Massachusetts Society of Genealogist’s Merrimack Valley Chapter. Free and open to the public!

Meeting, Join us in Person or Virtually by Zoom

Those who wish to attend virtually, can pre-register at https://tinyurl.com/MVMay2024

Finding Fred Magee: Hunting my French-Canadian Ancestors — Learning to deal with Drouin and poor handwriting

“Actually, we knew where to find Fred (my 2G-grandfather), after 1880. But we didn’t know where he was born, where he lived before entering the US, why he emigrated, what the rest of his family looked like, where the lost cousins were hidden, or even his proper given name. And we had only a very few family stories. This is a typical problem & case study in family history. Along the way we’ll touch on: some linguistic & cultural understanding of surnames, DNA match analysis, use of French-Canadian resources (both familiar and not), and the bane of necronyms. In retrospect, what should I have known?”

Presented by Greg Paris

Greg is a published biomedical research scientist and software engineer, also trained in library science. Though he started family research in the 70s in his great-uncle’s footsteps, it went on a long hiatus until retirement, when he translated his professional experience with DNA and big data into an obsession to trace his New England & New York English (Parish), Pennsylvania German (Myers, Kuhns), Swedish (Enbom) and French-Canadian (Magee) roots. He’s a past VP of the Worcester chapter. He and his (also retired) wife live on a sheep farm in Charlton MA where they used to run a herding dog training facility with livestock and several rambunctious Scottish herding dogs, until Covid set in.