The Fellows of the American Society of Genealogists are pleased to announce the four 2023 winners of the ASG Continuing Genealogical Research Grants.

Shahidah Ahmad of Watertown, Mass., to collect, digitize, and index information about African Americans buried in Holly Hill and Cottageville, South Carolina, by interviewing residents over age 65 and using local knowledge to identify individuals and family buried in those towns, map communities, and create photographic, scanned and digital images linked with Excel master list to fill the void of less documented rural towns as an example for South Carolinian family historians. Shahidah is an Independent Genealogy Researcher and former Treasurer and Presenter of the African American Genealogical and Historical Society – New England.

Richard de Boer of Harlingen, The Netherlands, to prepare an English language overview of preserved genealogical sources (microdata) in six Western Balkans countries: Bosnia-Herzegovina, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Serbia, Kosovo, and Albania, addressing the problem of language barriers and difficulty in retrieving and accessing sources. Among sources to be used are church registers and censuses, war victim lists, Ottoman tax registers and land cadastres, with the goal of publishing an overview of records by country, region, and ethnoreligious community. Richard is a professional journalist from The Netherlands, and administrator of the website www.exyugenealogy.net (“Sources for post-Yugoslav Family History”).

Stephanie Mills Trice of Silver Spring, Maryland, to lead a group of volunteers in identifying families buried at Mount Zion Baptist Church, the oldest African American graveyard in Macon, North Carolina, that dates to 1879, when field stones and periwinkle marked the graves, and for which there is no known record of interments. They will be using interviews with living story tellers, funeral programs, obituaries, photographs and digital documents, which are to be stored locally in Warren County. Stephanie is a Volunteer Oral Historian and Collaborative Partner in the Facing East 158 Voice Project of the North Carolina Department of Natural and Cultural Resources.

Jamie Wasilchenko of Newaygo, Michigan, to gather records on the population of the village of Horodylovychi in Galacia of the Austro-Hungarian Empire that was destroyed in 1939, with many of its residents, including Ukranians, Poles and Jews, forcibly removed to Soviet territory. She will be using records of the Greek Catholic church she located in the Polish State Archives that were believed to have been lost. Records of baptisms, marriages, and burials for 1873 to 1937 (about 300 pages) will be indexed and made available through the Polish Genealogical Society and placed in repositories in Ukraine and Poland, both online and offline. Jamie is a Professional Genealogist, ShiftingSandsGenealogy.com.

The ASG Continuing Genealogical Research Grant program was established in 2022 by the American Society of Genealogists. A decision about funding grants for 2024 will be made at the Fellows’ Annual Meeting in October 2023. Interested parties may obtain information from Alicia Crane Williams, FASG, Chair, Grants Committee, acwcrane@aol.com. Or write to her at 4 White Trellis, Plymouth, MA 02360-7790.

Updated information on the ASG Grants for Continuing Genealogical Research Projects has now been placed online here for the 2023 cycle. While in 2022 applications and awards were on a rolling basis, the 2023 awards will be on a set cycle with an application deadline of March 1, 2023.

Further information is at our page Awards > Grants for Continuing Genealogical Research Projects, including the downloadable 2023 Research Grant information and application packet.

The ASG Scholar Award rewards talented genealogists with stipends to pursue advanced academic training in genealogy. At its annual meeting on October 15, 2022, the American Society of Genealogists granted the ASG Scholar Award for 2023 to Kathrine C. Aydelott, MLIS, PhD, of Raymond, New Hampshire, for her unpublished work, “Darius Andrews of Sumner, Maine: A Descent from Henry Andrews of Taunton, Massachusetts.” Dr. Aydelott will use the award to attend the Boston University Certificate Program in Genealogical Research in 2023.

The Society’s 83rd Annual Meeting was held on Saturday, October 15, 2022, in Salt Lake City, with 38 Fellows in attendance, 16 in person and 22 by videoconference:

Row 1 (seated): T. Jones, Hyde, Dearborn, Stott.
Row 2 (standing): Johnson, Saxbe, Reed, West, Taylor, Sperry, J. Anderson, Battle, Mahler, Murphy.

The zoom attendees projected above the in-person attendees in the above portrait can more clearly be seen here:Row 1: Bamberg, [meeting room feed], Baldwin, J. Hansen, Byrne.
Row 2: Joslyn, Mathews, Hart, Sanborn, Williams.
Row 3: H. Jones, Dobson, C. Hansen, Hatcher, Smith.
Row 4: Mills, Garrett-Nelson, J. Fiske and W. Fiske, Lennon, Harris.
Row 5: Dwyer, Arthaud.

