About MeEdit

Hi, my name is Tom Chatt, and I've had an interest in genealogy as long as I can remember, though it's only in recent years that it's turned into an obsession a more serious pursuit. Professionally, I'm a software technologist, living in Los Angeles. This is my first experience contributing to a wiki, and I began contributing to here on June 15, 2006. My first page was on Captain William Henry Dobbs (1716-1781), a particularly colorful ancestor who was a privateer, nautical pilot, and served in the American Revolution.

(NOTE 12/31/2006: I am shifting my focus away from this site and over to WeRelate.org, which I find has a much more ideal combination of free-form wiki with structured data.)

Family Clusters I Am Working OnEdit

Taylor, Holt, Dobbs: New York and colonial New England

• Captain William Henry Dobbs (1716-1781)

Sherratt: Aberdeenshire, Scotland --> Ontario, Canada
Spring, Farquharson of Finzean: Aberdeenshire, Scotland

(related families include Cattanach, Cromar, Shaw, Garden, Mortimer, and Gordon)

• Robert Spring (c1735-?)
• Robert Sherrat (1771-1818)

Wilhite, Ramsey: Virginia -> eastern Tennessee -> Illinois
 

Chatt: Northumberland, England -> Illinois / Indiana
 

Brautman/Brantman: possibly Czernowitz --> New York City
Littmann: Bohemia(?) --> New York City
 

Scheidemann, Reuscher, Weitzel: Norka, Russia -> Kansas -> California
 

O'Hargan/Harrigan: Ireland -> western New York -> California
Comstock: colonial New England -> Nauvoo, PA
Slater: colonial New England -> Wisconsin
 

Carmelich, Marincovich, Cvitanich: Bol, Brac, Split, Croatia
Uglesich, Mircovich: Veli Rat, Dugi Otok, Zadar, Croatia
 

Places of InterestEdit

• Cocke County, Tennessee, early 1800s
• Allendale, Hexham, Northumberland, England
• Aberdeenshire, Scotland (particularly Birse and Lumphanan parishes)

Other Contributions to GenealogyEdit

• Makhnovka "shtetl" page contributed on JewishGen.org
• A Beginner's Guide to Kagan's Sefer HaPrenumerantn, a useful source for 19th century eastern European Jewish genealogy
• various items about genealogy on my blog

LanguagesEdit

I'm a native English speaker, with some ability to communicate in French and Spanish. I've also proven capable of some amount of decoding of genealogical records in Italian, Croatian, and Hebrew.