SFBAJGS - Calendar of Genealogical Events

Past Programs

Sunday, December 8, 2024 SFBAJGS Presentation ZOOM Free and everyone interested is welcome. Time and Place: 1:00 pm until 2:30 pm, Pacific Time At Your Home Topic: Navigating Metrical Books for the Non-Russian Speaker Speaker: Ellie Vance Vital records were often recorded in Russian and can be tricky to navigate, especially for non-Russian speakers, but with the proper tools you can learn to identify ancestral surnames, common vocabulary, and record format. An extensive handout complete with column heading translations, examples of handwritten key vocabulary, common given names, and resources to help you determine the handwritten forms of your surname will be included with the presentation. Speaker Ellie Vance graduated from Brigham Young University with degrees in Russian and Family History and Genealogy. She worked as the Slavic research specialist for the FamilySearch Library and currently works as a technical historical records expert at FamilySearch. Ellie enjoys helping others trace their roots in the former Russian Empire. Register for this meeting. After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the meeting. You do not have to have a Zoom account to attend a Zoom meeting. You will be prompted to download the software, once you have clicked on the link that you have been provided. You may also wish to create an account, but that is not required to participate in a Zoom meeting.

Monday, January 13, 2025 SFBAJGS Presentation ZOOM Free and everyone interested is welcome. Time and Place: 4:00 pm until 5:30 pm, Pacific Time At Your Home Topic: Avoiding Fallacies in Family History: A Key to Research Success Speaker: Jean Wilcox Hibben Some familiar with the fallacies of argumentation will recognize these; for others, this will provide names for the errors they have encountered but haven’t labeled.  Whether in the evidence or the source, fallacies infiltrate genealogical problem-solving, taking us off-track.  Understanding the difference between induction and deduction will start the unlocking of family truths. Jean Wilcox Hibben has been involved in family research for more than 40 years and has traced her origins to Germany, the Czech Republic, Denmark, the Netherlands, England, and France.  She was a Board-Certified Genealogist for 10 years (2006–2016) and elected not to renew.  She is the 1st vice-president and Webmaster of the Corona (California) Genealogical Society, where she served a number of years as president.  She has been on the board of the Genealogical Speakers Guild and the Association of Professional Genealogists.  She belongs to the Aurantia Chapter, Daughters of the American Revolution in Riverside County, California; the National Genealogical Society; and the Jefferson County New York Genealogical Society, where she maintains the quarterly column “Ask Aunty Jeff” in their newsletter, The Informer. Register for this meeting. After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the meeting. You do not have to have a Zoom account to attend a Zoom meeting. You will be prompted to download the software, once you have clicked on the link that you have been provided. You may also wish to create an account, but that is not required to participate in a Zoom meeting.

Sunday, Febuary 2, 2025 SFBAJGS Presentation ZOOM Free and everyone interested is welcome. Time and Place: 1:00 pm until 2:30 pm, Pacific Time At Your Home Topic: The Julian Calendar and Its Importance to Genealogists Speaker: Dr. Stephen Morse The Julian calendar is important to historians because it was used worldwide for more than 16 centuries, and in various parts of the world for another three centuries after that. It's important to genealogists because it was used to record events in many countries as recently as the early 1900s. Converting from Julian-calendar dates to our current Gregorian-calendar dates appears to be straightforward. But a deeper look shows the subtle issues involved, such as double-dating, undetermined year starts, and birthdates that change over time. This talk presents the Julian calendar by first giving a historic perspective of the Roman calendars from which it was derived. It then explains the workings of the Julian calendar and the reforms that were made to convert it to the more accurate Gregorian calendar. It describes the implications of these reforms and problems that they can cause for genealogists and historians. Stephen P. Morse is the creator of the One-Step Website, for which he has received both the Lifetime Achievement Award and the Outstanding Contribution Award from IAJGS, the Award of Merit from the National Genealogical Society, the first ever Excellence Award from the Association of Professional Genealogists, and two awards that he cannot pronounce from Polish genealogical societies. In his other life Morse is a computer professional with a doctorate degree in electrical engineering. He has held various research, development, and teaching positions, authored numerous technical papers, and written four textbooks and holds four patents. Register for this meeting. After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the meeting. You do not have to have a Zoom account to attend a Zoom meeting. You will be prompted to download the software, once you have clicked on the link that you have been provided. You may also wish to create an account, but that is not required to participate in a Zoom meeting.

