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Speaker 2: Oh hey, it's your fourth cousin twice removed Ali ward
Speaker 2: back with a familial historical episode of ologies. So you
Speaker 2: were here because people made babies with each other, and
Speaker 2: out of all of the game meats, in all of
Speaker 2: the conats, you became a collection of molecules, and you're
Speaker 2: suspended in a web of family. Even a cockroach technically
Speaker 2: has grandparents and cousins. Is that weird? Your cab might
Speaker 2: have an uncle, and if you have children, gay at them.
Speaker 2: They may have children who have children, and then those
Speaker 2: children's might not even know your damn name. They'll just
Speaker 2: know you're dead. But before we get into it, first,
Speaker 2: a quick thank you to the select slice of listeners
Speaker 2: who are also patrons. You know who you are. You
Speaker 2: make the show possible. Thank you to everyone spreading the
Speaker 2: word with your mouth, or with your tweets, or by
Speaker 2: wearing my face on your chest via ologiesmerge dot com.
Speaker 2: Thanks to everyone who boosts the show for others to
Speaker 2: see by hitting subscribe and rating it that actually works
Speaker 2: and leaving reviews like sweet Sweet Tier Male for me
Speaker 2: to see, such as this fresh evaluation from DC Doppelganger,
Speaker 2: who says, feeling sad and monotonous life getting it down,
Speaker 2: listen to this podcast Ologies reminds you about how amazing
Speaker 2: the world around you actually is. Thanks Dad word, stay curious.
Speaker 2: Everyone will do DC, I promise. Okay. Genealogy the first
Speaker 2: topic ever to not be an ology. Look at it, genealogy?
Speaker 2: What is this? The Baron's stained bears. It's an allergy?
Speaker 2: What the heck man? So genealogy comes from the root
Speaker 2: word gena, meaning to give birth to you, like genesis,
Speaker 2: and genealogy is not the study of genetics and how
Speaker 2: DNA works. That's just called genetics. So this was news
Speaker 2: to me. Now, genealogy is the tracing of family origins,
Speaker 2: and in Old English it was called folk talou, meaning
Speaker 2: folk tales. But the allergy and not ology is because
Speaker 2: the o analogies is borrowed from the first word anyway,
Speaker 2: So my point is that this podcast should actually just
Speaker 2: be called lo cheese, and to be honest, I'm not
Speaker 2: really emotionally prepared to process that. Also, it has taken
Speaker 2: my laptop one hundred and fifty episodes to not correct
Speaker 2: this my life's work into eulogies or logis, which it's
Speaker 2: done in business emails. So now we know the ology
Speaker 2: allergy is as good as analogy. So this week's allogist,
Speaker 2: I suppose, has been in this field for three decades,
Speaker 2: starting as a personal passion that just consumed him into
Speaker 2: making it a job. And I was introduced to him
Speaker 2: by someone who worked to publish his latest book, which
Speaker 2: is called sixteen nineteen twenty Africans, which just came out
Speaker 2: this past July, and I immediately ordered the book. I
Speaker 2: was so happy he was down to pop into a
Speaker 2: sound booth in Portland to chat with me about his
Speaker 2: passion tracing family histories and chasing down records, and also
Speaker 2: about mysteried novels and capes. Questions you should ask your
Speaker 2: relatives us history and how we treat the past, how
Speaker 2: to heal from our individual legacies, the joy of cracking
Speaker 2: a case, DNA tests, technology, brunch revelations, and how everywhere
Speaker 2: you look there's family. So pull up a chair and
Speaker 2: absorb the stories of two time author Total Peach distant
Speaker 2: relative to Tom Hanks and perhaps your relative as well,
Speaker 2: genealogist Steven Hanks. I'm sure you get that with a
Speaker 2: lot of Stevens.
Speaker 3: I do.
Speaker 2: I do.
Speaker 4: My name is over at pH as you probably noticed,
Speaker 4: and when it was funny when I introduced myself, they
Speaker 4: say Steve, Okay, Steve, nice to reach you.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Steve, Steven And now you are a genealogist. Yes,
Speaker 2: and you've been a genealogist for quite a while now. Yeah.
Speaker 4: I started like in eighty nine. Yeah, but I was like, God,
Speaker 4: how old was I? I was, oh, about thirty years old,
Speaker 4: And that's I got the bug. I was over at
Speaker 4: my dad's house that day and summer July, and he
Speaker 4: was watching the baseball game and he handed me this
Speaker 4: letter that he got from a cousin in Kansas, and
Speaker 4: he says, read this, And of course I didn't know
Speaker 4: anything about my fa family's history, you know, I'm just
Speaker 4: a kid growing up for the and so he shows
Speaker 4: me this letter. I started reading and it's an obituary
Speaker 4: of a newspaper and all these relatives names are listed
Speaker 4: in this obituary. And saw my dad's side of the family,
Speaker 4: and I just said, wow, I don't know who these
Speaker 4: people are. And that's what that's what got it started.
Speaker 4: Right there, I said, I got to find out who
Speaker 4: these people are. I got to find out about the
Speaker 4: history of my family. And so that's how it got started.
Speaker 4: Eighty nine.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and what was the first thing you did? Back
Speaker 2: in eighty nine? We had libraries and microfiche and the
Speaker 2: Dewey Dustal system.
Speaker 4: Old microfilm readers. Yeah, the Michael Fish totally totally no
Speaker 4: no Internet, no clicking of the mouse. You know, it
Speaker 4: was old school all the way.
Speaker 2: In old school ways involved making the two to three
Speaker 2: hour drive from Portland to Seattle's National Archives, and that
Speaker 2: houses fifty eight thousand cubic feet of records. That's a
Speaker 2: lot of records all about the Pacific Northwest for Oregon, Idaho, Washington,
Speaker 2: and now Alaska, but just in the past few weeks,
Speaker 2: this is breaking news. Historians are rightly poed that the
Speaker 2: government wants to sell this building because the Techie Seattle
Speaker 2: location has become so valuable, and a building sale would
Speaker 2: mean moving all of those records of the Pacific Northwest
Speaker 2: to Missouri or California, making the journey for people much longer,
Speaker 2: and let's face it, mostly impossible. And note, you can't
Speaker 2: just jump on the information super highway. A lot of
Speaker 2: those ledgers and records haven't even been digitized. So genealogy research,
Speaker 2: like family trees, still has its roots in the past.
Speaker 4: Well, when I started getting interested in this field and
Speaker 4: wanting to learn more, I had to learn the rules
Speaker 4: of the game and how the professional genealogists did it.
Speaker 4: And so I learned about census records, tax records, you know,
Speaker 4: land deeds and all that sort of thing, courthouse records,
Speaker 4: just on and on and on, museums. So I said, well,
Speaker 4: let me start with the census records. That sounds pretty
Speaker 4: easy enough. You know, every ten years they have a census,
Speaker 4: and of course they put a privacy restriction on the
Speaker 4: first seventy years they released it to the public. So
Speaker 4: the most recent census that was available to me at
Speaker 4: that time was, I believe the nineteen twenty census. Yeah,
Speaker 4: nineteen twenty. But they had no National Archives branch in Portland.
Speaker 4: I could either fly to Washington, d c. While that
Speaker 4: probably wasn't going to work, or they said you could
Speaker 4: go to Seattle, Washington. They have a branch there. So
Speaker 4: I would just take off whenever I could and just
Speaker 4: drive up three hours up to Seattle and just spend
Speaker 4: time looking at the old microfilm reels and putting the
Speaker 4: old microfilm on, you know, cranking the machine, and boom,
Speaker 4: there they were. I found my grandparents in Manhattan, Kansas.
Speaker 4: I started getting excited in nineteen twenty. And the genealogists rule,
Speaker 4: this is the genie all it's just ral Alley is
Speaker 4: work your way back from what you know to what
Speaker 4: you don't know. That's the rule. Never do it the
Speaker 4: other way around. Never go to what you don't know
Speaker 4: and try to work your way up to the present
Speaker 4: because you don't know who those people are in the past, right,
Speaker 4: so you don't know what journey, what path you're going
Speaker 4: to be on. So start with what you know and
Speaker 4: work your way back. So I found my grandparents' names.
Speaker 4: I said, okay, I'm on the right track, and just
Speaker 4: started working my way back. But it started getting tricky
Speaker 4: as you get, you know, further back in time. And
Speaker 4: that's what even got me more excited, because you know,
Speaker 4: I'm like a detective, you know, like the Perry made said,
Speaker 4: you know, you know, just start looking under the rocks.
Speaker 4: And so went to nineteen ten, a nineteen hundred census,
Speaker 4: and this was really getting exciting. I finally was able
Speaker 4: to locate my great grandparents, knew their names, and it
Speaker 4: just blew me away, you know, found them in Kansas
Speaker 4: and found out that they had moved to Kansas from Mississippi.
