LaSalle County Genealogy Guild * Ottawa

The LaSalle County Genealogy Guild Ottawa will meet at the Guild Library located at 115 W. Glover at 1pm on Saturday, October 21st.  The speaker will be Dr. Daniel Habbard, the subject of his presentation “DNA behind the Scenes.”  Dr. Habbard started in genealogy at the age of 11.  He never looked back and now he has been researching family history for over 35 years.  His ancestors began arriving in North America nearly 400 years ago.  They were English, Scots-Irish, German, Welsh, Irish, French and probably Dutch.  Though he was born and raised in the US, looking back upon his 8 great-grandparents 3 were born and raised in Canada.  He was part French-Canadian and the mother of a fifth may have passed through New Brunswick on her way to the US.  A lifelong obsession for science and research resulted in eight years of living in France while working at CERN just over the border in Switzerland during which he earned a Ph.D. in high energy physics from the University of Michigan and had a postdoctoral position with Harvard.  There he met his wife and they eventually moved to her native land of Sweden.  Currently he is serving as President of Lake County Illinois Genealogical Society and as a member of the Advisory Board of the Swedish-American Center in Chicago.  He will tell us about DNA the different tests?  Why do they tell us different things?  and lots of other questions.