In addition to family history, I have written a good deal on World War II history, including the handout book for my workshops Dad's War: Finding and Telling Your Father's World War II Story. My 2010 art history book The Graphic Work of Berthe Morisot is now the definitive reference on her graphic works. My external contributions to computational intelligence were few, since my company did not wish to disclose competitive advantage, but I did have a chapter on model visualization in the 2002 book Information Visualization in Data Mining and Knowledge Discovery.

• (May 1984, August 1984). Blood Relationship Searches in Genealogical Databases. Genealogical Computing.
  When genealogical software was still in its infancy, no one had found a way to do fast searches of genealogical databases to find blood relationships between two people in the database. My 2-part article presented a near-instantaneous search method. View Part 1 View Part 2

• (July 2003). Non-blood Relationship Searches. Genealogical Computing.
  I had originally planned to write this article as a follow-up to my 1984 article, but life priorities prevented that. By 2003, there were many robust genealogical software programs, and yet none of them provided searches for non-blood relationships. Once again, I published the efficient search method, and soon after that all genealogical software programs included this capability. View - Excel Visual Basic source code

• (February 2007). From Cornwall to Canada in 1841. Families, vol. 46, no. 1, pp. 7-14. (Ontario Genealogical Society) Viewable by OGS members
  A 1905 account of the voyage served as the starting point for the web page where new information about the Cornish-Canadian immigrant voyages continues to be gathered.

• (2011). GEDCOM Redesign: Bringing Genealogical Computing Fully into the 21st Century web page View
  I was particularly distressed by the failure of the genealogical computing community to deal with the complete re-design of the GEDCOM database format. The database design of GEDCOM was based on the limitations of the technology of the early 1980s. The resulting design sacrificed the principles of good database design (especially third normal form) in order to make things work within the limits of the technology of that time. So, I put together a web page that addressed the topic in detail.

• (10 Feb 2014). Dad's War: Finding and Telling Your Father's World War II Story - Workshop Book. Book Amazon.com
  Workshop book from my "Dad's War" workshops, which I had to stop doing because of health problems

• (24 Apr 2014). Family Thickets: Deep Family and Local History. Book Amazon.com
  Family thickets were the reality within which our ancestors lived, a landscape as real to them as the terrain in which they lived. Putting all the families of a locality back together yields deep understanding of their lives and the choices they made. The book provides steps for dealing with the complexity of communities of highly-interconnected families.

• (13 May 2014). Researcher's Guide to the Pre-Fire Records of Chicago and Cook County: Revised Edition. Book Amazon.com
  The Great Chicago Fire of 1871 destroyed the courthouse and city hall and most of the records. But many records survived or were later able to be legally proven. In 1938, the Work Projects Administration’s Historical Records Survey inventoried Cook County and Chicago records. But the inventory went unpublished when the WPA ended, and the records languished in the Illinois State Archives. Wesley Johnston spent 2 years going through the records and 4 more to publish them in 1982. Now he has updated his 1982 book.

• (Jun 2014 and Sep 2014). Basic Reading of Czech Church Records. Naše Rodina, vol. 26, no. 2, pp. 54-62 and vol. 26, no. 3, pp. 102-108. (Czechoslovak Genealogical Society International) Viewable by CGSI members
  Finding the basic elements of Czech vital records in Latin, German and Czech

• (Jul 2022). Sharing Distant Autosomal DNA: Low probability is not no probability. The Journal of One-Name Studies, vol. 14 no. 7 (July-September 2022), pp. 16-19. (Guild of One-Name Studies) View
  The "Birthday Paradox" gives autosomal DNA projects more success with fewer kits than most people expect.
  ERRATA: (1) Formula 5C has an extra parenthesis at the right end. (2) Tables on first page and last page row "4" should be Detection Probability/Detect 45.9%, NoDetect 54.1%, Pairs Needed 8, Kits Needed 4

• (6 Nov 2022 - 2033 edition 7 May 2023). Wesley Johnston's Guide to Getting Started with Graphs for Genealogists, Graphs for Genealogists (blog of GFG developer Dr. David Stumpf) View
  Step by step guide to downloading, installing and configuring Graphs for Genealogists as a Neo4j graph database application and uploading GEDCOM and DNA information. I have many years of corporate IT experience with design and maintenance of relational databases. I see great potential -- though with a non-trivial learning curve -- for the new-in-2022 Graphs for Genealogists software by Dr. David Stumpf. So, I have been working with him to streamline the installation. But I still have a great deal to learn about graph databases and specifically the Neo4j graph database on top of which GFG is an application.