Speaker 4: And the thing about that experience was they came from
Speaker 4: Mississippi under a different set of living as you as
Speaker 4: you know where I'm coming from, you know, the slavery,
Speaker 4: you know, kind of the slavery thing. So that was
Speaker 4: a big chakaru.
Speaker 2: But Stephen's first book was twenty thirteen's A Key Tree,
Speaker 2: a Descendants Quest for his slave ancestors on the Eskridge Plantations,
Speaker 2: and he has such an amazing way of writing about
Speaker 2: the process of genealogy through his own narrative and how
Speaker 2: one discovery can kind of ignite another the further you.
Speaker 4: Go back in time. I was able to find them
Speaker 4: on the eighteen eighty census and the eighteen ninety census,
Speaker 4: I guess was burned in a fire in nineteen twenty one.
Speaker 4: So that's yeah, that's something that all genealogists, if you're
Speaker 4: studying Greek, Italian, whatever you're you know, ancestry is that's
Speaker 4: something that you have to live with. The eighteen ninety census,
Speaker 4: it's gone forever. Wow.
Speaker 2: So yeah, Stephen told me that through the eighteen seventy
Speaker 2: census he discovered that his grandparents lived in a little
Speaker 2: town called duck Hill, Mississippi, hailing from what is now
Speaker 2: Montgomery County, the same place that Oprah Winfrey's family is from.
Speaker 2: Small world, but big deal, given that Oprah Winfrey is
Speaker 2: like the closest thing this country has had to a queen.
Speaker 4: There they were eighteen seventy June something I couldn't believe it.
Speaker 4: I couldn't believe it. There they were never met, these
Speaker 4: family members, but these were my ancestors. And so when
Speaker 4: I got to that point, I was just in heaven,
Speaker 4: you know. But the problem is, you know, you going
Speaker 4: beyond eighteen seventy is the trick for you know, as
Speaker 4: far as African American genealogy. But I enjoyed, you know,
Speaker 4: doing it for I've had many different clients, many different
Speaker 4: people just even friends that I've done it for, all
Speaker 4: types of different Italian Greece so forth. It's exciting.
Speaker 2: And you've established yourself as a genealogist, You've written multiple books,
Speaker 2: you've consulted on multiple documentaries, and you know, going back
Speaker 2: a little bit to your own history, were you always
Speaker 2: someone who liked mystery novels, like detective novels like what did?
Speaker 4: Yeah?
Speaker 2: Was that kind of in your genes?
Speaker 4: Oh my god, Sherlock Holmes. I can remember as a
Speaker 4: kid just staying up late at night and just watching
Speaker 4: the Sherlock Holmes with who was who was the guy
Speaker 4: that was playing that? But yeah, you know, it was
Speaker 4: it was It always had to be this one actor
Speaker 4: that played Charlotte Holmes. He was the one that I
Speaker 4: fell in love with. I can't remember his name or
Speaker 4: off the bat, but we'll look it up.
Speaker 2: My guess is that this is Ronald Howard, who, in
Speaker 2: nearly forty episodes of Detective Capers portrayed the caped icon.
Speaker 4: What are you doing anyway?
Speaker 2: Research research? Ps. I know, I just learned that that
Speaker 2: cape is called an Inverness Cape and it's named after
Speaker 2: a rainy region in the Scottish Highlands. We're Scottish where
Speaker 2: this sleeveless cloak thing because it allows for easier access
Speaker 2: to their sporan, which is their long, hairy fannipack coin
Speaker 2: purse that hangs over their chunk area. Anyway, Yes, Sherlock
Speaker 2: Holmes loved a good problem to solve and on the
Speaker 2: topic of clever Scotts.
Speaker 4: But I love loved TI. I'm Sherlock was my guy.
Speaker 4: And then of course you know James Bond. I mean,
Speaker 4: who who's not going to like James Bond? You know
Speaker 4: the Sean Connery?
Speaker 2: I know, I love you James, But yeah.
Speaker 4: I totally was into the mysteries and the detectives early on.
Speaker 2: Definitely, for sure, after you were handed this obituary and
Speaker 2: you started driving up to Seattle to look in the
Speaker 2: archives you mentioned to your your thirties, have you been
Speaker 2: able to balance genealogy with UH with other careers or
Speaker 2: did it at some point did you have to decide
Speaker 2: what you were going to dedicate your career to well,
Speaker 2: you know.
Speaker 4: That's a good question. And I did have to kind
Speaker 4: of juggle back and forth because I had, you know,
Speaker 4: the passion and the drive to want to be an genealogists.
Speaker 4: I tried to start up my own business. Actually I
Speaker 4: did start my own business. It was called Genealogical Networking Services.
Speaker 4: And I went back to school and learned how to
Speaker 4: do computers because I didn't know that, and so I
Speaker 4: started up my own little entrepreneurship and I was getting
Speaker 4: requests all across the country. It was amazing, It was amazing.
Speaker 4: I still have those those inquiry letters to this day,
Speaker 4: and they were all over the country. People asked me
Speaker 4: to do this, that, can you look this up Native American?
Speaker 4: Just anything you could think of, and I had fun
Speaker 4: doing it. The only problem was people had a tendency
Speaker 4: to not want to pay you, but they want you
Speaker 4: to do the research first and then okay, now send
Speaker 4: me a payment. So it got to be kind of
Speaker 4: hard to make a living out of it. But I
Speaker 4: always had the passion for it, so I had to
Speaker 4: do other type of work just to you know, pay
Speaker 4: the bills type thing. But finally I was able to
Speaker 4: just recently actually five years ago, I finally got a
Speaker 4: really nice job that goes right along with my genealogy.
Speaker 4: I'm working for the school district here and yeah, I'm
Speaker 4: a record's clerk and it's amazing how many people come in,
Speaker 4: walk in or email or phone. They want to do
Speaker 4: research about this, that and the other. And that's just
Speaker 4: right up my alley doing research and it ties right
Speaker 4: into the genealogy. So for the first time, after so
Speaker 4: many years, I finally got you know, they both together,
Speaker 4: genealogy and just doing historical research, you know, in local research.
Speaker 4: So it's cool.
Speaker 2: Oh, that's amazing. And you know, I know that you
Speaker 2: chronicled these discoveries that you made with your family in
Speaker 2: your first book, A key Tree, and yeah, yeah, I
Speaker 2: would love to hear more. I know it's the ackey
Speaker 2: tree or a key tree. You've pronounced it either way.
Speaker 4: I know, I know I say I say a key
Speaker 4: tree that I've heard people say no Aki.
Speaker 2: You know, I know I wasn't good shirt, so I
Speaker 2: just messed it up either way.
Speaker 4: But I guess it's my auntie who she just racally
Speaker 4: passed away in Saint Louis, Missouri. But she is my
Speaker 4: mother's sister, and she would take trips to Jamaica, you know,
Speaker 4: as often as she could. And so she pronounced it aki,
Speaker 4: and she sent me a picture of it, and I
Speaker 4: put it in the book.
Speaker 2: So, the Aki tree or a ki tree, depending on
Speaker 2: how you say it is native to West Africa, and
Speaker 2: it bears this red fruit that in due time yawns
Speaker 2: open to reveal dark black, glossy seeds and this yellow,
Speaker 2: spongy flesh. And it's popular in Caribbean dishes. But if
Speaker 2: you try to eat that sucker before it's ripe, your
Speaker 2: impatience might get rewarded with the very self explanatory Jamaican
Speaker 2: vomiting sickness. Anyways, let it ripen and then cook it
Speaker 2: with cod, and it's just supposed to be heaven on earth. Now.
Speaker 2: Stephen's book The Aqi Tree has cipia toned photographs of
Speaker 2: his ancestors and the silhouett of this tree behind them.
Speaker 2: And he told me that his first book was narrative fiction,
Speaker 2: based on his family experiences and inspired by books like
Speaker 2: Alex Haley's Roots, but later he revised it to be
Speaker 2: purely nonfiction.
Speaker 4: It took about ten years to do the research on that,
Speaker 4: and my whole goal when I first started out was
Speaker 4: just to learn about my family on both my sides,
Speaker 4: my father and mother's side. I wasn't trying to like
Speaker 4: go all the way to to Africa or anything like that,
Speaker 4: just learning about the family. But every time I would
Speaker 4: go further back in history, I kept getting excited. I'm like,
Speaker 4: how far back can I go? Yeah, this is getting
Speaker 4: to be interesting now. I mean because as we all know,
Speaker 4: you know, Abraham Lincoln he ended slavery. We know that
Speaker 4: in eighteen sixty five or eighteen sixty three. Some say
Speaker 4: because the Emtancipation Proclamation, And like I had mentioned here earlier,
Speaker 4: I found my parents or my great grandparents on the
Speaker 4: eighteen seventies. That was the first time ali that African
Speaker 4: Americans were listed on a federal census for the first
Speaker 4: time as far as everyone, because it was five years
Speaker 4: after the end of the Civil War, and so now
Speaker 4: everyone was just you know, a regular citizen, you know,
Speaker 4: the way it was supposed to be. So, but if
Speaker 4: you want to go further back eighteen sixty well then
Speaker 4: you're going back into the old system of things. You know,
Speaker 4: when the South was at its peak and the cotton
Speaker 4: was king and all that. So eighteen sixty that's when
Speaker 4: you really get into the struggle of trying to identify
Speaker 4: who your parents are and your ancestors. I should say, now,
Speaker 4: for some people, they have what they call free people
Speaker 4: of color. I learned about that as I became a genealogist.
