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.

The Society’s 82nd Annual Meeting was held entirely by videoconference on Saturday, October 9, 2021.  Of the 36 Fellows in attendance, 33 are visible in this image:

Row 1: Joslyn, Taylor, Remington, Bamberg, C. Hansen.
Row 2: J. Anderson, R. Anderson, Rose, Dwyer, H. Jones.
Row 3: Baldwin, Smith, Hoff, J. Hansen, Sanborn.
Row 4: Stott, Dearborn, Hinchliff, Harris, Dobson.
Row 5: Saxbe, Mills, W. Fiske and J. Fiske, Hatcher, Byrne.
Row 6: Williams, T. Jones, Hart, Murphy, Mathews.
Row 7: Hill, Lennon.
Present but not visible in photo: Hyde, Mahler, Sperry.

John Frederick Dorman, CG (Emeritus), FASG, FNGS, FVGS, 73rd Fellow of the American Society of Genealogists and for many years our senior living fellow, died today, 26 November 2021, at The Woodmont Center in Fredericksburg, Virginia, after a long illness.

Fred was born in Louisville, Kentucky, 25 July 1928, the only child of John Frederick and Sue Carpenter (Miller) Dorman. His father was the child of German immigrants; his mother was descended from colonists in Virginia, Maryland, and Pennsylvania who had migrated to Kentucky at the end of the eighteenth century. It was through this maternal ancestry that Fred developed the interest in Virginia genealogy that defined his career. Fred received a bachelor’s degree from the University of Louisville in 1950. He served from 1951 to 1953 in the United States Army’s Army Security Agency, the successor to the SSA (Signals Security Agency), which conducted military signals intelligence in the Second World War. He then served as assistant archivist at the College of William and Mary from 1953 to 1955,  simultaneously earning a M.A. in library science from Emory University in 1955. In the following year he moved to Washington, D.C., and became an independent professional genealogist.

Fred’s first genealogical article was published in Louisville in 1949, while he was still an undergraduate (“Descendants of General Jonathan Clark, Jefferson County, Kentucky, 1750-1811,” Filson Club Historical Quarterly 23 [1949], nos. 1, 2, and 4). This launched a publication career that few, if any, will ever match. Aside from several comprehensive book-length genealogies of colonial Virginia families (Robertson, 1964; Farish, 1967; Preston, 1982; Epes, 1992-1999; Claiborne, 1995; and most recently Slaughter, still unfinished), he published a long list of articles in National Genealogical Society Quarterly, The American Genealogist, and other leading journals. He also published, as editor or co-editor, dozens of volumes of abstracts of Virginia county records and Revolutionary War pension applications. He edited the major reprint sets of Genealogies of Virginia Families from Tyler’s Quarterly, William and Mary Quarterly, and The Magazine of Virginia Genealogy published by Genealogical Publishing Company in the 1980s. In the 1980s, he co-edited the third edition of Adventurers of Purse and Person—the systematic genealogical summary of all Virginia settlers before 1625 who left descendants—and then went on to produce the substantially enlarged fourth edition, in three volumes in 2007. Throughout all this, Fred launched and sustained The Virginia Genealogist, which he published in 200 issues over fifty years from 1957 to 2006.

Fred was deeply involved in the leading educational and professional organizations of the genealogical world. He served the National Genealogical Society as its librarian in 1959-1960 and vice president in 1958-59 and 1968-70, and a councilor in the 1950s and again in the 1970s. He was one of the founding board members of the Board for Certification of Genealogists in 1964, and after many years as a trustee, served as its president in 1979-80 and executive director from 1982 to 1996. Fred was only thirty when he was elected a Fellow of the American Society of Genealogists in 1958; he was its treasurer from 1959 to 1966 and served as president from 1982 to 1985. He taught for many sessions of the National Institute of Genealogical Research (now Gen-Fed) in Washington, D.C., and the Institute of Genealogical and Historical Research at Samford University, Birmingham, Ala.  Beyond these involvements, Fred saw participation and membership in hereditary societies as entirely consistent with the scholarly pursuit of genealogy. He was a member of the Society of the Cincinnati in the State of Virginia, Sons of the American Revolution, Sons of the Revolution, Society of Colonial Wars, General Society of the War of 1812, Jamestowne Society, Descendants of Colonial Governors, and other hereditary societies. He served some of these in a volunteer capacity as a state- or national-level officer; he also served others professionally as the verifying genealogist.

