A genealogy workshop will be held from 2 – 4 p.m., Sunday, October 15, at the Oak Park Arms retirement community, 408 S. Oak Park Ave. Oak Park resident Dan Kane, founder and proprietor of Extended Family Ties, will facilitate the workshop. It is free and open to the public.
Genealogy is the study of one’s family by tracing lineages and history to determine kinship and pedigree of family members. This can be done a number of ways including oral interviews, historical records and genetic analysis.
“The workshop is aimed at moving you from Point A to Point B and, hopefully, Point C in your search for family roots,” Kane said. “It’s a given in the genealogy business that most seniors are walking around with a library full of family lore that’s never been written down.”
Although everyone has their own motivation for studying family history, there is often a desire for people to carve out a place for their family in a larger historical picture and to preserve the past for future generations.
In 1989, Kane discovered the joy of research at Chicago’s Newberry Library. Despite not becoming “serious” about his research until his mid-30s, he considers himself among one of the fortunate genealogists who got an early start.
He is a lifetime member of the Illinois State Genealogical Society, the Chicago Genealogical Society, and several other genealogy organizations in Illinois, Wisconsin, Kentucky, Pennsylvania and New York. In addition, he has served as first vice president of the British Interest Group of Wisconsin and Illinois, and was the local society liaison for the Illinois State Genealogical Society.
Oak Park Arms Senior Living is a rental retirement community which provides senior housing in the form of independent living. Furnished apartments are also available for a short-term stay – a weekend, a week, a month or longer.
The workshop is free and open to the public. For more information call 708-386-4040.