Speaker 4: There were some people who had the designation of they
Speaker 4: were a free person of color, meaning they were emancipated
Speaker 4: or they were set free a long time ago, maybe
Speaker 4: eighteen hundreds, and their family just were free all the
Speaker 4: way up and right through the Civil War everything. They
Speaker 4: were just cruising and they were free. And so they
Speaker 4: never had that problem of being found on the census
Speaker 4: record because their family had always been free.
Speaker 2: Free people of color by the bye or heard to
Speaker 2: as free people of color, and just the distinction is
Speaker 2: a very painful reminder that they were the exception and
Speaker 2: not the rule. Stephen explored the beginnings of the laws
Speaker 2: that would shape and scar the nation for the last
Speaker 2: four hundred years in his book sixteen nineteen twenty Africans
Speaker 2: their story and discovery of their black, red, and white descendants.
Speaker 4: But in Hampton, Virginia, there was a little ship that
Speaker 4: came in in August of sixteen nineteen and had had
Speaker 4: twenty Africans on it and they were taken off of
Speaker 4: a of a slave ship that was heading to Mexico
Speaker 4: Vera Cruz, Mexico and some pirates attacked the ship and
Speaker 4: took about fifty Africans off off of the slave ship.
Speaker 4: This true story, and twenty of them came to the
Speaker 4: coast of Virginia Hampton, Virginia and they let them go.
Speaker 4: They traded them for food and long story short, I
Speaker 4: did this book based on this and DNA is so
Speaker 4: interesting now too. Everyone is taking a DNA test trying
Speaker 4: to find out about their ancestry. You know, we have
Speaker 4: TV shows about it.
Speaker 2: Please see Finding Your Roots, Genealogy, road show, Faces of
Speaker 2: America and Who Do You Think You Are? The latter
Speaker 2: of which fun fact is produced by Lisa Kudro aka
Speaker 2: Phoebe from Friends and she even did an episode on
Speaker 2: Courtney Cox and See and she was hoping that you know,
Speaker 2: her family were good people and knowing like murdered anyone.
Speaker 1: And it turns out her ancestors murdered the King of England.
Speaker 2: I looked into this further and a red hot poker
Speaker 2: may have been involved. But we don't need to go
Speaker 2: into it anyway. Part of discovering one's genealogy is facing that,
Speaker 2: guess what, just because they're your ancestors doesn't mean that
Speaker 2: they're the protagonist of the story. So it's easy as
Speaker 2: a white person to think that, say, Black History Month
Speaker 2: doesn't involve you, But if you live in America, it does.
Speaker 2: It involves all of us. And with knowledge comes context,
Speaker 2: and with context comes understanding, and DNA tests are expanding
Speaker 2: that knowledge more and more.
Speaker 4: It's just phenomenal. And so I took my DNA test
Speaker 4: and come to find out that I have some connections
Speaker 4: to these first Africans. So that's what this latest book
Speaker 4: is about. And so the further you go back in time,
Speaker 4: it just gets harder and harder to locate your family.
Speaker 4: If you were, if you're you know, if your ancestry
Speaker 4: or your inheritance was slavery. But it can be done.
Speaker 4: It can be done.
Speaker 2: And I'd love to hear more about your personal family
Speaker 2: discovery and what that was like for you when you
Speaker 2: were tracing your genealogy, trasing your family history and you
Speaker 2: made that discovery that you had obviously relatives who were
Speaker 2: slaves in the South, what was that like for you?
Speaker 4: Wow, Yeah, to connect it was amazing. I interviewed so
Speaker 4: many different relatives, so many different cousins. Most of my
Speaker 4: father's side had passed away, but my mom's was still around.
Speaker 4: But it was just amazing just interviewing people. But then,
Speaker 4: as we mentioned earlier, we didn't have the Internet back
Speaker 4: in those days, so you can't just get on Google
Speaker 4: and you know, type in a web search and click
Speaker 4: on a document and you know, print out your family tree.
Speaker 4: It doesn't work that way. So I had to travel around.
Speaker 4: I didn't go fly, but I would get on the
Speaker 4: ground bus and I would just travel to Mississippi to Kansas.
Speaker 4: I went to Virginia, South Carolina, just interviewing people, going
Speaker 4: to courthouses. And I'll never forget this day, Alli, September
Speaker 4: twenty second, nineteen ninety four. I'll never forget that day.
Speaker 4: That was the day that I took a trip down
Speaker 4: to Duck Hill, Mississippi, to meet the great granddaughter of
Speaker 4: the man who my ancestors worked for. It was deep. Yeah.
Speaker 4: We corresponded over the phone and she said she'd be
Speaker 4: happy to meet me her and her husband, and I
Speaker 4: told her about my book and that I'm trying to
Speaker 4: write this information. I'm trying to research my family, and
Speaker 4: I just would like to know where my ancestors lived
Speaker 4: and where they worked at and the land and just
Speaker 4: everything about it. I just wanted to breathe it, touch it,
Speaker 4: smell it whatever. I wanted to get down there and
Speaker 4: see that. She says, come on down. You just let
Speaker 4: us know when you're come in and we'll meet you.
Speaker 4: So I planned my trip went down there in September
Speaker 4: nineteen ninety four, and we met at the local bank there.
Speaker 4: It's a little small town and we just embraced, and
Speaker 4: we just embraced and we just made a really deep connection.
Speaker 4: We're still friends to this day. Well actually her son
Speaker 4: and his wife are friends with me because she's now
Speaker 4: passed on. She was about seventy five years old in
Speaker 4: nineteen ninety four. But she just opened her arms and
Speaker 4: we just I had to rent a car and I
Speaker 4: drove up from Jackson, Mississippi, rented a car, drove up
Speaker 4: the Interstate fifty five and got into town there and
Speaker 4: she hopped into my car. She didn't know me from
Speaker 4: Adam the first time we met, you know, she hopped
Speaker 4: into the passenger side and she her daughter drove her
Speaker 4: up there, and she tells her daughter, Okay, i'll see
Speaker 4: you later on today, goodbye bye. She she's that confident
Speaker 4: to get into the car with me. A total strange
Speaker 4: but that's the connection we had that day. It was amazing.
Speaker 4: It's amazing. I'll never forget it. And she took me
Speaker 4: to the old family site, the old plantation home that
Speaker 4: her great grandfather lived in, and she took me to
Speaker 4: the family cemetery, and some of my ancestors were buried
Speaker 4: in her family cemetery. It was it was just amazing,
Speaker 4: and yeah.
Speaker 2: Just side out. I was casually fully crying in my
Speaker 2: recording closet at this point.
Speaker 4: I just was taking notes the whole time. And that
Speaker 4: was a turning point, and that just broke through to
Speaker 4: finding another generation of my family. And long story short,
Speaker 4: ALLI went by the time I was said, and then
Speaker 4: I was able to work my way all the way
Speaker 4: from starting in nineteen twenty and went all the way
Speaker 4: back to like the seventeen hundreds, oh, my seventeen thirties. Yeah,
Speaker 4: I couldn't believe. I had no idea that I could
Speaker 4: go that far back, but I had paper documents from
Speaker 4: the courthouses and estate records that I just followed the
Speaker 4: paper trail, you know, you know, Perry Mason and Charlocke
Speaker 4: Holmes followed the paper trail.
Speaker 2: I heard you had a reputation for resourcefulness. So Stephen
Speaker 2: followed those clues and it led him to Virginia in
Speaker 2: the seventeen thirties and an archived estate inventory.
Speaker 4: You know, when somebody dies, they have to do an
Speaker 4: estate inventory of all your property. And they did that
Speaker 4: back then too, nothing, you know, pretty much the same.
Speaker 4: And so this person's plantation home that this paper trail
Speaker 4: pointing me to. His name was Colonel George Eskridge, and
Speaker 4: he had Africans that were working on his He had
Speaker 4: a tobacco plantation. Tobacco was the main crop, I guess
Speaker 4: at that time. And he had on his estate inventory
Speaker 4: when he died, he died in seventeen thirty five, they
Speaker 4: had to do a state inventory of all his belongings,
Speaker 4: and of course, unfortunately they listed you know, you know,
Speaker 4: human beings, this property of human beings. We get that,
Speaker 4: you know, that's how they did. But they were African names.
Speaker 4: When I looked on the on theory, they were African names.
Speaker 4: I couldn't believe it, and so through a little bit
Speaker 4: of more research, I was able to identify one of them,
Speaker 4: and it was just it was just amazing. It's just amazing.
