How it all started…
For as long as I can remember, there was a stoneware jug in my childhood home. It bore the words “W.B. Dawson, Wine Merchant, Jacksonville, FL”. I knew this was the business of my great grandfather, William Bunn Dawson from England, but not much beyond that. As a child, I had no interest in my family history or heritage. At some point after I had moved to California, I became aware of a website created by my cousin, Claes-Herbert Jonsson. He had researched some of the Dawson family line as well as other branches of his family tree. Little did I know that we both lived in Southern California for a period of time, but I never had the opportunity to meet him. In 2017, I had the presence of mind to download his website. I’m thankful to have preserved the valuable information from his site which disappeared within a year or so after his death.
In 2014-2015, I was out of work and started to play around on Ancestry.com. I started a family tree and recklessly added information from other people’s trees, without doing much verification or further investigation. When I started working again, I let my Ancestry.com membership lapse. In 2019, during a visit to my parents, I mentioned that someday I wanted a stoneware jug like the one that was in the bedroom where we stayed on our visits. Little did I know, that casual mention created a quest for my husband, Lynn that sent him searching daily for a stoneware jug from WB’s business. It took until May 2021 when he surprised me on Mother’s Day with the jug shown above. It sparked a passion and hobby in me that gave me a reason not only to return to that family tree on Ancestry.com, I also started one on MyHeritage.com. More importantly, it has led to our family taking global travel adventures, providing opportunities to meet some family members and reconnect with others.
My family had dubbed me “Dorian, the Family Historian” long before I actually even started my deep research into my family tree. I take a lot of photos at family events, doing my best to document the occasions being celebrated. I love research, the thrill of discovery and will race down rabbit holes to find out everything I can on a topic. I’m excited to share this work with those who are willing to take the journey with me.
Dorian Dawson DeVries
Family Historian