Board Bio's

Revision as of 10:05, 17 July 2020

Biographies of the Board of Directors Members

Selma Kampe Blackmon

Selma has been a family history researcher for 30+ years. As a nontraditional student, Selma attended Clayton State University, Morrow, Georgia. She holds a BS in Integrative Study with a major in psychology and a minor in history/genealogy. She received her BS in 2009 and was graduated Magna Cum Laude.

In 2008, Selma completed an internship with the CSU Archivist, which concluded with the founding of Our Genealogy Group (OGG). Now in 2020, she is active on the OGG steering committee, provides community genealogy education, Dunham board member and vice president and writer of a blog, genealogicalhistoryresearch.blogspot.com.

Selma's Dunham connection? My connection started in the 1990s while attempting to identify two photos. The back of one identified "Aunt Sarah Dunham." The photo collection is circa 1900 and belonged to Nettie Ethel Couch, my maternal grandmother. With family information, I started the search in Rome, Oneida County, New York. Overwhelming response of photos and suggestions came from the friendly Dunham's of Oneida County. The photo has been identified as Sarah Dunham Hickok, sister to my gr gr grandmother Jane Angeline Dunham (1823-1906). The other photo is labeled "Grandpa and Grandma Donaham." This may be the only photo of Jane's parents, William F and Sarah Metcalf Dunham. DNA provided a strong match to several of the William and Sarah family. Finally, last year a DNA cousin found a newspaper article from Wisconsin providing information on a family reunion after 43 years, this article names all of the siblings. See my blog article, Jane Angeline Dunham 1823-1906, parents William F Dunham & Sarah Metcalf, 21 June 2009.

With the support received from past researchers, I would like to encourage new members to endure!!! My public online trees are RootsDigger2020 on MyHeritage and RootsDigger (Under Construction) on Ancestry, Selma Kampe Blackmon aka RootsDigger

url for blog article: https://genealogicalhistoryresearch.blogspot.com/2019/06/jane-angeline-dunham-1823-1906-parents.html

Jackie Beck Coniglio

I was born in Madison, WI in 1938 and grew up in south central Wisconsin. My mother is Edna Dunham, one of nine children of Dennis Rockwell Dunham and Mollie Muir. We are descended from "Deacon John Dunham" I was late to develop an interest in genealogy, sometime in middle age. I was fortunate enough to know both of my great grandparents, Charles Foster Dunham and Virginia Gallager Dunham. After my great grandmother died we moved in with my great grandfather to help him run the farm and lived there for a almost two years. At that time he raised chickens and sold chickens and eggs. He also raised a crop of cucumbers for the local pickle factory in Hancock.

When I finally began research on my family I had success with some other lines but hit a dead end with the Dunham's not knowing anything beyond my great grandparents. I was fortunate enough to have Gratia answer a question about my ancestors which I had posted in a Mormon publication. She opened the door for me and I discovered that we were cousins and so shared most of our Dunham ancestory.

I have lived in Rochester, NY since 1963 when I married my husband Guy. We have two grown children and two grown grand daughters.

I think knowing where you came from helps you know who you are and the Dunham genealogy has helped enrich my life. Kudos to all of you who have worked so hard to make this organization what it is.

John Dunham Duguid

My Grandfather, Lewis G. Dunham, a descendant of Deacon John Dunham, was born in Braintree, Vermont in 1871. He became employed as a trainman with The Central Vermont Railway. My Mother, Dorothy (Dunham) Duguid was born in White River Junction, VT in 1909. Around 1914 Lewis moved his wife Abbie and two daughters to Canada and began working for the Canadian National Railway as a brakeman and later as a conductor.

In 1929 Dorothy married Arthur A. Duguid, a Canadian of Scottish heritage in what is now Thunder Bay, Ontario on Lake Superior. Twins, Grace and Glenn were born there in 1930. I was born in 1938, and Charlotte in 1944. In 1948 the family moved to Toronto.

After high school and technical training I was employed as a radio operator for the Canadian Department of Transport. In the 1960s I relocated to England and worked as sea-going radio officer in the British Merchant Navy. In 1969 I returned to Canada and was employed in various technical jobs.

In 1982 I went back to school for training in computer programming and accounting. In 1993 I moved to Central Texas and held administrative positions with the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center and with the Center for American History at the University of Texas at Austin.

In 2005 I retired to San Marcos, TX, and in 2017 I returned to Canada, living in Amherstburg, Ontario, near Detroit. For the past few years I have served as coordinator for our group's DNA Project. In 2019 our association cooperated with another genealogy association researching the origins of Scandinavian DNA groups. This research virtually assured that Deacon John Dunham's DNA can be traced back to Denmark around one thousand years ago.

Trudy Dunham

Trudy Dunham is a former President of the Dunham-Singletary Family Connections, now Dunham Genealogy Research Association, and continues to serve on the Board of Directors. She is a member of the Bladen County NC Dunham family, determined through the Dunham DNA Project to be one of about five unique Dunham lines in North America. She is researching her family line. Trudy is a retired faculty member from the University of Minnesota and currently lives in Minnesota.

Lisa Eschenburg

"There was more time before genealogy. I blame my Dad and a brother for getting me into this." That is a direct quote from Lisa Eschenburg who has actively researched her family genealogy for over 25 years having started with the family's predominantly German lineage and eventually taking over the research on her Dad's one non-German line that started the adventure and involves a Dunham line. In recent years, the addition of autosomal DNA has helped support traditional research identifying her fourth great grandmother Dunham's parents and siblings breaking down a brick wall.

