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Speaker 4: full teas and seas. Oh hey, twenty twenty six Alley
Speaker 4: here with a well deserved encore of an episode that
Speaker 4: I love. Perfect timing. Also for Black History Month, And
Speaker 4: if you go to alleywar dot com slash ologieslash Black
Speaker 4: History Month, you'll find a wonderful catalog full of great
Speaker 4: ologists and all of the causes that they chose for
Speaker 4: us to support in their name. So we'll link that
Speaker 4: in the show notes. But onto this chat that I love. Okay, hey,
Speaker 4: it's your fourth cousin twice removed. Ali Ward back with
Speaker 4: a familial historical episode of Ologies. So you were here
Speaker 4: because people made babies with each other, and out of
Speaker 4: all of the game eats, in all of the conats,
Speaker 4: you became a collection of molecules, and you're suspended in
Speaker 4: a web of family. Even a cockroach technically has grandparents
Speaker 4: and cousin. Is that weird? Your cat might have an uncle,
Speaker 4: And if you have children, gaze at them. They may
Speaker 4: have children who have children, And then those children's might
Speaker 4: not even know your damn name. They'll just know you're dead.
Speaker 4: But before we get into it, first, a quick thank
Speaker 4: you to the select slice of listeners who are also patrons.
Speaker 4: You know who you are. You make the show possible.
Speaker 4: Thank you to everyone spreading the word with your mouth
Speaker 4: or by wearing my face on your chest via ologiesmerge
Speaker 4: dot com. Also thanks to everyone who boosts the show
Speaker 4: for others to see by hitting subscribe and by rating
Speaker 4: it and telling friends I read all your reviews, such
Speaker 4: as this Fresh twenty twenty six to one from Birds
Speaker 4: for Brains, who wrote not a single uninteresting episode in
Speaker 4: the bunch, not to mention life changing Birds for Brains,
Speaker 4: thank you for letting us change your life. Okay, genealogy
Speaker 4: the first topic ever to not be an ology. Look
Speaker 4: at it, genealogy? What is this? The Berenstain bears, it's
Speaker 4: an allergy? What the heck man? So genealogy comes from
Speaker 4: the root world gena meaning to give birth to you,
Speaker 4: like genesis, and genealogy is not the study of genetics
Speaker 4: and how DNA works. That's just called genetics. So this
Speaker 4: was news to me. Now, genealogy is the tracing of
Speaker 4: family origins, and in Old English it was called folk talou,
Speaker 4: meaning folk tales, but the allergy and not ology is
Speaker 4: because the O analogies is borrowed from the first word anyway.
Speaker 4: So this week's alogist, I suppose, has been in this
Speaker 4: field for three decades, starting as a personal passion that
Speaker 4: just consumed him into making it a job. And I
Speaker 4: was introduced to him by someone who worked to publish
Speaker 4: his latest book, which is called sixteen nineteen twenty Africans,
Speaker 4: and I immediately ordered the book. I was so happy
Speaker 4: he was down to pop into a sound booth in
Speaker 4: Portland to chat with me about his passion tracing family
Speaker 4: histories and chasing down records, and also about mystery novels
Speaker 4: and capes. Questions you should ask your relatives us history
Speaker 4: and how we treat the past, how to heal from
Speaker 4: our individual legacies, the joy of cracking a case, DNA tests, technology,
Speaker 4: brunch revelations, and how everywhere you look there's family. So
Speaker 4: pull up a chair and absorb the stories of two
Speaker 4: time author Total Peach, distant relative to Tom Hanks and
Speaker 4: perhaps your relative as well, genealogist Stephen Hanks. I'm sure
Speaker 4: you get that with a lot of Steven's.
Speaker 5: I do I do. My name is show with a
Speaker 5: pH as you probably noticed them. But when it was
Speaker 5: funny when I introduced myself, they say, Steve. Okay, Steve,
Speaker 5: nice to reach you. Yeah, Steve, Steven.
Speaker 4: And now you are a genealogist. Yes, and you've been
Speaker 4: a genealogist for quite a while.
Speaker 5: Now, yeah. I started like in eighty nine. Yeah, but
Speaker 5: I was like, God, how old was I? I was, oh,
Speaker 5: about thirty years old. And that's I got the bug.
Speaker 5: I was over at my dad's house that day and
Speaker 5: summer July, and he was watching the baseball game and
Speaker 5: he handed me this letter that he got from a
Speaker 5: cousin in Kansas, and he says, read this. And of
Speaker 5: course I didn't know anything about my family's history, you know,
Speaker 5: I'm just a kid growing up for then, and so
Speaker 5: he shows me this letter. I started reading. It's an
Speaker 5: obituary of a newspaper, and all these relatives and names
Speaker 5: are listed in this obituary. And saw my dad's side
Speaker 5: of the family, and I just said, wow, I don't
Speaker 5: know who these people are. And that's what that's what
Speaker 5: got HA started. Right there. I said, I got to
Speaker 5: find out who these people are. I got to find
Speaker 5: out about the history of my family. And so that's
Speaker 5: how it got started eighty nine.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and what was the first thing you did? Back
Speaker 4: in eighty nine, we had libraries and microfiche and the
Speaker 4: Dewey dustmal system microfilm readers.
Speaker 5: Yeah, the microfish totally totally, no Internet, no clicking of
Speaker 5: the mouse. You know. It was old school all the way.
Speaker 4: And old school ways involved making the two to three
Speaker 4: hour drive from Portland to Seattle's National Archives and that
Speaker 4: houses fifty eight thousand cubic feet of records. That's a
Speaker 4: lot of records all about the Pacific Northwest for Oregon, Idaho,
Speaker 4: Washington and now Alaska. But just in the past few weeks,
Speaker 4: this is breaking news. Historians are rightly poed that the
Speaker 4: government wants to sell this building because the techie Seattle
Speaker 4: location has become so valuable, and a building sale would
Speaker 4: mean moving all of those records of the Pacific Northwest
Speaker 4: to Missouri or California, making the journey for people much longer.
Speaker 4: Let's face it, mostly impossible, and no, you can't just
Speaker 4: jump on the information super Highway. A lot of those
Speaker 4: ledgers and records haven't even been digitized. So genealogy research
Speaker 4: like family trees, still has its roots in the past.
Speaker 5: Well, when I started getting interested in this field and
Speaker 5: wanting to learn more, I had to learn the rules
Speaker 5: of the game and how the professional genealogists did it.
Speaker 5: And so I learned about census records, tax records, you know,
Speaker 5: land deeds and all that sort of thing, courthouse records,
Speaker 5: and just on and on and on museums. So I said, well,
Speaker 5: let me start with the census records. That sounds pretty
Speaker 5: easy enough. You know, every ten years they have a census,
Speaker 5: and of course they put a privacy restriction on the
Speaker 5: first seventy years they release it to the public. So
Speaker 5: the most recent census that was available to me at
Speaker 5: that time was, I believe the nineteen twenty census. Yeah,
Speaker 5: nineteen twenty. But they had no National Archives branch in Portland.
Speaker 5: I could either fly to Washington, d c. While that
Speaker 5: probably wasn't gonna work, or they said you could go
Speaker 5: to Seattle, Washington. They have a branch there. So I
Speaker 5: would just take off whenever I could and just drive
Speaker 5: up three hours up to Seattle and just spend time
Speaker 5: looking at the old microfilm reels and putting the old
Speaker 5: microfilm on, cranking the machine, and boom, there they were
Speaker 5: I found my grandparents in Manhattan, Kansas. I started getting
Speaker 5: excited in nineteen twenty. And the genealogists rule, this is
Speaker 5: the genealogist rural alley, is work your way back from
Speaker 5: what you know to what you don't know. That's the rule.
Speaker 5: Never do it the other way around. Never go to
Speaker 5: what you don't know and try to work your way
Speaker 5: up to the present because you don't know who those
Speaker 5: people are in the past, right, so you don't know
Speaker 5: what journey, what paths you're going to be on. So
Speaker 5: start with what you know and work your way back.
Speaker 5: So I found my grandparents' names. I said, okay, I'm
Speaker 5: on the right track, and just started working my way back.
Speaker 5: But it started getting tricky as you get, you know,
Speaker 5: further back in time. And that's what even got me
Speaker 5: more excited, because you know, I'm like a detective, you know,
Speaker 5: like the Perry mat said, you know, yeah, you know,
Speaker 5: just start looking under the rocks. And so went to
Speaker 5: nineteen ten, a nineteen hundred census, and this was really
Speaker 5: getting exciting. I finally was able to locate my great grandparents,
Speaker 5: knew their names, and it just blew me away, you know,
Speaker 5: found him in Kansas, and found out that they had
Speaker 5: moved to Kansas from Mississippi. And the thing about that
Speaker 5: experience was they came from Mississippi under a different set
Speaker 5: of living as you as you know where I'm coming from,
Speaker 5: you know, slavery, you know, kind of the slavery thing.
Speaker 5: So that was a big chakaru.
