Alicia Crane Williams, FASG, will talk about her work as Lead Genealogist of the Early New England Families Study Project for NEHGS, concentrating on families of Essex County. Out of 123 sketches published to date, Alicia has produced twenty-nine that treat families associated with Essex County. Studying these families as groups often illustrates how they were, or were not, related or associated with one another; when they came to Essex County; how they migrated within and/or out of the county; and what lesser-known resources are available for them.

As a professional genealogist for forty-eight years, Alicia has compiled and edited numerous multi-family genealogies and surname works, including the first three volumes of the John Alden family for the Mayflower Families through Five Generations project. She has been editor of the journal Mayflower Descendant, State Historian of the Massachusetts Society of Mayflower Descendants, Assistant Historian General of the General Society of Mayflower Descendants, and Genealogist of the Alden Kindred of America. Her current endeavor, the NEHGS’s Early New England Families Study Project [ENEF], was created to fill the need for accurate and concise published summaries on seventeenth-century New England families, as a companion to The Great Migration Study Project (immigrants from 1620-1640).