Barbara Shoff

Barbara Shoff began writing before she could write. At the age of five she would make up dialogue for her friends so they could perform plays. They charged a nickel a performance to "the old people" - parents and grandparents - in the neighborhood. The stage was a front porch with a blanket curtain. Their acting group was quite successful which kept them in bubble gum and popsicles most summers.

In the 1980's Barbara had a column in a small town Missouri newspaper. It was called, “BJ’s Corner.” She became serious about writing and began penning articles for several women's magazines.

“I sold my first article for $25. I was so excited I screamed so loud you would have thought it was for 25 million. I have since written brilliant ad copy as well as very dull assembly instruction manuals.”

Perhaps because Barbara was severely social media challenged and not afraid to admit it, she became The Accidental Pundit on PolicyMic. Her writing was geared toward a millennial audience.

She decided to write a novel addressing some of the challenges that face survivors of domestic violence. "What survivors need to learn, is how to protect themselves and support themselves while they heal and transform into something stronger and more beautiful than they were before. Few people want to discuss the subject. For that reason, I wrote the stalker-thriller, A Community of Butterflies: Chrysalis. My goal was to entertain and educate at the same time. And because genealogy has long been a passion, many of the characters in her book have some of her family surnames.

“I hired a teenager to teach me how to set-up a blog. When I asked him how to add a subscribe button, he shrugged his shoulders and said, ‘Dunno. Let’s try this. Nope, not that, Let’s try this.’ Fifty dollars later a light went on in my head and I decided to try clicking different links on my own. I watched YouTube videos until my eyes crossed, took a spiral notebook and made notes. Learning about tabs at the top of the page made it worth the money. I'm still learning."

In 2013 she was honored to be a member of the inaugural cast of Oklahoma City’s production of Listen to Your Mother. You can watch her on YouTube by searching, LTYM OKC Barbara Shoff.

Barbara's passion for genealogy really took off when she took an autosomal DNA test and she started helping people find their biological family.

She struggled.

"The light came on when I read Jim Bartlett's blog, Segment-ology."

She joined GEDmatch Tier 1 and began writing a blog to share what she was learning with others. She realized adopted people and people with "brick walls" needed a written method they could follow. I Am A Leaf Following Branches to Find My Tree is her method.

Barbara's blog is The Blundering DNA Genealogist.

She teaches classes about DNA, and online genealogy tools.

She is a WikiTree Ambassador and a member of the Genealogical Speakers Guild.