Speaker 2: You've had a long history of going into you know,
Speaker 2: musty bookshelves and microfesion, all the way up to internet
Speaker 2: into DNA tests and you know, genealogy. The field expands,
Speaker 2: it seems like, you know, every year with technology. And
Speaker 2: on one hand, you know, we learned that we're literally
Speaker 2: like all related, but on the other it uncovers some
Speaker 2: really painful truths about our histories and about slavery and
Speaker 2: about colonialism. How do you feel as a genealogist that
Speaker 2: can affect us emotion only? Do you think that can
Speaker 2: bring up pain or do you think it can help
Speaker 2: heal something? Or is it empowering?
Speaker 4: I think that I think that initially it does cause
Speaker 4: a little bit of pain and uncomfortableness because for some reason,
Speaker 4: in our country of you know, America, the United States
Speaker 4: of America, I don't think we've fully ever grappled with
Speaker 4: what happened after eighteen sixty five. I don't think we
Speaker 4: ever really had any discussions about race, and you know
Speaker 4: that topic I just don't think we ever really dealt
Speaker 4: with it, and because there were so many things that
Speaker 4: came on right after, you know, okay, slavery endered everybody's
Speaker 4: celebrating Da da Da, and then boom, we had a
Speaker 4: whole set of other problems that came right after that,
Speaker 4: you know, with Jim Crow and segregation and you know,
Speaker 4: the K K K and on and on and on
Speaker 4: and on, and so we never really dealt with it,
Speaker 4: and so I kind of look at it like this here.
Speaker 4: It's just like a person that's maybe has an addiction,
Speaker 4: you know, maybe have an addiction with alcohol or drug
Speaker 4: addiction or whatever it is. The first step is acknowledging
Speaker 4: that you have a problem, and then you discuss it
Speaker 4: with someone and you try to get help. And the
Speaker 4: more you discuss it and you acknowledge it, it starts
Speaker 4: to heal you and you start to feel better.
Speaker 2: Stephen notes that South Africa's post apartheid public hearings held
Speaker 2: by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, which it was then called,
Speaker 2: allowed victims of abuses and violence to speak out and
Speaker 2: explain the physical and emotional impacts of apartheid, and it
Speaker 2: also gave those who perpetrated violence a chance to ask
Speaker 2: for amnesty and forgiveness. Stephen thinks that having a similar
Speaker 2: healing process in America could lead to better understanding, compassion
Speaker 2: and healing.
Speaker 4: If you study your roots and you find that you
Speaker 4: have people that are in your family that are of
Speaker 4: a different ethnicity or a different culture, embrace it and
Speaker 4: get to know who they are, reach out to them
Speaker 4: and introduce yourself, and you know because they're your family.
Speaker 4: You know they're your family. And the DNA test that's
Speaker 4: so popular now that people are finding that out more
Speaker 4: and more that we're all so more closely connected than
Speaker 4: we ever have been, because we're all related. Really when
Speaker 4: you look at it, you know, and so it is
Speaker 4: painful at first, but just acknowledging that we had a problem,
Speaker 4: but that we want to move forward and just be
Speaker 4: be in peace. And that's one thing about doing genealogy
Speaker 4: for me is that I have to look at it.
Speaker 4: It is a little emotional sometimes, but I have to
Speaker 4: put that aside and put that on one little compartment
Speaker 4: and look at it from the perspective of this is history,
Speaker 4: and I want to learn about history. I want to
Speaker 4: learn about people. And because we're all the same, and
Speaker 4: so if we do that, you know we're going to
Speaker 4: We're going to do fine. We're going to be fine.
Speaker 4: The time.
Speaker 2: Has come. How has the advent of you know, consumer
Speaker 2: DNA tests changed what you do and how you research.
Speaker 4: It's very interesting. It's a very interesting question. When I
Speaker 4: first took the test and got the results back and
Speaker 4: all these I had, like about I think it was
Speaker 4: like two thousand, at least about two thousand connections of
Speaker 4: people that were related to me. And they did it
Speaker 4: from obviously from the highest ratio down to the lowest ratio,
Speaker 4: and so I could look at my top twenty, you know,
Speaker 4: and say, wow, these are really close to me.
Speaker 2: So Stephen has taken two DNA tests, and his father
Speaker 2: before he passed away, also took one, and their raw
Speaker 2: data led them to the Skridge family name he was
Speaker 2: already familiar with, which validated the technology for him. He
Speaker 2: was like, oh, this works, but sometimes results might surprise you.
Speaker 2: Turns out that iconic Lizzo's iconic te with Hurt's genealogical ripper.
Speaker 2: I just took a.
Speaker 4: DNA test times out I'm one hundred percent that it's.
Speaker 2: One hundred percent her brainchild. So a London musician with
Speaker 2: the handle Mina Linus tweeted that exact line in February
Speaker 2: twenty seventeen, and then it became a meme and Lizo
Speaker 2: liked the meme. She tossed it in a song and
Speaker 2: the original tweeter was like, uh, hello, excuse me, Lizzo,
Speaker 2: that is my DNA joke, and some legal things ensued,
Speaker 2: but fences have been mended. And fast forward to October
Speaker 2: when Mina tweeted out quote, I just took a DNA test.
Speaker 2: Turns out I'm a credited writer for the number one
Speaker 2: song on Billboard. All's well, that ends well, and.
Speaker 4: I'm getting ready to take another DNA test. Hear shortly
Speaker 4: because there are so many companies out there and people
Speaker 4: are choosing what companies they want to do it with.
Speaker 4: So either my cousins haven't taken the test on the
Speaker 4: companies that I took it with, or they haven't taken
Speaker 4: one at all. Or it could mean that my family
Speaker 4: that I thought was my family, maybe they weren't my family.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 4: Yeah, never know.
Speaker 2: If you take a DNA test you're twenty three and
Speaker 2: me say, but then you have relatives who have taken
Speaker 2: it through like Ancestry. Does that mean that you just
Speaker 2: might be like not connecting because you're using different companies.
Speaker 4: Exactly exactly, And that's the point is that I want
Speaker 4: to take another test through another company. Actually, I do
Speaker 4: want to take it through Ancestry because I think that
Speaker 4: a lot of more of my family. In fact, I
Speaker 4: know I've heard that more of my cousins are taking
Speaker 4: on the Ancestry one. So I want to get on
Speaker 4: board and just see how I line up with that.
Speaker 4: So at twenty three and me it's a great company.
Speaker 4: I've gotten a lot of good hits and connections with that.
Speaker 4: That did validate that that this DNA stuff is for
Speaker 4: real because I did know their names and they did
Speaker 4: show up, and they're on my mother's side, but not
Speaker 4: on my father's side showed up.
Speaker 2: How does that work? And I might have to look
Speaker 2: this up, But how does that work with like the
Speaker 2: mitochondrial eve and things coming down from the X chromosomes?
Speaker 2: Like do we tend to find out more about our
Speaker 2: our maternal sides when we take DNA tests than we
Speaker 2: do Paternal mitochondrial eve side note has become the pop
Speaker 2: cultural name of the most recent known maternal ancestor that
Speaker 2: we all share. Because mitochondrial DNA is only passed on
Speaker 2: through maternal lineage. Scientists do not love this biblical name,
Speaker 2: as it's misleading from a narrative standpoint. Let's say, but
Speaker 2: this mitochondrial eve is what's called an mrca most recent
Speaker 2: common ancestor, and she can vary depending on genetic discoveries.
Speaker 2: So if a more recent common ancestor lineage is discovered,
Speaker 2: for example, it's a different mitochondrial eve, but yes, all related,
Speaker 2: all of us wild.
Speaker 4: For a female that wants to do genealogy and using
Speaker 4: the DNA tool, in order for them to learn more
Speaker 4: about their their father's side, they need to try to
Speaker 4: see if they have a brother they can take the test,
Speaker 4: or their father or an uncle, you know, anyone on
Speaker 4: the paternal side.
Speaker 2: This side note is called a Y chromosome test, and
Speaker 2: it's helpful to figure out, say, if two families with
Speaker 2: the same surname are indeed genetic relatives. So ladies, surprise
Speaker 2: your dad or brother with a DNA test. It's a
Speaker 2: gift that just keeps giving you information. And then of
Speaker 2: course there's the mitochondrial DNA test you can do. Everyone
Speaker 2: has their mom's mitochondrial DNA, and this is helpful because
Speaker 2: historically women's history can be erased or at least very
Speaker 2: illegibly smudged by the taking of surnames. More on that later. Oh,
Speaker 2: and you can get single nucleotide polymorphism testing, which scans
Speaker 2: your DNA for variations in the CG and AT pairings,
Speaker 2: and they'll tell you what traits or diseases or in
Speaker 2: some case says parents you might share with folks in
Speaker 2: their database.
