GenClub
Episode 4
December 2025
For this episode of GenClub the panel read:
Mt. Tambora: the Eruption that Rewrote My Family’s Destiny.
by David Shaw.
We invite you to read the posts before or after you watch the episode. Leave a comment for them! We’d love to know what you think too.
David Shaw
Author of Serengenity
In this GenClub conversation, we are joined by David Shaw, a writer whose work brings together personal memoir, historical investigation, and the quiet preservation of memory. Raised on a farm and trained as an archaeologist, David spent thirty years as a stockbroker, finding his liberal-arts background more useful than a business degree. After retiring in 2019, he turned his attention to restoring historic gravestones, a practice that naturally led him into solving long-forgotten cemetery mysteries.
What began as hands-on conservation work grew into storytelling. David first shared these discoveries on Facebook and later moved his writing to Substack, where he publishes Serengenity. His essays weave together the lives behind the stones, the process of restoration, and his own photography of the markers he repairs.
Meet the GenClub Panel:
The GenClub Panel is made up of a group of Genealogy and Family History Substack authors who get together to talk about what we’ve read on Substack. Here are the members of the Panel:
Jane Chapman
I’ve been researching family history since the early 1990’s and incorporating DNA evidence since 2013. In 2024 I started a one-place study. My Substack publications mainly draw on material from my Websites on the weare.xyz platform
Julie Dove
Julie Dove is a writer and researcher exploring food, memory & the legacies we leave behind. After discovering over 200 vintage cookbooks in an abandoned house, she began piecing together the life of their owner—one recipe at a time.
Lynda Heines
I’m a writer, a textile artist, a genealogist, an iris lover, and a cat herder. My sis’ death in 2023 pulled me back into writing about my ancestors and my life journey. My hubby, two cats, and I live on a small piece of land in Newburgh, Indiana.
Anne Wendel
Teenage genealogist turned retired reading teacher living on Anne time now! Summer vacation every day. Read, blog, research, find cousins, live on ancestors’ land. Goals for rest of life: be pro genealogist, write my Roots, rebuild my Rev War house.
Lisa Maguire
Your family has a story. Your family were makers of history. ancestory is the place where family stories and history meet.
I’m your host,
Thank you for watching!
