What first inspired your interest in genealogy and family history, and how did that evolve into advocacy work?
When I was thirteen, my stepfather was contacted by a long-lost first cousin he barely knew from the French Canadian side of the family. We met that summer in Burlington, Vermont, and the cousin shared a whole set of family history materials she had put together. My stepfather was never especially interested in genealogy, so I kept the papers she gave us, and a couple of months later, by pure chance, I found a genealogy website while I was killing time one morning. That day I sat with my grandmother, started entering names into a family tree, and that was really it.
The advocacy side came later, growing out of my own frustration with how hard it was to access New York City-area records, even ones that should have been public. As I got older and became a professional genealogist, I started learning how public record laws actually worked and how often agencies were ignoring them. My first success was my fight to obtain New Jersey marriage indexes, which led to 116 years of records being released and put online through a partnership with Reclaim the Records, which I later went on to help run.
What does advocacy in records preservation and access mean to you personally?
To me, advocacy has two main sides, and both matter because we have to use every tool the government actually gives us. One side is legislative: trying to persuade the people who make the law, whether by statute or regulation, to create rules that improve access to historical records. The other side is judicial: asking courts to interpret existing laws in ways that make records more accessible, affordable, and practical to use.
Which path to pursue depends on the situation. Sometimes the law is simply against us. In those cases, no amount of clever argument will fix the problem, and the real answer is to change the law. Other times, the law is vague or poorly applied, and litigation can force an agency to recognize that records should already be public. Much of that work takes the form of Freedom of Information litigation, though sometimes broader legal tools can matter too. For example, if an agency is failing to perform a duty it is legally required to do, a mandamus action may be another option. Advocacy means understanding which tool fits which problem, and then using it strategically.
Can you share a defining moment when you realized the importance of protecting or improving access to historical records?
My villain origin story occurred on my 15th birthday, when my mother took me to the New York City Municipal Archives for the first time. I went in expecting to leave with copies of a whole stack of family records. Instead, I learned that researchers were not allowed to photograph or photocopy them and had to pay for certified copies, even when no certification was needed. At the time, the fee was $5 per record; now it is much higher. My mother let me get exactly one document, and I had to hand-transcribe everything else. I was furious.
As I got older and learned more about public records law, I realized those policies were not just frustrating; they were likely illegal. For the past decade, I have been involved in advocacy around the New York City Municipal Archives and access to its records. In 2022, after years of pressure, we sued for access to digital copies of the City’s vital records. Three weeks later, the Archives launched a free online portal. I cannot prove exact cause and effect, but the result is what matters: records that once would have cost researchers thousands of dollars are now available online for free.
What specific issue, effort, or record/archival collection have you been most passionate about advocating for, and why?
It is hard for me to pick one project, because I am involved in so many and I usually focus on the things I care most about. But if I had to choose one thing from a genealogical standpoint, it would be access to Veterans Administration (VA) “XC Files.” These claims files are essentially the 20th- and 21st-century successors to Civil War pension files. The VA holds more than 1 million cubic feet of them, primarily covering veterans from World War I forward, and they are often packed with extraordinarily valuable material: vital records, family information, medical records, records from overseas, and even documents that no longer survive elsewhere.
A few years ago, improved records management at the VA and Reclaim the Records (RTR) litigation for its primary index opened a path for genealogists to request these files more effectively, and I obtained hundreds of them. It quickly became clear that they are among the most underused sources in American genealogy. We built a tool so others could request them too, and in response, the VA adopted a policy that sharply restricted genealogists’ access. These files are too important to remain inaccessible, and restoring access to them is one of the most important fights I can imagine.
What challenges or barriers have you faced in your advocacy work, and how have you worked to overcome them?
In public records litigation, courts often seem uncomfortable with the idea of ordering governments to release large datasets about ordinary people, even when the law supports disclosure. At the trial-court level, we are usually successful. In recent years, we have repeatedly won initial rulings in New York and Pennsylvania, establishing that records we sought were public. But on appeal, those victories have repeatedly been reversed—six times in a row, in fact. That pattern has been demoralizing, especially because appellate courts usually defer to trial courts, so even a few reversals are uncommon.
Once that happens, the options become limited. Higher courts rarely agree to hear these cases, even when we believe the lower appellate courts got the law wrong. At that point, the only real path left is often legislative. That is why, in addition to litigation, I have increasingly turned to lobbying to improve records access. I chair advocacy for the Association of Professional Genealogists (APG), and we are a 501(c)6, which means that we are specifically empowered by the IRS to lobby. Yet without a dedicated income stream for this purpose, our work will necessarily be limited.
