Maine Genealogical Society

MGS 2023 Fall Workshop and Annual Meeting

Save the Date!

MGS is happy to announce that this year’s conference will be held on Saturday, September 30^th, at Jeff’s Catering, 15 Littlefield Way in Brewer! The theme is “Sharing Your Family Story”. We’re sure you’ll enjoy the day, with 3 interesting speakers scheduled so far.

The keynote will be Lisa Gorrell, winging her way to Maine from California. Here’s what she says about herself: Lisa S. Gorrell, a certified genealogist, has been seriously researching her father’s German and Irish ancestry, her mother’s southern U.S. ancestry, and her husband’s English, German, and Swedish ancestry. She is a founding member of the Applied Genealogy Institute where she teaches. She volunteers at the Contra Costa County Historical Society’s archives at the History Center in Martinez. She enjoys giving genealogy presentations and writing about her family on two blogs: “Mam-ma’s Southern Family” http://mam-massouthernfamily.blogspot.com/ and “My Trails Into the Past” http://mytrailsintothepast.blogspot.com . Her keynote is entitled “How I Hope to Leave My Genealogy to My Heirs”. In the afternoon she will offer two breakout sessions, “Writing Your Family History” and “Using Research Plans”.

The second presentation of the day will be given by David Slagger, and is called “Knowing Your Tribal Roots”. Mr. Slagger holds a bachelor’s degree in Maine History from the University of Maine at Orono, and a double master’s in Maine History (thesis on the Maine Indian Land Claims), and Global Policy and International Affairs. He was the first Maliseet Tribal Representative in the 125^th Maine legislature. He has worked for the Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian and Aboriginal Affairs Canada, as a tribal liaison. He currently teaches Native American Studies at the Maine Cooperative Extension in Dover-Foxcroft. He is a member of Woodstock First Nation Canada and the Houlton Band of Maliseet Indians. He’s working on his Ph.D. as well!

Also on tap for breakout sessions will be Adam Fisher and Dawn Thistle. Adam is director of collections development and digital initiatives for the Maine State Library and he will talk about efforts to expand access to genealogy resources through newspaper digitization and scanning of sources pertaining to Maine local history. He will provide information on how to search and access these collections and discuss some new projects that the library is working on.

Dawn Thistle is the director of Gardiner Public Library. She continues to oversee the Special Collections area and fields reference, local history and genealogy inquiries for the GPL Community Archives Room, which she has done since 2012. Dawn is passionate about serving the information needs of those seeking such answers. The title of her talk is: “Navigating Digitized Newspapers and How to Unfold the Stories They Might Tell”.

Please plan on joining us in September for an exciting day!

Click here for information and registration

You can find out more about membership on our Membership webpage.