Jeff Gentry

Ancestors

Son of Tommy Gentry and Sandra (Swinney) Gentry

Problems/Questions Profile manager: Jeff Gentry [send private message]

What I'm Working On

Jeff's current to-do list

Biography

Genealogically Defined

Jeff Gentry Participated in the 2022 US Black Heritage Project Connecting Challenge.

Jeff is a participant of the Integrators Challenges

Jeff has participated in 1 out of 52 weeks during the 2022 52 Weeks of Photos Challenge.

Jeff has participated in 1 out of 52 weeks during the 2022 52 Ancestors Challenge.

Descendant of James Rufus Lowe, Confederate & Union Soldier.

Descendant of Benjamin Franklin Bone, Union Soldier.

Descendant of Thomas Troup Swinney, Confederate Soldier.

Descendant of Uhtred (Northumbria) of Northumbria (abt.0971-1016) (per WikiTree).

Descendant of Charlemagne Carolingian (abt.0748-0814) (per WikiTree).

Descendant of Merovech Merovingian (abt.0415-0458) (per WikiTree).

Descendant of Énnae Cennsalach mac Labrada (abt.0400-) (per WikiTree).

Descendant of Feradach Finnfechtnach Fearadhach (abt.0007-abt.0036) (per WikiTree).

Jeff Gentry is a Texan.

Jeff Gentry is 100% mongrel.

Jeff is 21 degrees from Kevin Bacon (14C1R).

Jeff Gentry has English ancestors.

Jeff has Bedfordshire ancestors.

Jeff has Cheshire ancestors.

Jeff has Essex ancestors.

Jeff has Devonshire ancestors.

Jeff has Herefordshire ancestors.

Jeff has Lancashire ancestors.

Jeff has Lincolnshire ancestors.

Jeff has London mayor ancestors.

Jeff has Middlesex ancestors.

Jeff has Northumberland ancestors.

Jeff has Shropshire ancestors.

Jeff has Stanfordshire ancestors.

Jeff has Somerset ancestors.

Jeff has Yorkshire ancestors.

Jeff Gentry has Welsh ancestors.

Jeff Gentry has German Roots.

Jeff Gentry has roots in the region now known as Rheinland-Pfalz, Germany.

Jeff Gentry has roots in the region now known as Baden-Württemberg, Germany.

Jeff Gentry has roots in the region now known as Bayern, Germany.

Jeff Gentry has roots in the region now known as Niedersachsen, Germany.

Jeff Gentry has roots in the region now known as Sachsen, Germany.

Jeff Gentry has Irish ancestors.

Jeff Gentry a des origines françaises.

Jeff has Alsace ancestors.

Jeff has Bretagne ancestors.

Jeff has Champagne ancestors.

Jeff has Côte-d'Or ancestors.

Jeff has Lorraine ancestors.

Jeff has Norman ancestors.

Jeff has Marne ancestors.

Jeff has Pas-de-Calais ancestors.

Jeff has Picardie ancestors.

Jeff has Poitou ancestors.

Jeff Gentry has Norwegian ancestors

Jeff Gentry has Danish ancestors

Jeff Gentry has Swedish ancestors

Jeff Gentry has Italian Roots.

Jeff Gentry has Belgian origins.

Jeff Gentry has Hungarian Roots.

Jeff Gentry was born on 9 Oct 1964 in Tyler, Smith County, Texas, United States, the first of three children of Tommy Gentry and Sandra (Swinney) Gentry.^[1] He is the third in a line of firstborn sons with the middle name "Lee". His son, Brandt Addison Lee Gentry is the fourth firstborn son bearing this name. Jeff lived in Troup, Texas until he was 17-years-old. All the local Gentry family were members of the Troup Church of Christ on Duval Street through the mid-1980s. His earliest memories included attending Western horse shows with his parents and neighbors who were active in the Troup Saddle Club, and attending drag races where his father, Tommy Lee Gentry, raced a 1969 Ford Fairlane (NASCAR edition). The living room was lined with ribbons, plaques, and trophies. Jeff was riding a horse before he learned to ride a bike. His mother Sandra Kay Swinney was a full-time homemaker and active member of the local community. She passed on her love of reading and libraries to Jeff at an early age, and taught him to play piano. Jeff was immersed in family as a youngster, with his paternal aunts, uncles, and first cousins living nearby, leading to his initial interest in genealogy in the 1970s. As a youngster, Jeff picked gallons of blackberries every spring and then sold them door-to-door around town for pocket money. Summers meant fishing with his dad on Lake Tyler East, Smith County and fall sometimes meant squirrel and raccoon hunting with his uncle Dale or friend Lester Dewberry. Raising vegetables on the old family farm in Cherokee County, Texas on County Road 4703 (known simply as The Place), bailing hay and working with his dad and grandfather, Johnny Lee Gentry, cutting and hauling timber dominated spare time in the springs and summers of his youth. The garden was also the site of frequent wars with plastic army men and BB guns with his younger brother Jerry James Gentry. He was also an avid philatelist, accumulating over 20,000 postage stamps from around the world before he was 15, including many from his eccentric maternal grandmother Beulah Warren Kershaw, an internationally-known poet who received mail from all over the world.

