Martha Benschura – Enemy Alien

This class will briefly explain the different types of DNA (autosomal, Y-DNA and mtDNA) and provide helpful tips for analyzing your DNA matches to identify your strongest matches to help you go back to your immigrant ancestor. A few examples of using this approach will be shown through mini case studies.

We will examine the migration patterns from Scotland to the US and Canada, looking at the push and pull factors, relevant to individual migration time periods. References and guidance will be provided for multiple waves from 17th Century to the present.

Whether you’re missing a naturalization record or finding an unexpected one, this session helps you discover how female ancestors — both foreign-born and birthright — gained, lost, or regained citizenship in the United States between 1790 and 1945. US citizenship and attendant rights for women could be fragile, depending on marital status, prevailing laws, social norms, and other shifting factors. Examples of US naturalization and citizenship records, and search strategies for finding these records are featured in this presentation.

Regular sailing schedules between Liverpool and North America began in 1818, and during the 19th century Liverpool became the primary port for emigrants from the British Isles, northern Europe and Russia to North America, Australia, and the rest of the British Empire. Learn how and why this came about, understand what the experience was like going to, in, and leaving from Liverpool. Learn how to identify, access, and use the records of the port and shipping that are available.

Many factors pushed or pulled our European immigrant ancestors to come to the New World. Follow in the footsteps of those who arrived between 1820 and 1920. What did our ancestors experience when they decided to leave their homes and communities to sail to America? What was the voyage like? How did they settle into their new homes? Then discover essential and unusual resources for migration research for all US and Canadian ports in this presentation.

Did your Mexican ancestors immigrate to the United States in the 20th century? This period of history witnessed significant waves of Mexican immigration to the U.S., both permanent and temporary. The types of immigration records introduced or refined during this era, provide a wealth of information.

Family historians face significant challenges tracing immigrant ancestors. Changes in language, culture, family composition, given name, surname, country of residence, and occupation tend to obscure the origins of many immigrants. This presentation introduces seven methodologies to effectively trace immigrant origins, illustrated with examples from the early 1600s to the early...

While people who have heard about Angel Island might know about the Chinese poetry carved on its walls, what is less known is that over half a million immigrants from eighty countries were processed by officials on the island, and genealogical resources are still available to researchers. There were generally…

20th-century immigrants to the west arrived by ship through Washington, Oregon, California, and Hawaii, and overland through Canada and Mexico. Vast numbers of these immigrants were Asian. This lecture will examine the ports of entry, the records generated, and the laws which impacted those immigrants.