Speaker 4: And that's another thing too about these genealogy the DNA
Speaker 4: companies is they're always updating the results. The results get
Speaker 4: updated because more and more people are joining them, and
Speaker 4: so they're getting more hits. The DNA results keep updating
Speaker 4: and you get more and more people that join, and
Speaker 4: you get new names that just keep popping up.
Speaker 2: And so, hey, that's got to be the best email
Speaker 2: to get because I get those from twenty three and
Speaker 2: me that'll be like, you have new relatives because my
Speaker 2: family's Catholic on both sides, which means there's a million
Speaker 2: of us. Oh and you.
Speaker 4: Took your task through twenty three.
Speaker 2: Yeah I did, And yeah, I have so many relatives
Speaker 2: and my dad's one of eleven. My Mom's one of six,
Speaker 2: so we got a lot of us out there. But
Speaker 2: that's got to be the most exciting email to pop
Speaker 2: up in your inboxes that you have new relatives.
Speaker 4: Yes, totally, totally.
Speaker 2: You've got to be like Jackpot.
Speaker 4: Totally yes.
Speaker 2: And I actually I I told our listeners that I
Speaker 2: was going to be talking to you today and they
Speaker 2: sent in questions. Can I ask you some questions from that?
Speaker 4: Absolutely?
Speaker 2: Okay, great, like literally hundreds of questions. I know everyone's
Speaker 2: so excited. Okay, but before we dive into your genealogical queries.
Speaker 2: As you know, each episode we donate to a relevant
Speaker 2: charity and one that Steven advocates for is Blackpast dot
Speaker 2: org and black Past is dedicated to providing a global
Speaker 2: audience with reliable and accurate information on the history of
Speaker 2: African America and people of African ancestry around the world,
Speaker 2: and they aim to promote greater understanding through this knowledge
Speaker 2: and to generate constructive change in our society. They have
Speaker 2: over six thousand pages of genealogical resources and history available
Speaker 2: and again are at Blackpast dot org. So that donation
Speaker 2: was made possible by some sponsors of the show, which
Speaker 2: you may hear about now get value.
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Speaker 2: Okay, let's hop into your questions and so let's see
Speaker 2: first patroon question. This was asked by Rachel Kasha, Jennifer
Speaker 2: Tran and first time question asker Danielle Levoy. I asked
Speaker 2: what's the deal with second cousins versus first cousins? Once removed?
Speaker 2: Rachel Kasha says, the whole once removed hurts my brain
Speaker 2: and I don't understand what does that mean?
Speaker 4: Yeah, wow, that's a good question. Well, I'll take the
Speaker 4: first part because that's easier. Okay, the second cousins would
Speaker 4: be like your you have your first cousin, like say
Speaker 4: you have your mother, how's a sister or which would
Speaker 4: be your aunt? And your aunt has children and those
Speaker 4: children would be your first cousins cousins twice removed and
Speaker 4: all that. I'm still trying to wrap my head around
Speaker 4: there that.
Speaker 2: If a genealogist who's some like published several books and
Speaker 2: is like a consultant for PBS shows, does it quite
Speaker 2: get it? That makes me feel so much better. Yeah, okay,
Speaker 2: side note, I looked up a float chart for this,
Speaker 2: and my soul hurt, but I think I got it.
Speaker 2: So your first cousin's child is your first cousin once removed,
Speaker 2: So your first cousin's kids kids are first cousins twice removed.
Speaker 2: So removed is in regard to generations. So same grandparents,
Speaker 2: different generation. Now, your second cousin, according to genealogy dot Com,
Speaker 2: is someone who has the same great grandparents as you,
Speaker 2: but not the same grandparents. So third cousins have this
Speaker 2: same great great grandparents. Fourth cousins have the same great
Speaker 2: great great grandparents and so on. So that cousin removed
Speaker 2: business is about generations on on my Italian side, feuds
Speaker 2: blistering family shattering feuds. In my family, my dad's you know,
Speaker 2: one of eleven, and then each of those siblings have
Speaker 2: a lot of kids and we just resort to levels
Speaker 2: like my grandparents are level one, my dad's a level two.
Speaker 2: That makes me a level three if I have kids.
Speaker 2: And so when are family reunions which are like ginormous
Speaker 2: literally different colored t shirts, so you know who's a
Speaker 2: level two and you're like, whose kid is that? And
Speaker 2: you're like, I don't know. They're in a yellow shirt.
Speaker 2: They're level four. So it helps us a lot of
Speaker 2: people wanted to know about the reliability of sites, like Ancestry,
Speaker 2: Maggie Fraser, who's the first time question asker wants to
Speaker 2: know about reliability, Michelle Miner, Lisa m Kendall, Burnell, Jesse Cole,
Speaker 2: Bennett Garber who's also a first time question asker, Danna
Speaker 2: jan and Hannah h They all kind of want to
Speaker 2: know can we rely on these Yes? Yeah, cool, good question.
Speaker 4: Very good question. Yeah. I have heard of different comments
Speaker 4: about different companies and you definitely want to do your
Speaker 4: research and you know, know which company, whatever company you
Speaker 4: choose to go with, you know a little bit about
Speaker 4: their ratings and how they're doing, how the people feel
Speaker 4: about them. And I've heard some things about ancestry pros
Speaker 4: and cons, So I have heard that. I don't know
Speaker 4: if it's true or not, but I'm going to find
Speaker 4: out because I'm getting ready to take my tests with ancestry,
Speaker 4: so I will know. But I have heard that they
Speaker 4: ask you different questions about, you know, putting in a profile,
Speaker 4: and so you start putting in names like well, this
Speaker 4: is my grandfather, this is my grandmother, my great grandfather,
Speaker 4: and boom boom boom, he was born in Maryland or
Speaker 4: you know, Jacksonsissippi, whatever. And if someone else on the
Speaker 4: other another part of the country, they go in there
Speaker 4: and they if one of their names matches with yours
Speaker 4: just on the family tree, not not the DNA part,
Speaker 4: but just just the profiles they seem to they'll send
Speaker 4: a message back and forth to each other that you
Speaker 4: might want to look at this person. This person might
Speaker 4: be interested or might be related to you, just by
Speaker 4: the names that you put on your profile. And so
Speaker 4: that's kind of something that makes you wonder. You be
Speaker 4: careful because you may not have been able to fully
Speaker 4: established those names that you're putting on your profile, if
Speaker 4: they really are truly related to you. I mean, unless
Speaker 4: you have concrete proof, no problem. But if you're a
Speaker 4: genealogist and you you know, you're doing the family tree
Speaker 4: and you've been following the paper trail, you know, the
Speaker 4: old school methodology, that's just what it says on paper
Speaker 4: that these are your family But how do you really know?
Speaker 4: You know, how what if somebody was had a child
Speaker 4: out of wedlock? You know, so you know, be be
Speaker 4: aware because that could throw you into the wrong direction.
Speaker 4: If just because you match another person's profile just based
Speaker 4: on the names, yeah, that may not. It may or
Speaker 4: may not you know, hold water. But but if you
Speaker 4: take the DNA test in your connected, well then then
Speaker 4: you have something to work with. But so I kind
Speaker 4: of was like, well, if I take this ancestry test,
Speaker 4: I'm not going to put any names right yet on
Speaker 4: my profile. I'm gonna just wait and see who pops
Speaker 4: up first, and then I'll go from there because I
Speaker 4: don't want too many people. You know, it might give
Speaker 4: me the wrong leads, you know what I'm saying. So yeah,
Speaker 4: so yeah, do your research and just kind of know
Speaker 4: what company that you're that you choose to go with.
Speaker 2: You know, along that line. A lot of listeners like
Speaker 2: Aaron jess Lynn, Maria Kumro, and Conchetta Gibson. Jess Lynn
Speaker 2: is the first time question ask her. All asked about surnames.
Speaker 4: Uh.
Speaker 2: Jesslyn asked that there's mentions that there's a lot in Quebec,
Speaker 2: Canada that forbids a woman from taking her husband's surname
Speaker 2: after marriage, and ask are there any cultures or countries
Speaker 2: in which women traditionally don't take their husband's name and
Speaker 2: does that ever cause issues when tracing back families.
Speaker 4: Oh, yeah, totally. I have heard that too, that there
Speaker 4: are some cultures where they it's some maternal line and
Speaker 4: the female just goes by her maiden name is the surname. Yeah,
Speaker 4: I would say too that that happens. That happens to
Speaker 4: be a problem a lot in genealogy, not a problem
Speaker 4: that cannot be overcome. And I have come across that
Speaker 4: even myself in my own research. Say I find a
Speaker 4: person on the census and say her name is Mary Johnson,
Speaker 4: just for example. But then if you go and you
Speaker 4: read further in the other columns of Mary Johnson's family line.
