I received an email today regarding the adult son of a former Army guy, possibly a supply sergeant, who served in the Chiayi area from 1960 to 1966. The sergeant apparently wanted to take his son with him back to the States, but his girlfriend refused.
The son, born in 1960, grew up to become a Christian minister in Taiwan who is now the head chaplain of a large hospital. He would like to locate his father, about whom he remembers almost nothing. He vaguely remembers playing on a military base as a child but that's about all. He remembers almost no English from his childhood.
I couldn't find anything on any US Army unit in the Chiayi area. I told his friend that I would seek the advice of others and that's what I'm doing here.
I did suggest that he consider looking into Y-chromosome DNA testing as offered by places like Ancestry.com, which I've used in my own genealogical research. It would still require some legwork, but it might provide him with some leads.
If anyone has any other ideas, please post them here or contact me directly. After all these years it would be really nice if this gentlemen could learn more about his paternal ancestry.
If the gentlemen knows his father's first and last name, he can pay a nominal amount for a temporary account on ancestry.com. For instance, I was able to search my own name with a temporary account and find a birth certificate record for myself and census records going back to 1800 for my ancestors. That is if he knows his fathers full name. That might be a starting point.
ReplyDelete