Maine Genealogical Society

President- Peter M. Smith is the current  President and a former Director of M.G.S.  He is an avid genealogist, researcher and submitter for the Maine 1790 Families series and the host of the Central Maine D.I.G. (DNA Interest Group) in Winslow, Maine.  He is a member of the Mayflower Society and Corinna, Maine Historical Society.   He works full-time as the Assistant Store Manager at Shaws Supermarket in Lewiston, Maine.

His interest in genealogy began when he was 14, on a trip to a family Cemetery in Corinna, Maine with his father and started asking who were the various people buried in the lot and how they were related to him.  This led to a meeting with his great-aunt who told him family stories of his ancestors, got him started in tracing all lines of his family.  His passion for DNA began in 2016 after DNA testing revealed that his maternal grandfather was actually a neighbor to his grandparents and so began a journey to find his new relatives and ancestors and share his story of discovery with others.

Peter lives in South Gardiner, Maine, but his roots are mostly in Penobscot and Piscataquis Counties and most of his family ancestors were early New England settlers and pioneers.

Recording Secretary – Pam Beveridge. It’s so rewarding to be associated with the Maine Genealogical Society and work with volunteers I admire for their contributions to genealogy and cemetery preservation.   Fellowship, fun, and accomplishment – does a body good!

As a member of Maine Old Cemetery Association, Penobscot County Genealogical Society, Taconnett Falls Genealogy Library and Washington County Historical & Genealogical Society, I’ve seen the power of volunteerism firsthand.  Visit the Library at Winslow or the new Heritage Center at Machias, or any formerly forlorn cemetery after a MOCA workshop, and you’ll see for yourself.

My interest in family history started when I spent childhood summers with my grandparents and went with them on their rounds to visit (i.e. check in on) older relatives in Downeast Maine and New Brunswick.  Oh, the stories!   I’m especially interested in people and families who once thought nothing of moving back and forth across a blurry border.

Another interest is bringing to heirlooms to light: i.e. letters, diaries, documents, Bibles, autograph albums, and photographs, particularly of hardscrabble folks who might otherwise have left little record.  Toward that end, I’ve been featuring items collected over many years on my blog “Heirlooms Reunited.”

Directors

Director – Lynne Holland is originally from the midwest but has called Maine home for over 25 years. She is a member of both the Great Portland and Pejepscot Chapters of the Maine Genealogical Society as well as the original Maine DIG.  Through the years Lynne has proven to be a serial volunteer by helping out in the genealogy rooms at the Cape Elizabeth Family History Center as well as the Curtis Memorial Library in Brunswick.  She specializes in Southern Italian, Mid-Western, Chicago and Early New England resources but has done research in other areas as well. Her start in genealogy began in 1996 in Massachusetts when she realized that their family had just moved to within blocks of where her husband’s ancestors landed in 1635. Nearly 10,000 relatives later she hasn’t stopped yet.

Director – Helen A. Shaw, CG® is a past president of MGS, serving in that office for five years. She is legislative liaison for the Maine Old Cemetery Association and Maine’s liaison to the Records Preservation and Access Committee.

Helen has been doing family history for over 40 years and is the keeper of her family’s documents and artifacts. She holds degrees in anthropology from Ohio State University and the University of Michigan. As an anthropologist, her approach to genealogy is that of a community-wide study. Her particular areas of genealogical interest and expertise include the federal census, Ohio, New York, and West Virginia.

Helen is married to Maine native William “Bill” Chapman; they have two sons. Since retiring to Maine Helen has become active in legislative issues concerning vital records access and cemetery preservation and access for family members. She also compiled an inventory of the records vault at the Lincoln County Courthouse where she was delighted to find original federal population and non-population censuses for most Lincoln County towns for 1850-1870.
Her term expires December 31, 2020.

Director – Marlene Groves, a member of the Maine Genealogical Society since 1976, has served as a Director at various times and has edited the MGS Newsletter since 1995. From 1992 until 2016 Marlene worked for Picton Press, a genealogical and historical book publishing company. While at Picton, she began transcribing vital records of Maine towns as MGS Special Publications. She has completed vital records for several towns in Knox, Kennebec, Somerset, Lincoln, and Sagadahoc counties.

She first became interested in genealogy while still in high school after hearing her grandmother say that her own grandfather had been in the Civil War and was buried down south. She has published three books on her ancestral families of Clark, Hinckley, and Malbon, and also published a book on her “adopted” Oliver family from the Georgetown/Phippsburg region. Prior to this change of career, she worked for law firms in Bath as a legal secretary, and in Rockland as a bookkeeper.

