Are you ready for a journey into the past? Don't just expect to find dates and names, as your family tree can unravel captivating tales and intriguing mysteries. This week, Michala had the pleasure of chatting with Ancestry's Crista Cowan, also known as the Barefoot Genealogist. The pair guide you through the process of building your family tree on Ancestry and show you how to unlock the stories that make your family uniquely yours. You'll learn how a simple birth certificate can spark a journey of discovery into your ancestral past.
Genealogical research is like detective work, and newspapers can provide essential clues. Crista and Michala delve into an engaging discussion about the unexpected insights that can be gleaned from Canadian census data from 1931, and even from such mundane details as whether a family owned a radio. They also delve into the stark contrast between British and American birth, marriage, and death records, and Michala shares her experience of discovering an ancestor in a newspaper. So, don't underestimate the power of the printed word in your journey into the past!
But the rabbit hole of genealogy goes deeper. The pair also explore military, immigration, and pension files that provide a unique window into the past. Crista and Michala discuss how these records shed light on societal norms and the bureaucracy of the era. They also share our own experiences and strategies for breaking through the 'brick walls' in our genealogical research. If you have hit a roadblock in your research, Crista's story about her ancestor will inspire you to look at things from a different angle. So, buckle up for an exciting ride into the world of genealogy and family history!
Are you ready for a journey into the past? Don't just expect to find dates and names, as your family tree can unravel captivating tales and intriguing mysteries. This week, Michala had the pleasure of chatting with Ancestry's Crista Cowan, also known as the Barefoot Genealogist. The pair guide you through the process of building your family tree on Ancestry and show you how to unlock the stories that make your family uniquely yours. You'll learn how a simple birth certificate can spark a journey of discovery into your ancestral past.
Genealogical research is like detective work, and newspapers can provide essential clues. Crista and Michala delve into an engaging discussion about the unexpected insights that can be gleaned from Canadian census data from 1931, and even from such mundane details as whether a family owned a radio. They also delve into the stark contrast between British and American birth, marriage, and death records, and Michala shares her experience of discovering an ancestor in a newspaper. So, don't underestimate the power of the printed word in your journey into the past!
But the rabbit hole of genealogy goes deeper. The pair also explore military, immigration, and pension files that provide a unique window into the past. Crista and Michala discuss how these records shed light on societal norms and the bureaucracy of the era. They also share our own experiences and strategies for breaking through the 'brick walls' in our genealogical research. If you have hit a roadblock in your research, Crista's story about her ancestor will inspire you to look at things from a different angle. So, buckle up for an exciting ride into the world of genealogy and family history!
Welcome back to Unearth the Past, a brand new family history and genealogy podcast brought to you by me, Dr Michaela Huw. This week, folks, we are joined by Genealogy Royalty. That is right, Ladies and gentlemen, welcome Ancestries. Christa Cowan, also known as the Barefoot Genealogist. Thank you so much for coming on my podcast. I feel like I've made it now. I feel like I don't know where I'd go from here. I feel like I've made it.
Speaker 2:Well, thank you for having me, Michaela. You have been way kind. I think that's the greatest introduction I've ever received.
Speaker 1:Thank you. Well, just to let you know, i follow you on everything. I love all your videos. I watch them on YouTube. You are a real inspiration for genealogy, especially like me. You know doing genealogy. If I get stuck, i think what would Christa do? Yeah, what would Christa do. So today we are here to talk about Ancestry. Ancestry I've been using it since, i think, 2002. I always moan that, brad, you know, i've been using it for 20 years and Brad has never sent me Brad Ardent, by the way, folks has never sent me chocolates and waiting for flowers. Honestly, nothing. I've had nothing off him. So if we are starting out doing our family tree and we've spoke to our relatives, so we know a tiny bit about it, and we've just logged on to Ancestry, what do we do? Where do we go?
Speaker 2:It's a great question, and that's really the question everybody should be asking themselves just to start with, is what do I already know about myself? That's usually the easy one. Then what do I know about my parents? That's where things start to get a little bit more challenging. And then what do I know about my grandparents? So just start with yourself and work your way back one generation at a time. Now, the great thing about building a tree on Ancestry is that it is free, so you don't have to jump right into a subscription And in fact I encourage people not to. If you've taken a DNA test or if you set up a free registered guest account, you can start building that tree and take the time to do it before you ever pay any subscription monies to access those historical record collections available on the site.
