Italian Roots and Genealogy
This podcast is dedicated to Italian Genealogy, finding your Italian Roots and how to navigate through Italian records. Your host has over 12 years of experience and we will have excellent guests that will discuss a variety of genealogy topics. Please subscribe!
Italian Roots and Genealogy
Preserving Stories and Legacies with Peek Into The Past
Embarking on a genealogical quest that spans continents and centuries, I had the chance to sit down with Jim Rothgeb, the visionary behind Peek Into The Past. Together, we unraveled the threads of ancestry that connect us to the echoes of history, with Jim recounting his profound experience of holding artifacts that once belonged to his ancestors in England. While I unveiled my own Italian lineage leading to historical figures, we also shed light on the disparate nature of record-keeping among countries, from England's meticulous civil documentation to Italy's Napoleonic beginnings.
Step into the historical landscape of a Massachusetts family's migration to Long Island in the 1630s and how their story is intricately woven into the fabric of the region, from the establishment of homes to the consequential sale of Rikers Island. Jim and I share how Peek Into The Past serves as a bridge between the past and the present, offering a repository for personal anecdotes and historical narratives. The platform isn't just a collection of tales; it's a community of voices, preserving the legacies of those who came before us for generations to come.
As we rounded off our conversation, the spotlight turned to the essence of family storytelling and the meticulous process of submitting and preserving these tales on Peek Into The Past. Jim highlighted the robust support network provided to storytellers, ensuring the rich tapestry of our familial legacies remains authentic and true. From the integration with other genealogical platforms to the recording of oral histories, this episode is an invitation to all who seek to preserve and honor the stories that have shaped them.
Short introduction to Peek Into The Past
Turnkey. The only thing you’ll lift are your spirits.
Hi everyone, this is Bob Sorrentino from Italian Roots and Genealogy. Be sure to check us out on our blog and YouTube and our Facebook group and our super, super advertisers, your Dolce Vita, italy Rooting and Abiativa Casa. And today we have a great guest not specific to Italian genealogy or any genealogy for that matter. We have Jim Rothjeb from Peek Into your Past, which is a great website, whether you want to record your family history or vacation or any other thing that you've done. So welcome Jim. Thanks for being here.
Speaker 2:Oh, thank you, thank you. I appreciate this opportunity to speak with you and your audience. I think I have a tool, a resource that they will find useful, and I'd be glad to share details about that.
Speaker 1:Absolutely, absolutely. So what prompted you, you know, creating the website? I think you're the co-creator, correct?
Speaker 2:Yes, I am, you know, I have been, you know, an amateur genealogist for oh gosh, since I was in my middle ages, so that long time ago and over the years, you know, trying to make sense of what my interest exactly was with this, what drove me to continue on with it and expand into, you know, I've sort of focused on one branch of a family and then I realized, you know, I wanted to explore other branches and I had several aha moments is what I call it when you go through it, and it's something you realize that you just didn't, you had no idea about, or you know, or ah, that makes sense about something you know. It's just, there was just, it kept drawing me together. And then I looked back one day and I said you know my understanding of this, of these, you know my ancestors, the way that they are, and I guess this really came about after I made a trip to England, where a lot of my ancestry is from, and I was able to go back to 1473. And some of the baptismal thoughts that some of those ancestors used I was actually able to put my hands on, you know, and it was just all of a sudden, things became more real and I appreciated the how it impacted, the way I started to have an outlook about our family or moving forward and so forth, and it became obvious to me that it brought me closer to the past, and so we came up with this idea of developing a way where we can tell these aha moments or these stories or these important events in the ancestry, or you can.
Speaker 2:There's no rule as to how long a story has to be. It can be an in-depth study of a subject. It could be just a story about a particular event, something, and so we saw it bringing people together, and to us that sounds like a great goal to bring people together in this world, and so I know that's a really big goal. But you know, it's a little step maybe to going to that direction.
Speaker 1:That's great. So now I'm going to take a wild guess. And your family probably came a couple of hundred years ago correct To America.
Speaker 2:Yes, that's right. Actually, in 1630 was when the first ancestor landed Right, and they landed in the New England area as so many have. But yes, it was gosh. What is that? 400 years ago almost.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and that's the reason I ask is, my children are adopted and my daughter, her family's going way back. Same thing. I traced her back, her lines back to England and she's actually descendant from the Dispenser family. Wow, I'm direct to. I could trace direct to William the Conqueror.
