About

I was born and raised in Southeast Texas, in the same town my Czech ancestors settled generations ago. The land has changed hands. The landmarks have faded. But the names are still here, carved into cemetery stones, written in church registers, preserved in courthouse records, and carried by the people who never left.

Genealogy, for me, is not about collecting names. It is about stewardship.

I have spent more than a decade on WikiTree, first as a volunteer trying to untangle my own family, then leading projects in Categorization, Cemeteries, and Templates, and later as part of the WikiTree Team. My role has always been the same: help fix what is broken, build what does not exist yet, and make the system work better than it did yesterday.

That mindset carries into my own family research. I do not copy trees. I do not chase prestige lines. I read the records. I test the DNA. I trace the land. I document the context. If something does not hold up, I rework it until it does.

I am a project coordinator and self taught developer by trade. I think in workflows, data structures, and edge cases. Genealogy just happens to be one of the most complex and meaningful datasets I have ever worked with. When I build a tree, I am not building it for show. I am building it to last.

Much of what I know began with my grandmother, who remembered the stories long before I understood their value. Others in my family preserved documents, notes, and handwritten histories that now serve as foundations. I am not starting from nothing. I am continuing what they began, with better tools and higher standards.

Outside of the screen, I am still here. Same town. Same roads my great great grandparents traveled. Member of the local historical community. Contributor and docent to the museum that preserves the place they helped shape. The past is not abstract to me. It is local.

This site is where I intend to write about that work. The research. The history. The DNA. The technology. The systems behind good genealogy. And occasionally the frustration with how easily history can be distorted when structure and discipline are ignored.

- Steve