• (Dec 2022). Calculating Autosomal DNA Match Coverage: A generalized additive recursive method, The Journal of Genetic Genealogy vol. 10 no. 1 View
  My conceptual pseudo-code specification of a simple but powerful recursive algorithm to calculate the autosomal DNA match coverage lower-bound of an ancestor from the DNA tests of multiple descendants. Prior to this, there was no scalable algorithm for rapidly and accurately doing this calculation. The first implementation of my algorithm was by David Stumpf in his Graphs for Genealogists software in July 2022. I also explained how DNA coverage of parents with two or more untested children whose DNA coverage is calculated from the their descendants can only be fully represented as a range and not a single number (akin to the the cone of uncertainty in hurricane path predictions).

• (Dec 2022). Seigniorial Registers PDF on the site of the Czechoslovak Genealogical Society International Viewable by CGSI members
  Brief guide to researching in Czech seigniorial registers

• (Fall 2023). The Journal of Genetic Genealogy View
  • Fully Calculating Autosomal DNA Recursively
    Completion of the work I presented in my 2022 paper Calculating Autosomal DNA Match Coverage: A generalized additive recursive method explaining the reality that only a range and not a single number can be used to accurately present DNA coverage estimates when only grandchildren or later descendants are DNA-tested and presenting the algorithm to calculate the lower bound of the range - This second paper extends the algorithm to calculate the upper bound and examines the behavior of the bounds and their average and the propagated average (now implmented in DNA Painter's Coverage Estimator). The paper also presents the complete source code for an Excel Visual Basic implementation of the upper and lower bound estimation calculations. Excel Visual Basic source code
  • Quantum Genetic Genealogy Applications - A First Look
    I take a first look at quantum computing and what applications it may have for genetic genealogy. I also give a guide to how I began working with IBM's Qiskit to learn quantum computing so that others can learn from the problems I encountered.

• (28 Oct 2023) - presentations (Genealogical Forum of Oregon Advanced DNA seminar)
  • The Birthday Paradox & Autosomal DNA Projects: The Power of Numbers in Autosomal DNA Projects View
    The same Mathematical reality that enables the "Birthday Paradox" gives autosomal DNA projects more success with fewer kits than most people expect.
  • Fully Calculating Autosomal DNA Coverage Recursively View
    Explanation of the method to automate calculation of the lower and upper bound estimates of the range of DNA coverage of an ancestor from the DNA tests of their descendants, along with exploration of the behavior of the bounds under different configurations of descendants
  • Genetic Genealogy Technology Yet to Come View
    A brief review of Face-to-DNA technology and potential genetic genealogy applications of quantum computing

• (Jun 2024). Using GEPHI to Create a Surname Connection Graph, Destinations: The Journal of the Society for One-Place Studies June 2024, pp. 8-19 (Society for One-Place Studies) View - See also the relevant web page
  Visualizing the complex connections between families gives insight into the structure of a community.

• (5 Oct 2024) The Power of Numbers in Autosomal DNA Projects presentation (East Coast Genetic Genealogy Conference)
  Autosomal DNA projects can achieve success with enough testers to overcome usual limitations - which can require far fewer testers than most people would expect.

• (Scheduled Oct 2025) Reconstructing the Families of a Czech Village - presentation (Czechoslovak Genealogical Society International Conference)
  Explanation of the methods, phases, objectives and intermediate results of the long-term project for the reconstruction of the families of Modřejovice in Central Bohemia of the Czech Republic. (See the related web page.)

• (Dec 2024 Pending Publications). Naše Rodina (Czechoslovak Genealogical Society International)
  • Chicago Czech Communities Overview
    Contrary to some recent books and documentaries, Chicago had several widely spread significant Czech communities in the late 1800s and early 1900s. Two Czech-language publications (1900, 1915) and one in English (1904) show us where these communities were.
  • Chicago’s Grand Crossing Czech Community
    After seeing yet another recent book that purported to tell the story of the Czechs of Chicago but omitted the many members of almost all but the largest community, I decided in 2011 to put at least one of these other communities back together documentarily and make that information available on a web site. And so began the “Chicago’s Grand Crossing Czech Community” web site. This article summarizes what I have learned so far.