Speaker 4: But Stevens first book was twenty thirteen's A Key Tree,
Speaker 4: A Descendants Quest for his slave ancestors on the Eskridge Plantations,
Speaker 4: and he has such an amazing way of writing about
Speaker 4: the process of genealogy through his own narrative and how
Speaker 4: one discovery can kind of ignite another the.
Speaker 5: Further you go back in time. I was able to
Speaker 5: find them on the eighteen eighty census and the eighteen
Speaker 5: ninety census, I guess was burned in a fire in
Speaker 5: nineteen twenty one. So that's yeah, that's something that all genealogists,
Speaker 5: if you're studying Greek, Italian, whatever you're you know, ancestry
Speaker 5: is that's something that you have to live with. The
Speaker 5: eighteen ninety census, it's gone forever. Wow.
Speaker 4: So yeah, Stephen told me that through the eighteen seventy
Speaker 4: census he discovered that his grandparents lived in a little
Speaker 4: town called Duckhill, Mississippi, hailing from what is now Montgomery County,
Speaker 4: the same place that Oprah Winfrey's family is from. Small world,
Speaker 4: but big deal, given that Oprah Winfrey is like the
Speaker 4: closest thing this country has had to a queen.
Speaker 5: There they were eighteen seventy June. Something. I couldn't believe it.
Speaker 5: I couldn't believe it. There they were never met, these
Speaker 5: family members, but these were my ancestors. And so when
Speaker 5: I got to that point, I was just in hebit,
Speaker 5: you know. But the problem is, you know, you going
Speaker 5: beyond eighteen seventy is the trick for you know, as
Speaker 5: far as African American genealogy. But I enjoyed, you know,
Speaker 5: doing it for I've had many different clients and many
Speaker 5: different people just even friends that I've done it for,
Speaker 5: all types of different Italian, Greece, so forth. So it's exciting.
Speaker 4: And you've established yourself as a genealogist. You've written multiple books,
Speaker 4: you've consulted on multiple documentaries, and you know, going back
Speaker 4: a little bit to your own history, were you always
Speaker 4: someone who liked mystery novels, like detective novels? What did yeah,
Speaker 4: was that going to be in your genes?
Speaker 5: Oh my god, Sherlock Holmes. I can remember as a
Speaker 5: kid just staying up late at night and just watching
Speaker 5: the Sherlock Holmes with who who was the guy that
Speaker 5: was playing that? But yeah, you know it was, it
Speaker 5: was It always had to be this one actor that
Speaker 5: played Charlote Holmes. He was the one that I fell
Speaker 5: in love with. I can't remember his name or off
Speaker 5: the bat, but I'll look it out.
Speaker 4: My guess is that this is Ronald Howard, who, in
Speaker 4: nearly forty episodes of Detective Capers portrayed the caped icon.
Speaker 2: What are you doing anyway?
Speaker 4: Research research ps side note, I just learned that that
Speaker 4: cape is called an Inverness cape, and it's named after
Speaker 4: a rainy region in the Scottish Highlands where Scottish wear
Speaker 4: this sleeveless cloak thing because it allows for easier access
Speaker 4: to their sporan, which is their long, hairy FannyPack coin
Speaker 4: purse that hangs over their chunk area. Anyway, Yes, Sherlock
Speaker 4: Holmes loved a good problem to solve, and on the
Speaker 4: topic of clever Scots.
Speaker 5: But I love loved Tim Sherlock was was my guy.
Speaker 5: And then of course you know James bond I mean,
Speaker 5: who who's not gonna like James bond On? You know,
Speaker 5: the Sean Connery. I know, I love you James, but yeah,
Speaker 5: I totally was the into the mysteries and the detectives
Speaker 5: early on.
Speaker 4: Definitely, for sure, after you were handed this obituary and
Speaker 4: you started driving up to Seattle to look in the archives.
Speaker 4: You mentioned you're in your thirties. Have you been able
Speaker 4: to balance genealogy with UH, with other careers or did
Speaker 4: at some point did you have to decide what you
Speaker 4: were going to dedicate your career to.
Speaker 5: Well, you know, that's a good question, and I did
Speaker 5: have to kind of juggle back and forth because I had,
Speaker 5: you know, the passion and the drive to wanna be
Speaker 5: a genealogists. I tried to start up my own business.
Speaker 5: Actually I did start my own business. It was called
Speaker 5: Genealogical Networking Services. And I went back to school and
Speaker 5: learned how to do computers because I didn't know that,
Speaker 5: and so I started up my own little entrepreneurship and
Speaker 5: I was getting requests all across the country. It was amazing,
Speaker 5: it was amazing. I still have those those inquiry letters
Speaker 5: to this day, and they were all over the country,
Speaker 5: people asking me to do this, that, can you look
Speaker 5: this up Native American? Just anything you could think of,
Speaker 5: and I had fun doing it. The only problem was
Speaker 5: people had a tendency to not want to pay you,
Speaker 5: but they want you to do the research first and
Speaker 5: then okay, now send me a payment. So it got
Speaker 5: to be kind of hard to make a living out
Speaker 5: of it, but I always had the passion for it,
Speaker 5: so I had to do other type of work just
Speaker 5: to you know, pay the bills type of thing. But
Speaker 5: finally I was able to just recently, actually five years ago,
Speaker 5: I finally got a really nice job that goes right
Speaker 5: along with my genealogy. I'm working for the school district
Speaker 5: here and yeah, I'm a record's clerk and it's amazing
Speaker 5: how many people come in walk in or email or
Speaker 5: phone they want to do research about this, that and
Speaker 5: the other. And that's just right up my alley doing
Speaker 5: research and ties right into the genealogy. So for the
Speaker 5: first time, after so many years, I finally got you know,
Speaker 5: they both together, genealogy and just doing historical research, you know,
Speaker 5: in local research. So it's cool.
Speaker 4: Oh, that's amazing, and you know. I know that you
Speaker 4: chronicled these discoveries that you made with your family in
Speaker 4: your first book, A key tree, and yeah, yeah, I
Speaker 4: would love to hear more. I know it's the Aki
Speaker 4: tree or a key tree. You pronounced it either way.
Speaker 5: I know, I know I say I say a key
Speaker 5: tree that I've heard people say no Aki.
Speaker 4: You know, I know I wasn't good sure, so I
Speaker 4: just messed it up either way.
Speaker 5: But I guess it's my auntie who she just reacally
Speaker 5: passed away in Saint Louis, Missouri. But she is my own,
Speaker 5: my mother's sister, and she would take trips to Jamaica,
Speaker 5: you know, as often as she could. And so she
Speaker 5: she pronounced it aki and she sent me a picture
Speaker 5: of it, and I put it in the book.
Speaker 4: So the Aki tree or a key tree, depending on
Speaker 4: how I see it is native to West Africa, and
Speaker 4: it bears this red fruit that in due time yawns
Speaker 4: open to reveal dark black, glossy seeds and this yellow,
Speaker 4: spongy flesh. And it's popular in Caribbean dishes. But if
Speaker 4: you try to eat that sucker before it's ripe, your
Speaker 4: impatience might get rewarded with the very self explanatory Jamaican
Speaker 4: vomiting sickness. Anyways, let it ripen and then cook it
Speaker 4: with cod and it's just supposed to be heaven on earth. Now.
Speaker 4: Stephen's book The Aqi Tree has cipia toned photographs of
Speaker 4: his ancestors and the silhouette of this tree behind them.
Speaker 4: And he told me that his first book was narrative
Speaker 4: fiction based on his family experiences and inspired by books
Speaker 4: like Alex Haley's Roots, but later he revised it to
Speaker 4: be purely nonfiction.
Speaker 5: It took about ten years to do the research on that.
Speaker 5: And my whole goal when I first started out was
Speaker 5: just to learn about my family on both my sides,
Speaker 5: my father and mother's side, trying to like go all
Speaker 5: the way to to Africa or anything like that, just
Speaker 5: just learning about the family. But every time I would
Speaker 5: go further back in history, I kept getting excited. I'm like,
Speaker 5: how far back can I go?
Speaker 4: Yeah?
Speaker 5: This is getting to be interesting now. I mean because
Speaker 5: as we all know, you know, Abraham Lincoln he ended slavery.
Speaker 5: We know that in eighteen sixty five or eighteen sixty three,
Speaker 5: some say, because the Emtancipation Proclamation, And like I had
Speaker 5: mentioned here earlier. I found my parents or my great
Speaker 5: grandparents on the eighteen seventy census. That was the first
Speaker 5: time ali that African Americans were listed on a federal
Speaker 5: census for the first time as far as everyone, because
Speaker 5: it was five years after the end of the Civil War,
Speaker 5: and so now everyone was just you know, a regular citizen,
Speaker 5: you know, the way it was supposed to be. So,
Speaker 5: but if you want to go further back eighteen sixty,
Speaker 5: well then you're going back into the old system of things.
