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Melody is the Site Manager for IslandRoutes.com. She has written many articles for the website as well as the ebooks "Getting the Most Out of Your Visit to the Family History Center", "Portuguese Hawaiian Immigration: A Research Guide", and "Your Island Roots". She headed the indexing project of the book "Portuguese Hawaiian Memories" by J.F. Freitas and compiled the Azorean passport registration indexes by town name, which can be found on IslandRoutes.com. She is currently working on an index the Portuguese names in ships from Hawaii to California. She has also documented most of the Portuguese families living on the island of Kauai from 1880-1930.
Melody was a volunteer for AOL's Genealogy Forum from 1997-2003 and GenealogyForum.org from 2003-2008. She worked with the Portuguese Special Interest Group as the Portuguese Hawaiian research specialist. She hosted chat, answered questions posted to the message boards, helped setup the Portuguese Resource Center, wrote for the newsletter, and helped create content and sections for the GenealogyForum.org website.
She is currently a moderator on the Azorean Genealogy Google Group and the IslandRoutes Portuguese Hawaiian Google Group.
She draws on her own research experience to assist others with their family trees. She has been researching her Portuguese Hawaiian (as well as her Irish, English, Australian, and French)roots for 12 years. What started as a simple project to help her Grandmother record the family history has turned 20+ binder pile up that threatens to overrun the household. She has experience with Hawaiian, Californian, and Azorean research. Her Portuguese ancestry originates in Achada, Nordeste, and Maia, Ribeira Grande on Sao Miguel Island, Azores. Both groups settled in Kilauea, Kauai, and worked for the Kilauea Sugar Plantation.
Her other online ventures...
Melody runs the website Living with Chronic Illness and Disease based on her experiences with ankylosing spondylitis and IBS. She also has a blog In Search of the Human Spirit where she posts positive stories from the world around us.