​Join us at our June meeting and program on Wednesday, June 15, 2016 at 7:00pm!

About the Program

We will cover things you can do this summer (or anytime) to bring your research up-to-date.  We will discuss Family Group Sheets, Timelines, To Do Lists, Cite your Sources, Organizing Your Research, Letter Writing and much, much, more.

About the Speaker

Pat is president of the Glendora Genealogical Group.  She first became interested in genealogy in 1990. She is an adopted child who found out in 1990 that she has a sister, a brother, and that her birth mother was still alive at that time.  Not knowing anything about this family is what started Pat on her journey in family history.  She has been able to trace various branches of her birth and adoptive family trees, as well as her husband’s, as far back as 1390.  She is doing research in Illinois, Wisconsin, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, California, Mexico, Germany, old Prussia, and Luxembourg.  She belongs to several other genealogical societies, teaches genealogy refresher classes for the Glendora Genealogical Group and Whittier Area Genealogical Society, and has spoken to various organizations on how to trace their family roots.

Pat was born and raised in the Chicago area until moving to southern California in 1954.  She has lived in the Covina/San Dimas area most of the time.  She has been married for 45 years, has one daughter, three step-children, six grandchildren and seven great-grandchildren.  She and her husband also lived in Peru, South America for 8½ years where he worked for a large copper mining corporation.  She is a retired school district employee from Covina-Valley USD where she worked for 18 plus years, the last nine of those years as secretary to the Director of Curriculum.  She has been retired for thirteen years and now has more time to further her family history pursuits.  In addition to her genealogy research, she enjoys taking care of her 3 year-old grandson, traveling, and reading. 

Join us at our monthly meeting and program this Wednesday, May 18, 2016 at 7:00pm!

About the Program

Although New Netherland as a political unit lasted only about 60 years, its influence on the developing American society was significant. Researching New Netherland ancestors is exciting and challenging and requires an understanding of both Dutch and English record groups.

​Mary will discuss several important concepts, including personal names, naming patterns, and patronymics, and will explore the various record groups needed to construct a family history of these early American colonists. She has prepared an extensive bibliography of New Netherland resources that can be used as a checklist for research.

About the Speaker

Mary Van Orsdol received her B.A. in history from University of California, San Diego, her M.A. in American history from University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, and her M.L.S. from University of California, Los Angeles. Her first library position was at University of California, Irvine, as the Humanities Reference Librarian. Mary began researching her genealogy in 1991 after she attended a Van Orsdol family reunion in Bristow, Oklahoma, and met several Van Orsdol genealogists who generously shared their findings. She was able to combine her professional interests in research methodology and her personal interest in genealogy when she was hired as a genealogy reference librarian at the Carlsbad City Library; she became the head of the Genealogy Division in 1993 and retired from that position in 2015.

Mary developed a strong research interest and expertise in New Netherland research as she traced her family’s history. Her other genealogy interests include genealogy research methodology and how this is changing with the internet, source citations and how citing sources influences research methodology, and, most recently, organizing genealogy findings electronically, in other words, going paperless.