The Santa Barbara County Genealogical Society will hold its monthly general meeting from 9:30 a.m. to noon Saturday, Sept. 27 at First Presbyterian Church, 21 E. Constance St. (Note this is a deviation from the usual third Saturday schedule.)
This month’s featured speaker, Ted Gostin, will speak on the topic of “brick walls,” that is, a research problem that just can’t seem to be solved. His lecture reviews three cases studies where brick walls were successfully overcome, and from those experiences draws out a series of research strategies that might be applied to other difficult-to-solve problems.
The three case studies involved trying to determine the parents of an early, post revolutionary American ancestor in New York state (Metcalf); trying to determine Juaneño Indian ancestry (from Mission San Juan Capistrano) in a California Latino family (Mireles); and trying to find any trace of a Polish-Jewish immigrant tailor in England in the mid-1800s (Stargatt/Stargratt).
Gostin has been conducting genealogical research since 1980, and has worked as a full-time professional genealogist since 1994. He has twice been president of the Jewish Genealogical Society-Los Angeles, and has taught genealogy for several adult school and university extension programs.
Gostin has helped plan and organize three national genealogical seminars, and has been a featured speaker at a half-dozen such conferences. He lectures widely on Jewish genealogy, Southern California resources and naturalization and immigration records.
Gostin is the author of Southern California Vital Statistics: Volume 1, Los Angeles County 1850-1859 and the owner of Generations Press publishing company. He is very active in the international Jewish genealogical community, and maintains contact with genealogists throughout the world. Gostin is also an active member of the Association of Professional Genealogists.
Special interest groups will meet at 9:30 a.m. for Beginning Genealogy, Writers’ Support Group, German Ancestry, Italian Genealogy, Computer Genealogy, DNA and Jewish Genealogy. The society monthly meeting will start at 10:30 a.m., and the featured speaker will begin at 11 a.m.
Come join us. You do not need to be a member to enjoy this wonderful free presentation.
A calendar of genealogical events can be found at the society website by clicking here.
— Glenn Avolio is the public relations chair for the Santa Barbara County Genealogical Society.