List of 2019 Meetings
January 23, 2019 Round-table discussion - bring your problems and questions
February 27, 2019 Find Answers with the FamilySearch Affiliate Library
by Ryan Henrie, Director of the Cranberry Family History Center
Come learn how you can access FamilySearch at the Cranberry Public Library as well as the Cranberry Family History Center.
Ryan Henrie will use demonstration and case studies to illustrate how to access various collections on FamilySearch, new features for displaying your ancestry, and ways to explore and search FamilySearch.org with greater research success.
March 27, 2019 - Talk by Rich Venezia - The Aliens Are Coming: USCIS Record Sets
A-Files? AR-2 Forms? C-Files? Oh my! Wade through the alphabet soup of the five record sets the U.S. Citizenship & Immigration Services holds to find where your recent immigrant ancestor may be hiding. (Note this lecture mainly applies to 20th-century immigrants.) Audience Level: Intermediate
In addition to handling current immigration into the USA, the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) holds indispensable genealogical records for anyone with immigrant ancestors who arrived from the late eighteenth-century forward. This lecture explores a bit about how USCIS came to be, but more importantly, the valuable records it holds. Participants will learn who is likely to show up in which USCIS file set, how the index searching and ordering process works, and see examples of each record set held by USCIS. The files that will be discussed are:
· A-Files (Alien Files) (including which files are held at NARA and which are held by USCIS)
· AR-2s (Alien Registration Forms)
· C-Files (Naturalization Certificate Files)
· Registry Files
· Visa Files
April 24 - Mary Jane Kuffner Hirt - Crossing the Pond from Northern Ireland to America
Mary Jane Kuffner-Hirt is back from a recent trip to Ireland, further enriching her ancestral story of James Leech. She will share James’ 1763 Irish passport and Pennsylvania and Virginia land, tax and militia records and maps that she used to trace the migration of her Scots-Irish ancestors from Northern Ireland through Lancaster and Cumberland Counties and later to Rockbridge County Virginia. She will also discuss the resources and repositories where the records were found.
Our presenter - Dr. Kuffner-Hirt, has published in Familia, the journal of the Ulster Genealogical and Historical Society, and presented at the 2017 FGS conference; and in 2016, to an international migration studies conference in Northern Ireland. Now retired from positions at IUP and city and state government, she is applying her research skills to family history.
May 21-22, 2019
Co-sponsored event with Maureen Taylor, the Photo Detective.
June - July 2019 TBA
GRIP and cemetery walks
August 28, 2019
TBA
September 25, 2019
TBA
October 23, 2019
TBA
November 2019 (Date TBA)
Library Lock-in or TBD
December - no meeting due to the proximity to Christmas.
Last revised 10 March 2019
February 27, 2019 Find Answers with the FamilySearch Affiliate Library
by Ryan Henrie, Director of the Cranberry Family History Center
Come learn how you can access FamilySearch at the Cranberry Public Library as well as the Cranberry Family History Center.
Ryan Henrie will use demonstration and case studies to illustrate how to access various collections on FamilySearch, new features for displaying your ancestry, and ways to explore and search FamilySearch.org with greater research success.
March 27, 2019 - Talk by Rich Venezia - The Aliens Are Coming: USCIS Record Sets
A-Files? AR-2 Forms? C-Files? Oh my! Wade through the alphabet soup of the five record sets the U.S. Citizenship & Immigration Services holds to find where your recent immigrant ancestor may be hiding. (Note this lecture mainly applies to 20th-century immigrants.) Audience Level: Intermediate
In addition to handling current immigration into the USA, the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) holds indispensable genealogical records for anyone with immigrant ancestors who arrived from the late eighteenth-century forward. This lecture explores a bit about how USCIS came to be, but more importantly, the valuable records it holds. Participants will learn who is likely to show up in which USCIS file set, how the index searching and ordering process works, and see examples of each record set held by USCIS. The files that will be discussed are:
· A-Files (Alien Files) (including which files are held at NARA and which are held by USCIS)
· AR-2s (Alien Registration Forms)
· C-Files (Naturalization Certificate Files)
· Registry Files
· Visa Files
April 24 - Mary Jane Kuffner Hirt - Crossing the Pond from Northern Ireland to America
Mary Jane Kuffner-Hirt is back from a recent trip to Ireland, further enriching her ancestral story of James Leech. She will share James’ 1763 Irish passport and Pennsylvania and Virginia land, tax and militia records and maps that she used to trace the migration of her Scots-Irish ancestors from Northern Ireland through Lancaster and Cumberland Counties and later to Rockbridge County Virginia. She will also discuss the resources and repositories where the records were found.
Our presenter - Dr. Kuffner-Hirt, has published in Familia, the journal of the Ulster Genealogical and Historical Society, and presented at the 2017 FGS conference; and in 2016, to an international migration studies conference in Northern Ireland. Now retired from positions at IUP and city and state government, she is applying her research skills to family history.
May 21-22, 2019
Co-sponsored event with Maureen Taylor, the Photo Detective.
June - July 2019 TBA
GRIP and cemetery walks
August 28, 2019
TBA
September 25, 2019
TBA
October 23, 2019
TBA
November 2019 (Date TBA)
Library Lock-in or TBD
December - no meeting due to the proximity to Christmas.
Last revised 10 March 2019