In recent years, Fred was limited by frailty mostly to his home and then to assisted living and nursing facilities in Fredericksburg, Virginia. Even when he could no longer continue sustained research and writing, Fred retained a prodigious memory for genealogical detail as well as a gracious and humble demeanor. He delighted the Fellows by attending the American Society of Genealogists’ annual meeting in Richmond in 2018, sixty years after his election.

The ASG Scholar Award rewards talented genealogists with stipends to pursue advanced academic training in genealogy. At its annual meeting on October 9, 2021, the American Society of Genealogists granted the ASG Scholar Award for 2022 to Michael G. Hait Jr., CG, CGL, of Harrington, Delaware, for his unpublished work, “African American Families Enslaved by the Carrolls of Maryland.” Mr. Hait will use the award to attend the Genealogical Institute of Federal Records (Gen-Fed) in 2022.

We are deeply saddened to learn of the passing of our 150th Fellow, Helen Schatvet Ullmann of Acton, Massachusetts. Helen died on Saturday, 9 October 2021—the day of our 82nd Annual Meeting—at the age of 83. Beyond her service to the field for many years as the Associate Editor of The New England Historical and Genealogical Register, Helen is personally known and remembered by countless genealogists as a selfless and gracious colleague, and a tenacious and perceptive researcher.

The Fellows of the American Society of Genealogists (ASG) held their 82nd annual meeting on Saturday, October 9, 2021. Robert Battle of Tacoma, Washington; LaBrenda Garrett-Nelson of Washington, D.C.; and Randy A. West of Salt Lake City, Utah, were elected to the Society as its 169th, 170th, and 171st fellows, respectively.

Robert Battle has published many in-depth genealogical articles in scholarly journals over the past twenty years, principally The New England Historical and Genealogical Register and The American Genealogist. His publications focus on the origins of English colonial immigrants, both to New England and to the American South.  His articles demonstrate consistent and creative mastery of a wide variety of sources, and his writing displays skill and sensitivity in chronicling trans-Atlantic families.

The Fellows are saddened to report that Annette Kunselman Burgert, FASG, of Elizabethtown, Pennsylvania, died on Monday, 15 February 2021, at the age of 90. A dedicated genealogist with a focus on Palatine immigrants to Pennsylvania, she was elected a Fellow in 1990.

Her obituary has been published on the website of Huff-Guthrie Funeral Home.

The Fellows have received with great sadness the news of the death of David L. Greene, FASG, the 115th Fellow and 19th President of the American Society of Genealogists (2007–2010).

Dr. Greene was Editor and Publisher of The American Genealogist from 1993 to 2015. Among his many genealogical interests was the genealogical study of those involved in the Salem Witch Trials of 1692.

The ASG Scholar Award rewards talented genealogists with stipends to pursue advanced academic training in genealogy. At its annual meeting on November 7, 2020, the American Society of Genealogists granted the ASG Scholar Award for 2021 to Faye Jenkins Stallings, CG, of Montgomery, Texas, for her article “Using Indirect Evidence to Find the Father of Robert Y. Jones of Hopkins County, Kentucky.” Ms. Stallings will use her award to attend the Salt Lake Institute of Genealogy in 2021.

The second-largest annual meeting of the ASG ever held: Salt Lake City, October 11, 1997. 35 Fellows in attendance. Surpassed to date (2020) only by the 2020 annual meeting, held by videoconference with 38 Fellows attending.

Front row: Beard, G. Russell, Martin, Austin, Hoff, H. Jones, Rasmussen, Joslyn, Dearborn, Macy, C. Hansen.
Middle row: Harris, Parsons, Hendrix, Burgert, Rose, Hyde, Mills, D. Russell, J. Fiske, Sanborn, Kelly, Leary.
Back row: Sheppard, Greene, R. Anderson, Thompson, J. Hansen, DeVille, Rising, Craig, Olsson, Allen, Sperry, Kaufholz.