Speaker 5: You know, when the South was at its peak and
Speaker 5: the cotton was king and all that. So eighteen sixty
Speaker 5: that's when you really get into the struggle of trying
Speaker 5: to identify who your parents are and your ancestors. I
Speaker 5: should say. Now, for some people, they have what they
Speaker 5: call free people of color. I learned about that as
Speaker 5: I became a genealogist. There were some people who had
Speaker 5: the designation of they were a free person of color,
Speaker 5: meaning they were emancipated or they were set free a
Speaker 5: long time ago, maybe eighteen hundreds, and their family just
Speaker 5: were free all the way up and right through the
Speaker 5: Civil War. Everything. They were just cruising. They were free,
Speaker 5: and so they never had that problem of being found
Speaker 5: on the census record because their family had always been free.
Speaker 4: Free people of color by the bye or herd to
Speaker 4: as free people of color, and just the distinction is
Speaker 4: a very painful reminder that they were the exception, not
Speaker 4: the rule. Stephen explored the beginnings of the laws that
Speaker 4: would shape and scar the nation for the last four
Speaker 4: hundred years in his book sixteen nineteen twenty Africans their
Speaker 4: story and discovery of their black, red and white descendants.
Speaker 5: But in Hampton, Virginia, there was a little ship that
Speaker 5: came in in August of sixteen nineteen and had had
Speaker 5: twenty Africans on it and they were taken off of
Speaker 5: a of a slave ship that was heading to Mexico Vercruz, Mexico,
Speaker 5: and some pirates attacked the ship and took about fifty
Speaker 5: Africans off of the slave ship. And this true story,
Speaker 5: and twenty of them came to the coast Virginia, Hampton, Virginia,
Speaker 5: and they let them go. They traded them for food
Speaker 5: and long story short, I did this book based on this,
Speaker 5: and DNA is so interesting now too. Everyone has taken
Speaker 5: a DNA to trying to find out about their ancestry.
Speaker 5: You know, we have TV shows about it.
Speaker 4: Please see Finding Your Roots, Genealogy, road show, Faces of
Speaker 4: America and who Do You Think You Are? The letter
Speaker 4: of which fun fact is produced by Lisa Kudro aka
Speaker 4: Phoebe from Friends And she even did an episode on
Speaker 4: Courtney Cox and We'll.
Speaker 1: See and she was hoping that, you know, her family
Speaker 1: were good people and knowing like murdered anyone, And it
Speaker 1: turns out her ancestors murdered the King of England.
Speaker 4: I looked into this further and a red hot poker
Speaker 4: may have been involved, but we don't need to go
Speaker 4: into it anyway. Part of discovering one's genealogy is facing that,
Speaker 4: guess what, just because they're your ancestors doesn't mean that
Speaker 4: they're the protagonist of the story. So it's easy as
Speaker 4: a white person to think that, say, Black History Month
Speaker 4: doesn't involve you, But if you live in America, it does.
Speaker 4: It involves all of us. And with knowledge comes context,
Speaker 4: and with context comes understanding, and DNA tests are expanding
Speaker 4: that knowledge more and more.
Speaker 5: It is just phenomenal. And so I took my DNA
Speaker 5: test and come to find out that I have some
Speaker 5: connections to these first Africans. So that's what this latest
Speaker 5: book is about. And so the further you go back
Speaker 5: in time, it just gets harder and harder to locate
Speaker 5: your family. If you were, if you're you know, if
Speaker 5: your ancestry or your inheritance was slavery. But it can
Speaker 5: be done. It can be done.
Speaker 4: And I'd love to hear more about your your personal
Speaker 4: family discovery and what that was like for you when
Speaker 4: you were tracing your genealogy, trasing your family history and
Speaker 4: you made that discovery that you had obviously relatives who
Speaker 4: were slaves in the South, What was that like for you?
Speaker 5: Wow? Yeah, to connect it was amazing. I interviewed so
Speaker 5: many different relatives, so many different cousins. Most of my
Speaker 5: father's side had passed away, but my mom's was still around.
Speaker 5: But it was just amazing just interviewing people. But then,
Speaker 5: as we mentioned earlier, we didn't have the internet back
Speaker 5: in those days, so you can't just get on Google
Speaker 5: and you know, type in a web search and click
Speaker 5: on a document and you know, print out your family tree.
Speaker 5: It doesn't work that way. So I had to travel around.
Speaker 5: I didn't go fly, but I would get on the
Speaker 5: ground bus and I would just travel to Mississippi to Kansas.
Speaker 5: I went to Virginia, South Carolina, just interviewing people, going
Speaker 5: to courthouses. And I'll never forget this day Ali September
Speaker 5: twenty second, nineteen ninety four. I'll never forget that day.
Speaker 5: That was the day that I took a trip down
Speaker 5: to Duck Hill, Mississippi, to meet the great granddaughter of
Speaker 5: the man who my ancestors worked for. It was deep. Yeah.
Speaker 5: We corresponded over the phone and she said she'd be
Speaker 5: happy to meet me her and her husband, and I
Speaker 5: told her about my book and that I'm trying to
Speaker 5: write this information. I'm trying to research my family and
Speaker 5: I just would like to know where my ancestors lived
Speaker 5: and where they worked at the land and just everything
Speaker 5: about it. I just wanted to breathe it, touch it,
Speaker 5: smell it whatever. I wanted to get down there and
Speaker 5: see that. She says, come on down. You just let
Speaker 5: us know when you're come in and we'll meet you.
Speaker 5: So I planned my trip went down there in September
Speaker 5: nineteen ninety four and we met at the local bank there.
Speaker 5: It's a little small town and we just embraced and
Speaker 5: we just embraced and we just made a really deep connection.
Speaker 5: We're still friends to this day. Well actually her son
Speaker 5: and his wife our friends with me because she's now
Speaker 5: passed on. She was about seventy five years old in
Speaker 5: nineteen ninety four. But she just opened her arms and
Speaker 5: we just I had to rent a car and I
Speaker 5: drove up from Jackson, Mississippi, rented a car, drove up
Speaker 5: the Interstate fifty five and got into town there and
Speaker 5: she hopped into my car. She didn't know me from
Speaker 5: Adam the first time we met, you know. She hopped
Speaker 5: into the passenger side and she her daughter drove her
Speaker 5: up there, and she tells her daughter, Okay, i'll see
Speaker 5: you later on today, goodbye bye. She just she's that
Speaker 5: confident to get into the car with me. A total
Speaker 5: strange but that's the connection we had that day. It
Speaker 5: was amazing. It's amazing. I'll never forget it. And she
Speaker 5: took me to the old family site, the old plantation
Speaker 5: home that her great grandfather lived in, and she took
Speaker 5: me to the family cemetery and some of my ancestors
Speaker 5: were buried in her family cemetery. It was it was
Speaker 5: just amazing, and yeah, just sided out.
Speaker 4: I was casually fully crying in my recording closet.
Speaker 5: At this point, I just wasgan notes the whole time,
Speaker 5: and that was the turning point, and that just broke
Speaker 5: through to finding another generation of my family. And long
Speaker 5: story short, ALLI went by the time it was said,
Speaker 5: and then I was able to work my way all
Speaker 5: the way from starting in nineteen twenty and went all
Speaker 5: the way back to like the seventeen hundreds, oh, myneen thirties. Yeah,
Speaker 5: I couldn't believe. I had no idea that I could
Speaker 5: go that far back. But I had paper documents from
Speaker 5: the courthouses and estate records that I just followed the
Speaker 5: paper trail, you know, just like you know Perry Mason
Speaker 5: and Charlotte Hols to follow the paper trail.
Speaker 2: I heard you had a reputation for resourcefulness.
Speaker 4: So Stephen followed those clues and it led him to
Speaker 4: Virginia in the seventeen thirties and an archived estate inventory.
Speaker 5: You know, when somebody dies, they have to do an
Speaker 5: estate inventory of all your property, and they did that
Speaker 5: back then too, nothing, you know, pretty much the same.
Speaker 5: And so this person's plantation home that these this paper
Speaker 5: trail pointing me to his name was Colonel George Eskridge,
Speaker 5: and he had Africans that were working on his He
Speaker 5: had a tobacco plantation. Tobacco was the main crop, I
Speaker 5: guess at that time. And he had on his estate
Speaker 5: inventory when he died, he died in seventeen thirty five,
Speaker 5: they had to do a state inventory of all his belongings,
Speaker 5: and of course, unfortunately that they listed you know, you know,
Speaker 5: human beings, this property of we get that, you know,
Speaker 5: that's how they did. But they were African names. When
Speaker 5: I looked on the on the inventory, they were African names,
Speaker 5: I couldn't believe it. And so through a little bit
Speaker 5: of more research I was able to identify one of them,
Speaker 5: and it was just it was just amazing, just amazing.
