FEEFHS -- Conference - 2009 Milwaukee registration

FEEFHS The Federation of East European Family History Societies Home Page | Conferences

FEEFHS/SGGEE Joint Conference - 2009 Milwaukee

	Larry O. Jensen Salt Lake City, Utah Identifying and using records in addition to parish and vital records Searching compiled genealogies to prevent duplication of research Understanding the historical and cultural background of the area of research Larry O. Jensen, AG, BS has over 35 years of German research experience. He completed graduate studies in history at Brigham Young University and University of Utah. He is a part-time teacher of history at Brigham Young University; president of Jensen Publication; and author of A Genealogical Handbook of German Research, volumes I and II, and Maps of the German Empire of 1871. He is also the writer of numerous German genealogical articles for the German Genealogical Digest. Jensen has lectured extensively on German family research in the United States and Canada.
	Thomas Krahn Houston, Texas Genealogical Use of DNA Using DNA as an anthropological tool Thomas Krahn is the Technical Laboratory Manager of Family Tree DNA’s Genomics Research Center in Houston. He graduated from the Technical University of Berlin with a Dipl. Ing. (MSC) in biotechnology and genetics. In 2000 he began running a paternity testing laboratory in Potsdam. Thomas specializes in complex kinship testing and family reconstructions. He is an expert in developing new molecular biology methods and assays to resolve questions of biological heritage. His technical engineering background allows him to find solutions to difficult problems in the laboratory that have previously been thought to be irresolvable.
	Ceil Wendt Jensen Detroit, Michigan Strategies for locating ancestral villages Immigration agents at work Seeking Wilhelm Boeing Ceil Wendt Jensen, Certified Genealogist, is an author and lecturer who presents practical examples and suggestions on how to use records, databases and archives to start or advance your genealogy research. She dispels the myth that records were destroyed during the World Wars and that language barriers make European research difficult. Ceil highlights traditional and electronic research methods. Ceil is the author of Detroit's Polonia Detroit's Mt. Elliott Cemetery, Detroit's Mt. Olivet Cemetery. and Sto Lat: A Modern Guide to Polish Genealogy. Ceil also runs a website, MIPolonia, dedicated to researching the Polish community in Michigan. In her 30-plus years of experience in genealogy, she has researched Polish, Irish, North American and French Canadian families. Her published articles have appeared in National Genealogical Societies Magazine, Ancestry Magazine, and online with Gen Dobry. She collaborated with Keith Famie on the video and DVD Our Polish Story (2007). Ceil is a 2008 recipient of the Michigan Technological University's Van Pelt Library Travel Grant for research on the Pioneer Poles of Calumet, Michigan. The Michigan Genealogical Council selected Ceil as their 2008 Lucy Mary Kellogg Award Recipient.
	Irmgard Hein Ellingson Grafton, Iowa Researching the Habsburg empire part 1 Researching the Habsburg empire part 2 Pommern Immigration to Wisconsin and Iowa Irmgard Hein Ellingson, author, translator, and lecturer, is the previous past president of FEEFHS. Her research experience includes work in German, Austrian, Czech, Canadian, and American archives. She is a longtime member of the American Historical Society of Germans from Russia (Lincoln, Nebraska) and serves on the editorial committee for the AHSGR Journal. She was a co-founder of the Bukovina Society of the Americas (Ellis, Kansas) in 1988 and is a member of its board of directors. From 1993 until 1997, she was U.S. representative for the quarterly Wandering Volhynians (Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada). Irmgard is a graduate of Winona (MN) State College with a degree in political science and history and of Wartburg Theological Seminary (Dubuque, Iowa), with a master's degree in ministry. A former public school and college instructor, she is now the Associate of Ministry in the Mission Unity Lutheran Parish in Grafton and rural Osage, Iowa.
