The first speaker for the 2020 season of the Chautauqua County Genealogical Society will be Max Walters, newly hired curator for the Darwin R. Barker Historical Museum, at the March 17 meeting.

Walters has studied history, archaeology, and museum science at Central Michigan University as well as museum collections and curatorial practices at Johns Hopkins. He has also worked for the Ukrainian American Museum of Detroit, the Historical Society of the Tonawandas doing research on the Erie Canal, and the Canterbury Shaker Village in New Hampshire.

The Genealogical Society meets March through November on the third Tuesday of each month in the Steele Room of the Darwin R. Barker Historical Museum/Library at 6:30 p.m. and speakers begin at 7 p.m. The August and November meetings are held off site as announced. The Garland Room, the society’s research room, is open on Tuesdays from 4 to 8 p.m., and Saturdays from 1 to 5 p.m., the same hours that the Historical Museum is open. The public is invited.

For information or willingness to be a speaker, please contact President Gail Pugh Dash at 595-3593 or 785-8420, or Vice-President and program chairman Ruth Nichols at 965-2656. The society is also on the web and Facebook.