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Speaker 3: Oh hello, and welcome to an episode of Smologies where
Speaker 3: we have taken a full length episode like this one
Speaker 3: from a few years back and condensed it and decursed
Speaker 3: it so it is safe for all ages and sensitive
Speaker 3: years who are interested in learning. There are more Smologies
Speaker 3: episodes available to download at Alleyward dot com slash Smologies,
Speaker 3: the links and the show notes.
Speaker 4: Let's go, Oh hey, it's your fourth cousin twice removed
Speaker 4: ali Ward back with a familial historical of ologies. So
Speaker 4: you were here because people made babies with each other
Speaker 4: and out of all of the gammats.
Speaker 3: You became a collection of molecules, and you're suspended in
Speaker 3: a web of family. Even a cockroach technically has grandparents
Speaker 3: and cousins.
Speaker 4: Isn't that weird?
Speaker 3: Your cat might have an uncle, And if you have children,
Speaker 3: gaze at them. They may have children who have children,
Speaker 3: and then those children's might not even know your name. Okay, genealogy.
Speaker 4: So genealogy comes.
Speaker 3: From the root word gena, meaning to give birth to you,
Speaker 3: like genesis, and genealogy is not the study of genetics
Speaker 3: and how DNA works. That's just called genetics. So this
Speaker 3: week's alogist, I suppose, has been in this field for
Speaker 3: three decades, starting as a personal passion that just consumed
Speaker 3: him into making it a job. And I was introduced
Speaker 3: to him by someone who worked to publish his latest book,
Speaker 3: which is called sixteen nineteen twenty Africans, and I immediately
Speaker 3: ordered the book. I was so happy he was down
Speaker 3: to pop into a sound move in Portland to chat
Speaker 3: with me about his passion tracing family histories and chasing
Speaker 3: down records, and also about mystery novels and capes. Questions
Speaker 3: you should ask your relatives US history and how we
Speaker 3: treat the past, the joy of cracking a case, DNA
Speaker 3: tests technology, and how everywhere you look there's family. So
Speaker 3: pull up a chair and absorb the stories of two
Speaker 3: time author Total Peach, distant relative to Tom Hanks and
Speaker 3: perhaps your relative as well.
Speaker 5: Genealogist Steven tanksology, psnology, knowlogies.
Speaker 3: And now you are a genealogist. Yes, and you've been
Speaker 3: a genealogist for quite a while now.
Speaker 6: Yeah, I started like in eighty nine. Yeah, but I
Speaker 6: was like, God, how old was I? I was, oh,
Speaker 6: about thirty years old. And that's I got the bug.
Speaker 6: I was over at my dad's house that day and
Speaker 6: summer July, and he was watching the baseball game and
Speaker 6: he handed me this letter that he got from a
Speaker 6: cousin in Kansas, and he says, read this. And of
Speaker 6: course I didn't know anything about my family's history. You know,
Speaker 6: I'm just a kid growing up for Snority. And so
Speaker 6: he shows me this letter. I started reading at the
Speaker 6: obituary of a newspaper, and all these relatives and names
Speaker 6: are listed in this obituary, and so my dad's side
Speaker 6: of the family, and I just said, wow, I don't
Speaker 6: know who these people are. And that's what got it started.
Speaker 6: Right there, I said, I got to find out who
Speaker 6: these people are. I got to find out about the
Speaker 6: history of my family. And so that's how it got started.
Speaker 6: Eighty nine.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and what was the first thing you did? Back
Speaker 3: in eighty nine? We had libraries and microfiche and.
Speaker 6: Do some system no microfilm readers, yeah, the micropace. Totally,
Speaker 6: no Internet, no clicking of the mouse. You know, it
Speaker 6: was old school.
Speaker 3: All the way. In old school ways involved making the
Speaker 3: two to three hour drive from Portland to Seattle's National Archives.
Speaker 3: And no, you can't just jump on the Information super Highway.
Speaker 3: A lot of those ledgers and records haven't even been digitized.
Speaker 3: So genealogy research, like family trees, still has its roots
Speaker 3: in the past.
Speaker 6: Well, when I started getting interested in this field and
Speaker 6: wanting to learn more, I had to learn the rules
Speaker 6: of the game and how the professional genealogist did it.
