Currently accepting clients for...

• Family History Research
• Speaking / Presenting

professional genealogist since 1982, specializing in Virginia record sources, land platting, neighborhood reconstruction and tax records; complete genealogies and problem-solving; lectures at national and regional conferences and conducts all-day workshops; editor, Magazine of Virginia Genealogy and NGS Research in the States series; Library of Virginia board member, former president, National Genealogical Society and the Virginia Genealogical Society; former course coordinator and instructor, IGHR, SLIG, GRIP; former editor Virginia Genealogical Society Newsletter and the Mid-Atlantic Germanic Society; published three volumes of Virginia court records and edited others for publication.

Geographic Specialties

VA, WV

Geographic Specialities
Virginia and West Virginia

Lectures
Methodology Backtracking Your Migrating Ancestor: A Methodology That Works
Femme Covert or Femme Sole: Women and the Law
Land and Inheritance
On A Scale of One to Ten: Weighing Your Sources
Correlating Evidence
Working the Land: Using Land Records to Solve Research Problems
Granny Possum's Pointers
Why Should I Have Every Census Record?
Re-creating Your Ancestor's Neighborhood
Teasing the Silent Woman from the Shadows of History
Finding a Needle in a Haystack: Working with Manuscript Collections
One Document, Three Steps: Transcribe, Abstract, Evaluate
Identifying Women: The Ultimate Brick Wall
Court Records: Beyond Deeds and Wills
Taxes: Milk Them for All They're Worth!
Chancery Records: The Secrets They Hold; The Families They Reveal
Using All the Census Data: Agricultural, Manufacturing, Population, Slave, Social
On the Frontiers of Freedom: The Baptists in the South
Virginia Topics:
In the Beginning: Patents, Grants and Bounty Land
Those Other Land Records: Leases, Mortgages, Partitions, Surveys, Taxes and More
Born in Virginia: How Do I Find Him
Research in Virginia: Her Records and Repositories (2 hours)
Digging Deeper: What We Can Learn from Colonial Land Patents
Land Companies and Early Settlers
The Road to Independence: Virginia's Revolutionary War Records
Colonial Conflict: Virginia's Colonial Wars and Militia Service
Virginia's Tax Records: A Gold Mine of Information
The Virginia Frontier: Little Known Sources
Beyond the Courthouse: Virginia's Manuscript Collections
Piedmont Virginia Migrations: Sources and Evidence
Virginia Land Records in Kentucky and West Virginia
From Jamestown to the West: Early Virginia Migration Patterns
Virginia Frontier Settlement and Migration
Working with Colonial Virginia Records
Virginia Sources for West Virginia Researchers
Other topics on request.
 

Research Time Periods

• 18th Century
• 17th Century

Honorifics/Credentials
FVGS, FNGS, FUGA, CG®

Affiliations
Board for Certification of Genealogists (board member)
Library of Virginia (board member)
National Genealogical Society (former board member and president)
Virginia Genealogical Society (former board member and president)
Orange County Historical Society
Institute of Genealogy and Historical Research (IGHR) (instructor and course coordinator)
Salt Lake Institute of Genealogy (SLIG) (instructor and course coordinator)
Genealogical Research Institute of Pittsburgh (GRIP) (instructor and course coordinator)
 

Degrees
M. Ed. (English)