Jacob Schiff proposed redirecting Russian-Jewish migration through the port of Galveston, Texas, Zangwill believed he had found the solution to the 'Jewish Question.' This talk examines what came to be known as the 'Galveston Movement' and asks what it can tell us about global Jewish communities, national migration policies, and regional identities in the early twentieth-century. Jeffrey Veidlinger is ...

Using the Tools at GEDmatch: Finding Relatives and More

Speaker: Kitty Cooper GEDmatch is a free third-party site of tools where you can upload your DNA test results and compare them with those from people who have tested at other companies. In addition, there are many analysis tools, some found nowhere else. There are also GEDCOM comparisons available, including yours to your DNA matches. This talk will focus on how to use the tools of GEDmatch for researching Jewish families, while sharing best practices for both new and experienced users. Kitty Munson Cooper is a well-known blogger on genetics and genealogy. She started blog.kittycooper.com in 2012 to keep track of her own family's DNA ...

The Kindertransports: The KTA, the 80th Year Commemorative Journey, and New Research

Speakers: Melissa Hacker, Wendy Henry, and Dr. Amy Williams From December 1st, 1938, through September 1st, 1939, nearly 10,000 mostly Jewish children traveled from Nazi Germany, Austria, Czechoslovakia, Poland, and Danzig to the United Kingdom without their parents. This rescue mission became known as the Kindertransport. In 1990, more than 50 years later, a group of Kindertransport survivors in New York City came together to establish the Kindertransport Association (KTA - www.kindertransport.org). This unique volunteer-run organization was founded not solely for survivors, but as an intergenerational group with the missions of connecting these child Holocaust survivors and descendants, educating the next ...

Finding Records in Israel - IGRA and More

Speaker: Garri Regev The Israel Genealogy Research Association (IGRA), with more than 2,600,000 records, makes available to the public a wide variety of material from the Ottoman period through the early years of Israeli Statehood, as well as additional material about Jews from the Diaspora located in Israeli archives. This lecture will guide you through the resources on the IGRA website and also discuss additional institutions and websites with genealogy records in Israel, including the Central Zionist Archives, Central Archives of the History of the Jewish People (CAHJP), Yad Vashem, Israel State Archives, Municipal Archives, Historical Jewish Press, and collections on MyHeritage. Bio: Garri Regev has ...

Researching our Families: Three Case Studies

Speakers: Steve Stein, Karen Franklin, and Hadassah Lipsius Three longtime members of the Jewish Genealogical Society, Inc. (JGSNY), Steve Stein, Karen Franklin and Hadassah Lipsius, will each present a case study that demonstrates how they resolved a genealogical question in their family research. Steve Stein will show how he discovered and then resolved a discrepancy regarding the identity of his wife’s Lithuanian great-great-grandmother, using a variety of sources, and ultimately applying the Genealogical Proof Standard. Breaking through this “brick wall” enabled the discovery of earlier ancestors as well as a host of contemporary relatives. While researching during the scariest days of Covid, Karen Franklin ...

Images of the Past: Jews and the American Civil War

Speakers: Bruce Form and Mira Katz Form Bruce (shown above as Capt. Asch) and Mira Form (see below) are Civil War historians, re-enactors and living historians.   Their many years of researching Jewish Civil War veterans and the Jewish community during the Civil War led them to discover two Philadelphians: Myer J. Asch, Captain of the 1st New Jersey Cavalry and Miss Rebecca Moss, Secretary of the Ladies Hebrew Association for the Relief of Sick and Wounded Soldiers. Bruce Form's article, "Captain Myer Asch, 1st New Jersey Cavalry and the Quest for His Grave," appeared in the Summer 2022 issue of Dorot; ...

Visit to Temple Emanu-El, Its Archives and the Herbert & Eileen Bernard Museum

Speaker: Warren Klein The JGSNY will initiate 2023-2024 with a members' visit to Temple Emanu-El, New York's first Reform congregation and one of the largest synagogues in the world. Warren Klein with lead a tour of the Temple and give a "show and tell" presentation of items from the Temple's archival and museum collections of interest to family historians. Those members who arrive earlier will be able to view on their own the Herbert & Eileen Bernard Museum's exhibition, Etrog: The Wandering Fruit, also the subject of a recently published monograph, Be Fruitful! The Etrog in Jewish Art, History, and Culture. Bio: Warren Klein is ...

Discovering My Litvak Ancestry

Speaker: David Ellis In this presentation David Ellis will tell the story of how he traced the ancestry of his grandfather, Robert Ellis. David was curious about his ancestry and spoke with his grandfather when he was a teenager. The only ancestors whose names his grandfather knew were his parents, and he was not aware that his parents came from Lithuania. Through detailed and often painstaking research, David managed to identify by name 46 Litvak ancestors who had been completely forgotten. Bio: David Ellis grew up on Long Island and has been researching his ancestry for more than 50 years.  As a software engineer, ...

Researching Your World War I & World War II Ancestors Online: Records, Resources, & Methodology

Speaker: KB Barcomb There is an ever-growing number of WWI and WWII records and resources available online. Learn what they are, where they are, and how to use them. More importantly, learn effective strategies for finding content related to the wartime and post-war experiences of your American WWI & WWII ancestors. This presentation is designed to benefit both advanced genealogists and those new to family history research and has been updated to reflect the latest additions to online content. Bio: KB Barcomb specializes in WWI and WWII records, resources, and research methodology. Her focus is on understanding the legislative, regulatory, and chronological context of military records, ...

Mapping Your Family History: How to Create a Customized Google Map

Speaker: Alex Calzareth Create maps with your own data on Google Maps. This presentation will teach you how to create a custom map, import location data associated with family history events or source records and then customize the appearance of that data on the map. Custom maps can be used in many ways, including visually conveying family migration patterns, showing the location of regional cemeteries, or which towns hold certain vital records. Resulting maps can also be imported into Google Earth. Bio: Alex Calzareth is a genealogist focusing on Southwest Germany, the Czech Republic and Southern Italy who began researching his family roots twenty-five years ago. He is a board ...