About

About

I spent six years helping people find their ancestors. Then I realized that wasn't the problem.

My name is Denyse Allen. I'm a Pennsylvania genealogist, published author, and the founder of Chronicle Makers.

For six years I worked as a professional genealogist, specializing in Pennsylvania research — one of the hardest states in the country. Twenty-five different religious groups. Constantly shifting county boundaries. Records scattered across 800 archives. If you can research Pennsylvania ancestors, you can research anyone's.

I was good at finding things. My clients got thorough research reports with proper citations, evidence analysis, the works.

But the reports went into a drawer. The stories never got written. My clients didn't know how to turn a professional report into something their family would read.

The problem was never the research. The problem was finishing.

Chronicle Makers started as a simple question

What would it actually take to help someone go from "I have decades of research" to "I finished a story my family can read"?

The answer turned out to be three things: a structured process, the right AI tools used the right way, and a community of people working toward the same goal. Not more research. Not more subscriptions. Structure, tools, and accountability.

The 10-Day Chronicle Writing Sprint came from that question. It has a 95% completion rate, not because the work is easy, but because the structure removes every excuse to stop.

Why Pennsylvania made me a better educator

Pennsylvania is where genealogists go to get humbled. The boundary changes, the language barriers, the religious complexity, the record gaps. the lack of online records....working through that taught me something: if you have a systematic method, it works everywhere. Pennsylvania research techniques transfer directly to researching ancestors in any American state.

That's why I use Pennsylvania as the proving ground for everything I teach. If a research technique works there, it works other places too.

Published books

Four books on Pennsylvania genealogy and Revolutionary War family history writing. Two are in the DAR Library permanent collection.

Colonial Pennsylvania Genealogy Research: Communities and Revolutionary Era Records, 1681–1790 (2026) A directory of surviving records from Pennsylvania's colonial and revolutionary era. Community by community, it identifies what records exist, where they are held, and what researchers should know before diving in. Covers 20 distinct communities, 29 chapters, and a comprehensive guide to the published Pennsylvania Archives series. #1 New Release in Mid-Atlantic History on Amazon. Buy on Amazon →

Archives in Pennsylvania for Genealogy Research (2023) — DAR Library permanent collection A guide to finding records across Pennsylvania's 800+ archives. Covers how to search archive catalogs, work with staff, plan research trips, and hire researchers. Buy on Amazon →

Pennsylvania Vital Records Research: Birth, Adoption, Marriage, Divorce, and Death Records from the Colonial Era to Today (2022) — DAR Library permanent collection The complete guide to finding every vital record on Pennsylvania ancestors from 1682 to today. Buy on Amazon →

The Revolutionary War Writing Workbook: Turn Your Research Into Your First Family History (2026) A step-by-step workbook for writing a finished family history about someone who lived through the American Revolution. Covers evidence evaluation, Revolutionary War records, historical context, AI prompts for research, and dedicated chapters for every type of Revolutionary experience — patriots, loyalists, women, enslaved and free Black lives, and the unaligned majority. Written for America's 250th anniversary. Buy on Amazon →

On AI and family history

I started teaching AI for genealogy during a window when most of the genealogy world was either ignoring it or panicking about it. I was neither. I saw what it could do: remove the friction between having research and writing a story.

AI doesn't replace your work. It doesn't write your ancestor's story for you in any meaningful sense. What it does is handle the parts that create stuckness — the blank page, the organizational overwhelm, the "I don't know how to start" paralysis. Your personal choices, your family knowledge, your instinct for what matters are built into every AI workflow I teach.

There's a best way to use these tools for this work. I've spent thousands of hours figuring out what that is.

What I believe

Family historians don't have a research problem. They have a finishing problem.

Your ancestors lived full, complicated, human lives. They deserve more than a database entry. And your family — the ones who are here now and the ones who come after — deserve to know who came before them.

We research. We write. We finish.

Find me here

Chronicle Makers is owned and operated by PA Ancestors LLC. Based in Pennsylvania.