Speaker 6: And so I learned about census records, tax records, land
Speaker 6: deeds and all that sort of thing, courthouse records and
Speaker 6: just on and on and on museums. So I said, well,
Speaker 6: let me start with the census records. That sounds pretty
Speaker 6: easy enough. You know, every ten years, they have a census,
Speaker 6: and of course they put a privacy restriction on the
Speaker 6: first seventy years they know least to the public. So
Speaker 6: the most recent census that was available to me at
Speaker 6: that time was, I believe, the nineteen twenty census. Yeah,
Speaker 6: nineteen twenty. I found my grandparents' names. I said, okay,
Speaker 6: I'm on the right track, and I just started working
Speaker 6: my way back. But it started getting tricky as you get,
Speaker 6: you know, further back in time. And that's what even
Speaker 6: got me more excited, because you know, I'm like a detective,
Speaker 6: you know, like the Perry Mason, you know, you know,
Speaker 6: just started looking under the rocks, and so went to
Speaker 6: nineteen ten, a nineteen hundred census, and this was really
Speaker 6: getting exciting. I finally was able to locate my great grandparents,
Speaker 6: knew their names, and it just blew me away. Found
Speaker 6: them in Kansas and found out that they had moved
Speaker 6: to Kansas from Mississippi under a different set of living
Speaker 6: as you as you know where I'm coming from, you know, slavery,
Speaker 6: you know, kind of the slavery thing. So that was
Speaker 6: a big chakaru.
Speaker 3: But Stephen's first book was twenty thirteen's a key tree
Speaker 3: a descendants quest for his slave ancestors on the Eskridge plantations.
Speaker 3: And he has such an amazing way of writing about
Speaker 3: the process of genealogy through his own narrative, and how
Speaker 3: one discovery can kind of ignite another the.
Speaker 6: Further you go back in time. I was able to
Speaker 6: find them on the eighteen eighty census. The eighteen ninety census,
Speaker 6: I guess was burned in a fire in nineteen twenty one.
Speaker 6: So that's yeah, that's something that you have to live with.
Speaker 6: The eighteen ninety census has gone forever.
Speaker 3: Stephen told me that through the eighteen seventy census he
Speaker 3: discovered that his grandparents lived in a little town called
Speaker 3: duck Hill, Mississippi, hailing from what is now Montgomery County,
Speaker 3: the same place that Oprah Winfrey's family is from.
Speaker 4: Small world, a big.
Speaker 3: Deal, given that Oprah Winfrey is like the closest thing
Speaker 3: this country has had to a queen.
Speaker 6: When I got to that point, I was just in heabit,
Speaker 6: you know. But the problem is, you know, you going
Speaker 6: beyond eighteen seventy is is the trick for you know,
Speaker 6: as far as African American genealogy, because as we all know,
Speaker 6: you know Abraham Lincoln, he ended slavery. We know that
Speaker 6: in eighteen sixty five or ageing sixty three. Some say
Speaker 6: because the Antancipation Proclamation, and like I had mentioned here earlier,
Speaker 6: I found my parents or my great grandparents on the
Speaker 6: eighteen seventy census. That was the first time ali that
Speaker 6: African Americans were listed on a federal census for the
Speaker 6: first time as far as everyone, because it was five
Speaker 6: years after the end of the Civil War, and so
Speaker 6: now everyone was just you know, a regular citizen, you know,
Speaker 6: the way it was supposed to be. But if you
Speaker 6: want to go further back eighteen sixty, well then you're
Speaker 6: going back into the old system of things when the
Speaker 6: South was at its peak and the cotton was king
Speaker 6: and all that. So ageen sixty that's when you really
Speaker 6: get into the struggle of trying to identify who your
Speaker 6: parents are and your ancestors. I should say. Now, for
Speaker 6: some people, they have what they call free people of color.
Speaker 6: I learned about that as I became a genealogist. There
Speaker 6: were some people who had the designation they were a
Speaker 6: free person of color, meaning they were emancipated or they
Speaker 6: were set free. A long time ago, maybe eighteen hundreds,
Speaker 6: and their family just were free all the way up
Speaker 6: right through the Civil War. Everything. They were just cruising.
