Dr. David Mc Donald, The Preacher Genealogist, has been an active genealogist for nearly 50 years. He took his first client as a sophomore in high school, and taught his first classes in genealogy as a teen. Dave’s lectured nationally and internationally, in-person and online, to audiences on matters of methodology, migration and immigration, the old Northwest Territory, the Draper Manuscripts, and churches and their records, land records, courthouse research and a variety of other topics. He has worked with clients across the country helping them discover their forebears in colonial America, New England, the Mid-Atlantic region, Virginia & Kentucky, the states of the old Northwest Territory/Midwest, and the Great Plains. Dave also has extensive experience researching English ancestors before and after the Industrial Revolution.
Dave’s been president of the Association of Professional Genealogists, of which he remains a member, and served on the Board for Certification of Genealogists. For several years, he was a Director of the American National Genealogical Society. He has been an expert witness, testifying in court on matters of heirship, and conducted the genealogical research necessary to complete a major expansion of one of the busiest international airports in the world. He has lectured for Ancestry Academy (online) and worked as a genealogist for ProGenealogists, their research division.
As an educator, Dave has been a a course coordinator for the Genealogical Research Institute of Pittsburgh [GRIP] (“Churches and their Records,” “The Old Northwest Territory,” “Advanced Methodology Seminar”) and the Salt Lake Institute of Genealogy [SLIG] (“Churches & Their Records”). He has served as an instructor at the Institute of Genealogy & Historical Research [IGHR] (“Advanced Methodology,” “Government Documents & Law Library,” “Military Records”) for more than a decade. With Billie Stone Fogarty, he created the Genealogy Symposium, an intensive, state library & state archives-based program in Oklahoma City on the theme “Thinking Genealogically.” He is the principal of Old Northwest Research, LLC, in Madison, Wisconsin, and the founder and editor of The Zephyr, a web-based genealogy journal.
Dr. Mc Donald is a retired Protestant minister, with an undergraduate degree in history and government, a master’s in parish ministry, and a doctorate in small group/non-profit leadership.