Monday, March 10, 2025 SFBAJGS Presentation ZOOM Free and everyone interested is welcome. Time and Place: 5:00 pm until 6:30 pm, Pacific Time At Your Home Topic: Jewish Fraternal Organizations of the Early 20th Century Speaker: Hal Bookbinder Our ancestors created a wide variety of organizations to provide mutual support, from religious to social, educational, insurance, and burial services. “Landsmanshaftn” brought together individuals who originated from the same town or area. Other Jewish fraternal organizations were organized into local lodges and paralleled the pomp and secrecy of Masonry, Pythians, and Odd Fellows. These organizations provided both a safety net and social opportunities to lead and to be recognized. Hundreds of thousands of our immigrant ancestors participated during the heyday of these organizations in the first half of the 20th century. Understanding these organizations provides important insights into the lives of our ancestors. Hal Bookbinder is a retired information systems professional and university instructor. He has been actively researching his genealogy for more than three decades, identifying more than 4,000 relatives and tracing two lines to the mid-1700s in modern Ukraine. He is a past president of the Jewish Genealogical Society of Los Angeles and of the International Association of Jewish Genealogical Societies. Hal publishes a series of monthly articles on safe computing which are freely available at https://www.tinyurl.com/SafeComputingArticles. He and his wife, Marci, were raised in the Catskills of New York State, in the famed “Borsht Belt.” After Hal attended New York University and served a four-year stint in the U.S. Air Force, they have lived in the Los Angeles area. In 2018, he made a journey to Ukraine, visiting various areas of the former Volhynia and Podolia in which his family lived for hundreds of years. Register for this meeting. After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the meeting. You do not have to have a Zoom account to attend a Zoom meeting. You will be prompted to download the software, once you have clicked on the link that you have been provided. You may also wish to create an account, but that is not required to participate in a Zoom meeting.

Wednesday, March 13, 2025 SFBAJGS Presentation ZOOM and LIVE at Oakland Family History Center (hybrid) Free and everyone interested is welcome. Time and Place: 11:00 am until ??, Pacific Time At Your Home AND LIVE at Oakland Family History Center Topic: MyHeritage Advanced Features and Technologies Speaker: Daniel Horowitz Check out the latest MyHeritage innovations to expand your research! Explore advanced features that will enhance your family tree and make the most of your DNA results. Learn more about Pedigree View, PedigreeMap™, the Consistency Checker, the Theory of Family Relativity™, AutoClusters, and much more. Dedicated to genealogy since 1986, Daniel Horowitz was the teacher and the study guide editor of the family history project "Searching for My Roots" in Venezuela for 15 years. He is involved in several crowdsource digitization and transcription projects and holds a board-level position at the Israel Genealogy Research Association (IGRA). Since 2006 Daniel has worked at MyHeritage, liaising with genealogy societies, bloggers, and media as well as lecturing and attending conferences around the world. We are pleased to welcome Daniel, but it should be noted that SFBAJGS is not endorsing MyHeritage over any other product or service. Register for this meeting. After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the meeting. You do not have to have a Zoom account to attend a Zoom meeting. You will be prompted to download the software, once you have clicked on the link that you have been provided. You may also wish to create an account, but that is not required to participate in a Zoom meeting.

Sunday, April 6, 2025 SFBAJGS Presentation ZOOM Free and everyone interested is welcome. Time and Place: 1:00 pm until 2:30 pm, Pacific Time At Your Home Topic: Oral History:  Interviewing Family Members Speaker: Basya Petnick awaiting details Register for this meeting. After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the meeting. You do not have to have a Zoom account to attend a Zoom meeting. You will be prompted to download the software, once you have clicked on the link that you have been provided. You may also wish to create an account, but that is not required to participate in a Zoom meeting.

Monday, May 5, 2025 SFBAJGS Presentation ZOOM Free and everyone interested is welcome. Time and Place: 4:00 pm until 5:30 pm, Pacific Time At Your Home Topic: Using Archives to Fill the Gaps in Your Ancestor’s Timeline Speaker: Melissa Barker Do you have gaps of missing information in your ancestor’s timeline?  Using archives and the records they hold can fill in those gaps.  Learn about unique records that are found in archives that will help tell your ancestor’s story and add information to your ancestor’s timeline. Melissa Barker is a Certified Archives Manager and Public Historian currently working at the Houston County, Tennessee Archives & Museum.  She is known as The Archive Lady in the genealogy community.  She writes a popular blog titled A Genealogist in the Archives.  She has been a professional genealogist for the past 19 years with expertise in Tennessee records.  She has been researching her own family history for the past 34 years. Register for this meeting. After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the meeting. You do not have to have a Zoom account to attend a Zoom meeting. You will be prompted to download the software, once you have clicked on the link that you have been provided. You may also wish to create an account, but that is not required to participate in a Zoom meeting.

Sunday, June 22, 2025 SFBAJGS Presentation ZOOM Free and everyone interested is welcome. Time and Place: 1:00 pm until 2:30 pm, Pacific Time At Your Home Topic: Canadian Resources for Jewish Genealogy Speaker: Gary Perlman The JGS-Montreal.org Genealogy Dashboard was created to assist searching the most commonly used resources for Jewish genealogy in Montreal.  It started as a list of resources and is now a tool that lets researchers explore more than 50 databases with one click per database.  This presentation will include a demonstration of the dashboard and in so doing will introduce many resources from Canadian Jewish genealogy. Gary Perlman is the JGS Montreal Webmaster and chair of its cemetery committee.  He has taken more than 100,000 photographs of gravestones and has helped index about 80,000 records for JOWBR, the JewishGen.org burial registry.  He was the 2020 IAJGS volunteer of the year. Register for this meeting. After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the meeting. You do not have to have a Zoom account to attend a Zoom meeting. You will be prompted to download the software, once you have clicked on the link that you have been provided. You may also wish to create an account, but that is not required to participate in a Zoom meeting.