	Jerry Frank Calgary, Alberta The road to Mokro Niemieckie (Using maps for genealogy) Bug Hollender in Siberia Jerry Frank is an amateur genealogist specializing, since 1986, in the research of Germans who migrated to or through Congress Poland and Volhynia. He has written three family books, Frank Migrations (about his paternal family), From Nagold to Thalberg (his maternal line), and Ask the Former Generations (a compilation of the previous two). Jerry is also an amateur cartographer, having created two maps of German settlements in Russian Poland (showing over 4000 Germanic villages) and in Volhynia (with over 1400 Germanic villages). Both represent the most current and comprehensive resources available and were the first ever to be fully indexed. They bring together the independent works of several historical map makers into a single resource and then add the most up to date listings of villages from such sources as the St. Petersburg Consistory records and other SGGEE (Society for German Genealogy in Eastern Europe) extractions. Jerry has spoken at a variety of conferences including FEEFHS, SGGEE, ASGHR (Calgary and Edmonton Chapters), Grande Prairie Branch of the Alberta Genealogical Society, and the Medicine Hat GR Festival. He lives in Calgary, Alberta and is currently active as webmaster for SGGEE.
	Joe Everett Provo, Utah Resources for Tracing Your Eastern European Heritage on Ancestry.com Resources for Tracing Your Germanic Heritage on Ancestry.com Joe Everett is a product manager for European databases at Ancestry.com. Before joining Ancestry, Joe was the head of International Reference at the Family History Library, where he also worked as a cataloger of Slavic and Germanic records. Joe earned a B.A. in Russian Language and in Family History/Genealogy (Germanic emphasis) from Brigham Young University and a Master of Library Science degree from Emporia State University (Kansas). He has served as an officer in the Federation of East European Family History Societies, lectured and published articles on Slavic and Germanic family history and Central & East European historical geography and migration.
	Thomas Kent Edlund Granite, Utah FamilySearch filming in Eastern Europe Jewish research Thomas Kent Edlund, a specialist in East European languages and manuscripts, is a Professor of Family and Local History, Brigham Young University. He has authored many books on language and genealogy, including The Lutherans of Russia, Die Ahnenstammkartei des Deutschen Volkes, Medieval Latin for Family Historians, An Introduction and Index to the German Minority Census of 1939, and A Compendium of Nahuatl Dialectology.
	Bill Remus Honolulu, Hawaii Migration of Germans into Poland and Volhynia Using DNA in your research William Remus is an Emeritus Professor of Information Technology Management at the University of Hawaii. To date he has published over 100 scientific papers including over 60 refereed journal articles, 5 books, and 5 book chapters. The best of this work has appeared in Management Science, Management Information Systems Quarterly, Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, and International Journal of Forecasting. His area of expertise is how people make forecasts and decisions. His doctoral is from Michigan State University. In recent years, Dr Remus has become interested in the history of the Germans in Eastern Europe (modern Poland and Russia). He regularly gives presentations of this topic and is past President of the Society for German Genealogy in Eastern Europe (SGGEE). His ancestors lived in Volhynia, Poland, and Saxony and ended up in Berrien County, Michigan.
	Gary Warner Gig Harbor, Washington A quick guide to using SGGEE's resources Gary has been ardently involved in genealogy since 1971 when he discovered that his father was not born with the surname Warner, but instead with Jaeger. He later discovered that his paternal grandfather used the surnames Jaeger and Geiger, sometimes both in the same official document! Because of a falling out between Gary's father (Henry Warner or Heinrich Jaeger), and his paternal grandfather (Eduard Jaeger or Geiger), Gary never met either of his paternal grandparents (grandmother was Emilia Koenig). Since no genealogical information was provided by his father, and his grandparents were already deceased in 1971, Gary took a trip across Canada in 1974 and visited most of his father's nine siblings and asked each of them what they knew about the family history. No one knew a lot, but upon visiting his uncle Ralph Sager (his deceased wife was Henry's sister, Martha), Gary stumbled upon the following documents which Ralph said he was going to burn, since none of his children were interested in them: Eduard's Polish birth certificate, Emilia's Polish birth certificate, Eduard's and Emilie's Russian marriage certificate, Eduard's Russian army papers, Eduard's Russian passport, Eduard's Canadian passport, and several other documents of genealogical value. Since that trip Gary has been trying to understand who exactly his German ancestors were, and where they lived. In July 1998, Gary went to the first meeting of people who wanted to form the society that is now SGGEE. He volunteered for the steering committee and was elected the chairman of that committee. He helped that committee form SGGEE that first year, and with his son, Matt Warner, set up the SGGEE website and acted as webmaster for the first seven years of the existence of SGGEE. Gary was President of SGGEE from 1999 to 2000. He also has been from the beginning the SGGEE Databases Manager, and spends time almost every day in merging the Master Pedigree Database (MPD) and collating many of the other SGGEE databases. Gary is a registered civil engineer with his own business, Warner Engineering. In his extended family of siblings and cousins (including his mother's Latvian kin), he is one of only three who is actively pursuing family history, and the only one doing research in Europe. He has, however, trained all of his known relatives to send him updates on all births, deaths and marriages in the extended family.