Speaker 4: You've had a long history of going into you know,
Speaker 4: musty bookshelves and microfision all the way up to internet
Speaker 4: into DNA tests and you know, genealogy. The field expands,
Speaker 4: it seems like, you know, every year with technology. And yes,
Speaker 4: on one hand, you know, we learn that we're literally
Speaker 4: like all related, but on the other it uncovers some
Speaker 4: really painful truths about our histories and about slavery and
Speaker 4: about colonialism. How do you feel as a genealogist that
Speaker 4: can affect us emotionally. Do you think that can bring
Speaker 4: up pain or do you think it can help heal something?
Speaker 4: Or is it empowering?
Speaker 5: I think that I think that initially it does cause
Speaker 5: a little bit of pain and uncomfortableness because for some reason,
Speaker 5: in our country of you know, America, the United States
Speaker 5: of America, I don't think we've fully ever grappled with
Speaker 5: what happened after eighteen sixty five. I don't think we
Speaker 5: ever really had any discussions about race and you know
Speaker 5: that topic. I just don't think we ever really dealt
Speaker 5: with it. And because there were so many things that
Speaker 5: came on right after, you know, okay, slave re entered,
Speaker 5: everybody's celebrating Da Da Da, and then boom, we had
Speaker 5: a whole set of other problems that came right after that,
Speaker 5: you know, with Jim Crow and segregation and you know,
Speaker 5: the KKK and on and on and on and on,
Speaker 5: and so we never really dealt with it. And so
Speaker 5: I kind of look at it like this here, It's
Speaker 5: just like a person that's maybe has an addiction, you know,
Speaker 5: maybe have an addiction with alcohol or drug addiction or
Speaker 5: whatever it is. The first step is acknowledging that you
Speaker 5: have a problem, and then you discuss it with someone
Speaker 5: and you try to get help. And the more you
Speaker 5: discuss it and you acknowledge it, it starts to heal you.
Speaker 5: You start to feel better.
Speaker 4: Stephen notes that South Africa's post apartheid public hearings held
Speaker 4: by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, which it was then called,
Speaker 4: allowed victims of abuses and violence to speak out and
Speaker 4: explain the physical and emotional impacts of apartheid, and it
Speaker 4: also gave those who perpetrated violence a chance to ask
Speaker 4: for amnesty and forgiveness. Stephen thinks that having a similar
Speaker 4: healing process in America could lead to better understanding, compassion,
Speaker 4: and healing.
Speaker 5: If you study your roots and you find that you
Speaker 5: have people that are in your family that are of
Speaker 5: a different ethnicity or a different culture, embrace it and
Speaker 5: get to know who they are, reach out to them
Speaker 5: and introduce yourself, and you know because they're your family.
Speaker 5: You know they're your family. And the DNA test that's
Speaker 5: so popular now that people are finding that out more
Speaker 5: and more, that we're all so more closely connected than
Speaker 5: we ever have been because we're all related really when
Speaker 5: you look at it, you know, and so it is
Speaker 5: painful at first, but just acknowledging that we had a problem,
Speaker 5: but that we want to move forward and just be
Speaker 5: and be in peace. And that's one thing about doing
Speaker 5: genealogy for me is that I have to look at it.
Speaker 5: It is a little emotional sometimes, but I have to
Speaker 5: put that aside and put that on one little compartment
Speaker 5: and look at it from the perspective of this is history,
Speaker 5: and I want to learn about history. I want to
Speaker 5: learn about people. And because we're all the same, and
Speaker 5: so if we do that, you know we're going to
Speaker 5: We're going to be fine. We're going to be fine
Speaker 5: the time.
Speaker 4: How has the advent of you know, consumer DNA tests
Speaker 4: changed what you do and how you research.
Speaker 5: It's very interesting. It's a very interesting question. When I
Speaker 5: first took the test and got the results back and
Speaker 5: all these I had, like about I think it was
Speaker 5: like two thousand, at least about two thousand connections of
Speaker 5: people that were related to me. And they did it
Speaker 5: from obviously from the highest ratio down to the lowest ratio,
Speaker 5: and so I could look at my top twenty, you know,
Speaker 5: and I said, wow, these are really close to me.
Speaker 4: So Stephen has taken two DNA tests, and his father,
Speaker 4: before he passed away, also took one, and their raw
Speaker 4: data led them to the s Gridge family name he
Speaker 4: was already familiar with, which validated the technology for him.
Speaker 4: He was like, huh, this works, but sometimes results might
Speaker 4: surprise you. Turns out that iconic Lizzo's iconic truth hurts
Speaker 4: genealogical ripper, I just took a DNA test.
Speaker 5: Turns out I'm one hundred percent.
Speaker 4: That's one hundred percent her brainchild. So a London musician
Speaker 4: with the handle Minalinas tweeted that exact line in February
Speaker 4: twenty seventeen, and then it became a meme and Lizzo
Speaker 4: liked the meme. She tossed it in a song, and
Speaker 4: the original tweeter was like, uh, hello, excuse me, Lizzo,
Speaker 4: that is my DNA joke. And some legal things ensued,
Speaker 4: but fences have been mended. And fast forward to October
Speaker 4: when Mina tweeted out quote, I just took a DNA test.
Speaker 4: Turns out I'm a credited writer for the number one
Speaker 4: song on Billboard. Oh it's well then as.
Speaker 5: Well, and I'm getting ready to take another DNA test
Speaker 5: here shortly because there are so many companies out there
Speaker 5: and people are choosing which companies they want to do
Speaker 5: it with. So either my cousins haven't taken the test
Speaker 5: on the companies that I took it with, or they
Speaker 5: haven't taken one at all. Or it could mean that
Speaker 5: my family that I thought was my family, maybe they
Speaker 5: weren't my family, you know. Yeah, never know.
Speaker 4: If you take a DNA test through twenty three and
Speaker 4: me say, but then you have relatives who have taken
Speaker 4: it through like Ancestry, does that mean that you just
Speaker 4: might be like not connecting because you're using different companies.
Speaker 5: Exactly exactly, And that's that's the point, is that I
Speaker 5: want to take another test through another company. Actually, I
Speaker 5: do want to take it through Ancestry because I think
Speaker 5: that a lot of more of my family. In fact,
Speaker 5: I know I've heard that more of my cousins are
Speaker 5: taking on the Ancestry one. So I want to get
Speaker 5: on board and just see how I line up with that.
Speaker 5: So at twenty three and meters, I've gotten a lot
Speaker 5: of good hits and connections with that that did validate
Speaker 5: that that this DNA stuff is for real, Because I
Speaker 5: did know their names, and they did show up, and
Speaker 5: they're on my mother's side, but not on my father's
Speaker 5: side showed up.
Speaker 4: How does that work? And I might have to look
Speaker 4: this up, But how does that work with like the
Speaker 4: mitochondrial eve and things coming down from the X chromosomes?
Speaker 4: Like do we tend to find out more about our
Speaker 4: maternal sides when we take DNA tests than we do
Speaker 4: Paternal mitochondrial eve side note has become the pop cultural
Speaker 4: name of the most recent known maternal ancestor that we
Speaker 4: all share because mitochondrial DNA is only passed on through
Speaker 4: maternal lineage. Scientists do not love this biblical name, as
Speaker 4: it's misleading. From a narrative standpoint, Let's say, but this
Speaker 4: mitochondrial eve is what's called an mrca most recent common ancestor,
Speaker 4: and she can vary depending on genetic discoveries. So if
Speaker 4: a more recent common ancestor lineage is discovered, for example,
Speaker 4: it's a different mitochondrial leaf, but yes, all related, all
Speaker 4: of us WO.
Speaker 5: For a female that wants to do genealogy and using
Speaker 5: the DNA tool in order for them to learn more
Speaker 5: about their father's side, they need to try to see
Speaker 5: if they have a brother they can take the test,
Speaker 5: or their father or an uncle, you know, anyone on
Speaker 5: the paternal side.
Speaker 4: This side note is called a Y chromosome test, and
Speaker 4: it's helpful to figure out, say, if two families with
Speaker 4: the same surname are indeed genetic relatives. So ladies, surprise
Speaker 4: your dad or brother with a DNA test. It's a
Speaker 4: gift that just keeps get you information. And then of
Speaker 4: course there's the mitochondrial DNA test you can do. Everyone
Speaker 4: has their mom's mitochondrial DNA and this is helpful because
Speaker 4: historically women's history can be erased or at least very
Speaker 4: illegibly smudged by the taking of surnames. More on that later. Oh,
Speaker 4: and you can get single nucleotide polymorphism testing, which scans
Speaker 4: your DNA for variations in the CG and AT pairings,
Speaker 4: and they'll tell you what traits or diseases or in
Speaker 4: some cases parents you might share with folks in their database.
Speaker 5: And that's another thing too about these genealogy the DNA
Speaker 5: companies is they're always updating their results. The results get
Speaker 5: updated because more and more people are joining them and
Speaker 5: so they're getting more hits. The DNA results keep updating
Speaker 5: and you get more and more people that join, and
Speaker 5: you get new names that just keep popping up, and
Speaker 5: so hey.