• (6 Oct 2024) When John Doe is a WWII Unknown Soldier presentation (East Coast Genetic Genealogy Conference)
  WWII soldiers buried as Unknowns await identification. 7th Armored Division Association Historian Wesley Johnston presents case studies of DNA identification after other methods failed.

• (5 Oct 2024) The Power of Numbers in Autosomal DNA Projects presentation (East Coast Genetic Genealogy Conference)
  Autosomal DNA projects can achieve success with enough testers to overcome usual limitations - which can require far fewer testers than most people would expect.

• (13 Sep 2024). Reconstructing Mama Pepa's DNA Kit with Borland Genetics presentation (7th We Are Cousins Conference)
  Each DNA-tested descendant of a person includes some of their DNA. Descendant tests can "cover" a significant part of the ancestor's DNA and matches. Josefa Ruiz (Mama Pepa) died in 1964, but we can know much of what her DNA test would have told us if she had done one. And with Borland Genetics, we can reconstruct an actual partial DNA kit for her from the kits of her descendants.

• (Jun 2024). Using GEPHI to Create a Surname Connection Graph, Destinations: The Journal of the Society for One-Place Studies June 2024, pp. 8-19 (Society for One-Place Studies) View - See also the relevant web page
  Visualizing the complex connections between families gives insight into the structure of a community.

• (Fall 2023). The Journal of Genetic Genealogy View
  • Fully Calculating Autosomal DNA Recursively
    Completion of the work I presented in my 2022 paper Calculating Autosomal DNA Match Coverage: A generalized additive recursive method explaining the reality that only a range and not a single number can be used to accurately present DNA coverage estimates when only grandchildren or later descendants are DNA-tested and presenting the algorithm to calculate the lower bound of the range - This second paper extends the algorithm to calculate the upper bound and examines the behavior of the bounds and their average and the propagated average (now implmented in DNA Painter's Coverage Estimator). The paper also presents the complete source code for an Excel Visual Basic implementation of the upper and lower bound estimation calculations. Excel Visual Basic source code
  • Quantum Genetic Genealogy Applications - A First Look
    I take a first look at quantum computing and what applications it may have for genetic genealogy. I also give a guide to how I began working with IBM's Qiskit to learn quantum computing so that others can learn from the problems I encountered.

• (28 Oct 2023) - presentations (Genealogical Forum of Oregon Advanced DNA seminar)
  • The Birthday Paradox & Autosomal DNA Projects: The Power of Numbers in Autosomal DNA Projects View
    The same Mathematical reality that enables the "Birthday Paradox" gives autosomal DNA projects more success with fewer kits than most people expect.
  • Fully Calculating Autosomal DNA Coverage Recursively View
    Explanation of the method to automate calculation of the lower and upper bound estimates of the range of DNA coverage of an ancestor from the DNA tests of their descendants, along with exploration of the behavior of the bounds under different configurations of descendants
  • Genetic Genealogy Technology Yet to Come View
    A brief review of Face-to-DNA technology and potential genetic genealogy applications of quantum computing

• (22 Sep 2023). Reconstructing Mama Pepa's DNA presentation (6th We Are Cousins Conference)
  Each DNA-tested descendant of a person includes some of their DNA. Descendant tests can "cover" a significant part of the ancestor's DNA and matches. Josefa Ruiz (Mama Pepa) died in 1964, but we can know much of what her DNA test would have told us if she had done one.

• (16 Sep 2023). Y-DNA Primer and The Butson Y-DNA Project presentations (Toronto Cornish Association)
  The Butson Y-DNA Project has had great success in connecting branches of the family that separated before the earliest documents.

• (25 Aug 2023). Johnstons of North Ireland: Brief Overview of Main Research Tools presentation (Around the Heather's Edge)
  I administer the Johnstons of North Ireland Y-DNA project and two related tools that has led our group of Johnston researchers to some remarkable progress. It takes time, but we have connected several Johnston lines. In this brief presentation, I give an overview of the tools we use.

• (Aug 2023). Ontario County Johnston Y-DNA Project Families, vol. 62, no. 3, pp. 46-49. (Ontario Genealogical Society) View
  Old Ontario County became the home of many Johnston families. Some of them lived very close to each other. Most came from Ireland, specifically the northern counties. But were they related? The fact that the Public Record Office in Dublin was destroyed in the 1922 Irish Civil War meant that most of the paper records no longer existed to answer the question. As part of the Johnstons of North Ireland Y-DNA Project, we have obtained Big Y-700 DNA tests for descendants of some of these Ontario County Johnston families. We can now begin to see which ones are more closely related to each other. Surprisingly, all of them thus far tested trace back to an ancestor estimated from the Y-DNA results to have been born about 1600, although we have yet to connect any of the five families with paper records.

