In 2013, Tracy Rivest Keeney founded an Armenian Genealogy Facebook group that connected people all over the world in a space with a focus on genealogical research, locating records, translation help and finding long lost family.
In 2016 George Aghjayan, the Director of the Armenian Historical Archives and the chair of the Armenian Revolutionary Federation (ARF) Central Committee of the Eastern United States brought the first Armenian Genealogy Conference to Watertown, Massachusetts.
Thanks to their connection in the Facebook group, Aghjayan’s co-organizers were Tracy Rivest Keeney and Mark Arslan, the creator of both the Armenian DNA Project and the Armenian Immigration Project (an online database of abstracts of primary source material for the study of Armenian immigration to North America through 1930).
Over 300 people attended the event in Watertown which was co-sponsored by NAASR, Project SAVE, Houshamadyan and the Armenian Museum of America. Attendees learned about Armenian genealogy sources, how to get the most out of the Armenian Immigrant database, DNA tests and the records of Armenian compatriotic unions.
After the success in Watertown, conferences were held in Detroit, Michigan in March 2017, Mahwah, New Jersey in June 2018 and Milwaukee, WI in November 2018.