Speaker 2:Oh my goodness you to William the Conqueror. Oh my goodness you can.
Speaker 1:Oh goodness Well you know that certainly had an impact on British history. Yeah, and the crazy thing about it, it's through the Italian family.
Speaker 2:Oh, is that right yeah it's through my grandmother's.
Speaker 1:My paternal grandmother's mother comes from a very noble Italian family and they, of course, either married with the Spanish or married with a friend. You know, you know the whole story right, and interesting things to find, so you got back pretty far. Any, I'm going to guess that that the records were pretty clear. Then going back, yeah.
Speaker 2:Well, yes, one, I think. On that same occasion that I mentioned earlier, a trip to England, I was able to actually do some research. It was, you know, I had come prepared with some specific questions that I hoped to find some direction for and I really was not all that familiar with their record keeping system other than what I could find online, which was pretty good. But we went to a couple of these hamlets, really, that found where the records were and people were willing to look at them and help us. And, yes, they're, they have a. You know, of course, their history goes back so much farther than here in the United States, but they're used to preserving some records and we were able to feel good about that.
Speaker 1:Some of it, of course, you know, still okay this is the way it's reported, but you know you, you don't, you don't know for sure, you can't say for sure, but this is, we're going with it yeah, I, I think I think the good thing about you know the um, the english civil records and I think you know some of the german civil records. They were record keeping long before anybody else was, uh, and and not just. You know noble families, even you know the uh, you know the common people and everything where you know in italy the civil records only go back to 1809 and that's only because, yeah, only because napoleon started it actually.
Speaker 2:Oh gosh, yeah before that everything was in the church yeah, yeah, you know that's a prime resource really really well. I'm I'm impressed that you were able to do such research on your adopted children.
Speaker 1:That sounds, you know, that's often a challenge it seems like to to get to that information, but I'm glad you were able to do that well, and in uh, in my daughter's case, uh, there was there was a lot of people on ancestry and uh, I was able to, you know, trace back. You know it was.
Speaker 1:It was pretty simple, um because, what happened with in her case was, uh, she always said she wanted to, you know, find her birth parents, um, and in florida the way it works is there's a registry and when you're 18 you could check the registry and if and the birth parents registered, um, you can, you can, you know, do the registry and if the birth parents registered, you can do a match like that. Well, her birth parents didn't register, but the kids knew from as early as they could know that they were adopted. So we got a private investigator and he found them pretty quick. He found them pretty quick. He found them pretty quick. They knew their history and everything like that. It wasn't difficult. Now in Italy there were children that were adopted by American parents and them trying to find their natural parents in Italy is very, very difficult, very, very hard. They don't Because they don't put the parents' names, so it's very, very hard to trace. So before we talk about the website, just another question for you Interesting people that you found in the family.
Speaker 2:Well, one comment that keeps coming up, you know being I've actually had two sides of the family that have been here before the Civil War, and you know, and there was this struggle as to this branch was Southerners and this branch was Northerners, and we would make jokes. It's nothing to joke about, but it's, you know. It's like like, you know, either you had pride in it or you had disgust in it, or you know, there was all sorts of emotions that comes up with it. But and then when you do enough research, you find out that no branch is pure, in that one branch will have a combination of the confederates and and the yankees in the same way and the Yankees in the same way for the other branch. You know, and then suddenly all of this, you know interchange that we had been going on. It's just, you know, look it's right, here, we're all. You know, that was and it was just like we're all mixed in together. It's, you know, it's hard to kind of draw any separations in there.
Speaker 1:That was an issue.
Speaker 2:Then I realized that the family that landed in 1630 in Massachusetts. They soon took some sort of ship not a big ship, I'm quite sure about that over to Long Island and that's where they ended up making their lives. And I keep joking to myself that, oh my gosh, I'm going to go back and play. Long Island is right there, you, you know, at the start of the of the island and all that. And you know, I've seen, uh, some old, uh pictures of homes that belong to the family. At that point. I mean these are very old pictures and of course those homes aren't there anymore, but it was just like, oh gosh, I should go there and find that.
Speaker 1:So, yeah, uh, yeah, I feel the same way about some of the homes in italy.
