Jennifer L. Shoer

Helping individuals and families reconnect with their roots, find their lost relatives, and tell their stories. 

I created Reconnecting Relatives®, LLC, to help clients trace their Jewish and Eastern European families back to their old countries. Genetic (DNA) and forensic genealogical research experience enable me to find relatives thought lost in the Holocaust, identify their relationships with the client, and trace connections to common ancestors and places. 

My family's immigration stories are rooted in the Jewish shtetls of the Russian Empire, the Irish Presbyterians in Antrim, Northern Ireland, the Catholics in multiple counties in Ireland, and the Evangelical Lutheran Germans in Russian Poland. All immigrant stories matter. Our ancestors bravely or desperately left or were forced from their homes and created new lives in new countries. Contact me to help to share your family's immigration story. 

My personal story began in an American military hospital in Frankfurt am Main, Germany, where I was born. I spent my first years in nearby Butzbach. My Roma German nanny, a victim of forced sterilization as a young girl in Nazi Germany, taught me German, likely leading to my life-long love of languages. I have studied German, French, Latin, Japanese, Hebrew, and Russian. 

Through my active membership in the Association of Professional Genealogists, I have an extensive network of colleagues throughout the genealogy industry with whom I collaborate to best tell your family's story.