Oldest Town in Texas Genealogy Day

Genealogy Lock-In hosted by Waco McLennan County Library and Central Texas Genealogical Society. Program topics are streamed. You may attend some or all of the programs.

Speaker bios:

2024 Speaker Bios

Claire Bradley

Claire Bradley is a professional genealogist and Director of Irish Studies at the International Institute for Genealogical Studies. Their website is https://genealogicalstudies.com/ She holds a Certificate in Family History from University College Dublin and an MA in the History of the Family from the University of Limerick. As well as teaching and working with clients (both traditional records and genetic genealogy), she regularly lectures both in person and online to a wide range of family history and historical societies in Ireland, the UK and countries with large Irish diasporas. Her website is www.cbgenealogy.ie

Craig Roberts Scott

Craig Roberts Scott, MA, CG, FUGA is the author of The ‘Lost Pensions’: Settled Accounts of the Act of 6 April 1838 (Revised) and Records of the Accounting Officers of the Department of the Treasury, Inventory 14 (Revised). His most recent work is Understanding Revolutionary War and Invalid Pension Ledgers, 1818 – 1872, and the Payment Vouchers They Represent. He has authored seventeen books and several articles in the National Genealogical Society Quarterly, the Magazine of Virginia Genealogy, and other genealogical publications. He is the President and CEO of Heritage Books, Inc., a genealogical publishing firm with over 10,000 titles in print. A professional genealogical and historical researcher for more than thirty-eight years, he specializes in military records, problem-solving, Quakers, and publishing. He is a member of the Company of Military Historians and on the editorial board of the National Genealogical Society Quarterly. He is a former Treasurer and Director of the Association of Professional Genealogists. He has been a faculty member or coordinator of research tracks in the Institute of Genealogy and Historical Research, Samford University and the Salt Lake Institute of Genealogy, and the Genealogical Research Institute of Pittsburgh. He is currently the Coordinator of the SLIG Guided Research and Consultation Track, helping students solve their brick wall problems. He is the host of the YouTube @Just Genealogy channel. He is a recipient of the Grahame T. Smallwood, Jr. Award and UGA Silver Tray Award. He became a Fellow, Utah Genealogical Association in 2014.

Irene B. Walters

Irene B. Walters came to Houston Public Library’s Family History Research Center at the Clayton Library Campus from New York in 1997 after receiving her librarian degree from the State University of New York at Buffalo. Irene has given talks to many groups on various aspects of genealogical research including computers, the internet, ancestors in the modern military, using newspapers for your research, passenger list searching, naturalization records, New York State, Irish, and French research. Irene started her own genealogy research as a teenager and has taken her lines back into France, Ireland and recently Germany. Her other German line and possible early Dutch ancestors are being more difficult.

Mark Dellenbaugh

Mark Dellenbaugh joined the Arlington Public Library in 2009, after ten years in high-tech (Dell, Lucent, IBM). Since 2016 he has been the Genealogy & Local History Librarian preserving, curating, & communicating Arlington's heritage through digitization and oral history projects, one of which he discussed as a panelist at TLA 2022. Mark also served as an officer with the Arlington Genealogical Society for many years and was named their 2021 Volunteer of the Year. He launched APL’s Retro Tech Lab in 2022—funded largely by AGS—which helps people rescue precious family memories locked away on inaccessible media.

Laura Douglas

Laura Douglas is the librarian in charge of the Special Collections with the Denton Public Library. Laura has a Bachelor of Science degree in History from Texas Woman’s University and received her Master of Library Science degree from the University of North Texas in 2003. She has worked at Denton Public in various positions for 33 years including children’s services, adult services, genealogy, and local history. Genealogical and local history research have become her passion - at work and as a hobby.

Leslie Watson Tomlinson, MFA, CG® has been researching her family history for over twenty years. Her educational background is in fashion and art and she has worked professionally in the graphic design and information technology fields. Her genealogy education includes numerous week-long national conferences from the National Genealogy Society, National Institute of Genealogical Research at the National Archives (now called GenFed), Institute of Historical and Genealogical Research, and Salt Lake Institute of Genealogy. One of the most important milestones in her studies was completing the ProGen Study Program—a self-study curriculum, with assignments enhanced by peer review, based on chapters from Professional Genealogy: Preparation, Practice & Standards, edited by Elizabeth Shown Mills.

Leslie’s ancestors are English and German on her mother’s side and Scots-Irish and English on her father’s. She specializes in Tennessee, Virginia, and New York family history research, as well as English and German. Her most satisfying work is using indirect evidence to prove relationships. For her certification portfolio she refuted direct evidence for the father of her third great-grandmother and used indirect evidence to name the correct father. Her articles have appeared in SAGHS’s Our Heritage, the International Society for British Genealogy and Family History’s British Connections, Tennessee State Genealogy Society’s journal Ansearchin’ News, and in October 2023, in The Middle Tennessee Journal of Genealogy & History. Breaking Through Walls is her first book.

Leslie is privileged to come from a military family which has afforded her many opportunities to travel and see the world. In addition to many southern states, Leslie has lived in Colorado, Hawaii, England, Germany, and Italy.

Event Venue & Nearby Stays

Nacogdoches Public Library, 1112 North St, Nacogdoches, United States