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.
LaBrenda Garrett-Nelson has a twenty-year record of writing family history, first as a dedicated amateur while practicing law, and then, since her retirement from that profession, as an authoritative writer and genealogical educator. Her compiled genealogical scholarship in journals such as National Genealogical Society Quarterly focuses on African-American families during and after enslavement, including combining DNA match evidence with traditional documentary evidence in a notoriously difficult field. Her educational publications include a guide to researching African-American family history in Laurens County, South Carolina, where she has roots—a primer with important methodological lessons applicable nationally—, and an authoritative guide to genealogical research in the state of Alabama.
Randy A. West has a particular interest in the origin of seventeenth-century New England colonists. Over the past ten years he has published over two dozen articles, primarily in The New England Historical and Genealogical Register and The American Genealogist, with discoveries of the origins of New England colonists. His concise articles display a uniformly high level of precision in extracting crucial data, often overlooked by others, from a systematic review of relevant indexed and unindexed records.