Glotfelty, Stephanie

Description

I’m a full-time English and ESOL teacher at Thomas Jefferson High School for Science & Technology in Alexandria, Virginia. I spend most of my free time working on genealogy. My father’s side of the family is mostly from the UK, France, and Switzerland, and they immigrated to the US between 1620 and 1847. My mother’s side is Polish, primarily from the Mazowieckie and Podkarpackie regions. They immigrated to the US between 1902 and 1914.

I was a co-editor the Fairfax Genealogical Society (FxGS) Newsletter for three years, during which time we won the 2023 National Genealogical Society small society newsletter award. I also run the Beginners’ SIG for FxGS and help with Open Genealogy Nights at our local genealogical library, the Virginia Room, part of the City of Fairfax Regional Library. I completed ProGen38 in 2019 before beginning my studies at the University of Strathclyde, where earned an MSc in Genealogical, Palaeographic, and Heraldic Studies with Distinction in September 2024. My thesis studied emigrants from two Polish-Galician towns who came to the US at the turn of the 20th century.

I love digging around in archives to solve mysteries. The most fun so far as been finding a pair of my 7th-great grandparents, who were both convicts transported from Newgate Prison to Baltimore, Maryland, in 1733 and 1737, searching at the Maryland State Archives, London Metropolitan Archives, Guildhall Library, Westminster City Archives, and British Library. In January 2024, I presented at talk at FxGS called “To Catch a Thief: Finding Your Convict-Immigrant Ancestors in England.”