About Sharon

Sharon was inspired at a young age to pursue teaching and research. A professional author and educator, many of her articles on South Carolina research and research methodology appear genealogical journals and newsletters. She lectures on these topics and continually explores ways to improve family research through use of sound methodology and technology.

For her, writing and research are “two sides of the same coin.” You simply cannot separate them. Reconstructing past lives from the relics that remain in court houses, archives, institutions and from capturing history “as told in the first person” is her great passion.

Sharon is a graduate of the Oral History Institute at Kenyon College, Gambier, Ohio—one of the few genealogists to seek formal training as an oral historian—and of the Institute of Genealogy and Historical Research at Samford University, Birmingham, Alabama. The Association of Professional Genealogists, Genealogical Speakers Guild, National Genealogical Society, Dallas Genealogical Society (Board member, DGS Journal editor), the International Society of Family History Writers and Editors, and the Texas Oral History Association are among the organizations to which she belongs.

Sharon’s research philosophy:

All research involves truth seeking, not only about the focus of one’s attention, but about the background, the methods and the technologies used. And if you linger long, here, you may also discover something else about my approach to research. I write about family history and my research much as Loren Eiseley wrote about paleontology: as a poet and empiricist.  Both dimensions are motivated towards “truth seeking,” the former toward the processes within the researcher, the latter toward the object of her attention. Together, they form a powerful dialectic.