Her hobby/obsession has resulted in research experience for not only Germany (including onsite research) but also Michigan, Ontario, New York, Massachusetts, and Rhode Island. In more recent years her experience has expanded to include some more southern states along with England and The Netherlands. Genealogy volunteering and helping others has added experience with French Canadian, Italian, Polish and Russian research.

Lisa's life background includes a bachelor's degree in journalism with a public relations emphasis along with advertising and marketing minors. This led her to the world headquarters of two tier-one automotive suppliers and the headquarters of a nursery and crafts retail chain.

In genealogy life, Lisa has been a local history and genealogy room volunteer at a local library for over twenty years. A member for twenty-some years, Lisa is currently a board member of the Macomb County Genealogy Group as well as the group's webmaster/tweeter/pinner and chairperson of the group's Let's Talk...Genealogy discussion group. She was the primary writer of the group's last two workshops on beginning genealogy and lineage genealogy. As if that is not enough, Lisa occasionally speaks on a variety of topics for local genealogical, historical, and member organizations. She is also a blogger and Youtuber on genealogy. In addition, Lisa is a member of the New England Historic Genealogical Society, and the New York Genealogical and Biographical Society. In 2018 Lisa and a sister were accepted as members of the National Society United States Daughters of 1812. Lisa has been a member of The Dunham-Singletary Family Connections now also known as the Dunham Genealogy Research Association since 2014 and a board member since 2019.

Audrey (Shields) Hancock

Audrey (Shields) Hancock was born in Miami Co., OH, reared in IL & IN; married to David Hancock (60y); and moved to Michigan. Audrey is a college graduate, a retired elementary teacher, mother of four children, grandmother of eight, g-grandmother of four, and a family genealogist for 50 plus years.

She descends from Jonathan Dunham, aka Jonathan Singletary (b MA & res. Middlesex Co., NJ), s/o Richard Singletary, down to her paternal gg-grandmother, Mary Jane Dunham (b OH), wife of Gideon W. Creager of Darke Co., OH. Mary Jane's father, James Dunham, Jr. (s/o James, Sr. b NJ) died as a POW at Andersonville, GA. His brother, bro-in-law and cousins in Ohio were also Civil War victims. Much sleuthing was done through the years in order to discover her Dunham (alias Singletary) ancestor.

Audrey has helped James Streeter, website coordinator, with editing information included in the DGRA/DSFC Newsletter and the Dunham Dispatch Indexes. She has helped edit or create comments to help researchers find which Dunham ancestor is being discussed in the Newsletters articles.

Gratia Dunham (Stavrum) Mahony

As a history major in college and a member of the Wayne, New Jersey Historical Commission I was appointed in 1976 to the New Jersey Bi-Centennial Committee. This peaked my interest in my own Revolutionary War ancestors and that was the catalyst to trace my own genealogy. I knew my descent on my father’s side was from Roger Williams, and much about that had already been written. My mother issued a challenge to trace her Dunham line. After doing much research on the Dunham and connected families I began teaching beginning genealogy at historical societies and libraries. I also wrote a few articles for an early Dunham Newsletter called “Dunham Dispatch”.

In 2008 I became the editor of the Dunham-Singletary Family Connections Newsletter and wrote many articles about Dunham family lines which I had researched. The name of that organization has been changed to Dunham Genealogy Research Association, and I still work with others to compose articles about Dunham genealogy. I serve on the Board of Directors as historian and newsletter editor.

Eric Stoltz

One day Eric's sister asked if he had any old family photos. She and her husband were creating a family gallery on a wall of their home and she had only recent photos of family members.

He knew he had some photos his grandmother had once given him, so he made copies and gave them to his sister. But on looking at the photos, although he knew the names, he wondered: "Who are these people and where did they come from?"

And thus began a fascination with genealogy that has led him to track his maternal English roots back to Deacon John Dunham's father Richard about 1550, his paternal German roots to 1679 and his paternal/maternal Mexican roots as far back as the mid 1700s.

Eric describes his more interesting discoveries and fills out the details of ancestors' lives on his blog Stoltz Family Genealogy at www.stoltzfamily.us. A recent profile was what happened to his maternal grandfather's first husband who abandoned her with a child at the age of 17. That story led to some wild adventures in piecing together DNA relationships in that desperado's wake. The ancestor profiles involve Civil War stories, stagecoach robberies, and pioneering women. A common aspect of all his lines are ancestor who gravitated toward national and cultural boundaries, and frequently crossed them.

A third-generation native Angeleno and fourth-generation native Californian whose Dunham ancestor 3x great-grandfather Seth migrated from Maine during the California Gold Rush, he lives in downtown Los Angeles within a short walk of many locations involved in his long family history in that city.

Eric works in software development as a UX design leader who has a long history in the technology industry back to 1998. HIs professional portfolio is at www.ericstoltz.com.

James A. Streeter

I became interested in my family history when I was about 12. I had been given a list of 10 names from my G.mother Donham that took me back to John Alden and the Mayflower in 1620. I had a slow start, not being able to drive until I was in High School and then I was able to get to several libraries that had family history collections and the family tree grew. I was about 19 or 20 when I found information at the Los Angeles City Library that took 20 generations to 56 generations of European Royal Families.

The Family Tree continued to grow and when my parents retired in 1983 they took a number of road trips to New England doing research. By about 2010 we had about 10000 individuals and currently over 26000 and still have several years of data entry converting paper records to digital records. I expect that the tree will grow to over 40000 individual when the review is completed.

I have been the treasurer and member of DSFC-DGRA since 2012. I was a founder of a online genealogical society in the past and member of several other family history organizations. I have also been working on a number of projects adding additional info to the Dunhams in America section along with indexing the newsletters and re-designing various sections on the website to make them more user friendly.

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