Lecture – Larry W. Thomas & Jeanette Sheliga

Do not overlook the wealth of information found in the tax records.  As Daniel Defoe is credited for saying in a book in 1726, “Things as certain as death and taxes…,” we simply cannot avoid them.  Up until the early 1900s, people were taxed on their land and other possessions and these can help in the research of your ancestors.  We will examine several sets of records from around the U. S. and see what we can learn from them.

 

Larry is a retired US Army Captain with 23 years in the field of Aviation, Transportation & Logistics, he has a Bachelor’s Degree in Aviation Maintenance Management, an FAA airplane mechanic license, and earned an MBA in Management Information Systems from Southern Polytechnic State University while working for the US Army Reserves as a Project Manager, earning his Certification as a Project Management Professional from the Project Management Institute in 2013. Larry began his Genealogy Research 30 years ago with his own Thomas Family, Georgia residents since the 1750s. Then adding the rest of his and his late wife’s families before beginning to research for clients in 2008, operating www.AtlantaGenealogy.com. A graduate of ProGen 38 and member of the National Genealogical Society, Association of Professional Genealogists, Genealogy Speakers Guild, Gwinnett Historical Society, Serves on the Board of the Georgia Genealogical Society, and past president of the Cobb County Genealogy Society.

 

FultonHistory.com, or Old Fulton NY Postcards, is a free, historic newspaper website that contains archives of over 50 million pages of microfilmed newspaper images (mostly New York State newspapers, along with collections from other states and Canada). This presentation will give an overview of the content and a variety of search strategies.

 

Jeanette lives in Lockport, NY and has been researching her family tree since 2002. Her career is a public school band teacher which she has done for over twenty years. She began genealogical lecturing at the North Tonawanda Public Library in 2011 and soon after formed the North Tonawanda Library Genealogy Club of which she managed for ten years. In 2013, she became a Board Member for the Niagara County Genealogical Society.  She is also the society Vice President, NGS Delegate, and the Program Chairperson.  Jeanette became Chairman of the Board on March 2020 and held that position for over a year and a half.

 

Jeanette has proven her ancestry and joined many lineage societies including the: National Society of the Daughters of the American Revolution, First Families of Pennsylvania, National Society Descendants of American Farmers, and the National Society of Mayflower Descendants.  She was elected as Chapter Registrar for her local Niagara Falls DAR Chapter in June 2020 and held that position for a year and a half. In the Fall of 2020, Jeanette became the Virtual Genealogical Society’s (VGA) Corresponding Secretary and was elected to become a member of the Board of Directors for the Western New York Genealogical Society (WNYGS).  While serving on the board for WNYGS, Jeanette became a contributing editor for the WNYGS’s quarterly publication, The Journal, and selected as the Programming Chair.

 

Jeanette officially started Jeanette’s Genealogy in January 2021 by filing a DBA with the local government.