Speaker 4: It says that she's single, but then she has two
Speaker 4: or three children in her household enlisted as son, daughter, whatever,
Speaker 4: but they are her children. So then you have to
Speaker 4: ask yourself the question, she's single, but she has children, okay,
Speaker 4: and then the children have different names. And so sometimes
Speaker 4: I've had that problem where I'm trying to figure out, well,
Speaker 4: Mary Johnson, if I can't find her marriage certificate to
Speaker 4: show that these are her children from her husband, I
Speaker 4: don't know if she's going if Mary Johnson is her
Speaker 4: married name, or if that's her maiden name, And so
Speaker 4: that happens sometimes where you have it's a question mark.
Speaker 4: That is a really big challenge with genealogy trying to
Speaker 4: locate maiden names. And the best thing that most genealogists
Speaker 4: are able to do is try to find a married certificate,
Speaker 4: and if that doesn't work, then a death certificate sometimes
Speaker 4: will show the maiden name. And if you can't find
Speaker 4: the marriage or the death certificate, it's going to be
Speaker 4: a tough one.
Speaker 2: Quick aside. One study showed that in nineteen eighty, ninety
Speaker 2: eight point six percent of American women almost ninety nine
Speaker 2: percent that took their husband's name after marriage, but that's
Speaker 2: declined in recent years to about eighty percent. Now, what
Speaker 2: percent of men adopt a new name after marriage these days?
Speaker 2: Three percent? So this next tip is a revelation.
Speaker 4: The other genealogist rule is look at who's living next door. Oh,
Speaker 4: look who's living next door or even a few houses down,
Speaker 4: because families tended to stay together. Families tend to stay together,
Speaker 4: and so your family that you found on the census
Speaker 4: might be living right next door to another family member.
Speaker 4: And so it's just amazing when you find that connection
Speaker 4: like that. And yeah, I've found that many times. I've
Speaker 4: had that discovery and I was like, wow, I've been
Speaker 4: I've spent two years trying to locate and here they
Speaker 4: were right living right next door.
Speaker 2: What were you there the whole time? And that kind
Speaker 2: of brings me to a question a lot of people asked.
Speaker 2: Anna Thompson, Conchetti, Gibson, Jesse Dragon, Margaret Bacher, Renny Chelsea A.
Speaker 2: Leary serageon Horowitz and Larissa Lewis and Chells here both
Speaker 2: first time question askers, and Lewis asked what's the best
Speaker 2: place to start to actually look into family history? What
Speaker 2: are some questions that we should be asking ourselves and
Speaker 2: our family and professionals like librarians in order to look
Speaker 2: into our history.
Speaker 4: Great question, great question, They're all great questions.
Speaker 5: And the first Yeah, obviously you're you're, you're listeners, they're
Speaker 5: they're they're the best. So yeah, first, yeah, So the
Speaker 5: first thing to do when you want to get started
Speaker 5: on your genealogy is, you know, ask start assembling your
Speaker 5: family tree and ask questions from your family if they're
Speaker 5: still living, if your father is still living, or your
Speaker 5: mother's still living, or grandparents, whoever's whoever is the most
Speaker 5: closest to you that's still alive, even your siblings. Sometimes
Speaker 5: your siblings have more of a recollection than you do.
Speaker 5: I know sometimes my brother be coming up with stuff
Speaker 5: I don't even remember telling me.
Speaker 4: Yeah that's all. Wow, I didn't know that. So just
Speaker 4: sit down with a pen and paper and just start
Speaker 4: making a list on the paternal side, your father's side,
Speaker 4: and the maternal side your mother's side, and then just
Speaker 4: start going from there. List your parents first, and then
Speaker 4: list their parents. Put down where they were born obviously,
Speaker 4: if you have that information, where they died, If you
Speaker 4: could find the county name of where they were born
Speaker 4: or die. That even helps to find out what year
Speaker 4: they were married, Like your grandparents, find out how did
Speaker 4: they meet each other. That's always been such a fascinating
Speaker 4: question to me, is how did the grandparents meet each
Speaker 4: other or the great grandparents, how did they meet each other?
Speaker 4: Because just because you were born in Chicago, Illinois, and
Speaker 4: you died in northerns Louisiana, for example, how did great
Speaker 4: grandpa meet great grandma or how did grandma meet grandpa?
Speaker 4: You know? And then you find out, oh, they got
Speaker 4: married in you know, Atlanta, Georgia, you know, and then
Speaker 4: that right exactly, that's the point is what were they
Speaker 4: doing there? Was their family there and atlanted So write
Speaker 4: all that down where they got married, because those could
Speaker 4: be clues later on down the road. They may not
Speaker 4: mean anything now, but they might later. And so just
Speaker 4: start putting a chart down, father's sign on one side
Speaker 4: of the paper, mother's sign on the other side, and
Speaker 4: just work your way back on who their grandparents and
Speaker 4: great grandparents were, and just list as much as you can,
Speaker 4: and then whatever blanks you have, fill in the blanks
Speaker 4: by interviewing your relatives and you know, the aunts and
Speaker 4: the uncles, and the grandmothers and the grandfathers, and try
Speaker 4: to fill those blanks in as much as you can,
Speaker 4: and go to the family closet, you know, or wherever
Speaker 4: whoever's the one that's holding the records in the family,
Speaker 4: you know, consult them. You know, there's always somebody in
Speaker 4: the family that's got all the marriage records. They've got
Speaker 4: all the pictures, the photographs, the obituaries and the death
Speaker 4: notices and all that sort of thing, and the birth certificates.
Speaker 4: So go to that person and just plow through all
Speaker 4: that and write all that down, maybe make photocopies if
Speaker 4: they'll allow you to. When you interview, you know, someone
Speaker 4: that's really old, how old? What does that mean? Really old?
Speaker 4: Sometimes I feel I'm really old. But when you interview
Speaker 4: a parent or a grandparent, I even ask him, is
Speaker 4: it okay if I can record it? Yeah, and I'll recorded,
Speaker 4: and that way you're not missing anything.
Speaker 2: So yeah, that's great. That's and you're also like, learn
Speaker 2: so much about your family. Who doesn't want to learn
Speaker 2: more about you know, people's histories that are write around them.
Speaker 2: I think that's such a good bonding project too, you know. Yeah,
Speaker 2: So treat yourself to a nice new notebook through a
Speaker 2: pot of tea, and then sit down and interrogate a
Speaker 2: loved one gently. A few people, including Beatrice Bella, Clava B. Wilson,
Speaker 2: and first time question asker Lizzy, for example, all want
Speaker 2: us to know about adoption, and Lizzy asks, my dad
Speaker 2: has adopted and knows some of his biological family's background,
Speaker 2: but what does that mean for our chie neology? Do
Speaker 2: we trace the adopted family's history do we trace the
Speaker 2: biofamily's history.
Speaker 4: Both excellent question. I would say do both if you
Speaker 4: feel like it, If you have a yearning for wanting
Speaker 4: to know both, go for it. I know that in
Speaker 4: my family my grandfather who I met, I never did
Speaker 4: meet my father's parents, so I never did know my
Speaker 4: paternal grandfather or grandmother. They both passed before I was born.
Speaker 4: But on my mom's side, my mother remarried and so
Speaker 4: her husband was always He was the one I always
Speaker 4: called grandpa, but he was not my biological grandpa. But
Speaker 4: to this day he will always be my grandfather. And
Speaker 4: so I did a genealogy search on his family. I
Speaker 4: wanted to know about him, and found out about that
Speaker 4: he had Native American heritage from Tennessee and you know,
Speaker 4: I found out that he had a aunt, Minerva, and
Speaker 4: she lived to be one hundred years old, and I
Speaker 4: recorded that. I still have that on tape, cassette tape.
Speaker 4: By the way, I need to update that. So I
Speaker 4: would say that for adoptions, why not look at both sides,
Speaker 4: the biological and the adopted side. Absolutely, And for adoptions,
Speaker 4: I've had people that have contacted me over the years
Speaker 4: that have wanted to get help and trying to locate
Speaker 4: their biological parents.
Speaker 2: What about turning over some hefty forensic boulders. I had
Speaker 2: a few people Julie Barre, Laura Merryman, Stephanie Berherties, and
Speaker 2: first time question asker April Parry. April Pary written and said,
Speaker 2: I'm a forensic scientist and DNA analyst more specifically, and
Speaker 2: our field has been all a uzz with genealogy in
Speaker 2: the past few years as cold cases are being solved
Speaker 2: using public database searches, and April is curious what your
Speaker 2: take is, including some possible ethical dilemmas. How do you
Speaker 2: feel about it?
Speaker 4: Yeah, that's been on the news recently here. Some people
Speaker 4: are kind of leery about putting their DNA information on
Speaker 4: a website where law enforcement agencies can come in and
Speaker 4: check into that, and they have cold cases where they're
Speaker 4: trying to solve and you might know some information about it.
Speaker 4: It's kind of scary, you know. I don't know's that's
Speaker 4: a good question. If it can create closure to someone,
Speaker 4: I wouldn't mind participating in in solving something, But of
Speaker 4: course I wouldn't want anything to turn back on me,
Speaker 4: you know. But I'm clean. I haven't done anything, so
Speaker 4: I'm good. I haven't cleaned conscience. But I guess, you know,
Speaker 4: you have to think about that if you you know,
Speaker 4: if you when you take a DNA test, you're susceptible
Speaker 4: to whatever is out there, so you know, just be careful.
