Emily H. Garber

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Emily H. Garber, an Arizona-based researcher, writer, and speaker, has been conducting family history research since 2007. She specializes in Jewish genealogical research and has worked with records from both Eastern European and German Jewish immigrants. Her client work has included research into narrowly-defined genealogical problems as well as research, management, development, and writing of broadly-based family history narratives.

In 2019 Emily produced a two-volume German-Jewish family history, "The Baum Family of Kansas City," which was privately published. In addition, she has written articles published in Avotaynu: The International Review of Jewish Genealogy. Her most recent article, "Six Elements of Success for Beginning Ashkenazi Genetic Genealogists," was published in December 2019 in Shemot (the journal of the Jewish Genealogical Society of Great Britain).

Emily writes a genealogy research blog: (going the) Extra Yad <https://extrayad.blogspot.com/>. She also has created and manages a webpage for one of her family's old world communities in today's Ukraine: https://kehilalinks.jewishgen.org/Yurovshchina/.

Emily is a well-known speaker and educator on family history topics. She had delivered talks at every annual International Association of Jewish Genealogical Society (IAJGS) conference since 2013 and has delivered talks at National Genealogical Society and the New York State Family History conferences. She was the course coordinator and part of the teaching cadre for two week-long Jewish genealogy seminars for the Genealogical Research Institute of Pittsburgh (GRIP) in July 2020 and the Salt Lake Institute of Genealogy (SLIG) in 2022.

She has taught webinars for numerous Jewish genealogical societies as well as the Southern California Genealogical Society and the Pima County Genealogical Society. She has conducted an in-person four-lecture seminar for the Jewish Genealogical Society of Colorado and been an invited speaker for Jewish genealogy societies all over the United States, including New York City; Seattle; Los Angeles; Florida; and Vancouver, Canada.

Locally (in Arizona) she has provided several introductory level Jewish genealogy courses for Jewish Community centers and synagogues. She has also taught classes for Arizona State University's Center for Jewish Studies. In addition she has presented intermediate and advanced genealogy talks to both Jewish and non-Jewish genealogy groups and conferences.

In June 2013, she toured family shtetlach (towns) in Ukraine and explored archives in Lviv, Khmelnitsky and Zhitomyr. An archaeologist by training (B.A., and M.A.), she retired from the federal government after a 30+ year career in natural resources management.

Emily is Chair of the Phoenix (Arizona) Jewish Genealogy Group and board member of the Arizona Jewish Historical Society and International Association of Jewish Genealogical Societies. She is a long-term volunteer for JewishGen.org and has served in leadership roles for both the Ukraine and Romanian Research Divisions.

Services

Research services: provides expert research, analysis and writing for client family history investigations.

Speaking engagements: available locally (Arizona) for talks and nationally for both in-person individual talks and seminars as well as webinar presentations. For lecture topics, see her blog at httphttps://extrayad.blogspot.com/

Research coaching: offers to review work and suggest strategies and options for overcoming research challenges. Can work online (over Zoom) one-on-one.

Geographic Specialties

AZ, NY and New York City, Mid-Atlantic, Cincinnati, Omaha, Detroit, Kansas City, Chicago, Eastern Europe (Ukraine, Lithuania, Poland, Romania).