Deb Freedman is retired from twenty years with the Tacoma Public Library, where she learned to enjoy doing research and storytelling. Those skills have helped her in her second career as a volunteer, researcher, writer and presenter.

An award-winning teacher and author, Deb has created two titles in Tacoma Historical Society’s series of 21 Tales books for elementary students.

In 2015, Deb received the prestigious “City of Destiny Award” from the City of Tacoma in recognition of her work as a volunteer for Tacoma Historical Society during its transition to a new facility.

Deb lives in Gig Harbor, Washington.

See her website about Tacoma Jewish residents at http://www.drygoodsandwetgoods.com/

“Something from Nothing: Methodology for Researching and Publishing Local Jewish History from Scratch” (Fri-106), 10:00-11:15 A.M.

Deb Freedman’s special interest is researching Tacoma’s previously-undocumented Jewish community of the nineteenth century. (In fact, she can claim to be the world’s leading expert on the subject, since she’s likely the only one.)

Deb will share the methodology she has used over the past 25 years to compile over 1200 pages of raw data. She will share techniques for doing original research from sources such as city directories and cemeteries, and demonstrate why community newspapers can yield a treasure-trove of information about local Jewish history.

Deb is the author of Tacoma Historical Society’s upcoming 2016 book entitled “Tacoma’s Dry Goods and Wet Goods,” and the curator of the Society’s exhibit of the same name. (Exhibit runs July 26 through November 26, 2016 at the Tacoma Historical Society’s museum, 919 Pacific Avenue in Tacoma, in conjunction with the centennial of Prohibition in Washington State.)

Category: Beginning genealogists

Topics: Jewish history and culture, Tacoma, Jews of the Western United States