Zion Genealogical Society
of Lake County, Illinois
Including Beach Park, Gurnee, North Chicago, Park City, Wadsworth, Waukegan, Wildwood, and Winthrop Harbor

Chain Migration

MONTHLY LECTURE SERIES & UPCOMING EVENTS
August 13, 2026 Thursday, 7 pm
Hybrid; In-person Cook Memorial Public Library 413 N. Milwaukee Ave., Libertyville, IL 60048
Lecture starts promptly at 7:00. They typically last an hour, with 15 additional minutes for questions.
Presented By: Suzanne Hoffman

Did you ever wonder how your ancestors chose a location to move to? What was the impetus that put them in a particular spot, or in a specific geographic region as opposed to another. We are going to explore the chain migration of immigrants to northern Illinois. Who were they and why did they settle where they did. We can match ethnic groups or people from the same location and follow their settlement patterns. The Push and Pull factors unique to them and the waves of migration will be identified for each ethnicity. We will look at: Germans, Swedes, Welsh, Irish, Jews, Italians, African Americans, Polish, and others if we get time.

Registration required at https://cooklib.libnet.info/event/14894600

About Your Presenter
Forensic specialization working on Probate and Heir searches originating in Illinois or Eastern Europe. Available for any local, state, or federal document retrieval in Cook County and Lake County, Illinois. Expertise in Jewish heritage and record access from Lithuania, Belarus, Ukraine, Poland, and other Pale of Settlement territories. Personal family History Research in Cook (with record access to restricted records) and Sangamon Counties of Illinois; Norfolk, Suffolk, and Middlesex counties of Massachusetts; states of Maine and Rhode Island. Currently, Vice President of APG, Secretary of the APG Forensic Special Interest Group, and an APG representative to the Record Preservation and Access Coalition, as well as Secretary of the Illinois State Genealogical Society and Chair of its Advocacy Committee.

How to Join Our Lecture Series

You Must Register to attend this free Zoom presentation. Send an email with your first and last name and inform whether you are a member or not, and your email address. Send that email registration to ziongenealogy@gmail.com by the Sunday evening prior to the zoom meeting. You will receive an email back giving you the details to link in to the meeting on Tuesday. Make sure that you've installed the Zoom software before the event and you'll use that link to join the meeting when it begins.

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