As he entered his teenage years, he learned to play clarinet and tenor saxophone, but athletics became the dominant extracurricular activity. He played basketball (poorly), golf, and ran track, but football^[2][3] was the primary focus, serving as team co-captain his junior year. He also competed in ready writing and calculator competitions. In about 1980, he found an old 1930s era map in the back of a library book that showed a centuries abandoned Caddo Indian settlement south of Hampton Creek near County Road 856, less than a mile ESE of the clay pits, in Cherokee County. The site had access to multiple springs to the north and the clay, a valuable natural resource abundant in the immediate vicinity. On his second trip to excavate the largely forgotten site, he found a 600-year-old Caddo bowl. Because he graduated in the summer of 1982 after his junior year, he was the last person to graduate from the Troup High School campus at the corner of Georgia Street and Ponsard Street. The new Troup High School campus opened on Texas Highway 135 a few months later. The old high school burned down a few years later.

Jeff moved to Commerce, Hunt County, Texas, United States to attend East Texas State University (later known as Texas A&M University - Commerce) in 1982. He had the highest college entrance exam (ACT) scores at the university for the freshman class, participated in the honors program, and was active in leadership of five different academic honor society chapters. He worked as a tutor and physics research assistant at the university for several years, and then as a salesperson at the Tandy Computer Center in Greenville, Hunt County, Texas, United States. There were times he juggled three part-time jobs at once. He was active in student government, learned racquetball, and graduated in 1986 with a BS in Computer Science and Mathematics, with minor in Physics. In his spare time, he played Dungeons & Dragons with friends, leading to him accumulating the world's largest collection of Dungeons & Dragons material when he sold it in 2009 for $10,000.

While still in high school, he met Patricia Gail "Patty" Parker in 1981 in Tyler, Smith County, Texas. They married on 18 May 1985^[4] at the Troup Church of Christ on Duval Street, Troup, Smith County, Texas and lived in Commerce, Texas until university graduation.^[5] They had two children, Brandt Addison Lee Gentry^[6] and Mackenzie Laura Gentry^[7] in Plano, Collin County, Texas, United States. Jeff worked as a systems programmer and information technology (IT) business leader for Electronic Data Systems for 11 years, living in Anderson, Madison County, Indiana and Garland, Dallas County, Texas before moving to Plano, Collin County, Texas in 1990. His time at EDS culminated in his role as Chief Technology Officer (CTO) - Europe for the dbINTELLECT Technologies unit, which specialized in data warehousing, database marketing, data mining, and very large databases. He and the family lived in Woluwe-Saint-Lambert, Brussels, Belgium for a year while he served in this position.

In 1997, Jeff left Electronic Data Systems to work in a variety of consulting roles until 2002. During this period, he consulted with clients, spoke at conferences, and taught seminars on data warehousing and customer relationship management globally, becoming known as "one of the early gurus of data warehousing".

The couple separated in 2002 and divorced in 2004.^[8] Jeff joined Tribal DDB, a digital marketing agency in Dallas, Dallas County, Texas as a database administrator to get off the road, becoming Chief Technology Officer and then senior marketing strategist in the ROI Solutions management consulting unit through 2009. He married Deanna Dawn Ashbrook in 2005 at the Fort Worth Botanical Garden in Fort Worth, Tarrant County, Texas.^[9] They lived in Hurst and Haltom City, Tarrant County, Texas and Plano, Collin County, Texas. They divorced in 2007 and had no children.^[10] One of the most memorable professional events during this time was standing before Nokia executives in Helsinki, Finland in March, 2008 less than a year after Apple introduced the iPhone. Nokia owned 43% of the global smartphone market. The Tribal DDB team presented competitive research and analysis naming Apple as their primary competitive threat, an existential threat. There was laughter in the room! One of the most memorable personal events of this period was the inauguration of Barack Obama on 20 Jan 2009, watched in a dusty open air coffee shop in central Egypt with only native Egyptians around, cheering. The next morning featured a view of the rising sun over the Sahara Desert from a hot air balloon.

Jeff remained in Plano, Texas and shared a house with his children, his sister Terralyn Joy Gentry, and niece Kaley Madison Gentry before moving to Fort Worth, Tarrant County, Texas, United States in 2009 and returning to consulting for a few years. In July 2010, Jeff married a high school classmate, Rhonda Nell Thorn, in Roanoke, Tarrant County, Texas^[11] and the couple lived in Lantana, Denton County, Texas with her two children. From 2011 thru 2015, Jeff worked as a director at Fidelity Investments pricing and cash management division and then at TD Ameritrade, forming their first data governance capability as Director, Enterprise Data and Analytics Governance. Jeff and Rhonda divorced in 2013 and had no children. Jeff moved to Main Street (just south of the railroad crossing) in Grapevine, Tarrant County, Texas in 2014.

