Who am I? Depending on who you ask, I am Dr. Antoinette Jenkins, Toni, or Mom. My array of names reflects a mosaic of roles: Wife. Mother. Relative. Friend. Educator.  I was raised in the DMV and have ancestral ties along eastern Virginia and northern Louisiana. My academic and professional background is in organizational science. For more than 25 years, I have dedicated time and applied my academic skills to fulfill my passion of learning history through the stories of families. I have constructed family trees, delighted in listening to oral histories, and verified information passed on through personal stories and records by researching and analyzing records held by archives, libraries, and government agencies. In more recent years, I have added analysis of autosomal DNA test results to my toolkit. Combining these methods has been illuminating; known relationships have been validated, hidden identities have been discovered, and a seemingly endless treasure trove of new questions continues to be revealed.  After many years of making time for genealogy research, I am now dedicating myself to this work full time. Why? It is deeply meaningful to me. I am passionate about historic preservation and recognizing the people, experiences, and places that made us possible. My lifelong interest in genealogy research has only deepened and increased with time, so I decided to shift the balance of my attention to more fully engage in this endeavor. In addition to managing and operating my genealogy practice, I support local historic preservation efforts through volunteer work with Historic Port Royal. I manage outreach and programming for the Old Port Royal School, a century-old, Rosenwald-style schoolhouse that was established, built, and operated by my ancestors—a discovery made possible by genealogy research.