Speaker 1:Um, it's because there's palazzo's there, but um, you know that's interesting because my ex-wife, uh, her family also, uh, I could trace way back, uh, when I did it and, uh, they, they're from Long Island and they owned pretty big chunks of land in Hempstead. Oh, she has both English, irish and Dutch going back and in fact, her I don't know if it's third or fourth great-grandfather sold Rikers Island, where the prison is now, to the city of New York. Oh, my gosh.
Speaker 2:Oh my gosh Well wow.
Speaker 1:And you know there's a lot of Quaker influence in that area, mm-hmm. And in fact the old court of course from the old courthouse was a Quaker influence in that area and in fact the old court of course from the old courthouse was a Quaker meeting house. I don't know if it's still there, but it dated back to like 1750 or something. It was a very old, very old building. So peek into the past Right Allows people to go in there and basically build their story right, which through I know you could do links you could put in your story, you could put in places. So why don't you tell us a?
Speaker 2:little bit about how that all works. Yeah, bob, I'd love to. You know our vision is to bring people together. I think I've made that point earlier and there is a writer. Her name is I'll have it here Deneen Brown. She wrote an article called Tulsa, the Fire and the Forgotten, and in that article she was talking about the Tulsa riots and fires that happened in Oklahoma. But in that article she said stories have power and, if told, they can change the future. And you know, I really latched on to that phrase and that, to me, is really what we're about. Me is really what we're about.
Speaker 2:And so there's really two groups of people who would access the website, peek into the Past. One we call storytellers those would be what we've generally been talking about here having done some research or have some interesting facet about their life or other person's life, or something that wants to preserve it and wants to share it. And then the other aspect, the other group, would be what we call visitors. These would be people who are in search of finding more information about an ancestor or whether it's a researcher or a genealogist or some sort of a formal book writer or something like that. And so we are connecting these two groups together. The first group will pass over time they will. Their lives will go on, but the stories that they have left with Peak in the Past are preserved. They are there on the internet and they get to choose and designate whoever they want to continue to monitor or update the story if it needs to be updated.
Speaker 2:It may be a fairly static story that this is the beginning, this is the end and there's nothing that needs to be added, but there is no obligation for a storyteller to be more involved than just writing the story and peeking the past to publish it. No subscription is required, although we have a couple. I'll offer that information in a few minutes, but it's just that simple. We need to preserve these stories and here's a place where you can use the tools we have and, through audio and video and pictures and writing, you can tell this story however you choose. Writing, you can tell this story however you choose. And then these visitors, when they read your story, they have the benefit of having that aha moment that calls you to write this story to begin with, and they maybe will have some feedback that they want to share with you, and so there's an opportunity for these visitors to be in contact with these storytellers, but no emails, no contact information is exchanged between them. It's all monitored here at Peak in the Past. We relay the story on to the storyteller and the storyteller is not obligated to be involved in this. But we encourage the storyteller to respond to the visitor and we pass that response back to the visitor. And if the two in their communications decide they want to share email addresses, of course they can do that, but that's their choice. Share email addresses? Of course they can do that, but that's their choice. It never happens. If you want to avoid having contact information, you can be assured People in the past will not share that. So we publish these stories.
Speaker 2:Like I said, publishing is free. A subscription is only necessary to continually update the story. And if there is no subscription, the story does not disappear. It's out there, it's published. And so you can even have your subscription for, say, a month or two and then say I don't want it anymore for say, a month or two and then say I don't want it anymore and the story is still there. And I mentioned earlier, of course you can edit the story at any time and we do have a story development team of researchers, writers, editors, and we're looking for more to add to that team.
Speaker 2:Many of you in the audience may be interested in participating in that way. Is that offering your professional services to help others in crafting their own story? We'd be glad to make connections like that. And then also we ask the visitors, particularly the ones that have visited a memorial or a marker of some sort, that if they observe some sort of vandalism or problem with the marker, that they share that with the storyteller so the storyteller can then see about taking care of that marker. So we call that a sort of our online caretaking feature that we have with that.
