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Genealogy Event - Genealogical Research Society of New Orleans

Event Type: Adults
Age Group(s): Adults
Date: 4/17/2017
Start Time: 7:00 PM
End Time: 8:30 PM
Description:
 Susan Tucker, author of a new book titled City of Remembering, A History of Genealogy in New Orleans, will speak at 7 p.m., Monday, April 17, at the East Bank Regional Library, 4747 W. Napoleon Ave., Metairie.

Tucker*s presentation is part of the regularly scheduled monthly meeting of the Genealogical Research Society of New Orleans. It is free-of-charge and is open to the public. Registration is not required.

By exploring one particular community of family historians in New Orleans, Susan Tucker reveals how genealogists elevate a subterranean foundation of the city求sepia photographs of the Vieux Carr谷, pages of birth registrations from St. Louis Cathedral, small scraps of the earliest French Superior Council records, leaves of papers used by notaries, and ledgers from the judicial deliberations of the Illustrious Spanish Cabildo.

According to Tucker, ※they also explore coded letters left by mistake, accounts carried over oceans, and gentle prods of dying children to be counted and thus to be remembered. Most of all, the family historians speak of continual beginnings, both in the genesis of their own research processes, but also of American dreams that value the worth of every individual life.§

Susan Tucker has worked for more than 30 years asking questions about how records figure in the lives of individuals and cultures, creating a national picture of genealogy*s origins, uses, changing forms, and purposes. Tucker examines both the past and the present and draws from oral history interviews, ethnographic fieldwork, and archival research. Illustrations come from individuals, archives, and libraries in New Orleans; Richmond; Washington, DC; and Salt Lake City, as well as Massachusetts and Wisconsin, demonstrating the contrasts between regions and how those practitioners approach their work in each setting.

As Curator of Books and Records, Susan Tucker oversaw the Newcomb Archives and the Vorhoff Library. Her research interests concern gender, material culture, and archival studies. These interests have extended from a large-scale oral history project on domestic workers 每 Telling Memories Among Southern Women (LSU Press, 1988) 每 to exhibits, publications, and projects concerned with how people remember the past through photographs, albums, and scrapbooks. Some of this work culminated in The Scrapbook in American Life (Temple University Press, 2006) co-edited by Tucker, Katherine Ott, and Patricia Buckler. That book won the 2006 Pioneer Society Award as the best-edited book in the field of North American material culture.

The Genealogical Research Society of New Orleans was established in 1960 to foster an interest in family research and to encourage preservation of genealogical records in New Orleans, and in Louisiana and the Gulf Coast south. Since January, 1962 the Society has published a quarterly, New Orleans Genesis, which is available to its members. The society welcomes new members and encourages their participation at its lecture meetings held in the months of March, April, May, September, October and November.

For more information regarding this event, contact Chris Smith, Manager of Adult Programming for the library, at (504) 889-8143 or wcsmith@jplibrary.net.

Library: East Bank Regional Library    Map
Location: Jefferson & Napoleon Rooms
Contact: Chris Smith
Contact Number: 504-889-8143
Presenter: Chris Smith