The following is a press release written by the Fellows of the American Society of Genealogists:
The Fellows of the American Society of Genealogists are pleased to announce the 2023 winners of the ASG Continuing Genealogical Research Grants.
Shahidah Ahmad of Watertown, Mass., to collect, digitize, and index information about African Americans buried in Holly Hill and Cottageville, South Carolina, by interviewing residents over age 65 and using local knowledge to identify individuals and family buried in those towns, map communities, and create photographic, scanned and digital images linked with Excel master list to fill the void of less documented rural towns as an example for South Carolinian family historians. Shahidah is an Independent Genealogy Researcher and former Treasurer and Presenter of the African American Genealogical and Historical Society – New England.
Richard de Boer of Harlingen, The Netherlands, to prepare an English language overview of preserved genealogical sources (microdata) in six Western Balkans countries: Bosnia-Herzegovina, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Serbia, Kosovo, and Albania, addressing the problem of language barriers and difficulty in retrieving and accessing sources. Among sources to be used are church registers and censuses, war victim lists, Ottoman tax registers and land cadastres, with the goal of publishing an overview of records by country, region, and ethnoreligious community. Richard is a professional journalist from The Netherlands, and administrator of the website www.exyugenealogy.net (“Sources for post- Yugoslav Family History”).
Stephanie Mills Trice of Silver Spring, Maryland, to lead a group of volunteers in identifying families buried at Mount Zion Baptist Church, the oldest African American graveyard in Macon, South Carolina, that dates to 1879, when field stones and periwinkle marked the graves, and for which there is no known record of interments. They will be using interviews with living story tellers, funeral programs, obituaries, photographs and digital documents, which are to be stored locally in Warren County. Stephanie is a Volunteer Oral Historian and Collaborative Partner in the Facing East 158 Voice Project of the North Carolina Department of Natural and Cultural Resources.
Jamie Wasilchenko of Newaygo, Michigan, to gather records on the population of the village of Horodylovychi in Galacia of the Austro-Hungarian Empire that was destroyed in 1939, with many of its residents, including Ukranians, Poles and Jews, forcibly removed to Soviet territory. She will be using records of the Greek Catholic church she located in the Polish State Archives that were believed to have been lost. Records of baptisms, marriages, and burials for 1873 to 1937 (about 300 pages) will be indexed and made available through the Polish Genealogical Society and placed in repositories in Ukraine and Poland, both online and offline. Jamie is a Professional Genealogist, www.ShiftingSandsGenealogy.com.
The ASG Continuing Genealogical Research Grant program was established in 2022 by the American Society of Genealogists. A decision about grants for 2024 will be made at the Fellow’s Annual Meeting in October 2023. Interested parties may obtain information from Alicia Crane Williams, FASG, Chair, Grants Committee, acwcrane@aol.com. Or write to her at 4 White Trellis, Plymouth, MA 02360-7790.