Genealogy Online
Then I got smarter, I decided to search for genealogy sites and lo and behold! I found
sites that contain lots of records. The most interesting of all is a site called
Family
Tree Maker which claims to have 200 million names in their archives that date back to the
early centuries. There I did a search for Shepherdsons and had a pleasant surprise.
There are 440 Shepherdson records in United States, 
Canada and England
taken from Census
Information, Marriage Indexes and Records, and even Passenger and Immigration lists.
Unfortunately, majority of the information are only available on CD-ROMs for sale.
I did however find Shepherdsons interested in finding their roots too.
There was a Lewis Shepherdson from Newcastle, Great Britain looking for a Frederick
Shepherdson born in 1863 , "lived about 1900 in Newport, East Riding of Yorkshire,
Near Kingston upon Hull, England and who later moved to Hull.England." Another – a
Clair Shepherdson, seemed an experienced "genealogist" who is actively documenting and
searching for several family trees. And finally, a Vicki Leanne Plew Virgo who is researching a number of surnames including Shepherdsons in South Australia and
"cousins" in other countries.
Excitedly, I wrote to each of them asking if they could assist me. Alas, they were
all in vain! Lewis’ address apparently no longer exists so that ruled him out.
Both Clair and Virgo responded by sharing with me their family trees. Clair, a
Canadian, has been researching her family roots for about 20 years. Although
she has similarly traced her roots to England, she was unable to provide any useful
information to cast new light on my research efforts. Likewise, Virgo had traced his
roots all the way back to England but that was it. However, he did refer me to a
Linda Sawkill who is looking for Shepherdsons worldwide too. I have since written
to her.
The Barry Pereira Connection
Perhaps the most important find that was to kick off my research and bring new light
to it involved a Barry P Pereira's "
Singapore Eurasian" Home Page where he lists a
few Shepherdson in his family trees. It took me a while to figure out that I know
him. He had once called me to say Dr Myrna Blake, whom we consulted in our earlier
research, referred him to me as he too was doing research on his own family as
well as other Eurasian family trees in Singapore. So I called him and learnt that he does
research on family trees as a hobby. What amused me was that he browses the
obituary pages of The Straits Times (a Singapore daily newspaper) on a daily basis to
update his records.
I learnt that he had read the Shepherdson research we had published and even continued
the research to include information on the missing Shepherdson tree that was not
included in the report. That saved me a lot of time having to visit other Shepherdsons
in Singapore and sourcing for more information.
Barry recommended me to buy the Family Tree Maker software published by Broderbund if
I was serious in researching my family tree. So I bought the software on a business
trip in Silicon Valley... And here I am – optimistic that I’ll be able to make more
progress soon. I’ve since updated my family tree with the information Barry provided
and was able to make certain assumptions (from the information collected in the
previous research) that help pieced more of the ancestral puzzle together.
