The Monmouth County Genealogy Society will welcome Melissa Johnson as the organization’s first speaker of 2019.
Johnson will speak on “Sources and Strategies for Discovering Immigrant Origins” at 1:30 p.m. on Jan. 13. The free seminar will take place at the Community Center in Eatontown, 72 Broad Street.
Johnson’s talk will cover immigration, naturalization, and alien records, as well as other records set covering a full range of time periods, according to a press release.
“I’ll be teaching about a variety of sources that can identify an immigrant’s specific place of origin, but will also focus on strategies that can be helpful when that key document doesn’t exist or can’t be found,” Johnson said.
She continued, saying, “We’ll talk about how to use DNA, how to use a network of friends, neighbors and associates, and how to correlate evidence from different pieces of information to identify origins when no document exists that specifically names a place of origin.”
Johnson will speak on USCIS (United States Citizenship and Immigration Service) records and discuss how an individual could obtain these documents.
She will also discuss DNA techniques that could help identify an individual’s ancestors’ origins overseas.