Thank you for visiting my website! My name is Jeanette Sheliga and I am a music teacher during the day and spend most of my free time researching and lecturing about genealogy.
Genealogy has always been an interest of mine as I remember when I was little and would visit my grandparents’ house that I would often ask them about their families and I would draw family trees. I still have some of those drawings!
After college, my first teaching job was in Elmira, NY. I took a 12-week online genealogy course in 2002 through Adult Education. It was a very good class and helped me begin to learn how to research.
I was fortunate that the library in Elmira had a great genealogy department and that I had relatives on my mom’s side of the family that lived in Elmira or south in the next county of Tioga, PA. I was able to apply many of the skills that I had learned from the online class with the resources that were easily available to me.
After living in Elmira for 7 years, I moved back home to Niagara County and continued my research as many of my Tioga, PA families located to Buffalo in Erie County just south of Niagara County.
As a teacher, I was eager to share the techniques that I learned and I was interested in teaching a class through Adult Education in North Tonawanda, NY. I figured that before I charged money for the course, that I should practice and I contacted the North Tonawanda Library to see if they were interested in having me give a 4-part presentation. They were and it was very successful! I thought maybe 12 attendees might show up, but it was 35-40 people each week! After the 4 sessions were done, the attendees requested that we keep it going. That is how the North Tonawanda Library Genealogy Club (NTLGC) got started in May 2011. We have been going strong since then!
Around this time, I started attending the Niagara County Genealogical Society (NCGS) program meetings and I lectured a Beginning Genealogy class for them. Late in 2012, they asked me if I would run to become a Board Member for NCGS and was voted in. I have been a Board Member since 2013 and I am also the Society’s Vice President and the Program Chairperson.
I created this website to blog and keep track of an educational plan that I’ve created for myself. More to follow on that soon!
Thank you,
Jeanette