Leaving a Legacy: Who's Writing Your Story?
2026-11-09 18:30 - 20:00 (America/Chicago) | Virtual Meeting
Deborah A. Abbott, Ph.D.

Dr. Deborah Abbott is a professional genealogist specializing in African American research, manuscript collections, and genealogy methodology. She is a Cuyahoga County (Ohio) Archives Advisory Commission member and serves on the Lake View (Ohio) Cemetery Outreach Committee. She is an associate with the Kentucky-Tennessee Associates based in Springfield, TN; past president of the African American Genealogical Society, Cleveland, OH; and a retired professor of Counseling from Cuyahoga Community College in Cleveland. She holds both a BS and an M.Ed. from Tuskegee University in Alabama and a PhD from Kent State University in Ohio.

Dr. Abbott is an instructor and the coordinator for both the week-long African American tracts at the Institute of Genealogy and Historical Research (IGHR), held at the University of Georgia in Athens, GA, and the Genealogy Research Institute of Pittsburgh (GRIP), held at LaRoche University in Pittsburgh, PA. She is also an instructor at the Salt Lake Institute of Genealogy (SLIG) in Salt Lake City, UT. She presents lectures and workshops at national, state, and local genealogy conferences. She lectures at colleges, businesses & libraries. She has published in both the Ohio Genealogy News and Family Tree Magazine. Dr. Abbott can be seen teaching the African American research course “Needles & Threads” in an educational video on Ancestry Academy, available on Ancestry.com. She coordinates monthly classes for the Genealogy and Family History Clinic for the Cleveland Public Library.

A Cleveland, Ohio native, Dr. Abbott is a life member of Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Inc., the Tuskegee University National Alumni Association, and Antioch Baptist Church in Cleveland.

A Zoom link will be sent to members and mailing list subscribers the morning of the meeting.