	Karla Walters Bellevue, Washington Volhynian migration into Wisconsin and the Upper Midwest Karla Walters is a native of Kenosha, Wisconsin. She studied English and mathematics at Union College in Lincoln, Nebraska and has a master's degree and a doctorate in English literature from the University of Oregon. She has been an English professor at California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo and at the University of New Mexico. She lives the Seattle area, where she teaches high school English. She has been married for 40 years to Ken Walters, who recently retired from university teaching and administration. They have two daughters and two grandchildren.
	Sigrid Pohl Perry Evanston, Illinois How to decipher Cyrillic lettering Sigrid Pohl Perry was born in Wedel, Germany to a family whose ancestors lived in the Lublin, Poland area for almost a century before being resettled to the Warthegau region in 1940 and then Hamburg in 1945. Her immediate family immigrated to Illinois in 1952 while other members of the clan homesteaded on the Alberta prairie. Sigrid has worked with archives and special collections at Northwestern University Library since completing her Ph.D. in medieval English literature in 1981. A member of SGGEE since 2003, Sigrid learned Cyrillic to decipher parish records found in Lublin's Trinity Evangelical Church. She has been actively involved in the Lublin Project and led a workshop on deciphering Cyrillic Napoleonic records at the SGGEE Convention in Kelowna in 2008. Sigrid and her husband Philip live in Evanston, Illinois; they have two adult children and extensive virtual villages.
	Cindy Jacobson Writing about family history Cynthia (Cindy) Jacobson has been researching four lines of her family history for over fifteen years. She has been a member of FEEFHS since 1996 and has attended at least nine FEEFHS conferences. As a member of the Germanic Genealogy Society in St. Paul, Minnesota, she has written articles in response to topics such as, "How Did You Find the Village of Your Ancestor?" Since 2001 she has written the "Gleanings" column for the GGS Journal after reading many articles related to Germanic genealogy. She has presented "Three Krupp Women" to the genealogical interest group of the faculty wives of the University of Wisconsin-Madison and a two hour version of today's lecture at the Germanic Genealogy Society's Fall Conference in St. Paul in October 2008.
	Dave Obee Saanich, British Columbia Genealogy 101 Dave Obee is author of Making the News, published by the Times Colonist in Victoria, British Columbia, in 2008 to mark the 150th anniversary of the newspaper. It is a comprehensive history of Vancouver Island, drawn from old newspapers. Dave is also the co-author (with Sherry Irvine) of Finding Your Canadian Ancestors: A Beginner's Guide, published by Ancestry in 2007. He has compiled seven other books for Canadian genealogical sources, and has given more than 250 talks at seminars and society meetings since 1997. Dave runs CanGenealogy, a Canadian link site, and Volhynia.com, dedicated to the past and future of the region in the northwest corner of Ukraine. He is one of the owners of Interlink Bookshop and Genealogical Services of Victoria, B.C., which runs the Genealogy Unlimited website. Dave has visited 17 countries in Europe during 14 visits. He has a keen interest in the world war battle areas in France, Belgium and Luxembourg. He served as president of the Federation of East European Family History Societies from 2004 through 2007.