ABOUT

I have been devoted to genealogy for more than 25 years. As a child, I couldn’t get enough of my parents’ and grandparents’ stories about the past. I could only imagine the toil of picking cotton, visiting those strange places called “outhouses,” or a time when girls were barred from wearing blue jeans to school. That love of history and stories led to a B.A. in American History from Kennesaw State University and a passion to tell the stories of “everyday people” rather than just famous names.

I specialize in tracking poor and hard-to-find Southern US ancestors, using strategies such as social history, little-known records, and cluster research. I’m especially interested in how social, economic, and labor trends influenced our ancestors’ lives.

My presentations have been featured at the Georgia Genealogical Society, Allen County Public Library, and local societies throughout Georgia, where I work to get other family historians as excited about tax and economic records as I am.

I’m an active volunteer, serving as Co-Chair of the Cherokee County Georgia Oral History Committee and Vice President of the Southeast Chapter of the Association of Professional Genealogists (APG). I’ve filled various roles on the Webinar Team at the Georgia Genealogical Society (GGS) and worked with Cherokee County Georgia government and history center on local projects such as identifying unknown burials. I’ve also contributed research to multiple episodes of PBS’s “Finding Your Roots.”

I teach a course on AI in land record analysis at the Institute of Genealogical and Historical Research (IGHR) and the Salt Lake Institute of Genealogy (SLIG).

(When I’m not solving your genealogical mysteries, I’m also an author, screenwriter and filmmaker. You can find out more about my writing and film work at Copperhead Media.)