Professional Background
Education, affiliations, and research standards behind Storyline Genealogy.
Mary Hamall Morales
Founder, Storyline Genealogy
I came to genealogy after a forty-year clinical career as a pulmonary function technologist, a field that rewarded precise measurement, careful documentation, and a refusal to report a result the data did not support. Those habits transferred more directly than I expected.
Sustained research began in 2018 with a single unanswered question about my second great-grandfather, an Irish immigrant whose family had lost track of his origins. Following it took seven years and led through parish registers in County Monaghan, burial records in Montreal, and Chicago court and cemetery records, and it taught me the methods I now bring to client work: build the case from original records, test every hypothesis against the evidence that would disprove it, and say plainly how confident a conclusion is.
Storyline Genealogy applies that discipline to research and to the documentary writing built from it. Research findings and the biographies written from them are held to the same standard of proof.
Genealogical Education
Grouped by type. Institute coursework, university short courses, and course programs are educational, not professional certifications.
Institute Coursework
Institute of Genealogy and Historical Research
Genetics for Genealogists: Fundamentals of DNA
Coordinator: Patti Lee Hobbs, CG, CGG
Y-DNA, mitochondrial, X, and autosomal DNA; clustering and triangulation methods; DNA Painter and GEDmatch; DNA within the Genealogical Proof Standard.
Core Course One: Methods and Sources in Practice
Coordinator: Rebecca Whitman Koford, CG, CGL
Land records, census analysis, court and probate records, church records, military records, early American handwriting, research organization.
Scottish Research: The Fundamentals and Beyond
Coordinator: Paul Milner
Civil registration, Old Parish Registers, census, kirk session and church court records, land and estate records, testaments.
Core Course Two: Intermediate Genealogy and Historical Studies
Coordinator: Debra A. Hoffman, PLCGS
Application of the Genealogical Proof Standard, immigration and naturalization, DNA as evidence, manuscript collections, advanced land and court records.
University Short Courses
University of Strathclyde, Strathclyde Institute for Genealogical Studies
The Scots in North America
Teachers: Dr Nicola Martin and Dr Elizabeth Ritchie, University of the Highlands and Islands
Scottish migration to the United States and Canada, 1700s–1900s; settlement from the Carolinas, Nova Scotia, and Prince Edward Island to the Great Lakes fur-trade frontier and Rupert’s Land; Scottish identity in North America.
Using DNA Testing to Explore Your Early Scottish Ancestry, 1600–1700
Speaker: Shannon Combs-Bennett, PhD, QG, FSAScot
Y-DNA and mitochondrial DNA applied to seventeenth-century Scottish research, and the limits of autosomal DNA for ancestors at that distance.
Course Programs
Programs in methodology, DNA, and regional records
Methodology
- Research Like a Pro Family Locket Genealogists
- Research Like a Pro with DNA Family Locket Genealogists
- The Search Party Method Your DNA Guide
Genetic Genealogy
- DNA Skills Workshop Autosomal DNA masterclass, Your DNA Guide
- Y-DNA and mitochondrial DNA for genealogy Your DNA Guide
- Endogamy and DNA Your DNA Guide
- What Are the Odds, shared match grouping, and identifying living relatives Your DNA Guide
Regional Records
- Irish Genealogy Essentials Ulster Historical Foundation, Winter 2024–2025; re-enrolled in the expanded 2026–2027 edition
- From Habitants to Households: Mastering Canadian Census Records from New France to 1931 Looking4Ancestors, Fall 2025
- Ulster-Scots ancestral research
Ongoing Study
- DNA Study Group Your DNA Guide, 2023–2026. Monthly classes, case study review, and coursework including Scottish genetic genealogy.
- RootsTech Attended annually since 2019
Professional Affiliations
National, international, and regional societies
National
- Association of Professional Genealogists Southeast Chapter. Business practices, DNA, and writing and publishing groups.
- National Genealogical Society
International
- Ulster Historical Foundation Northern Ireland
- Prince Edward Island Genealogical Society
- American-French Genealogical Society
Regional
- Georgia Genealogical Society
- Chicago Genealogical Society
- Illinois State Genealogical Society
Research Specializations
Regions where I hold working knowledge of the record sets, the archives that hold them, and the gaps in what survives
Research Standards
Research is conducted to the standards published by the Board for Certification of Genealogists. I am preparing to apply for a professional genealogy credential.
Original records, examined directly
Indexes and transcriptions locate a record; they do not substitute for it. Where an original image exists, I examine it. Where I have relied on an index or a derivative, the report says so.
Stated confidence levels
Conclusions are reported at the level the evidence supports, and the difference between a proven relationship and a probable one is stated rather than smoothed over. A well-supported hypothesis is labeled as a hypothesis.
Conflicting evidence addressed
Records that contradict the conclusion are reported and resolved in writing, not omitted. Where a conflict cannot be resolved with available evidence, it remains on the record as an open question.
Complete citations
Every assertion carries a citation sufficient for another researcher to locate the same record and evaluate the same reasoning independently.
Privacy of living people
Living individuals are identified by initials in any published or shared work. DNA match information is used with the consent of the testers whose kits I administer, and match identities are not disclosed.
A full curriculum vitae, including detailed coursework and reference library holdings, is available on request to colleagues, conference organizers, and prospective clients.
Have a research question?
Tell me what you are trying to find out, and I will tell you honestly whether it can be answered.
Begin a Research Inquiry