Speaker 4: I know there's a lot of pros and cons on that.
Speaker 4: That's that's a very very big question right now.
Speaker 2: It's such a new quandary. It's such a new ethical
Speaker 2: dilemma that we've just never encountered before. So I think
Speaker 2: a lot of people are still wrapping their brains around
Speaker 2: the benefits of getting closure or apprehending someone versus the
Speaker 2: how from a molecular level invasive that is on some
Speaker 2: of your actual genes. So yeah, it's really interesting. I
Speaker 2: think a lot of people are probably super ambivalent, meaning
Speaker 2: you know, they're just seeing the good and the bad.
Speaker 2: And Rachel C wrote in Sho had a great question
Speaker 2: and said, I've heard that out of a group of
Speaker 2: three people, two black and one white, it is just
Speaker 2: as likely for a black and white person to be
Speaker 2: more related as it is for the two black individuals
Speaker 2: to be more closely related. If that is really the case,
Speaker 2: then what the heck is race anyway? And why does
Speaker 2: it persist in modern times?
Speaker 4: It is so true, that is so true. I mean,
Speaker 4: race is just it's just a classification. I mean even
Speaker 4: now we have when we fill out forms, they have
Speaker 4: checkboxes where you can mark whatever ethnicity you wish. But
Speaker 4: now they're becoming more where you can mark that you're
Speaker 4: a Bible racial and even try racial. And so that's
Speaker 4: a problem for the government. They want they want to
Speaker 4: have solid data so that they know who's in our
Speaker 4: country and da da da. But yeah, I say, hey,
Speaker 4: why not just embrace? Why pick? Why do you have
Speaker 4: to pick one or the other? And you have so
Speaker 4: many that are part of your DNA, so you know,
Speaker 4: haven't I have to admit I've been just picking the
Speaker 4: one African American, But there was a few times where
Speaker 4: I did pick by racial because I am. If I
Speaker 4: can remember my racial I am. Oh, I'll just round
Speaker 4: it off. I'm about eighty percent African and about eighteen
Speaker 4: percent European, which includes Scandinavian, British, and then two percent
Speaker 4: Native American and Southeast Asian, which blew me away. So
Speaker 4: I'd like to learn a little bit more about the
Speaker 4: Southeast Asian part, you know, the Philippines, Vietnam, top like that,
Speaker 4: and the Native American part. I love to learn more
Speaker 4: about my Native American ancestry in regards to that race
Speaker 4: is just a classification. Were all related, and it's interesting
Speaker 4: the book that I just recently came out with sixteen
Speaker 4: nineteen twenty Africans. One of the points I mentioned in
Speaker 4: the book is that when those Africans came to Virginia
Speaker 4: in the year sixteen nineteen, they didn't come as slaves
Speaker 4: as we know it as slaves that come to our minds.
Speaker 4: They were indentured servants, and so they didn't have the
Speaker 4: disignation of being slaves. So what that meant was indentured
Speaker 4: servants just like those that were coming from England. They
Speaker 4: worked for a certain period of time they were indentured
Speaker 4: to their employer. And so those Africans were indentured. Once
Speaker 4: they served their time, they were given their freedom, just
Speaker 4: like just like all the other indentured servants. Virginia wasn't
Speaker 4: until seventeen five is when the slavery laws, you know,
Speaker 4: the really hardened slavery laws came into being, was in
Speaker 4: the year seventeen oh five. So prior to that, there
Speaker 4: were a lot of African American families in Colonial America,
Speaker 4: colonial Virginia who were not slaves. They were not in slavery.
Speaker 4: They had a hard life, Yes, they had a very
Speaker 4: hard life. Many of them were taking advantage of no
Speaker 4: doubt about it, but they were not classified as slaves.
Speaker 4: So what I'm going with this is that many of
Speaker 4: these Africans, as they had children and their children had children,
Speaker 4: there was probably about two or three generations of African
Speaker 4: Americans who were free in this country before and I
Speaker 4: got before in big, large letters, before the slavery laws
Speaker 4: were even enacted. And that's huge and a lot of
Speaker 4: people don't know about that. And I didn't know about
Speaker 4: it until I took my DNA test and found out
Speaker 4: that I was related to some of these early African
Speaker 4: American families. And so what I also found out was
Speaker 4: that a lot of the African families that were free
Speaker 4: in the early part of our colonial history, they were
Speaker 4: intermarrying with the Irish, with the Native Americans, with the Germans.
Speaker 4: They were intermarrying, they were becoming a family. And so
Speaker 4: but many of the American families that are in this
Speaker 4: country today, whatever surname you want to use, Johnson, Smith, whatever,
Speaker 4: if your family's been in this country for you know,
Speaker 4: going back to colonial times or even the American Revolution times,
Speaker 4: chances are you are a mixed family. Chances are you're
Speaker 4: a mixed family, you know, in some way, shape or form,
Speaker 4: in one way or another in Native America or you know,
Speaker 4: it's because it's just a fact. And but that is
Speaker 4: not taught in our schools. It's not taught in our
Speaker 4: history books that there were at least two or three
Speaker 4: generations of free people before slavery laws even were passed.
Speaker 4: Virginia as kind of what everybody looks to is the
Speaker 4: the mother of the of the slavery laws. But everyone
Speaker 4: o the other states looked at Virginia. You know, whatever
Speaker 4: they passed, they'll pass. But yeah, there was quite a
Speaker 4: few years, quite a few decades before slavery even got entrenched,
Speaker 4: and so that that allowed a lot of families to
Speaker 4: have freedom. There was a lot of African families that
Speaker 4: were able to buy land. You couldn't do that as
Speaker 4: a slave. You couldn't buy land. You could, they could,
Speaker 4: they could sit on juries, they could barter in trade.
Speaker 4: It was just a lot of people just don't know
Speaker 4: the history of that. And so again there was a
Speaker 4: lot of inner marriage. A lot of the Africans were
Speaker 4: marrying Irish women and Scottish women because there was a
Speaker 4: shortage of African women. And so there's a lot of
Speaker 4: intermixture in our in our society today. And so your
Speaker 4: listener brings up a very good question there that you know,
Speaker 4: chances are if if you have three people and if
Speaker 4: you're white and the other one's black, you're probably more related,
Speaker 4: just as much related as the two persons that are
Speaker 4: of the same race. Definitely.
Speaker 2: And was that a discovery also that you made in
Speaker 2: your own family with your sister in.
Speaker 4: Law, Yes, my sister in law, Yes, absolutely, yes, yeah,
Speaker 4: my sister in law. This this blew me away, is
Speaker 4: uh yeah, this is a perfect example is my wife's
Speaker 4: sister would be my sister in law. She has children,
Speaker 4: and we went to go visit one time and we
Speaker 4: were sitting around the breakfast table there and the restaurant
Speaker 4: and chit chatting, and my sister in law's daughter says, well, yeah,
Speaker 4: I can remember old grandma. You know. She was from
Speaker 4: Mississippi and she used to cook so well, and I
Speaker 4: remember all these different dishes she would make. She said
Speaker 4: she was from Jackson, Mississippi, and her and I said, oh, really,
Speaker 4: well what was her What was her name? And she said, well,
Speaker 4: she was Grandma Grantham. Her maiden name was Grantham. I
Speaker 4: almost fell off my chair. I said, Grantham. That's that's
Speaker 4: a name that has come up in my family researched. Well,
Speaker 4: when I get back home, I'm going to look that
Speaker 4: up because that's very interesting. I said, So maybe my
Speaker 4: some of my family members maybe new you know, your
Speaker 4: grandmother's family. So when I got back home that night,
Speaker 4: and I went through the records and I said, I'll
Speaker 4: be dog gone, but these my sister in law's children
Speaker 4: are related to me. Because when I took my twenty
Speaker 4: three and meters test, there was one genetic cousin that
Speaker 4: we had a connection with. This was like twenty eleven
Speaker 4: and me and her we had communication back and forth
Speaker 4: trying to figure out how we were connected. We couldn't
Speaker 4: figure it out a thing. But she sent me her
Speaker 4: family tree, and her family name was Grantham, her ancestors,
Speaker 4: her grapham. It was just amazing.
Speaker 2: In his book sixteen nineteen, Stephen writes of the encounter
Speaker 2: quote we might be related. We joked I was black
Speaker 2: and they were white. When I later got home, I
Speaker 2: looked up the information my sister in law's daughter gave
Speaker 2: me about her paternal grandmother. Turns out it wasn't a
Speaker 2: joke after all, that my sister in law's children and
Speaker 2: I were related. If everyone learns a little about their genealogy,
Speaker 2: chatter over waffles is about to get way more interesting.
Speaker 2: If you hadn't asked over breakfast, what was her name?
