Who We Are

Get to Know the Genealogist at Ancestral Roots Consulting

Ancestral Roots Consulting is a one-person practice run by a freelance genealogist and historical researcher who has been doing serious family history work since 1995. A lifelong curiosity about the past, handed down by a father who loved history, turned into a career spent tracing the lives of everyday people and setting them inside the wider story of their era.

Browse the site to find out more about the practice and the services it offers.

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Early Years and Formative Influences

The passion for genealogy and history started in childhood. A father working toward a master's degree in history at the University of Texas in Austin told family stories, among them tales of a great-great grandfather who fought at the Battle of Chickamauga and the later Battle in the Clouds in 1863. Those oral traditions were later researched and verified as accurate. Family outings to places like Jamestown, Virginia, Gettysburg National Battlefield, and Great Smoky Mountains National Park made the past feel vivid and close.

Academic Background and Training

History was the standout subject at Lampasas High School in Texas, where the award for best history student was earned at graduation. Four years later came a B.A. in History and English from Trinity University in San Antonio, awarded cum laude. A Ph.D. in American Studies followed from the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque, with a doctoral dissertation that was an environmental ethnohistory of the Navajo Nation's 500,000-acre ponderosa pine forest.

Living and Researching in Northern Arizona

Since 2000, the researcher has lived in Northern Arizona, mainly in Flagstaff but also in Sedona and Winslow. Over the past two decades, research has increasingly woven genealogy, or kinship studies, together with public history, the history of ordinary rather than famous people. Like a tree with a double trunk, these twin passions have grown deep roots and long, healthy branches, much like the pinon and ponderosa trees of Northern Arizona's forests and woodlands, with the deserts lying below.

Researching the Tyree and Delilah Gentry Family

A major focus of personal genealogical and historical research has been the Tyree and Delilah Gentry family of South Carolina, Georgia, Tennessee, and Arkansas. These are the researcher's mother's mixed-blood Cherokee ancestors, roots that were barely known while growing up. Recovering this hidden part of family history, and of the history of the United States and the Cherokee Nation, led to the development of distinct research techniques. These techniques use U.S. census and other records to look sideways at the closely woven fabric of American communities between the Revolution and the Civil War, connecting the dots while reading between the lines.

How the Research Is Done and Why

Accurate, truthful, and responsible genealogical research ultimately rests on facts and truth. The most exciting part of this work is weaving detailed information about a person's or a family's life in their own time into the broader tapestry of historical events they lived through, understanding how ancestors influenced their times and how their times influenced them. We, the living, experience a similar process today, living in different yet related times.

This research and consulting project is about helping you dig deep into your own ancestors' rich and meaningful lives and understand more fully how their lives connect to yours: past, present, and future. If you have already done a fair amount of your own research, the work can help transform a brick wall into a brick pathway leading back into the historical and genealogical past, a pathway that spirals back into the present and the future. If history were merely dead, like our ancestors, why bother?

Common Questions

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