That's me!

I was born in Corning, NY and I have always lived in New York State. I moved around the State in the early 70s. I finally settled in the Rochester, NY area in 1975. I bought a tiny one bedroom house in the Town of Greece in 1989 which I have been fixing up since then.

About 1976 I was found as a missing heir. I got a whole $92 as an inheritance but it got me started in in doing genealogy. My interest in genealogy first got me to trace my own family tree. You can see some of my family data on the net. I also have traced every branch I can find of the Wilklow family (mom's maiden name). A whole genealogy of the Wilklow family is on-line.

At one time, I did do professional genealogical research but my work situation made it impossible for me to do any more research for others. I spent about 10 years as membership chair of the Rochester Genealogical Society. That term finally ended in June 1998 and now I edit the RGS newsletter; Hear Ye, Hear Ye. In 1993 - 1994, I aided Eileen Welsome, a reporter from the Albuquerque Tribune in finding people who had been injected with plutonium at a Rochester area hospital in the 1940s and 1950s. Her quest for those victims is documented in the book titled The Plutonium Files. In July 1996, I volunteered to host the Monroe County GenWeb site as part of the US GenWeb Project. As part of the Monroe Co. GenWeb are many tombstone records of Monroe Co. cemeteries that I had started copying in 1983. As part of Monroe County GenWeb, I also moderate a "mail list" for Monroe County genealogy.

Another interest is computers. I had my first programming course on mainframes in FORTRAN and learned a bunch of other computer languages which I never used. My first personal computer was a Sinclair ZX80 which I bought for about $200 about 1982. It had a total memory of 1K and used a tape recorder instead of a hard drive.. After that I got a Coleco Adam for which I bought a 300bps modem to connect to Compuserve. That got me my first taste of being on-line. I was on many of the local computer bulletin boards in the late 80s and early 90s and then got on the Internet in 1994. I created my first web page soon after. As noted above, I am now using the Internet to post genealogical information that may be useful for others. You can also see a list of all pages that I have created (somewhere around 400 total).

Also, I have always been a fan of science fiction. I watch many sci-fi shows on TV but current favorites are Doctor Who, Red Dwarf and Enterprise. And I just can't forget the best movie series of all time; Star Wars.

Send a message to: Dick Halsey.

- 6 Jan. 2003