Speaker 4: That's got to be the best email to get because
Speaker 4: I get those from twenty three and me that'll be like,
Speaker 4: you have new relatives because my family's Catholic on both sides,
Speaker 4: which means there's a million of us.
Speaker 5: Oh and you took your task through twenty three?
Speaker 4: Yeah I did, And yeah, I have so many relatives
Speaker 4: and my dad's one of eleven, my mom's one of six,
Speaker 4: so we got a lot of us out there. But
Speaker 4: that's got to be the most exciting email to pop
Speaker 4: up in your inboxes that you have new relatives.
Speaker 5: Totally.
Speaker 4: You've got to be like Jackpot totally.
Speaker 5: Yes.
Speaker 4: And I actually I told our listeners that I was
Speaker 4: going to be talking to you today and they sent
Speaker 4: in questions Can I ask you some questions for that?
Speaker 5: Absolutely?
Speaker 4: Okay, great, like literally hundreds of questions, right, Yeah, I
Speaker 4: know everyone's so excited. Okay, but before we dive into
Speaker 4: your genealogical queries. As you know, each episode we donate
Speaker 4: to a relevant charity, and one that Steven advocates for
Speaker 4: is Blackpast dot org and Black Past is dedicated to
Speaker 4: providing a global audience with reliable and accurate information on
Speaker 4: the history of African America and people of African ancestry
Speaker 4: around the world, and they aim to promote greater understanding
Speaker 4: through this knowledge and to generate constructive change in our society.
Speaker 4: They have over six thousand pages of genealogical resources and
Speaker 4: history available and again are black Past dot org. So
Speaker 4: that donation was made possible by some sponsors of this show.
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Speaker 4: Okay, let's hop into your questions and so let's see
Speaker 4: first patroon question. This was asked by Rachel Kasha, Jennifer
Speaker 4: Tran and first time question asker Danielle Levoy. I asked
Speaker 4: what's the deal with second cousins versus first cousins once removed?
Speaker 4: Rachel Kasha says, the whole once removed hurts my brain
Speaker 4: and I don't understand what does that mean?
Speaker 5: Yeah, wow, that's a good question. Well, I'll take the
Speaker 5: first part because that's easier. Okay, the second cousins would
Speaker 5: be like your you have your first cousin, Like say
Speaker 5: you have your mother has a sister, which would be
Speaker 5: your aunt, and your aunt has children and those children
Speaker 5: would be your first cousins, cousins, cousins twice removed and
Speaker 5: all that. I'm still trying to wrap my head around there.
Speaker 4: If a genealogist who's like published several books and just
Speaker 4: like a consultant for PBS shows, does it quite get it?
Speaker 4: That makes me feel so much better. Yeah, okay, side note,
Speaker 4: I looked up a float chart for this, and my
Speaker 4: soul hurt, but I think I got it. So your
Speaker 4: first cousin's child is your first cousin once removed, So
Speaker 4: your first cousin's kids kids are first cousins twice removed.
Speaker 4: So removed is in regard to generations. So same grandparents,
Speaker 4: different generation. Now your second cousin, according to genealogy dot Com,
Speaker 4: is someone who has the same great grandparents as you,
Speaker 4: but not the same grandparents. So third cousins have the
Speaker 4: same great great grandparents, fourth cousins have the same great
Speaker 4: great great grandparents and so on, so that cousin removed
Speaker 4: business is about generations. Unlike on my Italian side, feuds
Speaker 4: blistering family shattering feuds. In my family, my dad's you know,
Speaker 4: one of eleven, and then each of those siblings have
Speaker 4: a lot of kids, and we just resort to levels,
Speaker 4: Like my grandparents are level one, my dad's a level two.
Speaker 4: That makes me a level three if I have kids.
Speaker 4: And so when our family reunions, which are like ginormous
Speaker 4: literally different colored t shirts, so you know who's a
Speaker 4: level two and you're like, whose kid is that? And
Speaker 4: you're like, I don't know, they're an yellow shirt. They're
Speaker 4: a level four. So it helps us a lot of
Speaker 4: people wanted to know about the reliability of sites like Ancestry.
Speaker 4: Maggie Fraser, who's the first time question asker wants to
Speaker 4: know about reliability. Michelle Minor, Lisa.
Speaker 5: M.
Speaker 4: Kendall, Burnell, Jesse Cole, Bennett Garber who's also a first
Speaker 4: time question asker, Deanna one and Hannah h They all
Speaker 4: kind of want to know can we rely on these?
Speaker 5: Yes?
Speaker 4: Yeah, cool, good question.
Speaker 5: Very good question. Yeah. I have heard of different comments
Speaker 5: about different companies, and you definitely want to do your
Speaker 5: research and you know, know which company, whatever company you
Speaker 5: choose to go with, know a little bit about and
Speaker 5: their ratings and how they're doing, how the people feel
Speaker 5: about them. And I've heard some things about Ancestry pros
Speaker 5: and cons, So.
Speaker 4: I have heard that.
Speaker 5: I don't know if it's true or not, but I'm
Speaker 5: going to find out because I'm getting ready to take
Speaker 5: my tests with Ancestry, so I will know. But I
Speaker 5: have heard that they ask you different questions about, you know,
Speaker 5: putting in a profile, and so you start putting in
Speaker 5: names like well, this is my grandfather, this is my grandmother,
Speaker 5: my great grandfather, and boom boo boom, he was born
Speaker 5: in Maryland or you know, Jacksonsissippi, whatever. And if someone
Speaker 5: else on the other another part of the country, they
Speaker 5: go in there and they if one of their names
Speaker 5: matches with yours just on the family tree, not not
Speaker 5: the DNA part, but just just the profiles they seem
Speaker 5: to they'll send a message back and forth to each
Speaker 5: other that you might want to look at this person.
Speaker 5: This person might be interested or might be related to
Speaker 5: you just by the names that you put on your profile.
Speaker 5: And so that's kind of something that makes you wonder.
Speaker 5: Be careful because you may not have been able to
Speaker 5: fully established those names that you're putting on your profile
Speaker 5: if they really are truly related to you. I mean,
Speaker 5: unless you have concrete proof, no problem. But if you're
Speaker 5: a genealogist and you you know, you're doing the family
Speaker 5: tree and you've been following the paper trail, you know,
Speaker 5: the old school methodology. That's just what it says on
Speaker 5: paper that these are your family But how do you
Speaker 5: really know, you know, how what if somebody was had
Speaker 5: a child out of wedlock, you know, so you know,
Speaker 5: be aware because that could throw you into the wrong direction.
Speaker 5: If just because you match another person's profile just based
Speaker 5: on the names, that may not it may or may not,
Speaker 5: you know, hold water. But but if you take the
Speaker 5: DNA test and your connected with then you have something
Speaker 5: to work with. But so I kind of was like, well,
Speaker 5: if I take this ancestry test, I'm not going to
Speaker 5: put any names right yet on high profile. I'm gonna
Speaker 5: just wait and see who pops up first, and then
Speaker 5: I'll go from there because I don't want too many people.
Speaker 5: You know, it might give me the wrong leads, you
Speaker 5: know what I'm saying. So yeah, so yeah, do your
Speaker 5: research and just kind of know what company that you
Speaker 5: choose to go with.
Speaker 4: You know, along that line. A lot of listeners like
Speaker 4: Aaron jess Lynn, Maria Kumro, and Conchetta Gibson. Jesslyn is
Speaker 4: the first time question ask her All asked about surnames.
Speaker 4: Jesslin asked that there's mentions that there's a lot in Quebec,
Speaker 4: Canada that forbids a woman from taking her husband's surname
Speaker 4: after marriage, and ask are there any cultures or countries
Speaker 4: in which women traditionally don't take their husband's name and
Speaker 4: does that ever cause issues when tracing back families?
Speaker 5: Wow, yeah, totally. I have heard that too, that there
Speaker 5: are some cultures where they is some maternal line and
Speaker 5: the female just goes by her maiden name is the surname. Yeah,
Speaker 5: I would say too that that happens. That happens to
Speaker 5: be a problem a lot in genealogy, not a problem
Speaker 5: that cannot be overcome. And I have come across that
Speaker 5: even myself in my own research. Say, I find a
Speaker 5: person on the sensus and say her name is Mary Johnson,
Speaker 5: just for example. But then if you go and you
Speaker 5: read further in the other columns of Mary Johnson's family line,
Speaker 5: it says that she's single, but then she has two
Speaker 5: or three children in her household enlisted as son, daughter, whatever,
Speaker 5: but they are her children. So then you have to
Speaker 5: ask yourself the question she's single, but she has children, okay,
Speaker 5: and then the children have different names. And so sometimes
Speaker 5: I've had that problem where I'm trying to figure out, well,
Speaker 5: Mary Johnson, if I can't find her marriage certificate to
Speaker 5: show that these are her children from her ho, I
Speaker 5: don't know if she's going if Mary Johnson is her
Speaker 5: married name, or if that's her maiden name. And so
Speaker 5: that happens sometimes where you have it's a question mark
Speaker 5: that is a really big challenge with genealogy trying to
Speaker 5: locate the maiden names. And the best thing that most
Speaker 5: genealogists are able to do is try to find a
Speaker 5: marriage certificate, and if that doesn't work, then a death
Speaker 5: certificate sometimes will show the maiden name. And if you
Speaker 5: can't find the marriage or the death certificate, it's going
Speaker 5: to be a tough one.
