Meetings

NEXT MEETING: Friday, June 5, 2026, 12:30pm (Pacific Time).

Topic: Striking Gold: Using Cluster Research to Identify an Unknown Father. Blended ethnic families can be tough to trace. Be successful finding your German ancestor's parents by using cluster research techniques and free online tools. This case study presentation will show how an unknown father of a German Catholic family who lived in Cincinnati was found by searching for others with the same name who were living in the same location and belonged to the same church.

Discussion will show how analyzing church records, obituaries, cemetery and other records led to the discovery of the unknown father and his origins in Germany. This is a great example of using cluster research to find elusive ancestors.

Presenter: Dana Palmer, CG®, CGL®. Dana specializes in Midwestern research, lineage society applications, and publishing family books. In addition to her client work, she is part of the Mayflower Silver Books team, and lectures at RootsTech and the National Genealogical Society (NGS) conferences. Her book Ultimate Guide to Mastering Family Search was released in print and digitally in November 2025.

We meet virtually on the first Friday of each month except July and August at 12:30 pm Pacific Time or 10:30 am PT, if the speaker lives outside of the United States. (To convert the meeting time, consider using https://dateful.com/time-zone-converter and Seattle, Washington as our location.)

Visitors are always welcome at our meetings but attendees must register for each meeting. Registrants should save the Zoom registration email containing the meeting link. Attendees can join the Pre-meeting chat 15 minutes prior to the beginning of the meeting.

P.S. We have no dues but if you wish to make a small tax-deductible donation toward securing professional speakers, please see our Donate page. Thank You for your support.

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