• (8 Jun 2023). Cornish Settlers in East Whitby Township: 1830s and 1840s - The English Corners Project presentation (Toronto Branch of Ontario Genealogical Society)
  Many related families emigrated from St. Blazey, Cornwall, to the east half of Whitby Township in the 1830s and 1840s.

• (15 Jan 2023). Finding Cornish Wills presentation (Cornish-American Heritage Society)
  John Evans published his wonderful index to Cornish wills in 2022. In this presentation, I show how to go from the index to the images of the will (actually estate) file and what to expect to find there. View

• (14 Jan 2023). Untangling Family Thickets: Cornwall to Canada presentation (British Isles Family History Society of Greater Ottawa)
  "Family thickets" is the term I use for locations where generations of local families have so intermarried that family trees or forests that stand separately really do not convey the complexity. The locals knew their relatives as much as they knew the terrain where they lived. It was part of their reality. We need to untangle and understand all of these overlapping connections. I show how I have done this for three related family thicket projects. View

• (Dec 2022). Calculating Autosomal DNA Match Coverage: A generalized additive recursive method The Journal of Genetic Genealogy vol. 10 no. 1 View
  My conceptual pseudo-code specification of a simple but powerful recursive algorithm to calculate the autosomal DNA match coverage lower-bound of an ancestor from the DNA tests of multiple descendants. Prior to this, there was no scalable algorithm for rapidly and accurately doing this calculation. The first implementation of my algorithm was by David Stumpf in his Graphs for Genealogists software in July 2022. I also explained how DNA coverage of parents with two or more untested children whose DNA coverage is calculated from the their descendants can only be fully represented as a range and not a single number (akin to the the cone of uncertainty in hurricane path predictions).

• (Dec 2022). The Liebezeit Family's 200 years at the Water Mills of the Mšec Area Naše Rodina, vol. 34, no. 4, pp. 158-166. (Czechoslovak Genealogical Society International) Viewable by CGSI members
  Tracing multiple generations of the Liebezeit family whose descendants operated many of the water mills of the Mšec estate

• (Dec 2022). Seigniorial Registers PDF on the site of the Czechoslovak Genealogical Society International Viewable by CGSI members
  Brief guide to researching in Czech seigniorial registers

• (6 Nov 2022 - 2033 edition 7 May 2023). Wesley Johnston's Guide to Getting Started with Graphs for Genealogists Graphs for Genealogists (blog of GFG developer Dr. David Stumpf) View
  Step by step guide to downloading, installing and configuring Graphs for Genealogists as a Neo4j graph database application and uploading GEDCOM and DNA information. have many years of corporate IT experience with design and maintenance of relational databases. I see great potential -- though with a non-trivial learning curve -- for the new-in-2022 Graphs for Genealogists software by Dr. David Stumpf. So, I have been working with him to streamline the installation. But I still have a great deal to learn about graph databases and specifically the Neo4j graph database on top of which GFG is an application.

• (Sep 2022). Reconstructing Modřejovice Families Destinations: The Journal of the Society for One-Place Studies, (September 2022), pp. 4-8. (Society for One-Place Studies) Viewable by SOPS members
  Report on the status of the first phase of my one-place study of Modřejovice in Central Bohemia of the Czech Republic

• (Jul 2022). Sharing Distant Autosomal DNA: Low probability is not no probability. The Journal of One-Name Studies, vol. 14 no. 7 (July-September 2022), pp. 16-19. (Guild of One-Name Studies) View
  The "Birthday Paradox" gives autosomal DNA projects more success with fewer kits than most people expect.
  ERRATA: (1) Formula 5C has an extra parenthesis at the right end. (2) Tables on first page and last page row "4" should be Detection Probability/Detect 45.9%, NoDetect 54.1%, Pairs Needed 8, Kits Needed 4

• (16 Jul 2021). Cornwall to Canada: 3 Related "Family Thicket" Projects - St. Blazey Families, Cornwall to Canada Voyages, English Corners [Columbus, Ontario]. 19th Gathering of Cornish Cousins, presentation (Cornish-American Heritage Society) YouTube
  Untangling the great tangle of Cornish families who came to the area of what is now Oshawa and Columbus, Ontario, from the same areas of Cornwall