Tell us about a key success or “win” that has had a meaningful impact on records preservation or access?
One of the most meaningful wins in my advocacy work came in RTR’s New York State Death Index case, because it was one of the rare times the highest court actually heard the issue. At the trial-court level, we won an order directing the New York State Department of Health to release its death index database. On appeal, however, we lost in a 3–2 decision. The majority treated basic death information as private, while the two dissenting judges would have ordered the release of the core data we were seeking.
Because the appellate ruling was split, we had an automatic appeal to the New York Court of Appeals. That court actually sided with us. It held that there is no inherent privacy interest in basic biographical death information, while allowing narrower protection for more sensitive details such as cause of death. As a result, we obtained millions of records and were able to publish a crucial stretch of the New York death index that had long been inaccessible, especially for the years after 1956. That decision was a major victory, not only for genealogists, but for the case law more broadly.
How do collaboration and community partnerships play a role in advancing your advocacy efforts?
Collaboration matters enormously in advocacy, but sustained, meaningful participation from community members is rare. Many people support records access in principle, but far fewer are willing or able to do the difficult, technical, and sometimes controversial work that advocacy requires. A small number of people end up carrying most of the burden.
My work through RTR and APG provides structure, credibility, and opportunities to combine litigation, lobbying, education, and public outreach. But there are a very small number of us, all volunteers, doing virtually everything, and we are often just juggling many roles and responsibilities. I try to build capacity by teaching others through webinars, conference presentations, and practical guidance, but capable volunteers are still few and far between.
At the same time, I have seen that genealogical organizations are often cautious about taking public positions on issues that may be sensitive or politically difficult, even when they broadly support the goal. Nor are they willing to fund advocacy work directly. So, for me, collaboration means not just finding allies, but helping more people develop the confidence, knowledge, and willingness to participate in advocacy in a serious way, and in that regard, I have been largely unsuccessful.
Why is access to historical records important not just for genealogists, but for society as a whole?
Access to public records matters for all of society because access to many of the basic biographical records I seek serves real civic purposes. In my advocacy work, opponents often try to reduce this issue to “genealogists just want people’s records to be nosy.” That misses the point. Most of the records I care about span the 20th century and sometimes the very recent past. Yet they help people—often marginalized groups and immigrant populations—understand families, communities, migration, identity, inheritance, and the basic facts of who lived where and when. These records help people understand the social history of their communities
On the other side of things, an agency’s privacy objections are often wildly overstated. In other states, the types of records I spend years fighting for have been public for 400 years, and society has yet to collapse. These records have been public since the colonial era because basic factual information about life events has an important public value. It allows us to understand who has lived, who has married, who has died—otherwise we have no easy way of knowing what funny business the government is up to.
How have you seen advocacy change in your time, particularly regarding tactics and strategies?
Advocacy in genealogy has changed enormously over the last decade, and I give most of the credit for that to RTR and its founder, Brooke Schreier Ganz. Public record laws have existed for decades, and many good-government groups have long used them. But what was totally new was applying those laws in a sustained, strategic way to genealogy. Genealogists had certainly filed record requests before, but usually on a one-off basis for a specific document. What RTR pioneered was using public records litigation to obtain large-scale historical datasets for the public as a whole.
It moved genealogy advocacy beyond asking politely for access and toward using the courts to compel agencies to release records they were already legally obligated to provide. In many ways, that work is still unusual, even within the broader public records world. Historians are often not pursuing these kinds of datasets, and traditional transparency groups are usually focused on contemporary government accountability rather than older historical records. As a result, we are still building the legal and strategic playbook for this kind of advocacy in real time.
What changes would you most like to see in the next 5–10 years?
The biggest change I would like to see over the next 5–10 years is serious investment in advocacy. Our profession simply does not have the intrinsic wealth that it needs to operate at the level these issues demand. Litigation and lobbying are expensive, and most of the people doing this work are donating enormous amounts of unpaid time. If I had $5 million, I could immediately allocate it for tons of important legal and legislative work.
What is missing is a real development pipeline: sustained fundraising, donor cultivation, and long-term financial planning specifically for records access work. There are many people who care deeply about history, genealogy, and preservation, but those interests have not yet translated into consistent large-scale support for advocacy. If that changed, we could do far more: pursue strategic litigation, retain lobbyists across the country, respond more quickly to threats, and build durable institutions—instead of relying on a handful of overextended volunteers. To me, the future of records access depends on turning advocacy from a shoestring effort into a properly funded movement.
Give us a word or phrase that defines your advocacy style:
Needling.