A fourth-generation native of Napa, California, Dan began formal family history research as a teenager. After he married, Dan collected birth, death, and marriage certificates from state and Canadian offices. He laboriously transcribed his family's ancestral records in ink onto the pages of a leather-bound book, the then-popular Bailey's Photo-Ancestral Record.
Dan earned B.S. and MBA degrees from of the California State University system. He worked as a
reliability engineer at the Autonetics division of
North American Aviation.
In 1978 he launched Adventures In Computing, Inc., which developed accounting software for small
businesses. Later, Dan designed and programmed the A&D genealogical software system,
founded Adventures In Ancestry, Inc. with his wife Karen, and obtained U.S. Patent
5,745,796
on genealogical date processing.
Most recently, Dan was a Business Information Security Officer (BISO) and the manager of information security at the Citicorp Development Center in Los Angeles, a software-development subsidiary of Citigroup. He has accumulated over 40 years of computer systems experience — covering large IBM mainframes, minicomputers, personal computers, and the web. Dan has taught courses on information system design, computerized report writing, IBM utilities, word processing, and on accounting and genealogy applications.
Dan's family history currently covers 2,074 individuals and is supported by 1,111 source documents. His family history includes the following family surnames: Hancock, Bird, Buck, Butler, Catt, Coleman, Duhig, Ellison, Fisher, Glos, Jackson, Lacaze, Land, McFarren, Martin, Rath, Samuels, Williams, and Whitthorne. (Click here to learn more about the Hancock family.)
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