Speaker 2:And then we have one more really benefit of a storyteller. It's every storyteller can give, however many gifts of subscriptions to anybody else a one-year subscription and they can even give it to themselves to publish a new story. So, like Bob, I can say you know, I'd like for you to join. Look at Peek and Pass and see if you'll do this. Here's a, here's a subscription you can have for one year free and when you publish your story you'll get that one year free subscription and then, once you're a storyteller, you can do the same thing with all of your contacts. It's a real nice gift for people. Let me see oh, I know what I wanted to really say, bob we have on the homepage there is a five minute short video of an introduction to Peaking the Pass. It really concisely brings together what I'm trying to explain now. I would highly suggest that maybe you could show that to your guests at some point or at least refer, refer to it in in in work. It's really a good recap of what we're talking about and you know people ask you know what makes us different from like ancestry or family search or american ancestors.
Speaker 2:Well, peak in the Past is foremost about storytelling and we blow past just being a digital archiving service. We, like I said, you can update and you can modify. It's not like an inscription on a marker. You can always change it and you can just expand on it and so forth. And I mentioned, we can share the contact. We don't share contacts, but we share the communication and no subscriptions required. Two are available. Each offer benefits to suit you. One is a low price of $24 a year and then the $48 subscription locks in that $48 rate forever, and not just for you, but whoever is the subsequent storyteller picks up that rate. So if we ever change the second subscription rate to say $50, you still pay $48 forever, okay, and you get an unlimited number of pictures and videos and other media to attach to the story. You can designate who's going to pick up after you're ready to let go of the storyteller responsibilities. And we had this neat we call it augmented reality feature, where there is this ceramic QR code tile that you can attach to a marker of interest and a visitor to that marker can scan that and it can pick up the story that you've just published on the peak of the past. So while they they're experiencing the, the cemetery and so forth, they can actually hear you or read the story or see the other ancestry pictures right there while they're experiencing their visit to the market. It's a real personalization feature.
Speaker 2:There is one facet that is sometimes a little bit of a hurdle for people, because we ask for a really heavily redacted copy of an official document that shows your name and your street address. What we seek to do is to deliver reliable information. We want to publish only trustworthy stories, and so we authenticate a person's identity, we authenticate their email address and we authenticate their image If they want to put it on a profile image. It has to look like the image on the official document in some vague way, and this helps us certify that the work is their work. And we also ask them to tell us that any other work that's in that story that is not there. Who wrote it? We try to disclose all copyright issues and disclose who the authors are in that story and pictures of people appearing in the story. We want their names in the story. So this is just a step. It's not foolproof, admittedly, but we try to assure that there is authenticity about these stories.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's great, and so I do have one question. Can people make this almost like a living history of their family if they want? Forget about just going back in generations, but going in the future?
Speaker 2:uh, I'm not sure I understand. Um, it's very flexible and so it can be modified at any time. Um, well, the modification requires that you have a subscription. So if you've decided to become inactive and not have a subscription, then it will just, you'll just have to activate the subscription again and then, um go in and add the new information. Um, is that? Is that what you're asking about?
Speaker 1:kind of I was thinking like in the old days uh, people, would you know, write everything in the bible, right? Somebody had a baby, somebody had this, somebody, you know, somebody dies or whatever. So, as long as they have a subscription, if you created a story that was, uh, the family genealogy, for example, I could edit that and add people or say when people died, or whatever. Yeah, right, oh, absolutely.
Speaker 2:And that would be the advantage of you indicating that you want, say, one of your children to take over after you pass, or maybe you're just tired of, you want to do something else and you just say, ok, will you pick this up now? And so then we honor your request there that we, that we, pass the storyteller responsibilities from you to this person and they can then change and modify anything that they, you know that they want, and until you give up that storyteller responsibility, you can change and modify anything you want.
Speaker 1:Great, and you do more than just have people type in. You also offer support teams for creating the stories or narration or things like that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's right, that's right. You know people are different levels. Some people will come with just a real outline and they really need a genealogist involved, or maybe they need some sort of historian, as opposed to others that may come with all of the research and they want to help with writing the story. Or maybe you've really written a story but you say I'd like an editor to kind of polish this thing up, you know. And so there's these things that can happen and it doesn't happen. It has to happen. Initially, you can go ahead and publish what you've got and then down the road you can modify it once you want to make other changes to it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, that's great. So, for example, if let's take you, for example, in your case you have a history going back in this country 400 years. You may not know every link, but if they come across a link that you didn't know, they would help you build that into the story.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely yeah, yeah, that's good, that's a great service, and I know a lot of people are shy about writing their stories. When I wrote my book, I was back and forth a million times. Should I say this? Should I say this? Should I format it this way? Should I talk more about the research than I, than the family and things like that? And it's no easy task to create a story.
