Sex, Lies and Genealogical Tape

This is my bread and butter talk that I have given for fifteen years.  Through two related examples I show how one can piece together an ancestor’s life by collecting as much documentation about him/her as possible as well as looking at the environments where they lived.  I will introduce a few tools to help this procedure/process, including the Life Chronology (TM), the Life Hub & Spoke, and mind maps.  The process allows a genealogist the possibility to go far beyond names, dates, and places (the answers to the questions: Who? When? and Where?  It allows us to explore the far more interesting questions: Why? and How?  Why did our ancestors act the way that they did?  How did their behavior have a direct impact our lives? (How can we explain events and other things in our lives by their behavior?)  I will demonstrate that the unintended benefit of this methodology: it surprisingly let me break through some brick walls, allowing me to push my heritage back four more generations and find a plethora of living relatives I never knew beforehand.

Ron Arons

Born in New York, Ron Arons worked for many years as a marketer at many high-tech companies, including Texas Instruments, Ashton-Tate, and Sybase, before deciding to work full time on his first book, The Jews of Sing Sing. Ron became interested in understanding his roots after he lost both his parents to cancer 16-18 years ago. In the process of researching his criminal ancestor’s past, Ron has traced his roots to England, Poland, Romania, Ukraine, Belarus, and Lithuania.

In 2005 Ron won a Hackman Research Residency Award from the New York State Archives to continue his research of New York Jewish criminals.

In January 2008, Ron appeared on the PBS television series, The Jewish Americans, as the acknowledged expert on Jewish criminals of New York’s Lower East Side.

Arons tours the country giving educational and entertaining presentations on Jewish criminals and Jewish genealogy. Ron earned a B.S. in Engineering from Princeton University and an MBA from the University of Chicago.

The General Meeting will start at 12:00 pm Pacific time and will be led by our President, Karen Smith. If you register for this event, you will receive an email reminder containing a link to the meeting three days before the event. If you are not receiving the invitations, please contact Karen Smith at:

presidentofcvgs@gmail.com

Admission is free for up to 100 participants so register early.  A handout will be available and sent to all society members.