Derek has a depth of experience in project management from a nearly 30-year military career managing linguists and intelligence professionals. The skills Colonel (Ret) Tolman developed serving the intelligence community transfer over nicely to the family history and genealogy community. As he says, “It’s nice to transition from looking for the bad guys as an intelligence professional to helping others trace the good guys on their family tree.”
Derek hails from a family deeply committed to genealogy and family history. He currently serves as the President of the Thomas Tolman Family Organization which was founded in 1903 by his third-great grandfather. This all-volunteer organization has been holding regular family reunions and preserving ancestral records, pictures, documents, and personal histories for over a century. In the mid-1970s, as the volume of records increased, the family built the Thomas Tolman Family Genealogy Center in Bountiful, Utah by gathering donations of over $70,000 (around $340K in 2018 dollars) and inviting cousins to volunteer over 21,000 hours of labor to house the family records. Over the years, cousins have stayed overnight at the home while they worked on the family records.
Derek’s passion for family history was sparked while serving as a Battalion Commander in Afghanistan in 2008-2009. Under the crushing stress and loneliness associated with the burden of command, he was strengthened by three short family history stories his father shared with him. These stories of faith from his ancestors carried him through that deployment and taught him the power and importance of documenting and preserving our stories.
Derek has a Bachelor’s Degree from Brigham Young University in Spanish Translation and Military Science and a Master’s Degree in Strategic Studies from the U.S. Army War College. Derek resides in South Jordan, Utah with his wife Carolyn who is also a Project Manager for Legacy Tree Genealogists. They are parents of five children.
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When I discovered through DNA results that my mother was adopted at birth (and she never suspected it), I began to try to find my biological grandparents. That quest for my biological grandparents began 12 months ago in June 2019. Since then, I have found enough genetic matches through AncestryDNA, FamilyTreeDNA and MyHeritageDNA to identify my grandfather beyond a reasonable doubt, but my biological grandmother remains very puzzling, chiefly because most of the DNA submitters, have not taken the time to fill their family histories and trees. I believe I am half way to solving the mystery of the biological grandmother, but certainty will require a real breakthrough. I have Identified a number of common segments of DNA on various chromosomes that link a number of people in the databases, but again, they have very incomplete family trees or none at all. I need help in going further. Nevertheless, I am continuing to build chromosome comparisons of close matches and eliminating gradually the family groups that cannot logically be those of my biological grandmother. What remains must logically be her biological relatives. I would love to hear from someone who has gone through this process and give me some tips. Best to all of you on a similar quest to solve a 100-year-old mystery! bob
Good luck in your research efforts, Robert! Here is an article from our blog that you may find of interest: https://www.legacytree.com/blog/x-chromosome-solved-100-year-old-adoption-mystery.