TAFFY GOULD COUTS, Speaker at Family History Day

It is a pleasure to introduce Taffy Gould Couts as a speaker at Family History Day at the California State Archives.

An Arizona native, Mrs. Couts started working in genealogy 36 years ago. In 2006, she attended the Genealogical Institute at the National Archives.  She completed the Certificate Program in Genealogy at Boston University in July 2009.

Mrs. Couts has taught Native American Genealogical Research for the past 13 years. She has taken classes at the University of California, Davis in the Native American Studies Major. Research has been conducted at California State Library, Sutro Branch, and Sacramento Branches. She has done major research at the National Archives in San Bruno, Laguna Nigel, Fort Worth and the Washington, D.C. and College Park branches. She also has attended classes at the Family History Library in Salt Lake City. She has in the past volunteered at the Auburn, California Family History Center.

For the past four years, she has donated time and research for Native Americans being disenfranchised from their tribes. Among the most treasured research she undertook and completed was to research her great-great grandmother and the Supreme Court Appeal to the Dawes Roll. She has lectured throughout Arizona and California for various genealogical societies.

Mrs. Couts has Native American ancestry from Cherokee, Chickasaw and Choctaw tribes. One of her grandfathers was listed on the Henderson Roll, another supplied meat at the Chickasaw Constitutional Convention. She has recently completed testimony for some southern California documented Indians against the tribes that have tried to unenroll them as members. Those cases now go before the U. S. Supreme Court .

Mrs. Couts will be presenting Five Civilized Tribes - Southeastern Tribes Relocated to Oklahoma.  Learn about the history and social fabric of the tribes, the agencies involved and the types of records held in them.