About

Portals2history, an historical and genealogical research company was recently established by Judith Sweets.

 

Judith Sweets, researcher, historian, genealogist and author has conducted part-time independent genealogical and historical research for more than 25 years and for several years served as a volunteer researcher for her local genealogical society. 

She has a Master's Degree in Historical Administration and Museum Studies from the University of Kansas. During the past 20 years she held various professional museum and archive positions including Collection Manager, Registrar/Exhibit Coordinator, Reference Archivist, Audiovisual Archivist and Media and Exhibits Archivist. She has also taught several "Genealogy and the Internet" classes for the local High School Extension  program.

During the early 1980s she was the editor of "The Pioneer," a publication of the Douglas County [Kansas] Genealogical Society.

Judith has a passion for historical and genealogical research. She enjoys finding ancestors for others and helping them fill in gaps on their family tree. Her specialties are newspaper research and census research. She also has expertise in Kansas historical research and African-American historical and genealogical research. While researching her own ancestry, she traveled to Ireland, England, Canada, Switzerland and France.

In 2006 Sweets compiled a book with Debby Lowery entitled African-Americans in the 1865 Kansas State Census [Douglas County]. In her free time she is conducting in-depth research about formerly enslaved African-Americans who rode the Underground Railroad through Kansas en route north in the late 1850s and early 1860s.


Sweets was most recently a co-researcher with Debby Lowery for the book The 116: The  True Story of Abraham Lincoln's Lost Guard, Jim Muehlberger, author, published 2015.