Martin Fischer, vice president-publicity of JGS of Illinois, is a member of the Association of Professional Genealogists, International Society of Family History Writers and Editors, and St. Louis Genealogical Society. He has been doing genealogy since the 1970s and has an extensive family history website.

Fischer has written for Avotaynu, APG Quarterly, St. Louis Genealogical Society Quarterly, and Chicago Tribune. He is a part-time copy editor at the Chicago Tribune, an adjunct instructor at the City Colleges of Chicago, and an associate faculty member at the University of Phoenix. He teaches social science and introductory college writing courses.

“Finding Living Relatives: Techniques for Discovering Unknown Mishpocheh” (Weds-116), 12:30-1:15 P.M.

Martin Fischer will share tips and how-to information about researching, finding and contacting previously unknown living cousins and other relatives. His presentation will include anecdotes about his own discoveries of relatives whom he had never heard of before.

He will discuss death notices/obituaries; cemeteries, funeral homes and monument companies; census records; synagogues; Yad Vashem Pages of Testimony; JewishGen’s Family Finder and Family Tree of the Jewish People; how to find contact information for living people; and how to contact complete strangers who just happen to be related to you.

With today’s increasingly online world, creating a Web presence has become an important tool to enable previously unknown relatives to find you. Several options for developing a Web presence with be explained.

Category: Beginning genealogists

Topics: Cemetery research, Holocaust research, Repositories, Technology in support of genealogical research