Back when I first became a professional genealogist, I launched the Honoring Our Ancestors grants program. Each month, I review grant applications that have been submitted and select one. Genealogical societies and projects are notoriously underfunded, so this seemed a good way to give back to the family history community that's provided me so many opportunities.
And the process continues the same until today. Typically, I print out the most recent month's applications and add them to a folder with applications from the previous five months (they remain active for six months). My husband and I then take some time at a local coffee shop, go through the stack, and choose one for funding. Then I write a check. That's it -- still as straightforward as it was in the beginning.
As is often the case with me, I'm running a little behind, but February of this year was my 100th grant. Since this was a special anniversary of sorts, I reached out and asked folks to help spread the word (thanks, Juliana, Dick and Chris and others who helped!). I wanted February's grant to be special in some way, so I reasoned the more applications I received, the more likely that one would jump out.
Well, two jumped out, but not for reasons I had expected. Two happened to be from Hudson County, New Jersey and Northeastern Pennsylvania -- the areas from which my mother's and father's families hail. And given that this program is called Honoring Our Ancestors, I decided to do just that -- honor my most immediate ancestors by awarding grants to the freshly formed Hudson County Genealogical Society and the Northeast Pennsylvania Genealogical Society.
In the case of Hudson County, it's always amazed me that Jersey City -- perhaps the second-most important immigrant city in the U.S. after New York City (it's not that immigrants arrived there, but many went immediately there upon arriving in NYC) -- didn't even have a county genealogical society until this year. And I'm delighted to say that the gung-ho society is already busily indexing local newspapers, a welcome initiative that will help thousands in their research.
As to Northeast Pennsylvania, this area is also somewhat neglected in a genealogical sense. The millions of Welsh, Irish and Slavs who toiled in the coal mines are often overlooked (except perhaps for an occasional mention of Hillary Clinton's Scranton roots).
So in honor of George Smolenyak and his Wilkes-Barre, PA roots and Seton Shields and her Jersey City, NJ roots, my 100th (shared) grant goes to the Hudson County Genealogical Society and the Northeastern Pennsylvania Genealogical Society.