Lithuanians have been immigrating to America since as early as the 17th century. Yet, rapidly changing boundaries, unfamiliar languages, and late civil registration are just some of the challenges faced by family historians trying to trace their Lithuanian roots. In this online lecture and syllabus, Genealogist James Heffernan provides you with a better understanding of the waves of immigration to the United States, what types of records exist, and how to get started in Lithuanian family history research.

Every family historian wants to visit their ancestral homestead. Changing street names, landscapes, and boundaries can make this task difficult. This online lecture will discuss resources for identifying an ancestor’s address and provide practical skills for finding its current-day location using land deeds, maps, surveys, directories, and other records.

While we might wish all our ancestors’ records were typed in a standard format and perfectly legible, that simply isn’t the case. Many of the records family historians turn to are handwritten and may be faded, use archaic terminology, unfamiliar abbreviations, or are just plain illegible.

The first Scandinavians arrived in North America nearly 1,000 years ago on Viking ships. Today, an estimated 11 million Americans have Scandinavian ancestry. This webinar will provide an introduction to essential records, repositories, and strategies for exploring your Scandinavian roots, focusing on Norway, Sweden, Denmark, and Finland. You’ll learn how to address challenges in Scandinavian research including language barriers, common names, patronymic surnames, name changes, and more.

When it comes to researching your Jewish ancestry, it is not just a matter of researching your ancestors as it can be in other situations. Instead, you must have a working knowledge of different countries and their laws in regard to civil registration, military service and more. An understanding of where Jews were allowed to reside and how they were recorded is also necessary.

In his 2016 best-seller, The Stranger in My Genes: A Memoir

550-piece puzzle featuring photography by Michele Yeeles

A terrific gift for you or the Mayflower descendant in your life!

Author: Ralph J. Crandall
Published: Nov-01

Learn to trace your family history with NEHGS Executive Director Ralph J. Crandall! Dr. Ralph J. Crandall of the New England Historic Genealogical Society explains how to research and organize a family history using the latest information available. Chapters include: discovering clues within the family, using the Internet, using library resources, birth, death, and marriage records, church records, cemetery records, court records, organizing and publishing your family genealogy, and much more.

Sue Allan’s tenacious pursuit of origins of the Mayflower passengers in England led us from Dorothy May Bradford’s family, to William White’s family in Wisbech, which in turn led to her assembling all the pieces necessary to solve the mystery of the origin of Mayflower passenger Susanna (Jackson) White Winslow – something researchers have been trying to puzzle out for many decades without success.