In 2015, he moved to San Antonio, Bexar County, Texas to become the first Chief Data Officer for Argo Group, an international property and casualty insurance company, and left that position in 2016. He now maintains a residence in Troup, Smith County, Texas and Grapevine, Tarrant County, Texas, working as a consultant on the role of the Chief Data Officer, data & analytics business strategy, and digital marketing. He no longer works full-time, spending some of his energy on nonprofit activities and genealogy.

Jeff has possession of his great great grandmother's family Bible - Laura Josephine Leathco and his great great grandfather's carpentry tool chest with original tools - David Allen Gentry. He still has that 600-year-old Caddo bowl, too.

DNA

Maternal relationship is confirmed by a 23andMe test match between Jeff Gentry and Sandra (Swinney) Gentry, his mother. Predicted relationship from 23andMe: Mother, based on sharing half of DNA.

Paternal relationship is confirmed by a 23andMe test match between Jeff Gentry and Tommy Lee Gentry, his father. Predicted relationship from 23andMe: Father, based on sharing half of DNA.

Advance Directive

To aid WikiTree in the administration of my account should I be incapacitated, or in the event of my death, I hereby give permission for all private profiles I'm managing to be transferred to the following WikiTreers, whether or not they are currently on the Trusted Lists:

Brandt Gentry

Sources

1. ↑ "Texas Birth Index, 1903-1997," database, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:VDJM-959 : 1 January 2015), Jeffery Lee Gentry, 09 Oct 1964; from "Texas Birth Index, 1903-1997," database and images, Ancestry (http://www.ancestry.com : 2005); citing Texas Department of State Health Services.
2. ↑ Tigers Favored to Capture 18AA Championship (1981, September 4) Tyler Morning Telegraph (Tyler, Texas) https://www.newspapers.com/clip/102010816/tigers-favored-to-capture-18aa-champions/
3. ↑ 1981 Troup Tiger Football Team (1981, September 4) Tyler Morning Telegraph (Tyler, Texas) https://www.newspapers.com/clip/102010467/1981-troup-tiger-football-team/
4. ↑ Gentry-Parker Cite Wedding Vows (1985, June 8) Tyler Morning Telegraph (Tyler, Texas) https://www.newspapers.com/clip/102011261/gentry-parker-cite-wedding-vows/
5. ↑ "Texas Marriages, 1966-2010," database, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:VTTX-FN4 : 6 December 2014), Jeffery L Gentry and Patricia G Parker, 18 May 1985; citing Hunt, Texas, United States, certificate number 083421, Vital Statistics Unit, Texas Department of State Health Services, Austin.
6. ↑ "Texas Birth Index, 1903-1997," database, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:VDB1-7YX : 1 January 2015), Jeffery Lee Gentry in entry for Brandt Addison Lee Gentry, 22 Jun 1989; from "Texas Birth Index, 1903-1997," database and images, Ancestry (http://www.ancestry.com : 2005); citing Texas Department of State Health Services.
7. ↑ "Texas Birth Index, 1903-1997," database, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:V814-WRK : 5 December 2014), Jeffery Lee Gentry in entry for Mackenzie Laura Gentry, 03 May 1995; from "Texas Birth Index, 1903-1997," database and images, Ancestry (http://www.ancestry.com : 2005); citing Texas Department of State Health Services.
8. ↑ "Texas Divorce Index, 1968-2010," database, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:VY2C-2HP : 12 December 2014), Jeffery L Gentry and Patrica G Gentry, 07 Jan 2004; from "Texas, Divorce Index, 1968-2011," database, Ancestry (http://www.ancestry.com : 2005); citing Collin, Texas, United States, certificate number 003683, Texas Department of State Health Services.
9. ↑ "Texas Marriages, 1966-2010," database, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:VTPT-39P : 6 December 2014), Jeffery L Gentry and Deanna D Ashbrook, 04 Jun 2005; citing Tarrant, Texas, United States, certificate number 059143, Vital Statistics Unit, Texas Department of State Health Services, Austin.
10. ↑ "Texas Divorce Index, 1968-2010," database, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:VY2Y-FHP : 12 December 2014), Jeffery L Gentry and Deanna D Gentry, 24 May 2007; from "Texas, Divorce Index, 1968-2011," database, Ancestry (http://www.ancestry.com : 2005); citing Dallas, Texas, United States, certificate number 046052, Texas Department of State Health Services.
11. ↑ "Texas Marriages, 1966-2010," database, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:VTT5-RWW : 6 December 2014), Jeffrey L Gentry and Rhonda N Thorn, 14 Jul 2010; citing Tarrant, Texas, United States, certificate number 086591, Vital Statistics Unit, Texas Department of State Health Services, Austin.

• First-hand information as recalled by Jeff Gentry on 2 Jan 2019 (and from time to time since then)