The Fellows of the American Society of Genealogists held their annual meeting on Saturday, October 15, 2022. Priscilla Eaton Gumina of Rochester, New York, was elected to the Society as its 172nd Fellow.

For more than twenty years, Priscilla Eaton Gumina has published extensively and frequently, principally on Maine families, in the leading genealogical journals. In 2020, her magisterial two-volume work, The Littlefield Genealogy: Descendants of Edmund Littlefield of Wells, Maine, received the Donald Lines Jacobus Award. As a researcher and writer, she deftly solves knotty problems ranging from the seventeenth to nineteenth centuries. Moreover, she sets these genealogical analyses compellingly into well narrated historical and cultural contexts. Her genealogical writing is a joy to read.

The fourth and final $2500 ASG Continuing Research grant for 2022 has been awarded to Holly MacCammon of Philmont, New York, for her project to index New York surrogate court guardianship records 1802 to 1866 abstracted and serialized in The Columbia newspaper between 1985 and 1992 as a first step to establishing intellectual and physical arrangement of disorganized records haphazardly arranged in several microfilm collections: 1890–1899, digitized and indexed at Ancestry; 1881–1889, not digitized; and 1802–1880, digitized but not indexed at FamilySearch.

Ms. MacCammon is the sole proprietor of HollyGenealogy, LLC, specializing in New England and New York State research.  Previously she has worked as Senior Project Manager for World Monuments Fund, New York, N.Y., and as a New York City Regional Archivist, Documentary Heritage Program, for the New York State Archives and Records Administration, Albany, N.Y. She earned a Professional Learning Certificate in Genealogical Research from Boston University.

The Society will make its decision on grant opportunities for 2023 at the annual meeting in October, with announcements concerning eligibility and application process to be distributed shortly thereafter. Further information about this new grant program is available elsewhere on the website of the American Society of Genealogists. Additional information is available from Alicia Crane Williams, Chair, ASG Grant Committee (4 White Trellis, Plymouth MA 02360; or acwcrane@aol.com).

Clarence Almon Torrey, FASG (1869-1962), is the 2022 inductee into the National Genealogy Hall of Fame. He was nominated for this honor by the American Society of Genealogists, and the announcement was made at NGS’s 2022 Family History Conference dinner held in Sacramento, California, on May 27, 2022.

A native of Manchester, Iowa, Torrey was educated at Cornell University and the University of Chicago. He then worked as a librarian for the University of Chicago for a few years before relocating to Massachusetts in 1921, from which point he dedicated himself wholly to genealogical research of New England families. Torrey was elected a Fellow of the American Society of Genealogists in 1942 as number 22 on the roll.

Mr. Torrey’s reputation as one of the giants in the pantheon of genealogy rests on his magnum opus: “New England Marriages Prior to 1700,” a twelve-volume manuscript (of which the original is held at the New England Historic Genealogical Society, Boston) that he compiled and annotated throughout his 41-year genealogical career. It lists approximately 37,000 New England couples whose marriages occurred prior to 1700, drawn from many thousands of references from printed sources. It was first published (without the references) in 1985, and has gone through many printings. It was released on CD-ROM, with the references, in 2001, and finally in book form, complete with the copious references, in 2011. Sixty years after Torrey’s death, his monumental index remains an indispensable bibliographical and demographic resource for anyone researching New England colonial families.

In addition to his compilation of colonial couples, Mr. Torrey published over fifty articles, nearly all in The American Genealogist. He specialized in uncovering English origins and identifying the maiden names of the wives of early New England and Long Island colonists. He was a careful, meticulous researcher. His long and extensive labors in the field of New England genealogy made him a kind of “elder statesman” to whom other genealogists could appeal for aid and counsel, according to his obituary written by his long-time genealogical colleague Donald Lines Jacobus in 1962. Torrey’s monumental compilation of New England marriages, as well as his individual studies of early colonial families and couples, continue to be cited regularly by scholars.

Clarence Almon Torrey, and all members of the National Genealogy Hall of Fame, are listed on the website of the National Genealogical Society.

Clarence Almon Torrey has been added to the list of Fellows named to the National Genealogical Society Hall of Fame.

Two new Continuing Research Grants ($2500 each) have recently been awarded by the American Society of Genealogists.