Director/Corresponding Secretary  – Charlene Fox Clemons grew up in Ellsworth, Maine and spent many happy hours as a young child exploring cemeteries with her aunt.  In 1992 she joined the staff of the Ellsworth Public Library and became the staff genealogist and three years later Assistant Director of the library.  During her 20 year career, she had the privilege of creating the Alvin S. Whitmore Memorial Collection for Genealogy and Local History.  After retiring in 2012, Charlene began work as the volunteer curator of the Lois C. Johnson Historical Museum of the Hancock (ME) Historical Society.  In 2015 the Ellsworth Public Library Board of Trustees asked Charlene to return to the library, where she continues to work three days a week as the staff genealogist.  Charlene is a member of Maine Genealogical Society, the Hancock County Genealogical Society, Washington County Historical and Genealogical Society, Hancock Historical Society, Maine Old Cemetery Association and on the Board of the Woodbine Cemetery Association in Ellsworth.  She is also the facilitator of the Eastern Maine DIG in Ellsworth.  She lives in Hancock with her dog and three cats, all rescues.  She has three sons all of whom tolerate her ramblings about the newest “dead person” find! Her term ends December 31, 2021.

Director – Jesse Casas

Jesse’s genealogy interests are varied and world-wide, ranging from his Kansan mother’s Welsh ancestry, his father’s adoptive parents’ Spanish and American ancestry, his father’s birth parents’ Mississippi and Montana ancestry, his wife’s Maine and New England roots, local town and county families, and everything in between.

Appointed

Membership Secretary – Deborah Nowers received her BA degree from Skidmore College, an M.Ed. from Boston University and an Ed.D. from the University of Massachusetts.  She served as a special education administrator for 20 years before retiring in 2006.  She moved to Maine in 2014 and retired from her post-retirement college teaching gigs.  Being afraid she would be bored, she volunteered to be the MGS Membership Secretary, having no idea there were 900 members!

Her interest in genealogy began during her college years when she inherited a silver spoon that had passed to her as the seventh generation of youngest daughters.  She and her mother set out to discover the identities of those women.  She has been researching ever since.  Having just about exhausted work on her own family, the move to Maine opened a new avenue to research her husband’s Waldo County ancestors. She has published articles in The Essex Genealogist, The NEHG Register, American Ancestors, Mayflower Descendant and The Maine Genealogist.  

Publications Chair – Joseph Crook Anderson II, FASG, received his B.A. degree in Spanish from Middlebury College in 1975 and his M.B.A. degree in Finance from New York University in 1978. He worked for Texas Instruments for thirty-seven years before retiring in 2014, managing the investments of the company’s worldwide retirement plans.

His love for genealogy stems from summer evenings spent sitting on his parents’ outdoor patio listening to his grandparents reminisce about the family. Since 1994, he has been the editor of The Maine Genealogist and editor of the Maine Genealogical Society’s focal Maine Families in 1790 project. Since 2000, he has been a coeditor of The American Genealogist and in 2017 was named a Consulting Editor of Vermont Genealogy.

Joe has authored or edited eighteen books on various genealogical subjects and contributed numerous articles to genealogical journals. His genealogical research and publications have been focused mainly on Maine, New England, and New York. In 2000 he was appointed a Fellow of the American Society of Genealogists (FASG).

Publications Sales Manager –  Roland Rhoades is an almost retired Fuller Brush distributor in Gorham Maine. Since I was working at home shipping products around the country, I volunteered to store and ship the MGS publications in 2012.

I was born in Farmingdale, Maine, with family roots in that area, Belfast area, and the Dover-Dexter-Cambridge area. After asking my parents and grandparents family questions, I started researching my family tree in 1980, staying a week at a time with my grandparents who lived near the Maine State Archives.

I have been an officer in the French Family Assn, National Assn of Leavitt Families, Strafford County chapter – NH Society of Genealogists, York County Genealogical Society, MGS Greater Portland chapter, and still wear multiple hats, especially as Leavitt Genealogist trying to sort and compile all the Leavitt families. I have been compiling every-name genealogies for many of my families since the 1980s, mainly for finding new cousins and documenting my ancestors on my RolandRhoades.com website. I am also deeply involved in DNA research and have infected many of my cousins with the genealogy bug.

Program Chair – Emily A. Schroeder was born in Augusta, Maine in the mid-1950’s, the only child of Donald C. and Marion (Miller) Herrick. Old-timers may remember the family grocery on the corner of Green and South Chestnut Streets in the capital city.

Marion’s father passed away when Emily was 5, and the decision was made to move to Thomaston and claim the home place. The “formative years” were spent there, thankfully outside the walls of the state’s penitentiary.

Emily left this idyllic setting to attend college at the University of Southern Maine (known then as the University of Maine at Portland-Gorham, or POGO), and managed to get a B.A. in Geography/Anthropology in 1978. She returned to Augusta to work, and spent the last 37 years at Maine State Library in various positions. In 1988, she earned a Master of Library and Information Studies degree from the University of Rhode Island. A co-worker retired in 2007, and she added genealogy to her job duties. Emily is a new retiree!

In addition to MGS, Emily is a board member of Kennebec Historical Society, and Secretary from 2003 to the present. She is also a Program Committee member.  She lives in South China with her wonderful cats Mindy and Binford.