Speaker 4: Quick aside. One study showed that in nineteen eighty, ninety
Speaker 4: eight point six percent of American women almost ninety nine
Speaker 4: percent took their husband's name after marriage, but that's declined
Speaker 4: in recent years to about eighty percent. Now, what percent
Speaker 4: of men adopt a new name after marriage these days?
Speaker 4: Three percent? So this next tip is a revelation.
Speaker 5: The other genealogists rule is look at who's living next store. Oh,
Speaker 5: look who's living next door or even a few houses down,
Speaker 5: because families tended to stay together. Families tend to stay together,
Speaker 5: and so your family that you found on the census
Speaker 5: might be living right next door to another family member.
Speaker 5: And so it's just amazing when you find that connection
Speaker 5: like that. And yeah, I've found that many times. I've
Speaker 5: had that discovery and I was like, wow, I've been
Speaker 5: I've spent two years trying to locate and here they
Speaker 5: were right living right next door.
Speaker 4: What were you there the whole time? And that kind
Speaker 4: of brings me to a question a lot of people asked,
Speaker 4: Anna Thompson, Conchetti, Gibson, Jesse, Dragon, Margaret and Baker, Rinny,
Speaker 4: Chelsea A. Leary, Sarahjeane Horowitz and Larissa Lewis and Chelsea
Speaker 4: are both first time question askers, and Laris asked, what's
Speaker 4: the best place to start to actually look into family history?
Speaker 4: What are some questions that we should be asking ourselves
Speaker 4: and our family and professionals like librarians in order to
Speaker 4: look into our history.
Speaker 5: Great question, great question. They're all great questions. And the
Speaker 5: first yeah, obviously you're you're, you're listeners, they're they're they're
Speaker 5: the best. So yeah, first, yeah, So the first thing
Speaker 5: to do when you want to get started on your
Speaker 5: genealogy is, uh, you know, ask start assembling your family
Speaker 5: tree and ask questions from your family if they're still living,
Speaker 5: if your father is still living, or your mother's still living,
Speaker 5: or grandparents, whoever's whoever is the most closest to you
Speaker 5: that's still alive, even your siblings. Sometimes your siblings have
Speaker 5: more of a recollection than you do. I know, sometimes
Speaker 5: my brother be coming up with stuff I don't even remember,
Speaker 5: and you'd be telling me yeah, and I said, wow,
Speaker 5: I didn't know that. So just sit down with a
Speaker 5: pen and paper and just start, uh making a list
Speaker 5: on the paternal side, your father's side, and the maternal
Speaker 5: site your mother's side, and and then just start going
Speaker 5: from there. List your parents first, and then list their parents.
Speaker 5: Put down where they were born obviously if you have
Speaker 5: that information where they died, if you can find the
Speaker 5: county name of where they were born or died, that
Speaker 5: even helps to find out what year they were married.
Speaker 5: Like your grandparents, find out how did they meet each other.
Speaker 5: That's always been such a fascinating question to me is
Speaker 5: how did the grandparents meet each other or the great grandparents,
Speaker 5: how did they meet each other? Because just because you
Speaker 5: were born in Chicago, Illinois and you died in Northern Louisiana,
Speaker 5: for example, how did great grandpa meet great grandma or
Speaker 5: how did grandma meet grandpa? You know, and then you
Speaker 5: find out, oh, they got married in you know, Atlanta, Georgia,
Speaker 5: you know, and then that right exactly, that's the point
Speaker 5: is what were they doing, there was their family there
Speaker 5: in Atlanta, So write all that down where they got married,
Speaker 5: because those could be clues later on down the road.
Speaker 5: They may not mean anything now, but they might later.
Speaker 5: And so just start putting a chart down, father's sign
Speaker 5: on one side of the paper, mother's side on the
Speaker 5: other side, and just work your way back on who
Speaker 5: they're grandparents and great grandparents were, and just list as
Speaker 5: much as you can, and then whatever blanks you have,
Speaker 5: fill in the blanks by interviewing your relatives and you know,
Speaker 5: the aunt and the uncles and the grandmothers and the grandfathers,
Speaker 5: and try to fill those blanks in as much as
Speaker 5: you can, and go to the family closet, you know,
Speaker 5: or wherever, whoever's the one that's holding the records in
Speaker 5: the family, you know, consult them. You know, there's always
Speaker 5: somebody in the family that's got all the marriage records.
Speaker 5: They've got all the pictures, the photographs, the obituaries and
Speaker 5: the death notices and all that sort of thing, and
Speaker 5: the birth certificates. So go to that person and just
Speaker 5: plow through all that and write all that down, maybe
Speaker 5: make photocopies if they'll allow you to. When you interview
Speaker 5: you know someone that's really old old? What does that mean?
Speaker 5: Really old? Sometimes I feel like I'm really old. But
Speaker 5: when you interview a parent or a grandparent, I even
Speaker 5: ask him. I said, okay, if I if I can
Speaker 5: record it, Yeah, and I'll recorded, and that way you're
Speaker 5: not missing anything.
Speaker 4: So yeah, that's great's and you'll also like learn so
Speaker 4: much about your family. Who doesn't want to learn more
Speaker 4: about you know, people's histories that are right around them.
Speaker 4: I think that's such a good bonding project too, you know. Yeah,
Speaker 4: So treat yourself to a nice new notebook, threw a
Speaker 4: pot of tea, and then sit down and interrogate a
Speaker 4: loved one gently. A few people, including Beatrice Bella, Clava, B. Wilson,
Speaker 4: and first time question asker Lizzie, for example, all wanted
Speaker 4: to know about adoption, and Lizzy asks, my dad has
Speaker 4: adopted and knows some of his biological family's background, But
Speaker 4: what does that mean for our genealogy? Do we trace
Speaker 4: the adopted family's history do we trace the bio family's history?
Speaker 5: Both? Excellent question. I would say do both if you
Speaker 5: feel like it, If you have a yearning for wanting
Speaker 5: to know both, go for it. I know that in
Speaker 5: my family my grandfather who I met. I never did
Speaker 5: meet my father's parents, so I never did know my
Speaker 5: paternal grandfather or grandmother. They both passed before I was born.
Speaker 5: But on my mom's side, my mother remarried and so
Speaker 5: her husband was always He was the one I always
Speaker 5: called grandpa, but he was not my biological grandpa. But
Speaker 5: to this day, he will always be my grandfather. And
Speaker 5: so I did a genealogy search on his family. I
Speaker 5: wanted to know about him and found out about that
Speaker 5: he had Native American heritage from Tennessee. And you know,
Speaker 5: I found out that he had a aunt, Minerva, and
Speaker 5: she lived to be one hundred years old, and I
Speaker 5: recorded that. I still have that on tape cassette tape.
Speaker 5: By the way, I need to update that. So I
Speaker 5: would say that for adoptions, why not look at both sides,
Speaker 5: the biological and the adopted side. Absolutely, And for adoptions,
Speaker 5: I've had people that have contacted me over the years
Speaker 5: that have wanted to get help and try to locate
Speaker 5: through biological parents out.
Speaker 4: Turning over some hefty forensic boulders. I had a few people,
Speaker 4: Julie bar Laura Merryman, Stephanie berherties and first time question
Speaker 4: asker April Parry. April Pary written and said, I'm a
Speaker 4: forensic scientist and DNA analyst more specifically, and our field
Speaker 4: has been all abuzz with genealogy in the past few
Speaker 4: years as cold cases are being solved using public database searches,
Speaker 4: and April is curious what your take is, including some
Speaker 4: possible ethical dilemmas. How do you feel about it?
Speaker 5: Yeah, that's been on the news recently here. Some people
Speaker 5: are kind of leary about putting their DNA information on
Speaker 5: a website where law enforcement agencies can come in and
Speaker 5: check into that. And they have cold cases where they're
Speaker 5: trying to solve and you might know some information about it.
Speaker 5: It's kind of scary, you know.
Speaker 4: I don't know.
Speaker 5: That's a good question. If it can create closure to someone,
Speaker 5: I wouldn't mind participating in in solving something, But of
Speaker 5: course I wouldn't want anything to to turn back on METE,
Speaker 5: you know. But I'm clean. I haven't done anything, so
Speaker 5: I'm good. I have a clean conscience. But I guess,
Speaker 5: you know, you have to think about that if you
Speaker 5: you know, if you when you take a DNA TOS,
Speaker 5: you're susceptible to whatever is out there, so you know,
Speaker 5: just be careful. I know there's a lot of pros
Speaker 5: and cons on that. That's that's a very very big
Speaker 5: question right now.
