Retired from a Human Resources management position with a major corporation, Ross has degrees in Economics from Binghamton University and Industrial Relations from Cornell. A long-time family genealogist, his American ancestry is early British Isles immigrants—all ancestors born after 1800 resided in rural Washington County, New York. His current focus is on documenting this little researched line of the Williams family that migrated from New England to the Argyle Patent in Eastern New York after the Revolution, and on to Western New York and beyond in succeeding generations.
Thomas P. Lester has been the Director of the Archive & Library for the Archdiocese of Boston since November 2014. He has authored articles appearing in American Ancestors Magazine and The Pilot Boston Catholic newspaper, and has contributed to features in the Boston Globe, Boston Herald, and Religion News Service. His first book, Catholic Boston, was published in 2018. Thomas regularly works with the Database Team at American Ancestors to bring researchers the Boston Catholic Sacramental Records and Catholic Cemetery Association Records online databases.
Andrew Searle Pang has been researching family history in fits and starts since his teenage years. In the late 1990s, he was a professional researcher with the New England Historic Genealogical Society’s Enquiries Service (now Research Services) and edited several genealogical books, including the 2002 Jacobus Award-winner, The Burling Books: Ancestors and Descendants of Edward and Grace Burling, Quakers [1620—2000] (2000) by Jane Thompson Stahr. Now a retired independent school administrator and consultant in fund raising and non-profit governance, Andrew lives in eastern Massachusetts.
Aisha Francis, Ph.D., is the CEO of the Benjamin Franklin Institute of Technology in Boston. A proponent of access to economic mobility, she is an enthusiastic champion for the learning opportunities her own two children are receiving in Boston's public schools. The daughter of a Dominican Republic immigrant father and mother who is a sixth-generation Nashvillian, she now resides in Boston. Aisha deeply appreciates the fortitude evident in Boston's immigrant and native communities. Her hobbies are reading, cooking, travel, and genealogy.
Rufus E. Jones Jr. is the co-founder and president of the James Weldon Johnson Foundation, which preserves “Five Acres,” the summer home of James Weldon Johnson and Grace Nail Johnson in Great Barrington, Massachusetts, and promotes educational, intellectual, and artistic works that reflect Johnson’s enduring contributions to American history and worldwide culture. A professional musician, singer/songwriter, recording artist, and bandleader in New Jersey and Massachusetts, Rufus is a native of Memphis, Tennessee, and holds a B.A. degree from Harvard University and an M.B.A. from the University of Tennessee.
Joe Smaldone and his wife Judy Warwick Smaldone have been researching their family’s history for 20 years. Their research has taken them to many national, state, and local libraries, archives, court houses, churches, cemeteries, historical and genealogical societies, and other research sites across the United States, and abroad to Ireland, Italy, and Sweden. They are members of NEHGS, the New Hampshire Historical Society, and the New York Genealogical and Biographical Society. Joe is an adjunct professor at Georgetown University, where he created and taught a course entitled Your Family in History. He is a Genealogy Research Consultant at the Family History Center, Annapolis, Maryland, and has published several genealogical studies, abstracts, and indexes.
Philip Grover is a retired chemical engineer who got involved in genealogy by helping his mother enter her extensive family research into Personal Ancestral File for Mac. Little did he know then what a slippery slope that minor involvement would become. After getting deeply involved in doing his own research, he realized how disinterested family members can be in genealogical charts, lists, and diagrams. His focus since has been making his family history more interesting and accessible, and toward that end he has self-published three books of family history.
Ralph Holley is the NEHGS Cataloging and Metadata Librarian. He previously worked as a librarian at the New England College of Optometry and in a variety of public library roles. Originally from Connecticut, Ralph lives in Boston and is working on an MLIS from Simmons University with a focus on information organization.