Anacortes Senior College

Basic genealogical research principles will be described. Genealogical rules will be presented, and help will be provided to know what to believe and what deserves skepticism. The principles and methods for genealogical research with DNA will also be discussed by the instructor. If you are serious about genealogy, you must have your DNA sequenced. The rules have recently changed—you must have your DNA sequenced at Ancestry (they no longer allow DNA sequence uploads from other vendors). This is a workshop—identify problems in your ancestry to work on. Bring a basic (paper) pedigree—4 to 6 generations with as much data as possible on birth, death, and marriages.

Instructor: Dick Tolman (Class size limited to 12 students)

R. L. Tolman is a twice-retired medicinal scientist (Ph.D., University of Utah in bio-organic chemistry--specialty DNA) with a consuming interest in history and genealogy; an experienced teacher, lecturer, and writer (120 refereed scientific publications). He won the National Genealogical Society’s Best Family History Competition in 2006 and has published articles in The Register (New England Historic Genealogical Society), Crossroads (Utah Genealogical Society) and Nevada in the West (Nevada Historical Society). He has been a volunteer at the Nevada Historical Society, a Family History instructor at Truckee Meadows Community College/Reno and at the Anacortes (WA) Senior College. He maintains the website www.29deadpeople.com, a site for sourced genealogical essays. He is a pro bono genealogical researcher and prefers to work on impossible problems and those that have been published in error.