Speaker 6: They were free, and so they never had that problem
Speaker 6: of being found on the census record because their family
Speaker 6: had always been free.
Speaker 3: Free people of color by the bye or heard you
Speaker 3: as free people of color, and just the distinction is
Speaker 3: a very painful reminder that they were the exception and
Speaker 3: not the rule.
Speaker 6: So the further you go back in time, it just
Speaker 6: gets harder and harder to locate your family if your
Speaker 6: ancestry or your inheritance was slavery. But it can be done.
Speaker 6: It can be done.
Speaker 3: You've had a long history of going into you musty
Speaker 3: bookshelves and microfesion all the way up to internet into
Speaker 3: DNA tests and you know, genealogy. The field expands, it
Speaker 3: seems like, you know, every year with technology. And yes,
Speaker 3: how has the advent of you know, consumer DNA tests
Speaker 3: changed what you do and how you research.
Speaker 6: It's very interesting. It's a very interesting question. When I
Speaker 6: first took the test and got the results back and
Speaker 6: all these I had, like about I think it was
Speaker 6: like two thousand connections of people that were related to
Speaker 6: me and They did it from the highest ratio down
Speaker 6: to the lowest racial and so I could look at
Speaker 6: my top twenty, you know, and say, wow, these are
Speaker 6: really close to me.
Speaker 3: So Stephen has taken two DNA tests and his father
Speaker 3: before he passed away, also took one, and their raw
Speaker 3: data led them to the s Gridge family name he
Speaker 3: was already familiar with, which validated the technology for him.
Speaker 3: He was like, Oh this works.
Speaker 6: That did validate that that this this DNA stuff is
Speaker 6: for real because I did know their names and they
Speaker 6: did show up and they're on my mother's side, but
Speaker 6: not on my father's side showed up.
Speaker 4: How does that work?
Speaker 3: And I might have to look this up? But how
Speaker 3: does that work with like the mitochondrial eve and th
Speaker 3: coming down from the X chromosomes? Like do we tend
Speaker 3: to find out more about our our maternal sides when
Speaker 3: we take DNA tests? Then we do? Paternal mitochondrial eve
Speaker 3: side note has become the pop cultural name of the
Speaker 3: most recent known maternal ancestor that we all share. Because
Speaker 3: mitochondrial DNA is only passed on through maternal lineage, scientists
Speaker 3: do not love this biblical name, as it's misleading from
Speaker 3: a narrative standpoint, Let's say, but this mitochondrial eve is
Speaker 3: what's called an mrca most recent common ancestor, and she
Speaker 3: can vary depending on genetic discoveries. So if a more
Speaker 3: recent common ancestor lineage is discovered, for example, it's a
Speaker 3: different mitochondrial eve, but yes, all related, all of us wild.
Speaker 6: For a female that wants to do genealogy and using
Speaker 6: the DNA tool, in order for them to learn more
Speaker 6: about their father's side, they need to try to see
Speaker 6: if they have a brother they can take the test,
Speaker 6: or their father or an uncle, you know, anyone on
Speaker 6: the paternal side.
Speaker 3: This side note is called a Y chromosome test, and
Speaker 3: it's helpful to figure out, say, if two families with
Speaker 3: the same surname are indeed genetic relatives. So ladies, surprise
Speaker 3: your dad or brother with a DNA test. It's a
Speaker 3: gift that just keeps giving you information. And then of
Speaker 3: course there's the mitochondrial DNA test you can do. Everyone
Speaker 3: has their mom's mitochondrial DNA and this is helpful because
Speaker 3: historically women's history can be erased or at least very
Speaker 3: illegibly smudged by the taking of surnames and I actually
Speaker 3: I told our listeners that I was going to be
Speaker 3: talking to you today and they sent in questions, Can
Speaker 3: I ask you some questions for so absolutely? Okay, great,
Speaker 3: like literally hundreds of questions. I know, everyone's so excited. Okay,
Speaker 3: But before we dive into your genealogical queries. As you know,
Speaker 3: each episode we donate to a relevant charity, and one
Speaker 3: that Steven advocates for is black Past dot org. And
Speaker 3: Black Past is dedicated to providing a global audience with
Speaker 3: reliable and accurate information on the history of African America
Speaker 3: and people of African ancestry around the world, and they
Speaker 3: aim to promote greater understanding through this knowledge and to
Speaker 3: generate constructive change in our society. They have over six
Speaker 3: thousand pages of genealogical resources and history available and again
Speaker 3: are at Blackpast dot org. So that donation was made
Speaker 3: possible by some sponsors of the show, which you may
Speaker 3: hear about. Now, okay, let's hop into your questions. What's
Speaker 3: the best place to start to actually look into family history?
