The Fellows of the American Society of Genealogists are pleased to announce the four 2024 recipients of ASG Continuing Genealogical Research Grants.
Shadidah Ahmad of Watertown, Mass. (awarded a second grant in continuation of the 2023 grant), to locate and record funeral programs from churches and funeral homes, and to conduct interviews with local elders, to document the African American cemeteries in Holly Hill and Cottageville, South Carolina. The programs are being copied and digitized, their information captured on Excel sheets and entered into a lineage-linked database. Her goals for 2024 include creating a website with the digitized materials she has collected and expanding research to family Bibles as well as records of church organizations. In-person visits with community elders, two aged 100 and 102, and with family members in charge of burial plots, etc., will add flesh to the stories of a “rapidly dying history in these small, yet rich towns.”
Carolyne Ngara of Nairobi, Kenya, for “A Comprehensive Genealogical Research of the Luo people of Kenya.” The Joka Jok oral history program has conducted 50 interviews with members of 24 Luo clans, with the expectation of eventually conducting over 100, “preserving over half a million records on the Luo.” Original documents, bibliographies, indexes, geographical locations, migration patterns and legal history of the Luo ethnic groups of Kenya will be compiled and studied. The preservation of endangered records is an urgent motivator in the face of political conflict in the area. The Luo population in Kenya comprises about four million, or 13% of the total population of Kenya, with other Luo people living in Tanzania, Uganda, South Sudan, Ethopia and the Democratic Republic of Congo. U.S. President Barack Obama is a descendant of the Luo clan.
Kelly Richardson of Dickinson, North Dakota, to continue work with the Redwood Coast Land Conservancy on a project to restore and document the Gualala River Cemetery in Northern California. Over 100 individuals buried in the long-neglected cemetery have been identified, genealogical research has been done, and descendants, most of whom do not know they have an ancestor buried there, have been contacted. Twenty-nine family sketches already published on the website (www.rclc.org/gualala-cemetery) include immigrants from Maine, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Ontario, New Brunswick, Ohio, Missouri, Denmark, Ireland, Italy, Norway, and West Prussia.
Pamela Vittorio of Brooklyn, New York City, for the project “Navigating the Records of the New York Canals (1817 to 1918): A Guide for Genealogical Research.” Tied to the bicentennial of the Erie Canal in 2025, this project evaluates and presents for publication records of the Erie and connecting lateral canals using the archives of The New York State Canal Society (at the New York State Archives), the Library of Congress, and New York Public Library, and regional collections. It is intended to supply researchers with tools, examples, and strategies for their work, and to help identify and find records of ancestors who may have worked along or been passengers on the canals. The project includes compilation of databases of people named in the records.