Tom Riley The Great Hunger in Ireland (1845-1852)                This meeting has been cancelled.

You are invited to view Tom Riley’s presentation, The Great Hunger in Ireland, in the Member Resources section of our website under Webinars.

The May meeting has been cancelled. 
View Melanie McComb’s webinar on the website in Member Resources.

Melanie McComb
Across the Border: Irish Immigration from Canada to the U.S. 18th to 20th Century  (webinar)

Not all of our Irish ancestors came directly to the U.S. Instead, they settled in Canada for several years or even for many generations. In this webinar, Melanie McComb will explore the various waves of migration from Canada to the U.S. including the mass migration during the Famine and homesteading ancestors who settled the American Midwest.

McComb, a staff genealogist for American Ancestors, lectures internationally on genealogical topics. She has a blog called The Shamrock Genealogist.

Zoom Presentation

The June 20 meeting with Toni McKeen will be a LIVE Zoom webinar, to start at 11 a.m. 
Members will have the opportunity to ask questions at the end. 
Members will be sent a link to click on in order to “attend” the meeting

Toni McKeen, Becoming an American: Naturalization Record

Toni McKeen returns to the Forum to discuss the information naturalization records contain, who became naturalized and why, the steps involved in the naturalization process, the rules for women and why you can’t find them in the records, and the special handling of men serving in the military. McKeen has taught genealogy courses for many year and has lectured at numerous genealogy societies in the Northeast  

Meeting will start at 11 a.m.

Donna Moughty

Irish Civil Registration and Church Records: It’s a New World!  

  The landscape of Irish research has changed drastically over the past few years with the digitization of the R.C. Church records by the National Library followed by the release of the images of birth, deaths, and marriage (with restrictions) by IrishGenealogy.ie.  It truly is a new world for Irish researchers.

A recording of the webinar and the handout are available in Member Resources under Webinars through October 19.

This will be a Zoom presentation.
Meeting will start at 11 a.m.

11:15 a.m. Tom Riley, The Orphan Train to Destiny

In this PowerPoint presentation, Tom Riley will describe the slow disintegration of a family as a result of the Famine. In this true story, a family leaves Ireland only to have its various members experience death on a coffin ship, a factory fire, and being orphaned and abandoned. The Children’s Aid Society and the Orphan Train also figure in the story, and an orphaned seven-year-old grows up to hold a prestigious position.

This will be a Zoom presentation  
Meeting will start at 11 a.m.

A recording of the September 19 webinar Irish Civil Registration and Church Records and the handout are available in Member Resources under Webinars through October 19.

11:15 a.m. Rhoda Miller, Organizit: Reducing Your Genealogy Clutter

Organizit presents creative solutions and problem-solving ideas to genealogy researchers who are interested in getting organized in order to free up mental and physical space for more research. The concept of clutter, how it happens, and what to do about it will be discussed. The organization of digital and paper files, documents, photographs, correspondence, research projects, and research materials will be presented. Methods of approaching a genealogy project, or subparts of a project, as well as planning for a research trip are also presented.

December 12

January 16, 2021

Christmas Party at the Irish Coffee Pub, East Islip, noon to 4 p.m.

Susan Miller, Researching New York Land Records

For those researching families in New York City and New York State, land records can produce a crop of information. Access to land records varies, and Miller will provide an overview to some collections that may yield results for your research.