“A Genealogist’s Guide to Women and the Law” will be the next program hosted by the Genealogy Club of Newtown.

The virtual event is scheduled for Wednesday, November 10. It will be at 7 pm, via Zoom. Genealogy club meetings are co-sponsored by C.H. Booth Library.

Registration is required and can be done via e-mail to genclubnewtownct.secretary@gmail.com. Those planning to participate are asked to sign in around 6:45 so that everyone will be admitted before the program begins at 7.

The speaker will be Judy Russell, a genealogist with a law degree, who is interested in helping people understand the often arcane and even impenetrable legal concepts and terminology important to those of us studying family history.

In early America, women were all too often the people who just were not there: not in the records, not in the censuses, not on juries, not in the voting booth. The common law relegated women to “protected” (second class) status. Understanding how they were treated under the law provides clues to finding their identities today.

Russell earned a bachelor’s degree in journalism with a political science minor from George Washington University and a law degree from Rutgers School of Law-Newark. She has worked as a newspaper reporter, trade association writer, legal investigator, defense attorney, federal prosecutor, law editor and, for more than 20 years before her retirement in 2014, as an adjunct member of the faculty at Rutgers Law School.

Additionally, Russell serves on the faculty at the Institute of Genealogy and Historical Research, the Salt Lake Institute of Genealogy, the Genealogical Research Institute Of Pittsburgh, the Midwest African American Genealogy Institute, and the Genealogical Institute on Federal Records.

She is a member of the National Genealogical Society, the Association of Professional Genealogists, and among others, the state genealogical societies of Illinois, New Jersey, North Carolina, Texas, and Virginia.

Reservations are required to participate in the Genealogy Club of Newtown program. Send a request for the link via e-mail, including name, address, phone number and e-mail address, to genclubnewtownct.secretary@gmail.com.

Those planning to attend should sign in at 6:45 pm so that all guests will be admitted before the meeting begins promptly at 7.