Speaker 4: It's such a new quandary, it's such a new ethical
Speaker 4: dilemma that we've just never encountered before. So I think
Speaker 4: a lot of people are still wrapping their brains around
Speaker 4: the benefits of getting closure or apprehending someone versus the
Speaker 4: how from a molecular level, invasive that is on you know,
Speaker 4: some of your actual genes. So yeah, it's really interesting.
Speaker 4: I think a lot of people are probably super ambivalent,
Speaker 4: meaning you know, they just seeing the good and the bad.
Speaker 4: And Rachel C wrote and she had a great question
Speaker 4: and said, I've heard that out of a group of
Speaker 4: three people, two black and one white, it is just
Speaker 4: as likely for a black and white person to be
Speaker 4: more related as it is for the two black individuals
Speaker 4: to be more closely related. If that is really the case,
Speaker 4: then what the heck is race anyway? And why does
Speaker 4: it persist in modern times?
Speaker 5: It is so true, that is so true. I mean,
Speaker 5: race is just it's just a classification. I mean, even
Speaker 5: now we have when we fill out forms. They have
Speaker 5: checkboxes where you can mark whatever ethnicity you wish, but
Speaker 5: there now they're becoming more where you can mark that
Speaker 5: you're a Bible racial and even try racial. And so
Speaker 5: that's a problem for the government. They want they want
Speaker 5: to have solid data so that they know who are
Speaker 5: who's in our country and da da da. But I say, hey,
Speaker 5: why not just embrace all? Why pick? Why do you
Speaker 5: have to pick one or the other? And you have
Speaker 5: so many that are part of your DNA, so you know,
Speaker 5: I haven't. I have to admit I've been just picking
Speaker 5: the one African American. But there was a few times
Speaker 5: where I did pick biracial because I am. If I
Speaker 5: can remember the ratio, I am. Oh, I'll just round
Speaker 5: it off. I'm about eighty percent African and about eighteen
Speaker 5: percent European, which includes Scandinavian British, and then two percent
Speaker 5: Native American and Southeast Asian, which blew me away. So
Speaker 5: I'd like to learn a little bit more about the
Speaker 5: Southeast Asian part, you know, the Philippines, Vietnam, top like that,
Speaker 5: and the Native American part. Loved to learn more about
Speaker 5: my Native American ancestry in regards to that race is
Speaker 5: just a classification. Were all related. And it's interesting the
Speaker 5: book that I just recently came out with sixteen nineteen
Speaker 5: twenty Africans. One of the points I mentioned in the
Speaker 5: book is that when those Africans came to Virginia in
Speaker 5: the year sixteen nineteen, they didn't come as slaves as
Speaker 5: we know it as slaves that come to our minds.
Speaker 5: They were indentured servants and so they didn't have the
Speaker 5: disigation of being slaves. What that meant was indentured servants,
Speaker 5: just like those that were coming from England. They worked
Speaker 5: for a certain period of time, they were indentured to
Speaker 5: their employer, and so those Africans were indentured. Once they
Speaker 5: served their time, they were given their freedom, just like
Speaker 5: just like all the other indentured servants. Virginia wasn't until
Speaker 5: seventeen five is when the slavery laws, you know, the
Speaker 5: really hardened slavery laws came into being, was in the
Speaker 5: year seventeen oh five. So prior to that, there were
Speaker 5: a lot of African American families in colonial America, colonial
Speaker 5: Virginia who were not slaves, They were not under slavery.
Speaker 5: They had a hard life, yes, they had a very
Speaker 5: hard life. Many of them were taking advantage of no
Speaker 5: doubt about it, but they were not classified as slaves.
Speaker 5: So what I'm going with this is that many of
Speaker 5: these Africans, as they had children and their children had children,
Speaker 5: there was probably about two or three generations of African
Speaker 5: Americans who were free in this country before and I
Speaker 5: got before in big, large letters, before the slavery laws
Speaker 5: were even enacted. And that's huge, and a lot of
Speaker 5: people don't know about that. And I didn't know about
Speaker 5: it until I took my DNA test and found out
Speaker 5: that I was related to some of these early African
Speaker 5: American families. And so what I also found out was
Speaker 5: that a lot of the African families that were free
Speaker 5: in the early part of our colonial history, they were
Speaker 5: intermarrying with the Irish, with the Native Americans, with the Germans.
Speaker 5: They were intermarrying, they were becoming a family. And so
Speaker 5: but many of the American families that are in this
Speaker 5: country today, whatever surname you want to use, Johnson, Smith, whatever,
Speaker 5: If your family's been in this country for you know,
Speaker 5: going back to colonial times or even the American Revolution times,
Speaker 5: chances are you are a mixed family chances are you're
Speaker 5: a mixed family. You know, in some way, shape or form,
Speaker 5: in one way or another in Native America or you know,
Speaker 5: it's because it's just a fact. And but that is
Speaker 5: not taught in our schools. It's not taught in our
Speaker 5: history books. That there were at least two or three
Speaker 5: generations of free people before slavery laws even were passed.
Speaker 5: Virginia as kind of what everybody looks to as the
Speaker 5: the the mother of the of the slavery laws. But
Speaker 5: and everyone other other states looked at Virginia, you know,
Speaker 5: whatever they passed, they'll pass. But yeah, there was quite
Speaker 5: a few years, quite a few decades before slavery even
Speaker 5: got entrenched, and so that that allowed a lot of
Speaker 5: families to have freedom. There was a lot of African
Speaker 5: families that were able to buy land. You can do
Speaker 5: that as a slave. You can buy land, you could,
Speaker 5: they could, they could sit on juries, they could barter
Speaker 5: in trade. It's just a lot of people just don't
Speaker 5: know the history of that. And so again there was
Speaker 5: a lot of inner marriage. A lot of the Africans
Speaker 5: were marrying Irish women and Scottish women because there was
Speaker 5: a shortage of African women and so there's a lot
Speaker 5: of intermixture in our society today. And so your listener
Speaker 5: brings up a very good question there that you know,
Speaker 5: chances are if you have three people and if you're
Speaker 5: white and the other one's black, you're probably more related,
Speaker 5: just as much related as the two persons that are
Speaker 5: of the same race. Definitely.
Speaker 4: And was that a discovery also that you made in
Speaker 4: your own family with your sister in law.
Speaker 5: Yes, my sister in law, Yes, absolutely, yes, yeah, my
Speaker 5: sister in law. This this blew me away. Is yeah,
Speaker 5: this is a perfect example. Is my wife's sister, which
Speaker 5: would be my sister in law, she has children, and
Speaker 5: we went to go visit one time and we're sitting
Speaker 5: around the breakfast table there in the restaurant, chit chatting,
Speaker 5: and my sister in law's daughter says, well, yeah, I
Speaker 5: can remember old grandma. You know. She was from Mississippi
Speaker 5: and she used to cook so well, and I remember
Speaker 5: all these different dishes she would make. She said she
Speaker 5: was from Jackson, Mississippi, and her and I said, oh, really,
Speaker 5: well what was he What was her name? And she said, well,
Speaker 5: she was Grandma Grantham. Her maiden name was Grantham. I
Speaker 5: almost fell off my chair. I said, Grantham. That's that's
Speaker 5: a name that has come up in my family researched. Well,
Speaker 5: when I get back home, I'm going to look that
Speaker 5: up because that's very interesting. I said, So maybe some
Speaker 5: of my family members maybe new you know, your grandmother's family.
Speaker 5: So when I got back home that night and I
Speaker 5: went through the records, and I said, I'll be dog gone,
Speaker 5: but these my sister in law's children are related to
Speaker 5: me because because when I took my twenty three and
Speaker 5: meter tests, there was one genetty cousin that we had
Speaker 5: a connection with. This was like twenty eleven, and me
Speaker 5: and her we had communication back for trying to figure
Speaker 5: out how we were connected. We couldn't figure it out
Speaker 5: a thing. But she sent me her family tree and
Speaker 5: her family name was Grantham, her ancestor Gratham. It was
Speaker 5: just amazing.
Speaker 4: In his book sixteen nineteen, Stephen writes of the encounter
Speaker 4: quote we might be related. We joked I was black
Speaker 4: and they were white. When I later got home, I
Speaker 4: looked up the information my sister in law's daughter gave
Speaker 4: me about her paternal grandmother. Turns out it wasn't a
Speaker 4: joke after all that my sister in law's children and
Speaker 4: I were related. So if everyone learns a little about
Speaker 4: their genealogy, chatter over waffles is about to get way
Speaker 4: more interesting. If you hadn't asked over breakfast, what was
Speaker 4: her name, you'd never would.
Speaker 6: Have known that.
Speaker 5: You never would have known that, never wouldn't know that.
Speaker 4: Yeah, if you weren't Sherlock Holmes, They're like, ooh, does
Speaker 4: that get your noteod up?
Speaker 5: And we embraced it. We just love that little facet.
