pcgspublicrelations@gmail.com

E.J. was first inspired to start investigating his ancestors after he found out how large of a role his Heinz family played in the development and involvement of Kickapoo Township. Many of his sources are located at https://ejheinz.center/GedSite/EJ-o/up/books.htm . E.J. began building his family tree after receiving a handwritten tree sketch from his uncle ten years ago. His site has gone through many changes since then and he continues to keep it updated and plans to have it better formatted this year. A lot of E. J.’s information was taken from the Heinz Family History Book (1975) listed in his books and links on the site. E. J. has always used ancestry.com (after they bought out rootsweb) and Family Tree Maker software to create and develop content that he then exports a GEDCOM file to his html creator/editor. He then uses GedSite to automate a lot of html code for and then tweaks it with manual code for getting the format better using scripts and code.

E. J. graduated from SIU with a bachelor’s degree in Industrial Management and Applied Engineering. He has one adult daughter who lives in Chillicothe. E. J. lives in Peoria with his longtime girlfriend .

E. J.  was born and raised a few miles east of Kickapoo on Heinz Lane. E. J. descends from the George Heinz Sr. (b1813 in Germany) Line and the Gooseberry Lovier (b1817 in North Carolina) line of Kentucky and Rosiclare, IL.  He went to Brimfield High School, class of 1996. E.J. is the oldest of five children:  three brothers and one sister. In his free time, E. J. conducts research and development projects, especially related to his family history and career, and participates in group exercise classes at the YMCA, the Riverplex and Landmark. I used to run a lot of half marathons as a volunteer for St. Jude, before developing injuries that needed surgery. E.J.  also plays guitar, working mainly on heavy metal projects when time permits.

E. J. currently works as an Equipment Service Technician, with a focus on Golf maintenance equipment, at the Peoria Park District, since 2017. He also worked at Caterpillar as a Manufacturing Systems Specialist in East Peoria where he made heavy equipment transmission parts and a Service Information Developer in Peoria developing heavy equipment Repair Processes (RPE) for a combined 15 years prior to and during his time at the Park District.