William Dennis Lindsey

William Dennis Lindsey is a native of Arkansas.  With one grandparent born in Arkansas, two in Louisiana, and one in Alabama, he has Deep-South roots on all sides of his family, with ancestors arriving in Virginia, Maryland, South Carolina, and Pennsylvania from the early 1600s to the first half of the 18th century.  He also has one 19th-century Irish immigrant line, and has been able to track this line back to its village of origin, which he has visited a number of times.

His professional genealogical research name—Dennis Lindsey—reflects his interest in tracing each of his family lines back to the immigrant ancestor.  Lindsey has proven his Lindsey ancestry to about 1700 in Virginia.  The earliest proven ancestor is a Dennis Lindsey, whose name is replicated throughout the generations of this family, descending to William Dennis Lindsey in the current generation.

In addition to a number of books and many academic articles, Lindsey has published numerous genealogical articles. At the request of a genealogical journal that has published several of his articles, he is presently at work on an article about an ancestral family of his which established an “outside family” of mixed racial ancestry in Arkansas.  The article focuses on research techniques for uncovering hidden family secrets.

His doctoral research training and academic work have given him fluency in Latin, French, German, Greek, and old English.  In his European genealogical research, he has found this linguistic background crucially important as he deciphers documents from the past. 

Lindsey is an active researcher who has done genealogical work for hire for a number of years now.  His clients have consistently praised his work.  In several cases, beginning only with scraps of information about ancestors in places such as Arkansas and Texas, he has assisted clients in finding their immigrant ancestors, linking to their European roots for generations prior to immigration, and joining the DAR/SAR.  His work for clients has also included transcribing family documents such as Civil War letters that had become practically illegible to family members.

Lindsey is frequently sought out to provide genealogical lectures on topics in which he has particular expertise.  For a sample of one such presentation, in which he discusses the research techniques that allowed him to bridge the Atlantic with his 19th-century Irish immigrant ancestral line.