Maryland Genealogical Society
Maryland Genealogical Society

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.
 
If you are already a member of the Society, you can log in by clicking on the Members Only link. If you are not already a member, we encourage you to become a member and begin receiving all the benefits of membership.  
 
And we hope that you'll follow us on Facebook for timely news and information.
 
        
    
                      

 

"Finding Your Roots: Back to Basics" Webinars

The Maryland Genealogical Society is pleased to once again partner with Maryland Public Television (MPT) to offer a new beginner-to-intermediate genealogy webinar series. Finding Your Roots: Back to Basics will include four (4) two-hour sessions designed to help you strengthen your research skills. If you're beginning your family history journey or looking to boost your research skills, this workshop will equip you with the essential tools and techniques. Sessions will be held at 7:00pm ET on September 10, September 24, October 8, and October 22.
 
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.  You can register on the MPT registration page.
 
The cost of the series is $100.00. Each session will feature a combination of lecture, small and large group discussion, question and answer time, and a homework assignment relating to your family search. Handouts will be provided for each session. The webinars will be recorded. 
 
The workshop series will be 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.
 

 

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 cost is $40.00. Please register here.
 
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.
 

 

Save the Date: MGS Fall Seminar

Maryland Milestones: Exploring Birth, Marriage, Divorce, and Death Records
 
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.
 

 

Episcopal Archives Parish Register List

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.
 
 
 
Baltimore's St. Luke's Episcopal Church now
 
 
 

 

April 2025 MGS News

 
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
 
 
 
 

 

All Issues of the MGS Journal Online

All issues of the Maryland Genealogical Society Journal, from 2008 to the present, are available online to MGS members! The Journal’s predecessor publication, the Maryland Genealogical Society Bulletin, already was online, which means that members can access over 60 years of informative articles on Maryland families and genealogical records. 
 
To access the issues, sign in as a member and select “MGS Bulletin & Journal” from the dropdown menu under "Members Only" on the left navigation bar. To learn what articles appear in each issue, you can consult the Journal cumulative table of contents and the Bulletin cumulative table of contents. Cumulative indexes for all volumes also are available for review.
 
New issues of the Journal will be posted as they are published.
 
 
 

 

MGS Journal

 
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.
 
 As always, we keep you informed about new genealogy publications with Allender Sybert’s reviews, including the most recent edition of Elizabeth Shown Mills’ Evidence Explained.
 
MGS Members can read this newest issue online in the Members Only section. All are welcome to consult the full table of contents and the tables of contents of earlier issues. Earlier issues of the Journal are available for sale, and members receive a discounted price. We are actively seeking articles for the Journal, and encourage you to take a look at our submission guidelines
 

 

Used Genealogy Books For Sale

(Image by Emma Lopez, posted on Flickr under a Creative Commons license.)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.