Joe Smaldone will provide an up-to-date review of how to access Italian records, especially online, with tips for effective searching. He will explain how to overcome language barriers in reading Italian records and how to use the internet to find new cousins and communicate with them. His talk will include lots of practical examples and personal experiences for illustration.

It is a little known story that, during 1830-1914, 1.5 million immigrants landed in Baltimore, America's third largest port of entry. Nicholas Fessenden will describe the stories of the largest groups who came here, Germans, Irish, Jews, and Poles, and why they left their homeland and how they fashioned new lives in their adopted country.

Nicholas Fessenden taught History in the Upper School at Friends School of Baltimore (1972-2010) and also as an adjunct at Towson University, Maryland Institute of Art, and Community College of Baltimore County. Since his retirement from full-time teaching in 2010, he has served on the board of the Baltimore Immigration Museum, which just opened in May 2016, chronicling the story of Baltimore's immigration. He has also lectured at a variety of senior citizen facilities, civic organizations and clubs, including the Maryland Genealogical Society.