Officers 2019
MGS Board of Directors 2019
Officers
Peter Smith
Vice President – B.J. Jamieson is the Maine State Library’s genealogy reference expert and currently serving as M.G.S. Vice President. (photo and more info to come)
Terry A. Gerald
Directors
Cindy Spaulding
Lynne Holland
Lynne was born and raised in suburban Chicago and is a graduate of Elmhurst College with a degree in Business Administration. She worked for over 30 years in various phases of horticultural marketing including procurement and sales in the mass market floral area in the Midwest, South and New England. Currently, Lynne is a Community Education Assistant and Volunteer Coordinator for the UMaine Cooperative Extension Master Gardener Volunteer program. She serves on various volunteer boards with a focus on Food Security for all. Lynne lives in Brunswick with her husband Ward and daughter Carolyn. eMail
Her term expires December 31, 2019.
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. eMail
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.
In her leisure time, Marlene transcribes images from early church records for the Congregational Library Archives in Boston. She has served on various Councils at her local church and is a member of its hand-bell choir and prayer shawl group. During the warmer months, she enjoys gardening, nature and taking morning walks. eMail
Her term expires December 31, 2020.
Director – Ralph Harris is the President of Hancock County Genealogical Society for 2018. He is also a member of 4 Maine Genealogical Societies; Penobscot County Genealogical Society, Taconnett Falls Genealogical, Lee County Genealogical Society in Florida and the Utah Genealogical Society. He is a lifetime member of Carmel Historical Society and has digitized Carmel Town Reports from 1884 to 2017 and other documents dating back to early 1800’s. He retired in 2008, and currently lives between Fort Myer, Fla. and Carmel, Me. He started doing family genealogy and history about 2006, on Harris, Damon, Patten and McGown families, with James Patten one of Hermon’s early settlers. Most of the genealogical and historical questions that come into the Carmel Town Office are transferred to me for research. eMail His term ends December 31, 2021.
Director – 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.
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. eMail
Corresponding Secretary – Theresa Davis was born in St Louis, MO and moved to Maine in 1972. Maine is where her parents were from. She has a bachelor’s degree in nursing and was an Emergency Room and Critical Care Nurse for over 30 years. Her interest in genealogy began when her mother started compiling the family tree for both sides of my family. She helped her get everything put into the computer, so she could print books on the Caron/ Lebel and Brooks/Belyea Families. She began inputting the information on ancestry several years ago and found some errors in what her mother had found. She loves the hunt of being able to find out who her ancestors are and where they were born, lived, died and are buried. She also enjoys helping others whenever possible with their research. Her greatest finds were discovering my great-grandparents’ graves, the 2 axes forged by our ancestors in 1719 at the Acadian Village and discovering a half-sister to her husband’s father that had been looking for him for some time.
Newsletter Editor & Archivist – Debbie Roberge recently moved to Old Town, Maine from Waterville a year ago where she was a member of the Taconnett Falls chapter. Some members may remember her as the editor of the Maine newsletter called “The Pine Cone and Tassel” which she published during the years 2003 through 2007. She has also worked on many workshops and conferences with MGS over the years; she served on the Board of Directors and was the Research and Inquiry Secretary as well.
Her interest in genealogy began in the 1970s when a family story led her on the detective trail to find out whether it was true or not. It wasn’t 100% true, it had been embellished over the years but that was all it took to get her hooked. Currently a member and newsletter editor for the Penobscot County chapter and chapter representative for the new MGS chapter of Washington County. She volunteers at the Franco Centre at the University of Maine and takes classes through Penobscot County Senior College through the Eastern Area Agency on Aging. As she says you can never stop learning!
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). eMail
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. eMail
Brian Bouchard
Emily Schroeder