Ready to take the plunge but haven’t any idea how to start researching your family history? Register now for this six session course and join in one of America’s most popular hobbies: Genealogy Research! Thanks to the generosity of The Friends of the Library, this course is offered to you for free! 

Beginning with “Six Key Steps to Launching Your Family Search,” learn the basic skills and get organized from the beginning, to save time and frustration later in your research. Understand the many things you can do all from the comfort of your  own home. Begin to add to your skills as we investigate many free as well as major online commercial tools and the wealth of resources available to you. 

Course Schedule

Monday, October 18 -- Getting started and organized

Monday, October 25 -- No Session/Students work on 1st week assignment

Monday, November 1 -- Free databases, biographical sources, newspapers

Monday, November 8 -- HeritageQuest/Ancestry LE

Monday, November 15 -- Immigration/passenger manifests

Monday, November 22 -- No Session/Thanksgiving Week

Monday, November 29 --Naturalizations and case studies

Monday, December 6-- GRADUATION DAY! Student show-and-tells

PLEASE NOTE: Attendance is mandatory for the first two sessions.  All participants must have basic computer knowledge & skills. Essex patrons will be given first preference at registration-all others will be waitlisted and notified if spaces are available. 

Linda B. MacIver is an educator, lecturer, librarian and genealogy researcher. She recently retired from a 27- year career at the Boston Public Library where she inaugurated the BPL patron genealogy classes. She taught the multi-week beginners’ genealogy course for 5 years. She also organized two extremely popular seasons of the Local and Family History series and developed the Intermediate Genealogy Summer Lecture series. Linda is the former Civil Records Director for Federal Records for the Massachusetts Genealogical Council and a member of the Massachusetts Society of Genealogists (MSOG) and the Essex (MA) Society of Genealogists (ESOG.) She serves as the New England Representative for the Essex (England!) Record Office. Linda has a BA in History from the University of New Hampshire, an MEd from Boston University and earned her MSLIS at Simmons College.

Linda was the 2018 recipient of the Richard S. Lackey Scholarship to the Genealogical Institute for Federal Records (GEN-FED) and the inaugural recipient of the 2019 Senior at the Center of Excellence Award sponsored by Xerox Corporation and the City of Boston.

We look forward to learning from Linda and sharing the journey to finding our family roots with her.