January 18 - Researching with Census Records - with Kerri Tannenbaum
Keri will be in person at the Freeport Memorial Library, 144 West Merrick Road, New York 11520, and available virtually to members via Zoom.
*Always check for last-minute meeting day changes due to weather or technical issues. We will send you emails and post updated information on our website, IFHF.org, and our Facebook page.
The Irish Family History Forum offers nine world-class Irish Genealogy lectures, both in person and on ZOOM. Handouts and most of our presentations are recorded and available to our MEMBERS for a limited time on our website after the original presentation.
If you would like to join the Irish Family History Forum, go to:
https://ifhf.org/index.php/plans/join-ifhf/
Individual: $30 a year.
Family: two people (one address) - $40 a year
Student (with a student ID) - $15 a year
*Upcoming Presentations
January 18
Researching with Census Records - with Kerri Tannenbaum
Unlock your family's past by digging into census records. We'll explore the fundamentals of using census records, including federal, state, and other censuses. You'll learn how census records have evolved, how to locate and interpret the records, and how to use the information to build your family tree and trace ancestors across multiple generations.
Forum member and professional genealogist Kerri Tannenbaum is a graduate of Boston University’s Certificate Program in Genealogical Research and the ProGen Peer Study Groups. A recipient of numerous awards from the National Genealogical Society, she serves as a contributing editor for the Forum Newsletter. She also runs her own genealogy company, Family Dot Connector.
February 14
The 1926 Irish Census - with Noel Carolan (via Zoom from Ireland)
On April 18, the 1926 Irish Census—the first enumeration conducted by the Irish Free State—will be released by the National Archives of Ireland. To prepare us for this event, Dr. Noel Carolan will highlight the unique insights that the 1926 census will provide into Irish families and their neighbors, employers, and living conditions. The talk will outline the stark political and economic contexts of the census, the information it contains, how it was collected, and what we will discover, free of charge, when the census becomes available. Dr. Carolan will provide a set of digital handouts with selected online links and resources to help you kickstart your family history research in the eight weeks before the census release.
Dr. Carolan is a historian with a focus on national, local, and family history. His Ph.D. dissertation dealt with the political history of Ireland’s food supply from 1895 to 1923 and resulted in his delivery of conference papers in Ireland, Northern Ireland, the U.K., and the Czech Republic. For decades, he has been an active member of Raheny Heritage Society in Dublin, which divides its interests between local history and family history.
March 21
The Orphan Train - with Frank McKenna
Forum Executive VP Frank McKenna will discuss the orphan trains (aka baby trains), a welfare program that transported infants and children from crowded Eastern cities of the U.S. to foster homes located mainly in rural areas of the Midwest and upstate New York. The orphan trains, which operated between 1854 and 1929, relocated approximately 200,000 children. The cofounders of the orphan train movement claimed that these children were orphaned, abandoned, abused, or homeless, but this was not always true. They were mostly the children of new immigrants, many of them Irish, and children of poor and destitute families living in these cities. Although there were criticisms of the program—including ineffective screening of caretakers, insufficient follow-ups on placements, and the view that many of the children were used strictly as farm labor—some of these riders grew up in loving homes.
Frank McKenna, a former president of the Forum, is also one of our charter members. The director of the Seaford Public Library in Seaford, NY, he has worked in the public library field for over 30 years. His late great-aunt Margaret (McKenna) Loftus-Taylor was a rider on a baby train.
April 18
Researching Catholic Nuns and Sisters - with Sunny Morton
Sunny Morton will discuss the topic of her book, Searching for Sisters: Researching Catholic Nuns in the United States. An estimated 350,000 Catholic nuns and sisters helped build the humanitarian and educational infrastructure of immigrant America. But because they left their families, changed their names, and produced no children, many are omitted from their own family tree. If someone in your family was a sister or nun –or was served by them in a school, orphanage, etc. — there should be information about her in the archive of her religious order.
Sunny Morton is editor of NGS Magazine; a contributing editor at Family Tree Magazine, and a past editor of Ohio Genealogy News. She is also coauthor of How to Find Your Family History in U.S. Church Records, which received a book award from the National Genealogical Society.
May 16
Irish Workhouse and Finding Your Poor Irish Ancestors - with Natalie Bodle
The Poor Law Act of 1838 established workhouses in Ireland to provide relief to the destitute. The workhouse was designed to be harsh; inmates were separated from family members, forced to do hard labor, and fed scant rations. During the Famine, overcrowding, starvation, and disease led to a massive increase in deaths. Speaker Nathalie Bodle, joining us from Ireland, will discuss records produced by the workhouses, including those for inmates and for staff. She will also cover the 19th–century Poverty Relief Loans, which name both the lender and the guarantor.
Professional genealogist Nathalie Bodle is the author of Tracing Your Family History Using Irish Newspapers and Other Printed Material. Her company, Roots Revealed, is based in Ballymena, Co. Antrim.
Members, thank you for your support, 30+ years and counting!
Members with email addresses on file will receive a MailChimp Zoom Invitation email about one week before the presentation.
Members, if you can’t find your MailChimp Zoom Invitation email, don't worry. You can access an invitation by visiting the ifhf.org website, clicking "Member Resources," and then selecting "Monthly Meeting Link." When you do, you will see an "Invitation Link" to register for the Zoom Webinar.
Also check out other Business events in Freeport, Workshops in Freeport, Meetups in Freeport.
