Gyneth Cheryl Singhal

CHERYL H. SINGHAL, born in Winchester, VA on November 18, 1944 died in Olney, MD on January 3, 2015. She was a long term resident of Maryland from 1963 (except for 10 years, 1970-1980, in Baton Rouge, LA) until her death. Funeral arrangements were handled by Hines-Rinaldi Funeral Home. Except for a few years of work for several departments of the Federal Government (State, Defense, and HEW) in the 1960s, she performed research and volunteer work as a genealogist all her life. Born and raised in the Valley of Virginia; all sides of her family have roots in pre-Revolutionary America. She began working in genealogy research in January 1971 (long before it became a popular topic) and stayed active in the field ever since. She taught Free University classes in Genealogy (1976-79) at Louisiana State University Baton Rouge. she volunteered at the Branch Genealogical Library in Baton Rouge, La and lead workshops for the East Baton Rouge Parish (La.) Library. She volunteered at the Family History Center (FHC) in Baton Rouge, while it was housed at the University as a Branch Library (1972-77), and since 1991 has been on-staff at the Washington, DC Temple FHC. In 1994, she joined the thin ranks of computer genealogists. She was a frequent presenter at FHC workshops in the area. She served as moderator for numerous brick-wall sessions (for those hard to tackle problems where the researcher has run into a “brick-wall”) and was a long time associate of and contributor to British Researchers. Additionally, she participated in numerous data-entry projects for the NGS, the DAR, the UDC, and the FHL. She is a Past President of the Baton Rouge (La.) Genealogical and Historical Society, and a Past President of the Capital PAF Users Group in Kensington Md. She is a member of the United Daughters of the Confederacy, a member of the Daughters of the American Revolution (since 1979) and a multiple term Regent of her Chapter (Bottany Cross, Kensington). She is the Genealogist for the Cresap Society and is a member of the Shanholtzer Reunion (and indexer of their family genealogy). In 2008, she received the National Genealogical Society's Award of Merit for her long-term involvement with their Member Ancestor Charts project, now on-line. She was the Compiler of the 3rd edition of The History of the Cresaps@ and was currently working on the Narrative History of the Cresaps@. She maintained the WVHampsh GenWeb site, as well as sites for other groups to which she belonged. She has conducted successful research in Virginia,West Virginia, Maryland, Louisiana, California, Great Britain, and India.