Student Genealogy Grant Recipients: Update with Melanie Frick

As the Suzanne Winsor Freeman Student Genealogy Grant program celebrates its seventh anniversary, we are checking in with past recipients to see where they are now, and how genealogy continues to impact their lives.

The 2016 grant winner Melanie Frick is a professional genealogist with an engaging new client — a beautiful little girl born last year. I enjoyed meeting them both for lunch recently and catching up on Melanie’s life as she navigates parenthood and genealogy. Melanie is the family curator for her extended family, and used the $500 cash grant award to purchase archival equipment and supplies to safely archive her collection of family heirlooms and photographs.

Since welcoming a daughter to her family Melanie has remained active on the board of the NextGen Genealogy Network volunteering as content coordinator and newsletter editor. For her website “Year in Review” post, she adds:

I was featured on Geneabloggers, wrote about my passion for antique photographs for MyCanvas, completed several memorable client projects (including copyediting Deborah Sweeney’s Lots of Love, Daddy: The World War II Letters of Roscoe and Gladys Yegerlehner), delved more deeply into DNA research, conducted interviews, photographed family historical sites in South Dakota, and made some exciting research discoveries of my own—along with, of course, adding a new generation to the family tree…

At the 2017 SCGS Genealogy Jamboree, Melanie will lead a panel discussion with other NextGen members to discuss how to better engage the next generation of genealogists, “The Next Generation: Young Genealogists and Your Society,” presented Saturday, 10 June, 2017, 11:30 a.m. – 12:30 p.m.

The NextGen Genealogy Network highlights ideas and challenges to encourage connections between generations. This growing group has an active presence at the TNGGN.org website and blog, and on Facebook and Twitter.

Fortunately for genealogists Melanie still finds time to research and write about her own family history for her blog at Homestead Genealogical Research, and share stories and photos from her family collection.

Learn more about the Suzanne Winsor Freeman Student Genealogy Grant program and download the 2017 application at the SWF Grant Page <www.thefamilycurator.com/swf-grant>. The application deadline for the 2017 Student Genealogy Grant and SCGS Jamboree Scholarship is April 15, 2017.