Self-taught pajama genealogist since 2006. My formal training in data-handling comes by way of anthropological linguistics, which I studied as part of my master`s degree in Linguistics. My research interests are primarily focused on the 20th century and mid-to-late 19th century, mainly in New England and the South in the United States, and South Devon in England. I prefer to call myself a family historian rather than a genealogist because I like to study an entire social group -- a person`s friends, associates, neighbors -- as well as the relations within the tight family circle. (Since I enjoy analyzing other people`s data as well as my own, `micro-historian` might be a better description.) I enjoy working with primary sources, something that I didn`t get to do when studying history in school. To me the journey is not simply about filling in blanks on a group sheet -- it is learning more about the times and places and how people lived -- how their lives were different from mine, and how some things are still the same. I enjoy talking about other people`s research and brainstorming about different ways to search. My toolkit includes Family Historian and Ancestral Sources, Behold, Scrivener, Evidentia, GenSmarts, and IrfanView. Even with all these wonderful tools, I`m most likely to give you the same advice my high school calculus teacher gave me when we were starting to work a problem: Get a piece of paper, and a piece of pencil, and draw a picture. Stack Exchange is great because the act of writing everything out and constructing a good question is a wonderful way to engage with a problem and get a fresh perspective. ©