Cindy Amrhein

After working for ten years as a freelance abstractor for a title search company, Cindy Amrhein changed her focus to title searching only historic properties and Native American land. From 2004 to 2006 Cindy was a weekly columnist for a Native American newspaper in northern New York State, "The Akwesasne Phoenix Sundays" (now out of print) under the pen name of HistorySleuth, the handle she still uses online. Her latest book, "A History of Native American Land Rights in Upstate New York" is on its way to becoming a reference for land claims. It is now carried by 30 college/university libraries in 19 states including Columbia University, Princeton, Harvard, Oklahoma State, Texas A & M, and Yale University Law School Library. She was the Historian for the town of Alabama, NY from 1997 to 2007. She also served as a museum aide at the Holland Land Office Museum in Batavia, NY. Cindy became fascinated with the town's history when she moved into the area in 1990. She wrote her first book "Bread & Butter The Murders of Polly Frisch" published in 2000, with her good friend, Ellen Lea Bachorski. The story has been given a new life by publishing a revised, updated 2nd edition in 2014. Cindy now lives in Wyoming County, NY where she served as Assistant County Historian since 2007, and became County Historian in June of 2015. She frequently publishes in the historian's quarterly "Historical Wyoming." She is a founding member of the Government Appointed Historians of Western New York. When she's not doing land research in the clerk's office or writing historical true crime, you can find her plotting out murder mysteries. She often posts snippets of her current writing on her blog http://historysleuth.blogspot.com/.