The American Society of Genealogists is the scholarly honorary society of the genealogical field. Founded by John Insley Coddington, Arthur Adams, and Meredith B. Colket, Jr., in December 1940, its membership is limited to 50 living fellows. ASG publishes The Genealogist, a scholarly journal of genealogical research semi-annually.
In a time when genealogy was frequently viewed as the realm of eccentric dilettantes, the founders of ASG were leaders advocating more rigorous research standards. This included using original sources whenever possible and documenting the source of information. Donald Lines Jacobus noted in 1960 that a new school had developed in American genealogy circles about 1930. That movement, according to the late Milton Rubincam, "wrote accounts of specific families, documented and referenced: they showed by example how problems should be solved, what sources should be used, and how records should be interpreted."
Fellows of the American Society of Genealogists, who bear the postnominal acronym FASG, have written some of the most notable genealogical materials of the last half-century. In particular, current Fellow Robert Charles Anderson is director of The Great Migration Study Project, an effort to catalogue the earliest European immigrants to New England. John Frederick Dorman, currently the senior fellow, recently (2007) completed the fourth edition of Adventurers of Purse and Person, chronicling the earliest settlers in colonial Virginia.
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