Discover Your Roots with the KF – New Genealogy Webinar Series

This series offers a deep dive into genealogical research, allowing you to connect with your heritage. Presented by renowned family historian Julie Roberts Szczepankiewicz, the series comprises six insightful episodes, providing expert guidance, tips, and strategies for exploring your unique family’s history. The host will provide you with the tools, methods, and resources needed to embark on your journey into the past with confidence and empowerment.

“Discover Your Roots with the KF” is exclusively available for the Foundation’s active members as a special benefit to reward them for their ongoing support.

If you’re not an active KF member and would like to unlock access, we invite you to join the Foundation now! You can do it by clicking the button below and following a few simple steps.

Become a Member

By becoming a member of the KF, you not only gain access to this enriching video series but also actively contribute to our mission of advancing education and fostering mutual understanding between Poland and America through academic, artistic, and cultural exchanges. 

We will contact members with the access code on October 3 and 4. If you’re a member and haven’t received your access code by October 5, 2023, please get in touch with the development department at development@thekf.org or call the Foundation at (212) 734-2130 and our Donor Relations Officer, Kinga Knight, will be happy to assist you.

A new lecture will be released each month until the series is complete. The full list of the episodes is available below. 

1. 1. Genealogy 101: The Basics of Family History Research 
   2. Getting Around the Language Barrier: Translation Aids for Polish Genealogy
   3. Gathering Evidence for Place of Origin 
   4. Using Gazetteers and Maps for Polish Genealogy 
   5. Finding Records from Poland Online 
   6. Working with an Onsite Researcher

The first webinar in the series, Genealogy 101: The Basics of Family History Research, is available on the KF Member Webinar Hub from October 5, 2023. This lecture is sponsored by Polaron, a company specializing in Polish and other EU states’ citizenship applications, and Genealogy Tour, an expert in Polish genealogy and heritage tours.

About the host: Julie Roberts Szczepankiewicz is a family historian with 30 years of experience researching family origins in Poland, Germany, France, the U.S., and Canada. She is a native of Western New York and holds a Bachelor of Arts in Biological Sciences from the State University of New York at Buffalo. She received her Master of Arts in endocrinology from the University of California, Berkeley. She first became interested in genealogy shortly after she was married. Her paternal aunt, Carol Roberts Fischer, had already been researching her dad’s side of the family for some time, so she decided to investigate her mom’s Polish ancestry. Aunt Carol was very encouraging and offered to get her a copy of the marriage certificate for her great-grandparents, John Zazycki and Veronica Grzesiak, from the Erie County courthouse in Buffalo, New York, since she was making regular trips there for research while living in California at the time. She still remembers the feeling of awe as she held the photocopy of that marriage record in her hand and stared at the names of John and Veronica’s parents—names previously unknown to her or anyone else in her family, as far as she knew. And yet these were the names of some of her great-great-grandparents, who lived, worked, loved, cried, dreamed, prayed, hoped, and laughed, and whose DNA lives on in her. From that moment, she was hooked. 

Julie enjoys sharing research strategies and resources via in-person lectures and webinars, which she has given for Polish genealogical societies nationally and regionally, as well as for local genealogical societies and library groups. She is an active member of a number of genealogy groups on Facebook, and she administers a few of them as well, including Poland & Genealogy, the Galicia Family History Group, and Genealogical Translations. She is currently serving as President of the Polish Genealogical Society of New York State (PGSNYS), Vice-President of the New England Regional Genealogical Consortium, Inc. (NERGC), and Secretary of the Polish Genealogical Society of Massachusetts (PGSMA).