Join us Saturday for Day 2 of Arab Family History Days
June 2026
NSAB Nashra
A Newsletter of theNational Society for Arab & Arab American Genealogy
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ARAB FAMILY HISTORY DAYS RETURN THIS SATURDAY!
Arab Family History Days – Day 2
Live Seminar is Free & Open to All(Virtual on Zoom)NSAB’s 3rd Annual Arab Family History Days continues.
Saturday, June 20, 2026
8:30 –11:00 AM Pacific /11:30 AM–2:00 PM Eastern
If you already registered for Day 1 on April 25, you do not need to register again. One registration covers both days, and all registrants will receive updates and Zoom details by email.
Day 2 will focus on researching Arab American communities, understanding access to Ottoman-era records, and learning practical ways to work with Ottoman records in family history research.
Day 2 Program Highlights — Saturday, June 20, 2026
Introduction
NSAB will open Day 2 with a brief welcome and overview of the day’s sessions.
Session 1 — Stephanie Arage Bennett
Following the Trail: Researching an Arab American Community
How do we research not only one family, but the community around them? In this session, Stephanie Arage Bennett will use community-based research as a framework for tracing Arab American families, neighborhoods, and networks. Using the Arab community of Palestine, Texas, as a case study, this session will explore how records, local history, newspapers, directories, libraries, archives, and family clues can help reconstruct the story of an Arab American community.
About the speaker: Stephanie Arage Bennett is a second-generation Arab American of Palestinian and Lebanese descent and serves as Secretary of NSAB. She holds a Master of Library & Information Science degree from Texas Woman’s University and is the Genealogy & History Division Manager for the Dallas Public Library. Stephanie has worked as a librarian specializing in genealogy and family history research for ten years and presents on genealogy, library resources, and family history research to local societies and community groups.
Session 2 — Jonathan McCollum, PhD
Access to Ottoman Records
For many families with roots in the Arabic-speaking world and across the former Ottoman Empire, Ottoman-era records may hold critical family history clues. Yet these records have historically been difficult to access without on-site or specialized research in Turkey, and only limited portions have been available online. Barriers such as language, archival systems, digitization, and indexing have kept many of these records out of reach for family historians. In this session, Jonathan McCollum, PhD, will discuss collaborative efforts to index and expand access to Ottoman records, opening new possibilities for researching families and communities across the region.
About the speaker: Jonathan McCollum, PhD, is the Content Strategy Manager and Middle East records expert at FamilySearch. He holds a PhD in Middle East History from the University of California, Los Angeles, as well as a BA and MA in History from Brigham Young University. He is a Turkish language specialist and formerly taught at Brigham Young University, where his work focused on Middle East and eastern Mediterranean history.
Session 3 — Reem Awad-Rashmawi, JD
Working with Ottoman Records
In this practical follow-up to the broader discussion of Ottoman record access, Reem Awad-Rashmawi will guide participants through the use of Ottoman records for family history research, with Palestinian records as the primary examples. The session will include a step-by-step approach to working with records available online, as well as ways to recognize Ottoman-era clues preserved in home archives, family papers, tin boxes, and other inherited materials. Participants will learn how to begin, how to identify relevant sources, what information these records may contain, and how to connect Ottoman-era evidence to family stories, oral history, and other genealogical sources.
About the speaker: Reem Awad-Rashmawi, JD, is a Palestinian American immigration attorney, professional genealogist, and founder and president of the National Society for Arab & Arab American Genealogy. She has researched and recorded her own family history for more than four decades and became a professional genealogist in 2019. Reem presents on genealogy and oral history related topics at societies and conferences across the United States. She is also the author of the book chapter “Arab American Genealogy Research as a Form of Public History,” published in Arab American Public History (2026).
Register for Arab Family History Days today!
NSAB Roots & Reminders
Migration Is Not Always One-WayFamily migration stories are often told as a single journey: someone left home and began a new life somewhere else. But many Arab and Arab American family stories are more layered than that. Parents, grandparents, and great-grandparents may have traveled back and forth, sent children to be raised by relatives, lived in more than one country, or stayed connected to home through letters, visits, marriages, and memory.
This month, take a moment to ask your family about movement. Did anyone return home after immigrating? Did relatives live in another country before arriving in the United States? Were children, spouses, or siblings separated across borders, including borders that changed over time? If an ancestor became a U.S. citizen and later returned to their homeland, were births, marriages, deaths, or other life events recorded with a U.S. consulate, leaving records now held by the U.S. National Archives? These stories remind us that migration is not only about departure and arrival, and neither are the records that may help document the journey.
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