About Rich Venezia: Nearly all of Rich Venezia’s ancestors arrived in America in the early 1900s – he has only one family line in the USA prior to the Civil War, and a handful of ancestors that arrived in the 1870s, 1880s, and 1890s. As such, twentieth-century immigrants and the records they’ve left behind are his main interest. Rich says he loves digging through little-known records at the National Archives, and other record repositories around the country, to find information about these ancestors. One of the best things about having recent immigrant ancestry is that there always seem to be more records to unearth–immigrant aid society records, fraternal organization records, alien registrations, requests for relief from military service… the possibilities are seemingly endless.

T253, Discovering Your Immigrant’s Origins: Exhausting Every Resource, at 4 pm, Thursday, 11 May 2017.

Still trying to determine the exact origins of your immigrant ancestor? Join Rich at this lecture and find out well-known and lesser known record sets, ideas, and techniques.

Records & Repositories, S408, “The Aliens Are Coming: USCIS Record Sets, ” 8 am, Saturday, 13 May 2017

The records of the U.S.Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS for short) are among the richest, and most underutilized, for those with twentieth-century immigrant ancestors. Anyone with ancestors or relatives who immigrated after about 1900 (and even in the half-century before) should be familiar with these records.

To gain more from this lecture, participants may bring a list of their immigrant ancestors, their dates of arrival into the USA, and their dates (or time frame) of when they naturalized as US citizens (if ever). This will help determine in which USCIS record sets their ancestors might be found.

Join Rich to discover where your ancestors may be hiding in the records of the USCIS! See you in Raleigh!