User:WilliamsDa

Biography
I began tracing my family history in 1983 while stationed in England with the United States Air Force. During my three years in England I visited various archives in England and Wales.

After my time in England I began studies at Brigham Young University and eventually finished a degree in Family and Community History. I started work at the Family History Library in 1991 as a British Reference Consultant. Bert Rawlins, Paul Smart and and others mentored me extending my education well beyond what was available at university. The opportunity to attend a course in Welsh family history at the University of Wales, Aberystwyth under the direction of John and Sheila Rowlands helped mold my passion for Welsh family history.

I took the genealogical accreditation test for England administered by ICAPGen and after a few years of recovery took the Wales accreditation test passing it also.

In 2004 I transferred from the Family History Library to Worldwide Support where we provided support to family historians throughout the world. Our effort to develop wiki.familysearch.org started as a tool for providing better and more efficient research support.

In the fall of 2008 I transferred to the Collection Management team where priorities are set for acquiring and publishing digital records. A reorganization in December 2009 placed me on the Content Strategy team. My responsibilities have expanded from British to a much larger portion of the world's countries. Content Strategy helps FamilySearch prioritize records based on their ability to help researchers:


 * Connect to living memory
 * Locate ancestors by geography
 * Identify ancestors uniquely
 * Trace Ancestors
 * Trace descendants

Credentials
Accredited Genealogist® in England

Accredited Genealogist® in Wales

Publications

 * Monumental inscriptions, Baran Welsh Independent Chapel, Llangyfelach
 * Monumental inscriptions, Capel y Gwrhyd, Llangiwg, Glamorgan
 * Monumental inscriptions, Saraon Independent Chapel, Rhydyfro, Glamorgan
 * Material for the Genuki website
 * Material for wiki.familysearch.org

Organizations

 * Society of Genealogists
 * Guild of One-Name Studies
 * National Genealogical Society
 * ICAPGen
 * Glamorgan Family History Society
 * The Glamorgan History Society
 * Capel: The Chapels Heritage Society
 * Friends of the National Library of Wales
 * Welsh National Gymanfa Ganu Association

My Reading List
Michael Whitfield Foster. "A comedy of errors" or the marriage records of England and Wales 1837-1899 : throwing light for the first time on the story of the GRO records of the 19th century. Wellington, New Zealand : Michael W. Foster, 1998.

David Russell Barnes. People of Seion: Patterns of Nonconformity in Cardiganshire and Carmarthenshire in the century preceding the Religious Census of 1851. Llandysul: Gomer Press, 1995.

R. M. &amp; G. A. Benwell. Interpreting the Census Returns For Rural Anglesey And Llyn. Anglesey Antiquarian Society and Field Club Transactions (Denbigh: Gee &amp; Son, 1973), 111-136.

R. M. &amp; G. A. Benwell. Interpreting the Parish Registers and Bishop's Transcripts For Anglesey And Llyn. Anglesey Antiquarian Society and Field Club Transactions (Denbigh: Gee &amp; Son, 1975), 69-140.

Dafydd Ifans. Nonconformist Registers of Wales. Aberystwyth: National Library of Wales &amp; Welsh County Archivists' Group, 1994.

David Jenkins. The Agricultural Community in South-West Wales at the turn of the Twentieth Century. Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 1971.

Major Francis Jones. An Approach To Welsh Genealogy, The Transactions Of The Honourable Society of Cymmrodorion Session 1948 (London: Honourable Society Of Cymmrodorion, 1949), 303-466.

 

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