Speaker 5: I mean, we loved each other even before we knew that,
Speaker 5: but that just kind of, you know, put a little
Speaker 5: spice into our conversations every time what you meet, and
Speaker 5: we can bring that up. And so it's just a
Speaker 5: wonderful thing. And you know, racist color is, it's just nothing,
Speaker 5: that's just a classification. We are all related.
Speaker 4: Steven says that the next book he's working on, which
Speaker 4: will be his third, will get deeper into how we're
Speaker 4: all related. And I realized just then that this episode
Speaker 4: would come out near the start of Black History Month,
Speaker 4: which is in part a celebration of the birthdays of
Speaker 4: Abraham Lincoln and abolitionist Frederick Douglass. I told Stephen that
Speaker 4: International Women's Day kind of pizzes me off because it's like, Hi,
Speaker 4: here's your three hundred and sixty fifth share of the
Speaker 4: year pie. And I asked him if he feels that
Speaker 4: way about February, Like, this country was literally built by
Speaker 4: people of color, but it was conceived first by history
Speaker 4: professor Carter Woodson in the nineteen twenties and finally recognized
Speaker 4: by Gerald Ford in ninety in the seventies. Stephen says
Speaker 4: that he too feels it should be more than a month.
Speaker 5: But I think it's just a good opportunity to educate people,
Speaker 5: all of us, even even for everyone. Everyone. When I
Speaker 5: say everyone, I mean including African American. Everyone to be educated,
Speaker 5: re educated about just getting along with one another. Martin
Speaker 5: Luther King Junior said that the.
Speaker 4: Sons of former slaves.
Speaker 2: And slave owner, we'll be being able to sit down
Speaker 2: together at the table of brotherhood.
Speaker 5: You know, we don't judge one another based on the
Speaker 5: color of our skin, but on the basis of our character.
Speaker 5: And so that's what it's all about, is just embracing
Speaker 5: one another and just getting closer as the human family,
Speaker 5: because we need each other. This world is as it's
Speaker 5: ups and downs as we know, and we all need
Speaker 5: to stick together and just be civil. And I think about,
Speaker 5: you know, Colonial America and how when the first Africans
Speaker 5: came here. Well, I shouldn't say the first African America.
Speaker 5: That's gonna be that's that's gonna be something coming out
Speaker 5: of my next block. Who were the first? But yeah,
Speaker 5: those that came in sixteen nineteen, how they were just
Speaker 5: treated just like everybody else. And then the slavery laws
Speaker 5: came along and just took away everything they had. But
Speaker 5: think of the Native Americans of what they've gone through.
Speaker 5: I mean, good, it's gracious. That's why I'm really interested
Speaker 5: to want to learn about that. But yeah, Black History
Speaker 5: Month is I think is still needed to as an
Speaker 5: opportunity to talk about things that we need to talk about,
Speaker 5: to acknowledge and to heal. Yeah.
Speaker 4: Absolutely, Now from the biggest issues to perhaps some sillier
Speaker 4: or petty difficulties in the job of genealogy. And the
Speaker 4: last two questions I always ask every guest is what
Speaker 4: is the hardest thing about genealogy or the most annoying thing?
Speaker 4: Is it water logged books, anything that just is really
Speaker 4: difficult about genealogy or this just maybe hesters you at all,
Speaker 4: even if it's petty. Yeah.
Speaker 5: Yeah, Well, the one thing that kind of irks me
Speaker 5: is someone will take their DNA test, they will log
Speaker 5: on to the website, they will download their data, they
Speaker 5: will click yes, I do want my information to be
Speaker 5: posted on this website. Here's my email address. And then
Speaker 5: when you connect and you find out that, oh, I'm
Speaker 5: related to this person. I've liket to know more about
Speaker 5: you because some of the names that you have on
Speaker 5: your profile match my family. And then you reach out
Speaker 5: to that person and they don't even reply back. That's
Speaker 5: that one just really gets me.
Speaker 6: I mean, like, why did you want to put your
Speaker 6: email address on there in the first place, you know,
Speaker 6: if you're not going to correspond, So that one, that
Speaker 6: one's kind of that one that makes sense.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 4: So if you ever, if anyone ever gets an email
Speaker 4: from a long lost relative, reply to them. It's worth it, replied,
Speaker 4: do not sit on that email. What is your favorite
Speaker 4: thing about genealogy? What just like fills you with butterflies
Speaker 4: or just makes you love it?
Speaker 5: Wow? The thing that makes me always love genealogy is
Speaker 5: being able to go on the hunt, go on the search,
Speaker 5: to try to find to find someone's brick wall, someone
Speaker 5: who you know. And what I mean by brick wall
Speaker 5: for any of your listeners is you just come in
Speaker 5: to a point where you can't go any further in
Speaker 5: your research.
Speaker 2: To break through it.
Speaker 5: Somehow, you just you come to a brick wall. You
Speaker 5: just you've exhausted all your avenues and you just don't
Speaker 5: know where to go. You just don't know who this
Speaker 5: person is, where they were, where, who their parents were,
Speaker 5: or whatever the question is. And I just love to
Speaker 5: take that brick wall and try to see if I
Speaker 5: can go through it. I just love that, and you know,
Speaker 5: just taking on that challenge and then once you're finding
Speaker 5: you're like, oh yes.
Speaker 4: Thanks.
Speaker 6: Love it.
Speaker 4: Do you wear a cape? Do you have a big
Speaker 4: I've got a cape on right now, big mustache.
Speaker 5: Right.
Speaker 4: So, find the most wonderful, smartest people and ask them
Speaker 4: about their great work, and before you know it, you
Speaker 4: might be sitting on a plane and discover the person
Speaker 4: next to you is your fifth step cousin in law
Speaker 4: four times removed, and you'll kind of know what that
Speaker 4: means and you might know them the rest of your life.
Speaker 4: So to get copies of Stephen Hanks books, you can
Speaker 4: go to the links in the show notes or ink
Speaker 4: water Press. Ology's merch is available at ali war dot com.
Speaker 4: Thank you to Shannon Feltis and Bonnie Dutch of the
Speaker 4: podcast You Are that they manage the merch. And thanks
Speaker 4: to Aaron Talbot for admitting the ologies podcast Facebook group.
Speaker 4: Thank you jareded Sleeper of the mental health podcast Make
Speaker 4: Good Bad Brain for the assistant editing, and of course
Speaker 4: to a guy who's like a bro, Stephen Ray Morris
Speaker 4: who hosts the per cast and see Jurassic Right, which
Speaker 4: are about kiddies and dinosaurs. Nick Thorburn of the band
Speaker 4: Islands wrote and performed the theme music. And you know,
Speaker 4: if you stick around past the credits, you get a secret.
Speaker 4: And this week I'm gonna tell you I drove to
Speaker 4: an ex boyfriend's house in the middle of the night.
Speaker 4: We dated for like four months a decade ago. But
Speaker 4: in the parking lot of the apartment complex, I remember
Speaker 4: there was a lemon tree that was overloaded with fruit
Speaker 4: way back then. And this was not just any lemonry.
Speaker 4: This is a Meyer lemon tree, which we all know
Speaker 4: has like way better lemons. Regular lemons are like a
Speaker 4: mounts Bar. Meyer lemons They're like an almond Troy, They're
Speaker 4: just better. I think technically there's some type of orange,
Speaker 4: but the point is from memory. I drove through the
Speaker 4: Lley Hills alone at ten pm. I felt like such
Speaker 4: a creep and I found the side street and the
Speaker 4: lemon tree was still there, with literally hundreds of Meyer lemons.
Speaker 4: So I took maybe like eight or ten. I put
Speaker 4: him in a hat and I ran back to my car. Now,
Speaker 4: granted he hasn't lived there in like ten years, but
Speaker 4: it still felt dangerous and schevy and very thrilling to
Speaker 4: have a bowl of the best lemons on my counter.
Speaker 4: Twenty twenty six, Alley here again, I kid you not.
Speaker 4: I happen to go back to that tree this weekend.
Speaker 4: I hadn't been in like years. I got myself so
Speaker 4: many lemons the tree was stuffed with them. Also, thank
Speaker 4: you to managing director Susan Hale, scheduling producer Noel Dilworth,
Speaker 4: and editors Jake Chafe and Mercedes Maitland for helping the
Speaker 4: show these days. But yes, back to our secret from them. God,
Speaker 4: I love myer lemons. I've been pulverizing them in a
Speaker 4: pitcher and drinking it as lemonade, and then I eat
Speaker 4: their ragged flesh and skin like a buzzard. Also, if
Speaker 4: fruit overhangs a fence, technically it's legal to pick. Also,
Speaker 4: no one's gonna ever eat all those lemons or so
Speaker 4: many lemons. Okay, so weta all right, provide pacidermist college, Hobbiology,
Speaker 4: cyberdo Zoology, Lithology and Technology, Meteorology and Teratology Technology, Seriology.
Speaker 4: Selenology is
Speaker 2: Either your third cousin four tangent moved or your fourth
Speaker 2: cousin three tangent move