July TBA

Sunday, August 24, 2025 SFBAJGS Presentation ZOOM Free and everyone interested is welcome. Time and Place: 1:00 pm until 2:30 pm, Pacific Time At Your Home Topic: How I Met My Singers: A Successful Example of Genealogy Research Speaker: Daniel Horowitz An ongoing research project for 30+ years, Daniel’s tree covers four continents and a dozen countries; with new discoveries every year.  His most successful branch jump starts with a legacy to be verified.  Learn the tools and techniques that will help you break through on your research and reconnect with long-lost relatives. Dedicated to genealogy since 1986, Daniel Horowitz was the teacher and the study guide editor of the family history project "Searching for My Roots" in Venezuela for 15 years.  He is involved in several crowdsource digitization and transcription projects and holds a board-level position at the Israel Genealogy Research Association (IGRA).  Since 2006 Daniel has worked at MyHeritage, liaising with genealogy societies, bloggers, and media as well as lecturing and attending conferences around the world. We are pleased to welcome Daniel, but it should be noted that SFBAJGS is not endorsing MyHeritage over any other product or service. Register for this meeting. After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the meeting. You do not have to have a Zoom account to attend a Zoom meeting. You will be prompted to download the software, once you have clicked on the link that you have been provided. You may also wish to create an account, but that is not required to participate in a Zoom meeting.

September TBA

Sunday, October 19, 2025 SFBAJGS Presentation ZOOM Free and everyone interested is welcome. Time and Place: 1:00 pm until 2:30 pm, Pacific Time At Your Home Topic: How to Research Your Jewish Ancestors in the UK Speaker: Jeanette R. Rosenberg OBE This is an introductory talk about researching Jewish genealogy in the UK.  The talk covers immigration to the UK and all the major records sources, from vital records and census through to other records available.  Some of the records are specifically Jewish sources and others are not.  The talk covers England and Wales, as well as Scottish and Irish records. Jeanette R. Rosenberg OBE is a professional genealogist and member of the UK Association of Genealogists and Researchers in Archives.  She holds a Postgraduate Diploma in Genealogical Studies from Strathclyde University.  A popular and knowledgeable Jewish/general genealogy speaker around the UK and abroad, Jeanette regularly researches at German archives and participates in local history seminars.  Jeanette leads for the Jewish Genealogical Society of Great Britain (JGSGB) on education/mentoring, exhibitions, outreach, and social media and chairs JGSGB’s German SIG.  A JewishGen GerSIG Director from 2009–2019, Jeanette previously led on GerSIG’s IAJGS conference arrangements. She is the genealogy representative on the ITS Oversight Committee, strategically managing Britain’s copy of the ITS Arolsen Archive. Register for this meeting. After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the meeting. You do not have to have a Zoom account to attend a Zoom meeting. You will be prompted to download the software, once you have clicked on the link that you have been provided. You may also wish to create an account, but that is not required to participate in a Zoom meeting.

Monday, November 17, 2025 SFBAJGS Presentation ZOOM Free and everyone interested is welcome. Time and Place: 4:00 pm until 5:30 pm, Pacific Time At Your Home Topic: Uncovering Heritage through the Periodical Source Index (PERSI) Speaker: Allison DePrey Singleton The Periodical Source Index (PERSI) is a valuable index of genealogy and local history articles from global newsletters and periodicals, offering unique resources for Jewish genealogy such as synagogue records, community histories, and ancestor charts.  Allison Singleton will guide you in locating PERSI, optimizing searches, and accessing article copies—an essential session for uncovering Jewish heritage through periodical research. Allison DePrey Singleton, MA, MLS, serves as both the Genealogy Services Manager at the Genealogy Center of the Allen County Public Library in Fort Wayne, Indiana and the President of the Indiana Genealogical Society.  As Genealogy Services Manager, she provides research consultations, leads the Center's programming efforts, oversees family history Webinars and educational initiatives, and manages a dedicated team of shelvers.  Allison has been a featured speaker at prestigious events such as the 2024 and 2020 RootsTech Conference, the 2022 and 2021 RootsTech Connect Conferences, the 2020 Indiana Library Federation Virtual Annual Conference, the 2018 Indiana Genealogical Society Conference, and numerous other conferences and seminars across the country.  In addition, she played a crucial role as Co-Chair of the 2018 Federation of Genealogical Societies Conference. Register for this meeting. After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the meeting. You do not have to have a Zoom account to attend a Zoom meeting. You will be prompted to download the software, once you have clicked on the link that you have been provided. You may also wish to create an account, but that is not required to participate in a Zoom meeting.

December TBA

Que sera sera

 

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