User:Papadugg

I'm a retired geneticist who's major personal activity for the last several years has been exploring both my family tree and that of my wife, a physical anthropologist. Luckily for me, my late mother did much of the heavy lifting by exploring the most recent parts before the internet and e-mails made the job much easier. I've transcribed her data into electronic form and expanded on it. In my wife's case, a recent family reunion was partly concerned with collecting genealogical information from surviving members of her father's family. In addition, her nephew (also interested in her mother's family) has shared information about that line.

A large part of my time recently has been devoted to building a collection of digitally scanned books from the principal sources now available : Google Books, The Internet Archive and Family History Books. The amount of material available presents a daunting task - a good sized portion of an external hard drive has been devoted to storage of this material. I have been able to do look-ups for friends as a result. I'm helped a lot by having Verizon's DSL, which makes big downloads much easier.

Both genealogies are presently stored on Family Tree Maker - still using the 2005 version, which is a much more comfortable old shoe than the 2012 version (which I have, but find awkward to use). Since we don't live in our home towns, the neighboring Family History Center, which is pointed toward local users in the Niagara Frontier, is not particularly useful. But the Erie County Public Library in downtown Buffalo has a very good Genealogy collection. It's likely that I'll join the Central New York Genealogical Society in the forthcoming year.

A major help in doing research on my family is the presence of several outstanding family history resources. My great grandfather was a recipient of a (tiny) part of Hetty Green's inheritance as a result of being one of the Howland Heirs. Two family associations are also great sources of information - The Society of Durkee and the Voorhees Family's association. In addition, there is a British researcher who is actively pursuing her relatives with my family name. I just contributed a cheek swab sample to compare my Y-DNA to that of her father. (They were, essentially, identical - but opened up a new problem - whether either of us are actually members of the family when compared to the other Y-DNAs provided by family members.)

My principal hope is that I can break down several "brick walls" in both pedigrees. In the case of my mother's family the earliest person with the name Mould - Joseph Mould - recorded in the 1790 census in Charlotte, Chittenden, VT as being from England- is a dead end. Similarly, in my wife's family, both of her Irish grandparents' (Roden and Canty) disappear from sight once Irish records are involved. And neither family appears in the Shipping Lists or during naturalization.