Plan a Road Trip to Louisville for the NGS 2025 Family History Conference via St. Louis

 It’s a beautiful time of year for a road trip! Those driving to the National Genealogical Society (NGS) 2025 Family History Conference, from areas west of Louisville in the Kansas City or Columbia areas of Missouri, it’s a straight shot to Louisville via I-70 and I-64, which pass through St. Louis, providing a nice halfway point to stop and do some research.  

Regional Research Opportunities 

Before you hit St. Louis, in Columbia, Missouri, you might want to stop at the Columbia Research Center of the State Historical Society of Missouri. The Research Center is home to records from central and northern Missouri. Regional research centers are also located in Cape Girardeau, Kansas City, Rolla, Springfield, and St. Louis.  

St. Louis Research Opportunities 

The trip from Kansas City to St. Louis is around 4 hours, and there, research opportunities abound. 

• The St. Louis Research Center of the State Historical Society of Missouri is located on the University of Missouri-St. Louis campus, and like the other regional research centers of the state historical society, it’s holdings cover the state of Missouri and the Midwest in general, with an emphasis on records of St. Louis and surrounding areas. Notable collections document labor groups, the African American experience in the area, and the LGBTQ community. 
• Not to be confused with the State Historical Society, the Missouri Historical Society was founded in St. Louis, and its Missouri History Museum Library & Research Center houses collections related to the state and city, as well as the Mississippi and Missouri Valleys, the Louisiana Purchase, and the nineteenth century American West.  
• The St. Louis County Library is home to the Emerson History and Genealogical Center, located on the second floor of the Clark Family Branch of the library. There you can access the National Genealogical Society’s Book Loan Collection, which includes more than 27,000 books for research in person or by interlibrary loan. Additional special collections include the collections of the St. Louis Genealogical Society and other organizations, German and Norwegian resources, religious denominational records, local histories, and expansive digital collection. 
• Also located at the St. Louis County Library is the Memory Lab, a “do-it-yourself digitization space” available by appointment for recording personal memories in a recording studio and digitizing family ephemera, like slides, negatives, photographs, and other documents. You can also transfer various tape mediums (VHS, cassettes, DVDs, etc.) into digital formats.  
• The St. Louis Public Library’s Genealogy Department and St. Louis Room are on the third floor of the Central Library and include archival and special collections unique to the area such as scrapbooks, portraits, clippings, obituaries, and many other items of interest. The library also offers access to a large number of online genealogical and historical databases.   
• National Personnel Records Center (NPRC) branch of the National Archives and Records Administration is the primary repository for military service records from WWI to the present. It is strongly recommended that you make an appointment ahead of your arrival to ensure access to the records you need. 

Back on the Road 

From St. Louis it’s an easy stretch of American countryside on the road to your destination in Louisville. Enjoy the spring scenery, crank up your favorite tunes, or load up your favorite podcast. If you’re looking for something on genealogy, ConferenceKeeper has you covered with a comprehensive list of genealogical podcasts that will make for great conversation starters as you meet and reconnect with genealogists from across the country and around the world at the NGS Conference. 

Once you arrive in Louisville, enjoy meeting and networking with genealogists from throughout the US who share your love for family history. Join us at the historic Galt House from 23-26 May for an amazing program and get access to audio recordings and slides from every session through 15 July 2025! 

Don't Miss the Conference and Related Events  

Go to the Registration and Pricing page for details, fees, and to sign up for the conference, luncheons, and special events. There are conference registration offers for Youth and NGS Organization Members.  

If you’ve already signed up, download a social media badge to share that you're going and invite people to join you for a road trip to remember. 

If you’re coming from the north or south, we also have you covered with articles on the road trip from Chicago, and from Birmingham. 

See you in Louisville! 

Visit the Conference Website and Register Now 

NGS Celebrates Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month

In 1992, May was designated Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) Heritage Month to honor the rich histories and contributions of Asian Americans in the United States. For family historians, this month presents an opportunity to discover the stories, explore migration journeys, and preserve the voices of Asians and Pacific Islanders who have played integral roles in building America.

We can help rediscover and reclaim these stories by exploring available resources like immigration and naturalization records that document their journeys to and in America. Historical newspapers can uncover stories and give us a sense of what life was like in the times and places where Asian and Pacific Islanders settled.

By researching and sharing these stories, we ensure that Asian American ancestors and their legacies are not forgotten. Join the National Genealogical Society (NGS) in honoring Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month this May. 

Here are some resources that can aid you in your quest to preserve and research this  history.

Chinese Historical Society of America.

FamilySearch Immigration and Naturalization (databases with images). While these collections typically cover all of the records for a particular location, there are also quite a few Asian- and Pacific Island-specific databases.

FamilySearch Wiki: Asia and Middle East.

FamilySearch Wiki: Pacific Island Guide.

FamilySearch Wiki: South Korea Genealogy.

Filipino American National Historical Society

Hoji Shinbun Japanese Newspaper Digital Collection. The “world’s largest online archive of open-access, full image Japanese American and other overseas Japanese newspapers in Asia and South America.”   

My Koseki. Japanese Family Register  Tool for locating vital family records for ancestors in Japanese city registers.

National Archives - Asian American, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander Heritage Month.

National Archives - Chinese Immigration and the Chinese in the United States.

National Archives - WWII Japanese Americans Incarceration. Records of incarcerations in War Relocation Authority (WRA) Camps.

National Japanese American Historical Society

Discover Nikkei.

Siyi Chinese Genealogy Forum. Message boards for Chinese Genealogy.

