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Welcome!
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.
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MGS Holiday Luncheon
 Saturday, December 6, 2025
Barrett's On The Pike
588 Baltimore Pike, Bel Air, MD
12:00pm - 3:00pm
MGS hopes you can join us to help kick off the holiday season at our 2025 Holiday Luncheon. Luncheon speaker Jack Burkert will take us back in time with his presentation, "Baltimore's Holiday Season," which explores both the customary holiday traditions and a few that are unique to the city. This one-hour talk includes stories of Christmas, Hannukah, and Kwanzaa in Baltimore and will highlight traditions such as holiday shopping “downtown,” holiday lights (colored or a Menorah), and visiting a Christmas Garden – for many, a requirement of the season.
Speaker: Jack Burkert is a Baltimore native who uses his energy and interest in all things Baltimore to create a number of educational programs. His working life, some 40+ years, was spent in various educator roles. Jack also worked for many years as a part time educator at the Baltimore Museum of Industry. In recent years he has presented several hundred Baltimore history programs to various adult audiences. Using that material, in 2024 he published Twentieth Century Baltimore: A Native Son's Casual History of the City on the Patapsco.
Meal: Lunch will include the following.
- Your choice of Classic Caesar Salad or Blue Crab and Roasted Corn Soup
- Your choice of Herb Chicken, Braised Short Ribs, or Jumbo Lump Crabcake
- Roasted Potato and Vegetable Medley
- Your choice of Fresh Berries Napoleon or Flourless Chocolate Cake
- Coffee, tea, and soft drinks
Cost: Members: $40 Non-members: $45 Deadline for registration is end of day on December 2.
MGS member registration: First be sure you log in as a member. Then click here to register at the member price.
Nonmember registration: To register below using PayPal or a credit card, provide your name and email address, and click "Add to Cart."
Announcing the MGS Writing Competition
We’re looking for the next great writer. Is it you? The Maryland Genealogical Society is excited to announce its 2025 Writing Competition.
Have a story to tell about your Maryland ancestors? Want to share information on Maryland records and resources with fellow researchers? Or explain how you solved a brick wall puzzle? Cash prizes will be awarded to the three submitted articles that best exemplify excellence in both style and substance, and they will be published in the Maryland Genealogical Society Journal.
Webinar on Eastern European Jewish 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.
"Finding Your Roots: Back to Basics" Webinars
Although the live sessions of our workshop series, Finding Your Roots: The Where and When, have ended, you can still register to view the series on demand. Our partner, Maryland Public Television, maintains the event registration page and will provide new registrants with links to the recorded sessions. The registration fee is $100.00 for the series.
Sessions include:
- 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
Registrants will also receive a one-year introductory membership to the Maryland Genealogical Society (not applicable to current MGS members) and a one-year MPT Passport membership or membership extension.
The workshop series was led by nationally known speaker Annette Burke Lyttle, who has been the presenter for several previous MGS/MPT workshop series. She holds the Certified Genealogist® credential and owns Heritage Detective, LLC, providing professional genealogical services in research, education, and writing. Her genealogical education has included the Salt Lake Institute of Genealogy, the Genealogical Research Institute of Pittsburgh, the British Institute, the ProGen Study Group, and the National Genealogical Society Quarterly Study Group. She is a course coordinator for the Salt Lake Institute of Genealogy (SLIG). She is past president of the Association of Professional Genealogists and is editor of The Florida Genealogist.
MGS Journal
We are pleased to bring you another issue of the Maryland Genealogical Society Journal, which runs the gamut from the namesake of Riderwood to Babe Ruth’s descendants to a story about public health in the 1920s – and several family histories in between.
First up is Jean Atkinson Andrews’s story of her ancestor Joshua Atkinson. He was born on Maryland’s Eastern Shore, grew up in Baltimore, and eventually migrated to southern Indiana. Jean uses census records, deeds, and probate records to follow the family’s journey.
Bryna O’Sullivan follows the life of Benjamin Ridgway, who was born in Maryland and then moved on to Washington County, Ohio. A courthouse fire destroyed many of the relevant records, but the author has reexamined surviving probate documents to follow Benjamin and his descendants.
Daniel Flynn delves into the history of Edward Rider, namesake of Riderwood, Maryland. From his birth in Shropshire, England, through the family’s migration to Maryland, Edward Rider’s marriage to Rachel Gorsuch, and his distinguished public career, the author documents the family history of his ancestor.
In a follow up to an article published in 2017, Druscilla Null uses updated DNA evidence to identify Babe Ruth’s family in Germany, Baltimore, and Ohio. The new DNA testing helps to corroborate the previous research on Babe Ruth’s family and to debunk the erroneous claims.
Finally, Lauren Parlett relates a family story of the death of her great-aunt from diphtheria, an often-fatal childhood disease in the early twentieth century. The rural working class family, who had limited education, were slow to recognize the child’s symptoms and find medical help, until it was too late to save her.
As always, we keep you informed about recent publications in genealogy with reviews from Allender Sybert, including a reissue of a biography of Johns Hopkins.
We hope that reading this issue of the Journal will prompt you to write your own story. We are always looking for well written and well researched articles to include in the Journal. Articles are posted on the MGS website on publication, so that all members have access to them.
In addition to articles, we welcome transcriptions of source material, such as family bible records, cemetery records, or tombstone inscriptions; abstracts of records, such as wills or other probate records, court documents, and the like; and case studies. We encourage all our readers to become involved in the Journal as authors or peer reviewers. If you have a manuscript, or just an idea for one, or if you can devote a few hours to reviewing, please contact me at journal@mdgensoc.org.
October 2025 MGS News
The October 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.
Used Genealogy Books For Sale
 MGS has an inventory of used genealogy-related books available for purchase on the For Sale page. MGS members receive a 12% discount on purchases. (Be sure to be signed in on the website as a member before ordering!) All prices already include shipping and handling. Sales are first come, first served!
In addition to books on Maryland, our current inventory includes the following topics: family histories; U.S., British, German, New England, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and West Virginia research; photography, lineage societies, royalty and nobility, heraldry, and general interest. We will be adding books as they become available.
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