• (27 Apr 2021). What Large-group DNA Analysis Reveals: a case study with Johnston autosomal and Y-DNA. April 2021 Monthly Meeting, presentation (North of Ireland Family History Society - County Tyrone Branch)
  Tools, methods and discoveries in the Johnstons of North Ireland Y-DNA project and by the Johnston Research Group with autosomal DNA

• (Jul 2021). Creating a Y-DNA Heatmap. The Journal of One-Name Studies, vol. 14 no. 3 (July-September 2021), pp. 14-16. (Guild of One-Name Studies) Viewable by GOONS members
  Making rough predictions and clusterings of the terminal SNPs of Y-111-only test results using a colored heatmap

• (May 2015). Diverse Destinies: The Butson Sisters, 1853-1954. Families, vol. 54, no. 2, pp. 13-22. (Ontario Genealogical Society) View
  My 2nd great grandmother and her 3 sisters' lives went in very different directions

• (Jun 2014 and Sep 2014). Basic Reading of Czech Church Records. Naše Rodina, vol. 26, no. 2, pp. 54-62 and vol. 26, no. 3, pp. 102-108. (Czechoslovak Genealogical Society International) Viewable by CGSI members
  Finding the basic elements of Czech vital records in Latin, German and Czech

• (13 May 2014). Researcher's Guide to the Pre-Fire Records of Chicago and Cook County: Revised Edition. Book
  The Great Chicago Fire of 1871 destroyed the courthouse and city hall and most of the records. But many records survived or were later able to be legally proven. In 1938, the Work Projects Administration’s Historical Records Survey inventoried Cook County and Chicago records. But the inventory went unpublished when the WPA ended, and the records languished in the Illinois State Archives. Wesley Johnston spent 2 years going through the records and 4 more to publish them in 1982. Now he has updated his 1982 book.

• (24 Apr 2014). Family Thickets: Deep Family and Local History. Book
  Family thickets were the reality within which our ancestors lived, a landscape as real to them as the terrain in which they lived. Putting all the families of a locality back together yields deep understanding of their lives and the choices they made. The book provides steps for dealing with the complexity of communities of highly-interconnected families.

• (10 Feb 2014). Dad's War: Finding and Telling Your Father's World War II Story - Workshop Book. Book
  Workshop book from my "Dad's War" workshops, which I had to stop doing because of health problems

• (Feb 2013). The Marriage and Parents of Samuel Hicks (1667-1736). The Devon Family Historian, no. 145, pp. 33-35. (Devon Family History Society)
  Correcting a widely-held erroneous ancestry that had him descended from Sir Humphrey Gilbert, who was not his ancestor.

• (December 2012). Two Hyde Park Families: Johnston-Gibson and Boezel, 1881-1921. Chicago Genealogist, vol. 45, no. 2, pp. 49-57. (Chicago Genealogical Society)
  Tracing the movements of a Canadian-American and a Dutch-American family over a period of 40 years.

• (December 2012). Chicago's Grand Crossing Czech Community. Naše Rodina, vol. 24, no. 4, pp. 160-165. (Czechoslovak Genealogical Society International) Viewable by CGSI members
  Report on the early phase of the documentary reconstruction of the community.

• (December 2012). A Confusion of Wives and Husbands. The Cornwall Family History Society, no. 146, pp. 9-10. (Cornwall Family History Society)
  Untangling two Harper families who emigrated from Luxulyan to the Oshawa, Ontario area.

• (December 2012). German Colonization in the Smečno-Slaný Area: Correspondence with Hana Skočková (Prague). Koreny (Roots), vol. 17, no. 1, pp. 15-16. (Czech & Slovak American Genealogy Society of Illinois)
  My exchange of correspondence with expert Hana Skočková on German colonization of the area northwest of Prague.

• (September 2012). Researching Pre-1900 Czech Church Records Online. Naše Rodina, vol. 24, no. 3, pp. 93, 95-105 (cover article). (Czechoslovak Genealogical Society International) Viewable by CGSI members
  Coverage of all online regional web sites for research in all areas of what is now the Czech Republic.

• (February 2007). From Cornwall to Canada in 1841 Families, vol. 46, no. 1, pp. 5-14. (Ontario Genealogical Society) View
  Samuel Pedlar wrote a narrative in the early 1900s based on research he did with original surviving settlers and their families.