From the Archives to the Classroom with Ancestors unKnown, Dana Saxon

Dana P. Saxon, JD, MSc, is the Executive Director of Ancestors unKnown, an education nonprofit that’s providing schools with genealogy research and history curriculum. After spending nearly 10 years in the education nonprofit sector in the U.S., Dana moved from NYC to the Netherlands in 2011. It’s there that she earned a Master’s in Sociology at the University of Amsterdam, focusing her studies on the significance of family history research among people who descend from survivors of slavery. Since then, she’s traveled between the U.S., the Netherlands and Suriname to introduce new audiences to some of the world’s untold histories and the power of genealogy research. Ancestors unKnown officially launched in 2014 and currently serves primary and secondary schools in the U.S. and the Netherlands. Dana currently resides in The Hague and blogs about her life as a U.S. expat at http://blackgirlgone.com.

Dana will share the journey that took her from amateur genealogy research to launching a business that introduces young people to their own family histories. And she’ll share some of the family stories that were most inspiring. Her story starts somewhere in New York, when she began looking for motivation and new ideas, which quickly led her to become more curious about her family’s history. 

From researching online to digging into the archives at the Schomburg Center (NYC) and the National Archives (DC), Dana pieced together the story of her 2nd great grandfather, Thomas Warren (T.W.) Long. Although she knew her grandfather by the same name, she never knew there was another T.W. 

Learn more about Ancestors unKnown: http://ancestors-unknown.org