Board of Directors

Owen M. McCafferty II

Co-Founder
Geschäftsführer & Chairman of the Board

owen@germansfromlithuania.org

Owen M. McCafferty (1991-) is an accomplished genealogist with expertise in the former German minority of southwest Lithuania known as the Deutsche aus Litauen. His 20 years of experience in genealogical research was sparked by an interest in his maternal grandfather’s family history which grew into a life-long passion. His lectures on the Germans from Lithuania have been featured at the International German Genealogy Partnership, the Society for German Genealogy in Eastern Europe, and the Foundation for Eastern European Family History Studies. In 2021, he contributed research for the BBC television programme Who Do You Think You Are? He is the founder and President of the not-for-profit International Association of Germans from Lithuania (IAGL) and has helped to translate tens of thousands of German, Polish, Russian, and Lithuanian records and documents for their online index. He holds a BA in English from Baldwin Wallace University where he minored in Entrepreneurship. Professionally, he is an experienced Product Manager, specializing in new product development and product innovation. In addition to genealogy, his other passion is analog film photography. He is a contributing podcast host for the Film Photography Project in Fair Lawn, New Jersey where he also volunteers his time and expertise to help preserve small format analog motion picture film shooting. In 2022, he published Vom Pongau Nach Cleveland: The Ancestors and Descendants of Heinrich Saleker & Emeilie Wiemert a 478-page family history on his maternal grandfather’s line.

Alvin Hirsch

Treasurer & Secretary (Kassenführer & Schriftführer)

Alvin Hirsch, one of the founding members of IAGL, was born in Lithuania near the town of Kalvaria. All four of his grandparents lived near the town of Seirijai in southern Lithuania and he still has relatives in Lithuania today. Al is a retired international banker, financial executive, financial management consultant and finance professor. He has researched his ancestry quite extensively and successfully, and continues to be an active member of the. He maintains a website documenting his research and family history discoveries at www.Hirsch-Lithuania-Ancestry.com.

Cynthia Jacobson

Co-Founder

Vice President & Chief Editor (Chefredakteurin)

Cynthia Spurgat Jacobson, a founding member of IGAL, has always been intrigued by the surnames that end in -at. Her interest increased when her father showed her an internal passport, later dated to WWI, of his grandfather Johann Ferdinand Hutop with a photograph and the word “Wilkowiszki” stamped on it. Her search resulted in a 600 page fully cited book, The Three Spurgat Families from Wylkowiszki in 2010 and a 200 page Addendum in 2015. She is currently at work on a second addendum, mostly focused on family members who did not emigrate. She has maintained the blog, G-GLISP, German Lutherans in Suwalki Province since 2012. She is a retired teacher and part time ad hoc university instructor, and current educational consultant.

Randall Kulat

Legal Advisor (Rechtsberater)

Randy grew up in Western Springs, Illinois (a suburb of Chicago), and graduated from the University of Illinois with high distinction in history and Phi Beta Kappa. He then graduated from the University of Illinois College of Law. He has been a lawyer in Chicago for over 40 years, practicing in the areas of public finance, tax incentives and real estate and asset-based lending. He met his wife Elizabeth while they both worked at The Daily Illini, the student newspaper in Champaign-Urbana. Randy and Beth have been married for 40 years and live in Oak Park, Illinois. They have two adult daughters who both live in Los Angeles and work in the film industry.

Both of Randy’s parents attended the same Lutheran church in Chicago where they were baptised, confirmed and married, and all of his grandparents came to Chicago in the early 1900s as immigrants from German-speaking regions in what are now Lithuania and Poland. His ancestral surnames include Kulat, Gerulat, and Neubacher and has ties in the areas of Wizajny (now in Poland), Vistytis, Marijampole, and Kybartiai.  

Alan Schlosser

Vice President (Vizepräsident)

Alan has been conducting genealogical research for almost 20 years. For the last 5-10 years, his concentration has been on his Prussian-Lithuanian branch. Alan was born and raised in Buffalo, New York, where his paternal Schlosser relatives have been for five generations.

Alan’s interest in family history began as a teenager, listening to his maternal grandmother tell the story of how her great-great-great grandfather's third cousin’s second husband came over on the Mayflower. It was never the same line of descent, as she could never remember it. He now jokes that his mother's family just missed the Mayflower as he’s found no ancestors on the ship.

His interest in his Prussian-Lithuanian connection started after talking to his 100-year-old great-great-aunt who had many stories and pictures to share. She believed the family was German, so it came as a surprise to them both to learn they came to Buffalo from Russian-Lithuania! How did they get there has been a question he’s been trying to answer.

Alan has been married to his wife for 20 years. They have two kids and two dogs. When not doing genealogical research, Alan works as a chemical technician for a food packaging company in their R&D ink printing department and has an Associates's degree in Materials Science.

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