The Jewish Genealogical Society of Oregon is pleased to present Handwriting Analysis for Genealogists by Ron Arons
Description: This presentation will cover both document examination and graphology. The former is the more accepted discipline of comparing questioned samples with known handwriting samples. For decades courts have allowed document analysis as evidence in probate cases, etc. Graphology is the more questionable “art” of trying to determine personality characteristics and behavior based on the analysis of signatures and handwriting in general. Although a “soft science” graphology has some merit. Examples of both how document examination and graphology can be used in genealogical research will be provided. Also, various software packages and books that can help understand these two topics will be discussed.
Bio: Ron has presented at 12 of the past 15 IAJGS conferences on a wide variety of subjects and has also been behind the scenes at 3 IAJGS conferences to help produce “Game Show Night/Jewish Genealogy Jeopardy”. Ron has traced his roots to Lithuania, Poland, Romania, England, Belarus, and the Ukraine. In 2006 Ron appeared on the PBS TV series The Jewish Americans. He has published three books including The Jews of Sing Sing and, most recently, Mind Maps for Genealogy. Ron earned a B.S. in Engineering from Princeton and an MBA from the Univ. of Chicago.
The Jewish Genealogical Society of Oregon invites you, your family and friends to its upcoming program on two topics – Ellis Island Name Change Myth & “Finding “Waldo” At Ellis Island presented by Joel Weintraub
Ellis Island Name Change Myth
The idea that inspectors at Ellis Island regularly Americanized immigrant names is a persistent myth. We will investigate the evidence that should exist (it doesn’t) to confirm the story as fact, and why name changing at the station was improbable given how immigrants were processed. The history of this immigration station, the types of people who passed through their doors, the legal documents (including their name) they came with, and station detention documents generated for about 1/6 of them, will be discussed with actual examples. Note: be prepared to avoid deportation by Inspector Weintraub.
Finding “Waldo” At Ellis Island
Using a case study, we will show how nine different strategies can be used to find the immigration record of an elusive immigrant to Ellis Island. For those who still cannot locate Ellis Island immigration records of their ancestors, this talk may provide some approaches you might not have tried. The difficulty of providing accurate indexes from transcriptions of ship manifests is a major problem associated with many of these strategies. We will see how well you do as a transcriber of manifest names.
Bio: Joel, a New Yorker by birth, is an emeritus Professor at California State University Fullerton and won awards for his science teaching. He volunteered for nine years at the National Archives and Records Administration. Joel created search tools for the U.S. and New York City censuses that are freely available on the Steve Morse “One-Step” website. He and Steve are currently developing locational tools for the 2022 release of the 1950 federal census. Joel has written and talked on NYC and Federal census research, immigration and naturalization, Ellis Island, biographical research, and Jewish genealogy topics.
The Jewish Genealogical Society of Oregon invites you, your family and friends to its upcoming program “Read All About It!: Using Online Newspapers For Genealogical Research” by Janice M. Sellers
Description: Newspapers are valuable in genealogical research because you can find information about births, marriages, deaths, moves, business, naturalizations, court cases, and more. Millions of pages of the world’s newspapers are now accessible online, but there is no one place to find them all. This class provides an overview of what is available online and techniques to help improve your chances of finding information about your relatives.
Bio: Janice M. Sellers is a professional genealogist specializing in Jewish, black, forensic, and newspaper research. She edits three genealogy publications and serves on the boards of San Francisco Bay Area Jewish Genealogical Society, African American Genealogical Society of Northern California, and Council for the Advancement of Forensic Genealogy. She is also a member of Association of Professional Genealogists, Genealogical Speakers Guild, and California Genealogical Society. Before becoming a professional genealogist, she worked in publishing for many years as an editor, indexer, translator, and compositor. Her web site is ancestraldiscoveries.com.