I feel like this month was taken up with results from the "Law of Unintended Consequences." It was not nearly that bad, but at times it sure felt like it.

Several months ago I purchased a much larger computer to use for research and web development. The computer is wonderful, but it generates so much heat that I had to install a new air conditioner. The new air helped, but did not solve the heat problem when you sat next to the computer as I often do for hours. So this month I moved the computer to a separate room adjacent to my office. What looked like a small job proved to be quite involved in rewiring everything. After a week of work I had everything done and back up, and ready for work.

That said, what did I get done? Well we are now up through the letter "V" on our World War I draft card search. This expands our library of cards to 1,177 and puts us at the letter "W" which will be very involved. Obviously we will have a large list of Whitehead relatives to work through (about 350) and then a few "Y" surnames to be through with the search. Because of the length of this search we will post cards as we find them over the next month.

One of our favorite cards so far is that of Elbert Munger who listed his occupation as "Rock Crusher." It seems that Mr. Munger was in a prison in South Dakota when he filled out his draft card. I guess as a guest of the state of South Dakota his job was indeed crushing rocks!

Even with the occasional strange card, this continues to be a great source of missing names, dates, and even marriage information and we encourage everyone to take a look.

Last month we mentioned that we were having some good conversations about the value of DNA information and the depth of information needed to get good results.

That series of conversations encouraged me to get our DNA information up so that it could be viewed, and the DNA section of the web site is now available for viewing.

We tried in this section to provide a detailed discussion about our decision process in doing a 67 marker test. We also provided the details of our specific analysis to help everyone who has not tested yet see just what the results might produce.

Also in this section is a view of Whitehead, Ireland from our trip there last year. It is a great trip if you have Irish ancestors and we encourage all who can go there to visit.

If you have not tested, we encourage everyone to find a male descendent to test. By doing so you can test both the Y and X DNA in your family and maximize the results of your tests.