David M. McCorkle is a land records expert with research experience in a wide variety of other records used by genealogists including court records, probate, colonial records, and governmental records. He has an extensive background in computer software, and has been working on using Artificial Intelligence tools to help researchers process evidence from these records in a more comprehensive and less time consuming manner.
He has given in-person, online, and hybrid lectures and workshops to national, state, and local genealogical and historical organizations, and well as corporate and government audiences. His topics include land grants, court records, digitization, maps, mapping tools, Artificial Intelligence, land records in general, DNA, land platting workshops, and introduction to genealogy.
David is the sole creator and ongoing administrator of the free website NC Land Grant Images and Data http://nclandgrants.com . This website contains searchable records for all 200,000+ land grants issued by North Carolina since 1663, along with over a million high quality images of original records. Many of these records cannot be viewed anywhere else outside of the State Archives of NC.
He is President and founder of NC Historical Records Online (NCHRO), a 501(c)(3) non-profit with a mission to provide public online access to images of original records and other relevant information useful to researching North Carolina history and genealogy. He is President of the Durham-Orange Genealogical Society (D-OGS), Vice President of the North Carolina Genealogical Society (NCGS), Treasurer of the Genealogical Speakers Guild (GSG), and on the board of the Friends of the (NC) Archives, the Mecklenburg Genealogical Society and the Historic Mapping Congress.
All of these projects along with his work with genealogical societies resulted in David receiving an award of merit in 2023 from the National Genealogical Society, as well as awards from the NC Genealogical Society and from local societies.
David is a native of North Carolina with deep roots on many lines dating back to the 1700s, primarily in the Mecklenburg County area. He wrote his first computer program in 1973, and has been working in the software industry for over 40 years. He is a graduate of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.