ROOTS & ROADIdentity Adventures

Roots & Road creates Identity Adventures—immersive journeys that reconnect people with the places, stories, and lives that shaped who they are.

I research your family’s story, then design a journey to the places where it happened. Not a tour. A homecoming.

Begin with a conversation

The stories

Three mysteries. Three trails followed.

1903 newspaper item headed 'Wants a Divorce': Jessie B. Warner entered suit for absolute divorce from J. Henry Warner

Nashville, Tennessee

The secrets Jessie kept

Born into the bustling Nashville of the late 1800s. Part of the Nashville social scene. Her three sons adored her. A century later, DNA revealed the rest of her story — and what an enigma she was. Read the story →

Handwritten colonial-era record page, browned with age

Colonial Virginia

Now we are Bennetts

A surprising DNA result, a change in surname, and the discovery of seven generations traced to colonial Virginia instead of Baden-Baden, Germany. Read the story →

Donna at work among documents and maps

The story behind Roots & Road

I followed my own trail first.

Decades of research, scraps handed down from uncles, aunts, distant cousins. Insights shared by fellow researchers, entries in old Bibles, stories told by my grandparents. And a big DNA surprise in my own family led me down many paths. I have followed them all and continue to do so. I’ve shared some of my journeys here — time travel back from my father’s hometown of Nashville, Tennessee through the hills of North Carolina and Virginia to even Jamestown itself. Some ancestors arrived as the earliest colonists on both sides of my family. Others came in the 19th century, making a long, circuitous journey from Scotland to end up in Kansas City, where my mother was born. Each story is fascinating. Let me help you unravel yours. Read my story →