Sunny Jane Morton Named Editor of NGS Magazine

25 April 2025—The National Genealogical Society (NGS) is delighted to announce the appointment of genealogy educator, researcher, writer, and editor Sunny Jane Morton as the new editor of NGS Magazine. Her first issue will be the October-December 2025 issue. Morton takes over the reins from long-time editor Deb Cyprych, who is retiring after nine years of exceptional leadership.

Morton is currently the content director at Your DNA Guide and a contributing editor at Family Tree Magazine. She is a past editor of the Ohio Genealogy News, where she also succeeded Cyprych. With Harold Henderson, CG, she coauthored How to Find Your Family History in U.S. Church Records, which received a book award from NGS. Her book Story of My Life: A Workbook for Preserving Your Legacy is now in its second edition. Her forthcoming book, a guide for researching Catholic nuns and sisters in the United States, received research travel support from the Cushwa Center for the Study of American Catholicism at the University of Notre Dame. Her article "Delayed Birth Records in the United States" with Jeanette Sheliga appeared in NGS Magazine, Vol. 50, Number 1 (January-March 2024). She was also a contributor to the FamilySearch Blog from 2018-2023.

In addition to her extensive writing and editing, Morton is an instructor at NGS's GRIP Genealogy Institute 2025 (Practical Family History Writing) and the Salt Lake Institute of Genealogy Spring Virtual 2025 (Researching Women from 1850-1960).

Morton is a longstanding member of NGS and the Ohio Genealogical Society and an associate member of Archivists for Congregations of Women Religious. She has a double B.A. from Brigham Young University in History and Humanities. Morton is a frequent speaker and lecturer at national, state, regional, and local genealogy events.

Expressing her enthusiasm about her new position, Morton said, "My role is to reach out into the community and bring expert voices and unknown resources into reach for readers. I look forward to building on Deb Cyprych's legacy, supporting authors and finding exciting and timely topics for NGS Magazine, while contributing to the growth of our family history community."

Executive Director Matt Menashes, CAE, shared his excitement about Morton's appointment, stating, "We are so glad to have Sunny as the next editor of NGS Magazine. Her experience will serve readers well. Working with feature authors and regular columnists, Sunny will continue our tradition of exceptional writing on methodology, technology, DNA, reference resources, genealogical societies' needs, and more."

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 Founded in 1903, the National Genealogical Society inspires, connects, and leads the family history community by fostering collaboration and best practices in advocacy, education, preservation, and research. We enable people, cultures, and organizations to discover the past and create a lasting legacy. The Virginia-based nonpro?t is the premier national society for everyone, from beginners to the most advanced family historians. NGS Magazine has a circulation of approximately 8,000 individuals and over 500 organizations, including libraries nationwide.

Your Family History Getaway: Road Trip from Chicago to Louisville for NGS 2025!

 

Map image courtesy Google Maps

 Looking for an escape to have some fun? Make this Memorial Day weekend unforgettable with a road trip to Louisville for the National Genealogical Society Family History Conference. Coming from Chicago and Northwest Indiana, traveling along I-65 South through Indiana, the journey is under five hours nonstop, but why rush? Make it a fun road trip, with tunes playing on the radio (or maybe a good genealogy podcast to set the mood).

Indiana Crossroads of America

If your family history has some Indiana roots, it’s possible that they traveled through Kentucky to get to Indiana. In the NGS Research in the States Guide: Indiana, author Dawne Slater reminds us, “The earliest settlers [of Indiana Territory and state] were from the Upland South; they moved from Virginia and North Carolina into Tennessee and Kentucky and then north into southern Indiana….Many of these immigrants from the South followed Daniel Boone’s trace from the Upper Tennessee Valley through the Cumberland Gap in to Kentucky, and northward into Indiana.” (And you can learn more about these types of migrations at the conference!)

I-65 will also take you to Indianapolis, which has three exceptional repositories with valuable resources for anyone whose ancestors lived in the state or earlier in the Northwest Territory—spanning most of present-day Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, and Wisconsin.

·         The William Henry Smith Memorial Library of the Indiana Historical Society has expansive collections of material on Indiana and the Northwest Territory. They also currently have several exhibits, including one on The Electric Railway and its impact on developing the region at the turn of the last century.

·         The Indiana State Archives houses records from the colonial period to today including court, land, military, and naturalization records, the 1805 Clark County Slave Register, and more.

·         The Indiana State Library maintains a genealogy collection of cemetery and county records, court and church records, family histories, federal censuses, passenger lists, and military pension files covering Indiana and bordering states.

Fun and Friends in Louisville

Once you arrive in Louisville, you’ll enjoy meeting and networking with genealogists from around the country who share your love for family history. Join us at the historic Galt House in downtown Louisville from 23-26 May. We have an amazing program planned for you.

·         Sign up for a pre-conference tour, workshop, or FOCUS workshops for society delegates, volunteers, and leaders on Friday, 23 May.

·         On Saturday and Sunday (24-25 May) attend your choice of lectures on genealogy research, luncheons, and other special events. And, don’t worry, we know you won’t be able to attend all 50+ learning sessions in person. Attendees can view them on Whova through 15 July.

·         On Memorial Day, spend the day at Cave Hill Cemetery & Arboretum, exploring its gardens and historic monuments; then join us for a ceremony at the National Cemetery section.

Renew your passion for family history research and treat yourself to a truly special road trip.

Visit the Conference Website and Register Now

Whether diving into archives in Indianapolis, enjoying some quiet time on the road, or connecting with fellow genealogists at the conference, your getaway to Louisville promises both discovery and good times with good people. Come join us!