Since 1959, the Maryland Genealogical Society has been promoting genealogical study and research.   Through our publications, programs, resources, and outreach, the Society can help you explore your family history.

 

• Where Do I Start?   
• Family Tree Building Blocks: Vital Records and Censuses  
• Using Ancestry and FamilySearch Effectively to Find Records 
• Next Steps: More Resources for Our Research  

The Maryland Genealogical Society and Maryland Public Television are partnering to offer a special two-hour webinar focused on Ashkenazic Jewish genealogical research. Finding Your Roots: Eastern European Jewish Ancestors will be held Wednesday, November 12, 7:00-9:00pm EST. It will cover how to methodically trace your family within the US back into Eastern Europe and will give insight into the types of sources and documents available for records in both the United States and Europe. 

 

Learn basic knowledge critical to researching one's Jewish roots, as well as examples of the types of things that can be found that can help get to the stories in the lives of your ancestors and the communities in which they lived.  Despite the myth, many documents were not destroyed, and it's very possible to learn about your ancestors and the communities in which they lived for several centuries.

 

 

The webinar presenter is Lara Diamond, who has lectured around the country and internationally on Jewish and Eastern European genealogy research as well as genetic genealogy. Lara is president of the Jewish Genealogy Society of Maryland, is JewishGen's Director of Subcarpathia Research, and is a strategic advisor to JewishGen’s Ukraine Research Division. She also runs multiple district- and town-focused projects to collect documentation to assist all those researching ancestors from common towns. Lara began researching her own family around 1989. She has traced all branches of her family multiple generations back in Eastern Europe using Russian Empire-era and Austria-Hungarian Empire records. Most of her personal research is in modern-day Ukraine, with a smattering of Belarus and Poland. She has done client research leading to their ancestors in many parts of the former USSR, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Romania and more. Lara blogs about her Eastern European and Jewish research at https://larasgenealogy.blogspot.com.

 

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Registration is not yet open, but be sure to save the date for the MGS Fall Seminar, Maryland Milestones: Exploring Birth, Marriage, Divorce, and Death Records on Saturday, November 8. Join us in-person at the Maritime Conference Center in Linthicum Heights, Maryland, or online for four great presentations of Maryland-specific content on civil vital records. 

 

In addition to discussing birth and death certificates, we'll explore less well known sources and touch on the difficulties associated with researching adoptions in Maryland. We'll also discuss the complexities of locating Maryland marriage records and tips for finding and understanding divorce records.

 

If you can join us in person, we’ll have a continental breakfast, buffet lunch, snacks and drinks, genealogy book sales, and door prizes. If you can’t join us in person, you can register and view the presentations on Zoom. As in the past, we plan to make the presentations available to all registrants for a time after the event.

 

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The Archives of the Episcopal Diocese of Maryland recently shared with us a list of their current parish register holdings. The Archives is the repository for the records of churches that have closed. (Active churches maintain their own records.) 

 

The list also is available through the Religious Resources section of the MGS Resources and Repositories webpage. This section of our website provides links to information on the religous records of many demominations in Maryland. Also highlighted is the interactive Baltimore City Historic Houses of Worship Locator, which allows you to locate churches and synagogues near where your ancestors lived. Entries flag whether the records are available at the Maryland State Archives or on FamilySearch.org.

 

 

 

serves as the Saint Luke’s Youth Center.

 

 

 

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The April 2025 edition of MGS News is now available. If you are a MGS member, you should have received the issue by email. If you are a member and haven't provided us with your email, please contact us at info@mdgensoc.org so that you can begin to receive MGS News. 

 

Archived copies of this issue and previous issues are available in the Member's Only area. 

 

 

 

 

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In the most recent issue of the Journal, Malissa Ruffner, as part of the work of the Maryland Lynching Truth and Reconciliation Commission, recounts the story of Jim Wilson, a free man of color who lived in Caroline County in the middle of the nineteenth century. He was accused of the murder of a young girl and arrested, but before he could be brought to trial, he was lynched by a mob. Malissa traces his family and his life as a way of restoring his humanity and his place in the community.

 

John Sinks presents the history of the Gaither family, ranging over several counties in Maryland and North Carolina and including five generations named John, and he corrects some previous confusion. Lee Garlock traces the Petticoart family, including the many variations in the spelling of their surname. The article examines the factual data for the family progenitor and addresses various claims that have become widespread on several web-based platforms, some of which can be proven to be based on false premises. Who was the mother of Eliza Jane (Starr) Doxen? Fitting together pieces of information from census records, Quaker meeting minutes, marriage records, newspapers, and city directories, Daphne Gabb has created a picture of how the Starr family and their associates overlapped in Baltimore and has shown that Joseph Starr actually married two women named Rebecca.