Speaker 2: You never would have known that.
Speaker 4: You never would have known that, never would know that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, if you weren't Sherlock Holmes, get your noteod.
Speaker 4: Of and we embrace it. We just love that little facet.
Speaker 4: I mean, we loved each other even before we knew that,
Speaker 4: but that just kind of, you know, put a little
Speaker 4: spice into our conversations every time we meet, and we
Speaker 4: can bring that up. And so it's just a wonderful thing.
Speaker 4: And you know, racist color is just it's just nothing.
Speaker 4: It's just a classification. We are all related.
Speaker 2: Steven says that the next book he's working on, which
Speaker 2: will be his third, we'll get deeper into how we're
Speaker 2: all related. And I realized just then then this episode
Speaker 2: would come out near the start of Black History Month,
Speaker 2: which is in part a celebration of the birthdays of
Speaker 2: Abraham Lincoln and abolitionist Frederick Douglas. I told Stephen that
Speaker 2: International Women's Day kind of pizzes me off, because, Hi,
Speaker 2: here's your three hundred and sixty fifth share of the
Speaker 2: year pie. And I asked him if he feels that
Speaker 2: way about February, Like, this country was literally built by
Speaker 2: people of color, but it was conceived first by history
Speaker 2: professor Carter Woodson in the nineteen twenties and finally recognized
Speaker 2: by Gerald Ford in the nineteen seventies. Stephen says that
Speaker 2: he too feels it should be more than a month,
Speaker 2: but that I think it's.
Speaker 4: Just a good opportunity to educate people, all of us,
Speaker 4: even even for everyone. Everyone. When I say everyone, I
Speaker 4: mean including African American. Everyone to be educated, re educated
Speaker 4: about just getting along with one another. Martin Luther King
Speaker 4: Junior said that the reviews the job.
Speaker 1: Sounds of farmer slaves and the sons of farmer slave owners.
Speaker 2: Will they be able to sit down together at the
Speaker 2: table of brotherhood.
Speaker 4: You know, we don't to one another based on the
Speaker 4: color of our skin, but on the basis of our character.
Speaker 4: And so that's what it's all about, is just embracing
Speaker 4: one another and just getting closer as a human family
Speaker 4: because we need each other. This world is as it's
Speaker 4: ups and downs, as we know, and so we all
Speaker 4: need to stick together and just be civil. And I
Speaker 4: think about, you know, colonial America and how when the
Speaker 4: first Africans came here, Well I shouldn't say the first
Speaker 4: African America. That's gonna be that's that's gonna be something
Speaker 4: coming out of my next book. Who were the first?
Speaker 4: But those that came in sixteen nineteen, how they were
Speaker 4: just treated just like everybody else. And then the slavery
Speaker 4: laws came along and just took away everything they had.
Speaker 4: But think of the dative Americans of what they've gone through.
Speaker 4: I mean good, he's gracious. That's why I'm really interested
Speaker 4: to want to learn about that. But yeah, Black History
Speaker 4: Month is I think is still needed to as an
Speaker 4: opportunity to talk about things that we need to talk about,
Speaker 4: to acknowledge and to heal. Yeah. Absolutely.
Speaker 2: Now from the biggest issues to perhaps some sillier or
Speaker 2: petty difficulties in the job of genealogy. And the last
Speaker 2: two questions I always ask every guest is on what
Speaker 2: is the hardest thing about genealogy or the most annoying thing?
Speaker 2: Is it water logged books, anything that is really difficult
Speaker 2: about genealogy or this just maybe hesters you at all,
Speaker 2: even if it's petty.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, Well, the one thing that kind of irks
Speaker 4: me is someone will take their DNA test, they will
Speaker 4: log on to the website, they will download their data,
Speaker 4: they will click yes, I do want my information to
Speaker 4: be posted on this website. Here's my email address. And
Speaker 4: then when you connect and you find out that, oh,
Speaker 4: I'm related to this person. I'd like to know more
Speaker 4: about you because some of the that you have on
Speaker 4: your profile match my family. And then you reach out
Speaker 4: to that person and they don't even reply back. That's
Speaker 4: That one just really gets me.
Speaker 3: I mean, like, why did you want to put your
Speaker 3: email address on there in the first place, you know,
Speaker 3: if you're not going to correspond, So that one, that
Speaker 3: one's kind of that one that makes sense.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So if you ever, if anyone ever gets an
Speaker 2: email from a long lost relative, reply to them. It's
Speaker 2: worth it, replied, do not sit on that email. What
Speaker 2: is your favorite thing about genealogy? What just like fills
Speaker 2: you with butterflies or just makes you love it?
Speaker 4: Wow? The thing that makes me always love genealogy is
Speaker 4: being able to go on the hunt, go on the search,
Speaker 4: to try to find to find someone's brick wall, someone
Speaker 4: who you know. And what I mean by brick wall
Speaker 4: for any of your listeners is you just come in
Speaker 4: to a point where you can't go any further in
Speaker 4: your research.
Speaker 2: To break through it. Somehow.
Speaker 4: You just you've come to a brick wall. You just
Speaker 4: you've exhausted all your avenues and you just don't know
Speaker 4: where to go. You just don't know who this person is,
Speaker 4: where they were, where, who their parents were, or whatever
Speaker 4: the question is. And I just love to take that
Speaker 4: brick wall and try to see if I can call
Speaker 4: through it. I just love that, you know, just taking
Speaker 4: on that challenge, and then once you're finding you're like, oh, yes,
Speaker 4: you know, it's just wonderful. Love it.
Speaker 2: Do you wear a cape? Do you have a big
Speaker 2: pipe and a cake? I got a cape on right now,
Speaker 2: big mustache.
Speaker 4: Right with the old pipe.
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 4: No. No.
Speaker 2: So find the most wonderful, smart people and ask them
Speaker 2: the stupidest questions, and before you know it, you might
Speaker 2: be staying on a plane and discover the person next
Speaker 2: to you is your fifth step cousin in law four
Speaker 2: times removed, and you'll kind of know what that means,
Speaker 2: and you might know them the rest of your life.
Speaker 2: So to get copies of Stephen Hanks books, you can
Speaker 2: go to the links in the show notes or in
Speaker 2: water Press. You can also find links to the sponsor
Speaker 2: URLs and blackpast dot org in the show notes. We
Speaker 2: are at Ologies on Twitter and Instagram. I'm at ali
Speaker 2: Ward with one L on both, so follow along. Let's
Speaker 2: be friends. Ology's merch is available at aliward dot com.
Speaker 2: Thank you to Shannon Feltis and Bonnie Dutch of the
Speaker 2: podcast You Are that they managed the merch, and thanks
Speaker 2: to Aaron Talbert for admitting the Ologies podcast Facebook group.
Speaker 2: Thank you Jared Sleeper of the mental health podcast Make Good,
Speaker 2: Bad Brain for the assistant editing, and of course to
Speaker 2: a guy who's likel bro Stephen Ray Morris who hosts
Speaker 2: the percast and c Jurassic Right, which are about kiddies
Speaker 2: and dinosaurs. Nick Thorburn of the band Islands wrote and
Speaker 2: performed the theme music. And you know, if you stick
Speaker 2: around pass the credits, you get a secret. And this
Speaker 2: week I'm going to tell you I drove to an
Speaker 2: ex boyfriend's house in the middle of the night. We
Speaker 2: dated for like four months a decade ago. But in
Speaker 2: the parking lot of the apartment complex, I remember there
Speaker 2: was a lemon tree that was were loaded with fruit
Speaker 2: way back then. And this was not just any lemon tree.
Speaker 2: This is a mere lemon tree, which we all know
Speaker 2: has like way better lemons. Regular lemons are like a
Speaker 2: mounts bar Meyer lemons. They're like an almondsoy, they're just better.
Speaker 2: I think technically there's some type of orange, but the
Speaker 2: point is from memory. I drove through the alley hills
Speaker 2: alone at ten pm. I felt like such a creep
Speaker 2: and I found the side street and the lemon tree
Speaker 2: was still there. With literally hundreds of mier lemons. So
Speaker 2: I took maybe like eight or ten. I put him
Speaker 2: in a hat, and I ran back to my car. Now,
Speaker 2: granted he hasn't lived there in like ten years, but
Speaker 2: it still felt dangerous and skivy and very thrilling to
Speaker 2: have a bowl of the best lemons on my counter.
Speaker 2: I've been pulverizing them in a pitcher and drinking it
Speaker 2: as lemonade, and then I eat their ragged flesh and
Speaker 2: skin like a buzzard. Also, if fruit overhangs a fence,
Speaker 2: technically it's legal to pick. Also, no one's gonna ever
Speaker 2: eat all those lemons or so many lemons. Okay, so good,
Speaker 2: all right, We're buy pack dermist college, homeology, do zoology, lithology, yeahnology, meteorology, fatology, technology, seriology, selenology,
Speaker 2: Hi skip believing.
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