One grant was awarded to William E. Cole of Gold River, California, funding three projects: preparation of a compiled genealogy of The Wife of John Cole of Weedon Bec, Northamptonshire: Frances —, her siblings and parents; preparation of a compiled Cole genealogy expanding on “The English Origins of Job, John, Daniel and Ruth Cole,” published in Mayflower Descendant, vol. 69 (Winter 2021); and preparation of a narrative history of the trials and tribulations faced by nine Puritans for their non-conformist beliefs in the early 1590s within the Church of England and in England’s highest courts. Mr. Cole is an in-demand genealogy presenter who will be speaking at the National Genealogical Society Family History Conference, “The American Mosaic,” in Sacramento, May 24-28, 2022.

A grant was also awarded to Al Sharp of Kittitas, Washington, to continue his “Henrico Project” of systematic abstracts from the Henrico County, Virginia, court records, of which fourteen volumes have already been published. This grant will be applied towards the completion of two volumes of Court Minute Books, 1752–1755 and 1755–1762. Mr. Sharp has worked with the editors of the papers of George Washington and James Madison at the University of Virginia in an Early American Studies seminar, critiquing draft theses of graduate students. He was also instrumental in obtaining changes in the Virginia laws to allow digital access to Virginia court records.

Further information about this new grant program is available on the website of the American Society of Genealogists. Additional information is available from Alicia Crane Williams, Chair, ASG Grant Committee (4 White Trellis, Plymouth MA 02360; or acwcrane@aol.com).

Ian Watson of Burtenbach, Germany, has been awarded the first ASG Continuing Research Project Grant of $2500 for his work to bring transcriptions of Ipswich Deeds to public researchers.

Ipswich Deeds are the five volumes of land records kept at the northern Essex County registry from roughly 1640 to 1710. In their early years these volumes also contain registered wills, inventories, and court records. They are an important source on the early settlers of Ipswich, Newbury, Rowley, and nearby towns. The originals are at the Southern Essex Registry of Deeds in Salem, along with manuscript copies of volumes 1-3 which were made in the 1800s. FamilySearch has digitized microfilm of the manuscript copies of volumes 1-3 and the originals of volumes 4-5 (https://www.familysearch.org/search/catalog/74273). Building on the work of ASG Fellows George Freeman Sanborn Jr. and Jane Fletcher Fiske, who transcribed and initially indexed the first two volumes of Ipswich Deeds, Watson is updating the archaic media on which the transcriptions have been stored, converting from an obsolete text program to modern LaTeX files, and formatting and re-indexing the results for publication.

Ian Watson is author of the forthcoming Volume I of Great Migration: Immigrants to New England, 1636-1638, covering surnames beginning with A through Be. He is co-author with Kyle Hurst of Selected Ancestors of Nelson McMahon and Louise Rathbun published by Newbury Street Press in 2020, and he is a paid proofreader for the Association of Professional Genealogists Quarterly and the APG eNews. He preserved and reposted the Pruzhany Uyezd Research Society’s website at www.pruzh.org, which preserves material about the Pruzhany district Jewish diaspora. Watson’s most recent genealogical article is “The Dating of the Providence Civil Compact,” published in The American Genealogist, 91(2019-2020):165-189, 261-283.

For more information about the Grant Program and application forms, e-mail acwcrane@aol.com or write to Alicia Crane Williams, FASG, Chair, ASG Grant Committee, 4 White Trellis, Plymouth MA 02360

The Fellows of the American Society of Genealogists are pleased to announce a new grant opportunity in support of important continuing genealogical research projects. These grants are intended to assist with those projects sitting unfinished (or unstarted) on every genealogist’s “back burner” for lack of financial aid to help cover researching and writing time, costs of copies, fees, travel, and other usual expenses associated with genealogical research and publication.

Each grant is for $2,500. Projects are not limited regarding subject, length, or format, but the value of the work to other researchers and institutions will be an important consideration. Examples of possible projects include, but are not limited to, compilation of single or extended family genealogies, transcriptions or translations of original documents, bibliographies, indexes, studies of ethnic groups, geographic locations, migration patterns, legal history, etc., using genealogical resources and methods.

Publication is not required, but acknowledgement of the support from the American Society of Genealogists in any distribution of the project results is requisite.

Fellows of the American Society of Genealogists are not eligible for these grants.

A detailed grant description document is available here.

Further information and application form are available from Alicia Crane Williams, FASG, 4 White Trellis, Plymouth, MA 02360; acwcrane@aol.com.