My genealogical research focuses upon the background of 18th-19th Century "singing masters". These men each had a circuit of schools training people to read music, so that they could sing the hymns in church. Most of them also compiled hymn-books which they sold and tried to introduce to the churches. Most of my work has concentrated upon a man named John W. Steffy, who flourished in Appalachian Virginia during the 1830s and 1840s. I and my partner in this project (a direct descendant of this singing-master) have managed to link up many hundreds of his relatives, but there's still a very long way to go. These days we are working extensively with DNA, which has broken open some difficult issues and hopefully will continue solving more in future. I've been writing a full length biography of this John W. Steffy for the last ten years, and it's the genealogical background that makes it so hard to complete.

My genealogical research focuses upon the background of 18th-19th Century "singing masters". These men each had a circuit of schools training people to read music, so that they could sing the hymns in church. Most of them also compiled hymn-books which they sold and tried to introduce to the churches. Most of my work has concentrated upon a man named John W. Steffy, who flourished in Appalachian Virginia during the 1830s and 1840s. I and my partner in this project (a direct descendant of this singing-master) have managed to link up many hundreds of his relatives, but there's still a very long way to go. These days we are working extensively with DNA, which has broken open some difficult issues and hopefully will continue solving more in future. I've been writing a full length biography of this John W. Steffy for the last ten years, and it's the genealogical background that makes it so hard to complete.