Hi. My name is Glenn Dixon, and I have been researching my family history since 1998. I am deeply indebted to my mother who used to interview relatives in the late 1950′s and early 1960′s every time we vacationed to Iowa or North Carolina. I am also very lucky to have run into Pat Hageman who was managing the Moultrie County, IL USGenWeb site and who graciously sent me paperwork connecting my family tree from the mid-1800′s in Illinois all the way back to the early 1600′s in Ireland. Yes, I got very lucky!

Since then I have spent countless hours researching in libraries and court houses nationwide, as well as many trips to cemeteries. I have taken pictures and video in states from Delaware to North Carolina to Iowa and almost everywhere in-between. The places and cemeteries are numerous as our family has been here in North America since 1689, almost one hundred years before the Declaration of Independence!

I have tried several different software programs and web programs over the years, and I still haven’t found what I consider to be the perfect or ‘ideal’ way to share my family history with other Dixon descendants, but for now everything is housed over at the My Heritage web site.

During the remainder of 2012 I will be cleaning up the genealogy database (now approaching five hundred names!) and adding more information and narratives here. Enjoy!

I have just added several images of people and documents to the genealogy portion of the site:

http://thedixons.net/clan

I now have copies of William Dixon’s will, his wife Ann Gregg Dixon Houghton’s will and a deed where she received a parcel of land from her children. It is believed that this parcel was the original 307 acres that William Dixon purchased on the west side of Red Clay Creek. I also have discovered maps of both the Mill Creek Hundred and Christiana Hundred areas from an 1868 atlas. Several Dixons were still in the area.

Shortly I will be uploading a GEDCOM file which will add approximately 70 more people to the database, primarily my grandmother Flossie Mae Stanley Dixon’s ancestors, including many Taylors. Interestingly enough, the oldest known Taylor comes from County Armagh in Ireland!

I also received a 47 page narrative history of the Dixons compiled by David D. Dixon of Iowa. It is in Word format and includes many illustrations and pictures. I will need to work on it a bit to get it into the right format for a web page, but it looks wonderful! I hope David can find a GEDCOM file for his branch of the family tree which would save me a LOT of typing.

As the self-designated family genealogist I am keenly aware of how quickly the information of past generations can be lost. I am so thankful that my mother started interviewing relatives and taking notes when I was just a child. Most of the people she talked to are now dead and gone, bits and pieces of their memories preserved in her notebook. It was her initial investigation that enabled us to contact a distant cousin who was able to connect us to the rest of the family tree going back to 1633. Over the last several years I have been filling in the blanks and connecting the dots, but as most genealogists know for every piece of information you find you usually discover the existence of several other pieces of information which are out of your reach. As an example, I recently connected with a long lost cousin through DNA testing. Once this was established we began looking for connections from the Dixon Quakers of North Carolina to this persons oldest known ancestor who died in 1801 in Georgia. In the process I discovered where yet one more branch of Dixons had disappeared to and found several new monthly meetings where Dixons had attended. One such meeting was the Lost Creek MM in eastern Tennessee. I also ran across a book written about this meeting entitled “Lost Creek Memories” by none other than Ben F. Dixon, the author of two major resources for our Dixon line. As it turns out he has authored over 20 books on history, mainly Quaker-related. So now there are an additional 20+ books that I know about but have no way to read as they are mostly out-of-print and are probably collecting dust on a few library shelves.

Now, on top of all that which genealogists have been dealing with for years, no doubt, comes the internet. There are many web pages which I consider to be vital resources. I read them again and again finding new clues. But what if those pages were suddenly gone? What if the hosting account ended, or the owners passed away? Do I have copies of the information somewhere? And even if I have a copy, what about all the other people who might need that information? Thus, I have decided that I need to copy all of these sites andrepublish them on my web site. Normally this would be considered some sort of copyright infringement but when you run across a web site with vital, unique family information and it hasn’t been updated since 1998 you should be scared! So now I have another project.

You can look for these pages along with all of my other genealogy data on my Dixon Quakers pages over at MyHeritage.com

I have spent much of my free time today scouring the internet for Dixon family information. I refuse to believe that I’m the only Dixon descendant doing so, yet sometimes it feels that way. Queries and pieces of information scattered throughout the world. Somewhere — in some dusty attic in Indiana, or some library shelf or storage room in Delaware, or some computer database in Scotland not connected to the internet, or some Parish register in Ireland in some basement — are the details of my ancestors. I know they are there, I just can’t get to them! And what is worse is that some of their owners don’t seem to care.

I can’t necessarily do anything about that, but I can do something about my fellow Dixon researchers. Many of them have run into brick walls and dead ends. All they know is a name, maybe a death date, maybe a city and state. Beyond that it is all black.

Now, again I can’t necessarily do anything about that for most researchers, but for Dixon researchers I am determined to help! And my desire is also somewhat selfish as I intend to help myself. I want us to all connect and pool our data, our information, our contacts. And I have been wanting to do this for a long time and have, for some reason, kept putting it off. I obsess over the details and leave the shovel leaning against the shed. But no more, I hereby announce the following:

I am hereby starting the Dixon Family Association. I envision this entity to eventually include all descendants of not only Henry Dixon (b. 1633) but the descendants of one Thomas Dicson born some time in the 13th century. Now normally it would be quite silly to imagine that this was possible. But times are changing. Which brings up my second start-up, a full-blown database-backed web site for the Dixon DNA Project. So far we have only 5 participating testers. This needs to be expanded ASAP! In addition to this, a full forum for discussion.

Keep checking this site for future updates and extra web pages with details of how you can join up. For now, send me an email at dixonge@gmail.com and I will send you updates.