Speaker 3: What are some questions that we should be asking ourselves
Speaker 3: and our family and professionals like librarians in order to
Speaker 3: look into our history.
Speaker 6: Great question. So the first thing to do when you
Speaker 6: want to get started on your genealogy is start assembling
Speaker 6: your family tree and ask questions from your family if
Speaker 6: they're still living, if your father who's still living, or
Speaker 6: your mother's still living, or grandparents, whoever's closest to you
Speaker 6: that's still alive, even your siblings. Sometimes your siblings have
Speaker 6: more of a recollection than you do. I know sometimes
Speaker 6: my brother be coming up with stuff I don't even remember.
Speaker 6: He'd be telling me, yeah, and that's all.
Speaker 3: Wow, I didn't know that.
Speaker 6: So just sit down with a pen and paper and
Speaker 6: just start making a list on the paternal side, your
Speaker 6: father's side, and the maternal side your mother's side, and
Speaker 6: then just start going from there. List your parents first,
Speaker 6: and then list their parents. Put down where they were
Speaker 6: born obviously if you have that information where they died,
Speaker 6: If you can find the county name of where they
Speaker 6: were born or die, that even helps to find out
Speaker 6: what year they were married. Like your grandparents, find out
Speaker 6: how did they meet each other. That's always been such
Speaker 6: a fascinating question to me is how did the grandparents
Speaker 6: meet each other or the great grandparents, how did they
Speaker 6: meet each other? And go to the family closet, you know,
Speaker 6: or wherever, whoever's the one that's holding the records in
Speaker 6: the family, you know, whatever blanks you have, fill in
Speaker 6: the blanks by interviewing your relatives. And when you interview,
Speaker 6: you know, someone that's really old, what does that mean?
Speaker 6: Really old? Sometimes I feel I'm really old. But when
Speaker 6: you interview a parent or a grandparent, I even asked him,
Speaker 6: is it okay if I can record it, and that
Speaker 6: way you're not missing anything.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's great. And you also, like learn so much
Speaker 3: about your family. Who doesn't want to learn more about
Speaker 3: people's histories that are right around them. I think that's
Speaker 3: such a good bonding project too, you know. Yeah, So
Speaker 3: treat yourself to a nice new notebook, threw a pot
Speaker 3: of tea, and then sit down and interrogate a loved
Speaker 3: one gently.
Speaker 6: Rachel C.
Speaker 3: Wrote in she had a great question and said, I've
Speaker 3: heard that out of a group of three people, two
Speaker 3: black and one white, it is just as likely for
Speaker 3: a black and white person to be more related as
Speaker 3: it is for the two black individuals to be more
Speaker 3: closely related. If that is really the case, then what
Speaker 3: the heck is race anyway? And why does it persist
Speaker 3: in modern times.
Speaker 6: It's so true. That is so true. I mean, race
Speaker 6: is just just a classification. We're all related. It's interesting
Speaker 6: the book that I just recent came out with sixteen
Speaker 6: nineteen twenty Africans. One of the points I mentioned in
Speaker 6: the book is that when those Africans came to Virginia
Speaker 6: in the year sixteen nineteen, they didn't come as slaves
Speaker 6: as we know it as slaves that come to our minds.
