Kathryn Taylor O'Malley was well-known for her work in the field of German-Russian family research. She was born in 1929 in Dodge City, Kansas, to Robert Roy Taylor and Johannah Leona Ehrlich. After graduating the University of Kansas, a career in business led to her appointment as Executive Director of the YWCA in San Bernardino, California. Appointed to the position of American Historical Society of Germans from Russia village coordinator for the Lower Volga Villages in 1990, by 1997 she was the driving force behind the Lower Volga Villages Project. As the project unfolded, she later supervised the work of the coordinators for each village. From her home in Mt. Ida, Arkansas, she edited the village newsletter, The Dreispitz Muehlberg/Shcherbakovka Sheet (it ceased publication after May, 2009). She compiled family histories for the Ehrlich family and published them in Christoph Ehrlich 1746-1798 & Anna Margaretha Braun 1752-1832 and Some of Their Descendants from Shcherbakovka, Russia, to Russell and Marion Counties, Kansas, and Shattuck, Oklahoma, and Lipscomb County, Texas, and Beyond. She also authored The Ehrlichs, Volga German Millers from Shcherbakovka, Russia, to Marion, Kansas, (Hot Springs National Park, Arkansas: Goslee Printing, 1997). O'Malley died on 8 July 2003 in Hot Springs, Arkansas.