Upcoming Meetings and Events - Future Events View

“Using FamilySearch for Jewish Research”
The Family History Library has an extensive collection of Jewish records. Understanding what is there and how best to access it is vital to having a successful search, Todd says. The Jewish records in the collection of FamilySearch can best be obtained through the Family History Library Catalog. There are multiple ways to search the Family History Library catalog to find the records, and in this presentation, we will learn how best to do that.

We will be screening the classic film, Everything Is Illuminated , a 2005 American biographical comedy-drama film, written and directed by Liev Schreiber and starring Elijah Wood and Eugene Hütz. It was adapted from the novel of the same name by Jonathan Safran Foer, and was the debut film of Liev Schreiber both as a director and as a screenwriter.
Jonathan Safran Foer, a young American Jew, goes on a quest to Ukraine to find Augustine, the woman who saved his grandfather, Safran Foer, during the Holocaust. He searches for a small town called Trachimbrod that was wiped off the map when the Nazis liquidated Eastern European shtetls.
The film will resonate with you on several levels—it is about heritage travel (and how not to do it); it is about Holocaust research; and it is about finding your family’s story—the good and the bad.

Hidden in plain sight lie millions of Jewish records—military lists, synagogue ledgers, school rolls—waiting to smash your brick walls. Join LDVDF CEO Marlis?Humphrey for a fast-paced?tour of JCat’s growth, AI handwriting breakthroughs, and new researcher tools. You’ll leave knowing exactly how to: search smarter, mine NewsNosh and JDays for leads, volunteer from your laptop, and fund the next wave of discovery. Come learn how you can help unlock the missing?85?%—before it vanishes.

How do you locate distant living cousins and reach out to them? How can you expand your pedigree chart forward in time? These and other questions relating to cousins will be addressed in this interesting program You may find family treasures, photos, DNA test takers and information that will break down a brick wall. This talk will explore online trees, lineage societies, online cemetery indexes, obituaries in newspapers, living people finder websites and social media. This will be a HYBRID meeting. In-person location: Chapel Hill Library, meeting room C.

This is our annual "show and tell" event where TJGS members share recent discoveries and/or tips.

This workshop is designed to help participants discover their own ancestors using the rich resources of the Apex FamilySearch Center—a local branch of the FamilySearch Library in Salt Lake City, the world’s largest family history library.

FamilySearch holds one of the most extensive collections of Jewish genealogical records anywhere. Todd Knowles, Deputy Chief Genealogical Officer for FamilySearch and a leading expert in Jewish family history, emphasizes that knowing what’s available—and how to use it effectively—is key to uncovering meaningful connections.

Attendees will receive personalized guidance from experienced staff, including Jim Heddell, retired professional genealogist and founder of one of the world’s largest family history firms. Jim, who has worked for several years with FamilySearch and previously with Ancestry.com, will demonstrate proven strategies for finding records across those platforms and the 20+ premium genealogy websites available free of charge at the Center.

Participants are encouraged to submit their specific research projects several weeks in advance, allowing Jim and the FamilySearch Center staff time to identify the best approaches and resources for each case.

Using case studies based on Lithuania Latvia, Poland, and Belarus, we explore how to connect a wide variety of
records and make use of many search engines. With these tools we cross the ocean from US records to locate
ancestral towns and family within them. Much as with any journey, we identify where we are going, who we are
going to visit, how we will communicate and how we assure we have the right luggage. Or in genealogy
parlance, what is our ancestral town, who are the family members who resided there, how do we decipher
documents, and how do we assure the people we are searching for are our family? This talk also addresses how
to create finding tools to decipher records in Russian handwritten Cyrillic.