Speaker 6: They were indentured servants, and so they didn't have the
Speaker 6: disigation of being slaves. So what that meant was indentured servants,
Speaker 6: just like those that were coming from England. They worked
Speaker 6: for a certain period of time. They were indentured to
Speaker 6: their employer, and so those Africans were indentured. Once they
Speaker 6: served their time, they were given their freedom, just like
Speaker 6: all the other indentured servants. Virginia wasn't until seventeen oh
Speaker 6: five is when the slavery laws, you know, the really
Speaker 6: hardened slavery laws came into being, was in the year
Speaker 6: seventeen oh five. So what I also found out was
Speaker 6: that a lot of the African families that were free
Speaker 6: in the early part of our colonial history, they were intermarrying,
Speaker 6: the Irish, with the Native Americans, with the Germans. They
Speaker 6: were intermarrying, they were becoming a family. Many of the
Speaker 6: American families that are in this country today. Whatever surname
Speaker 6: you want to use, Johnson, Smith, whatever, If your family's
Speaker 6: been in this country for you know, going back to
Speaker 6: colonial times or even the American Revolution times, chances are
Speaker 6: you are a mixed family. Chances are you're a mixed family,
Speaker 6: you know, in some way, shape or form, in one
Speaker 6: way or another in Native America or it's just a fact,
Speaker 6: but that is not taught in our schools. It's not
Speaker 6: taught in our history books that there were at least
Speaker 6: two or three generations of free people before slavery laws
Speaker 6: even were passed. There was a lot of African families
Speaker 6: that were able to buy land. You can do that
Speaker 6: as a slave. You can buy land. They could sit
Speaker 6: on juries, they could barter in trade. So your listener
Speaker 6: brings up a very good question there that chances are,
Speaker 6: if you have three people, and if you're white and
Speaker 6: the other one's black, you're probably just as much related
Speaker 6: as the two persons that are of the same race.
Speaker 3: What is your favorite thing about genealogy? What just like
Speaker 3: fills you with butterflies or just makes you love it.
Speaker 6: Wow. The thing that makes me always love genealogy is
Speaker 6: being able to go on the hunt, go on the
Speaker 6: search to try to find to find someone's brick wall,
Speaker 6: someone who you know. And what I mean by brick
Speaker 6: wall for any of your listeners is you just comeing
Speaker 6: to a point where you can't go any further in
Speaker 6: your research. You just you come to a brick wall.
Speaker 6: You just you've exhausted all your avenues and you just
Speaker 6: don't know where to go. You just don't know who
Speaker 6: this person is, where, who their parents were, or whatever
Speaker 6: the question is. And I just love to take that
Speaker 6: brick wall and try to see if I can go
Speaker 6: through it. I just love that, you know, just taking
Speaker 6: on that challenge. And then once you're finding you're like, oh, yes,
Speaker 6: you know, it's just one. I love it.
Speaker 3: Do you wear a cape? Do you have a big
Speaker 3: type and a cake?
Speaker 6: I got a cape on right now, a big mustache
Speaker 6: right with the old pipe. Yeah, no nonologies.
Speaker 3: So find the most wonderful smart people and ask them questions,
Speaker 3: and before you know it, you might be staying on
Speaker 3: a plane and discover the person next to you is
Speaker 3: your fifth step cousin in law four times removed, and
Speaker 3: you might know them the rest of your life. So
Speaker 3: to get copies of Stephen Hanks books, you can go
Speaker 3: to the links in the show notes or ink water Press.
Speaker 3: You can also find links to the sponsor URLs and
Speaker 3: blackpast dot org in the show notes. We are at
Speaker 3: ologies on Twitter and Instagram. I'm at ali word with
Speaker 3: one L on both, so follow along. Let's be friends
Speaker 3: and in the interest of keeping things small around here,
Speaker 3: the full credits are listed in the show notes. More
Speaker 3: Sosmologies episodes are available at aliword dot com, slash smologies
Speaker 3: and before I go, I usually give you a tiny
Speaker 3: piece of advice, and this week it's that if you
Speaker 3: have something to do that you don't want to forget,
Speaker 3: what I like to do sometimes is pick up a
Speaker 3: little pebble and put it in my pocket. That way,
Speaker 3: all day, I'll all the pebble and I'll think I
Speaker 3: gotta do that thing. At the end of the day,
Speaker 3: when you take off your pants, if there's a pebble
Speaker 3: in your pocket, you know had to do that thing.
Speaker 3: So sometimes a pebble in the pocket will help jog
Speaker 3: your memory. I hope that helps. Okay, until next time, smallogites,
Speaker 3: byebye jet.
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