About THE AUTHOR
About Vilma Ruddock
After years of attending to the healthcare of women and girls, Vilma Ruddock now advances her passion for writing, teaching, and service to others with the launch of her first book, Jamaican Genealogy Research: A Concise Guide to the Best Resources.
Vilma developed her expertise in Jamaican genealogy research during twenty years of researching her own family ancestry. She sharpened her skills by helping others through personal communications and via genealogy website forums and her active involvement in various online Jamaican genealogy groups – three of which she manages. The author grew up in multi-ethnic Jamaica with exposure to its complex, colonial and modern history and rich culture, its historic libraries, genealogy registries, and archives, and a classic, British-influenced education. Travel to all of the other parishes since early childhood exposed her to many of the island’s historic sites. This gave added perspective to much of her genealogy and history research.
Writing has always been a passion for Vilma Ruddock, having nurtured a love of reading and words starting with savoring the Complete Works of Shakespeare and other classics from the age of eight. Her love of reading, research, writing, and teaching continued during a long, beloved first career as a physician in the United States. She emigrated to the US from Jamaica after high school and attended Seton Hall University and then Harvard Medical School. Her senior medical school thesis, Healthcare Delivery in the Rural Caribbean: With Special Reference to St Thomas Jamaica, won first prize in its category at graduation. She has since written articles on health and various other topics for an online website.
Born in Kingston, Jamaica’s vibrant, international, historic capital, Vilma Ruddock spent most of her childhood and teen years in the city. For a few of her early years, she lived with her beloved maternal grandmother in Westmoreland parish at the other end of the island. Family roots are also in the neighboring parishes of St James, Hanover, and St Elisabeth. A 4th-year medical school clerkship at the Princess Margaret Hospital in St Thomas parish reawakened an intrigue with the island’s colonial history and its intrepid people. The experience was also the basis of her medical school thesis. It was years later that she was able to begin to research her family ancestry and follow her current path.