Speaker 2:Well, I'm glad you shared that for just enough time to just get started. Just, you know, submit a story, let's get it out there, and then you know, you can continue to find how you feel about it. You can see how people are reacting to it. You can, it's not locked in stone, it's not. You know. You can even say in the story these are my initial thoughts. I know that I got together. This is straightened out, you know. But here I'm.
Speaker 1:Here I am and is there any limit to how long a story can be or what you could add to it?
Speaker 2:no, no, it can be very short, it can be. Actually, you can link to say you have a genealogical tree in ancestry, you can link to that tree and so, um, you know, there will be a place where you can just say, okay, here's more detail if you want it. But I'm not putting it in this story just because you don't need to know all that. But if you have more interest in it, you can go into that sort of thing, right?
Speaker 1:And I think the real positive thing about it is because a lot of people ask me how do I start genealogy, doing my genealogy? And I tell them, go, go ask grandma, go ask the oldest relative, and and now I tell them, record them, put them on tape and in fact, the um is it? Uh, family search? They actually. You could actually go into a family search. Some of the family search libraries have video capabilities where you could go in and record your story and with professional equipment and they'll give you that, that tape or dvd tape. Right, you know how old I am, but I think this is a good way for people to put family stories out there and actually be able to see an ancestor 50 years from now talk about when they came from, wherever Right.
Speaker 2:Oh, absolutely Absolutely, you know. And yet those, those recordings can be part of the story. They can. Just we can add, we can add videos, we can add audios, pictures. You pictures is another thing. You know, you kind of sometimes always stumble on a new picture of interest and you can come back and add in a picture and description. Maybe that fits in better, or something like that. Yeah, that's.
Speaker 1:That's really. That's really great. Uh, I especially like the thing where you could put that you know marker in there where people, if they they go visit someplace, that they could actually read the story while they're there. That's pretty cool.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it is really cool, Sometimes the only invitation you figure out in a cemetery somewhere that doesn't have internet. They don't even maybe have electricity around there or something you know, but that doesn't happen all that often.
Speaker 1:so not these days. I guess in some, some really out of the way places, it could happen. Um, but I, I you know this what I liked when I came across this. It's a very unique type of tool for people to kind of combine their stories with their research, pass it along to other people and maybe find something out that they didn't know by searching, peek into the past.
Speaker 2:Well, yes, and then share that wisdom you know with back with other people and it just, it just brings people together, it just does.
Speaker 1:So anybody who wants to get started, how do they find you? How do they find the website?
Speaker 2:Well, again, it's called peek into the pastcom and that's all one word and um. From there there are tools. You hopefully you'll find them um easy to uh, manipulate. As a visitor, you have a, a tab at the top um where you can pursue questions that you have. Just follow that tab and it will be a tree where you can kind of identify what your question is and we get you to the right person.
Speaker 2:If you have already published a story, there's another tab for you there. There's one for them we call them storytellers and you may have some administrative things that you want done, you know, designating this future storyteller or making a change or change to your subscription, or you know a variety of things. There's a tab for that. And then on the homepage and then on a separate tab up there is to explore and find stories of interest, and we've got we're really looking for more stories to show up in there for that to be a really effective tool, but it's set up to once we can really expand on our source of stories. It's easy to get there and see what might be of interest to you.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I'm working my way through my story. I got a little busy and put it aside, but I picked it back up again today and it is really pretty easy to navigate and, like you said you could, you could put a lot of information in there, you could put maps in there and and all of that.
Speaker 2:So I uh, my goal is to get that done shortly, well, good I I I had thought maybe you were curious from the point of view just to see how it manipulates itself. I'm glad you're pursuing that and I'm eager to welcome you as a new storyteller soon.
Speaker 1:Great, I appreciate it. Well thanks, Jim. I really appreciate you taking the time today and I'm sure this is going to help a lot of people get their stories out there.
Speaker 2:Okay, thank you again. Pick up the pass. Thank you and we hope to. We hope to our. Our past cross soon.
Speaker 1:Same here. Yep, yep, just hang on a sec.