Speaker 1:Now I love your tree building, the tree building side of Ancestry's website. I have all my trees that I'm building or that I've built over the years on that website. Honestly, it's like it's that big. I've got that many trees on there. now I'm waiting for an email to say you need to clear some off. I really like the fact it's so easy to build the tree and the fact you can link records that you are looking at directly to that tree and you start to build the family history of a person. Is that what we should be using it for, chris? Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and that just building it. You know, sometimes building a tree sounds a little bit stuffy to some people probably not to your listeners. But it's not just about tree building, really. It's also about making sure that we capture those memories, uploading photographs, talking to our family and getting stories that they may have. I have been doing family history since I was a kid and I still hear new stories all the time. When I start talking to my family, i'll share a story. If that's okay, please do So.
Speaker 2:My grandfather, my mom's dad, passed away when she was 17. And so my whole life I've heard stories about him, and one of the stories that we've been told is that he never knew when his birthday was. It was either the 2nd of October or the 4th of October and it was in either 1920 or 1921. And part of the reason we didn't know was because he was born at home and a country doctor came around and you know days after the birth and said when was the baby born? And said somebody said, oh, i think it was last Tuesday, and so he just wrote down a date in his book. And then the reason he didn't know what year he was born was because when he was younger. His mom died when he was 3. And so he was raised by a wicked stepmother, who my uncles used to say is the reason stepmothers are called wicked. She was pretty horrible, and she lied about his age so that she could keep taking the money that he earned for an extra year, and so that was the story that I was raised with my whole life.
Speaker 2:Last week on Ancestry, i discovered that we have published the Arkansas birth records And there is an actual birth certificate for my grandfather And it lists his date of birth as the 4th of October 1921. And so now we have definitive proof of his birth date. But the weird thing was, on his birth certificate his name is spelled differently than he spelled it his whole life. So of course I immediately call my mother, who has told me this story my whole life, and I share this with her, and she says oh yeah, that's funny. I think I remember my dad saying something about. And then out comes this whole new story that I had never heard before, and this certificate had just tweaked her memory a little bit about something that she hadn't thought of in you know, 50 or 60 years since he passed. And so there's always new things to discover, and sometimes it's the records that spur those discoveries, and sometimes it's just the conversations.
Speaker 1:Ancestry has a lot of records, doesn't it on the site? Yeah, 40 billion of them. There you go, 40 million folks, billion, from all over the world. I have found my ancestors who moved to America with well, it was Stan Laurel who then became Laurel and Hardy. I found his records on there and also the records of his wife, who was American. I have found records for my Polish great, great great grandmother. You know who'd have thought I'd have been able, sitting in my living room in rainy old Cheshire, i would be able to find records from the late Victorian period of my Polish ancestors from my living room. So if you want records and you have ancestors not just from the UK but from most of the world, honestly check our ancestry, because their record collection is the biggest that I have come across in my research.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we have 40 billion records from 80 countries around the world, And last year we added 15 or 5 billion records to the site, And this year we're tracking to add an additional 15 billion records. So the rate of growth is not only not slowing down, it's exponentially getting faster because of the new technologies that we have.
Speaker 1:So, in terms of records, you're not sure about what record you're adding. You give a really good description, don't you? if you sort of scroll down the page, of what record that is.
Speaker 2:Yeah, one of the features on Ancestry that I love is the little leaf hint, because basically as soon as you enter something in your tree, ancestry goes to work for you, trying to find do we have anything in those 40 billion records that looks like it might be for the same person?
Speaker 2:Now, of course, people have similar names and you know, my dad has what I thought was a super unique name, but there are two men who grew up within a five mile radius of him who have the same name and are only a year or so different in age. So you have to kind of keep that in the back of your mind when you're looking at those hints. But yeah, you'll get hints for things like census records, birth, marriage and death records, passenger lists, military service records. All of those will start popping up in your tree And then you just carefully review them, one at a time, and we will tell you exactly what's on the record. If we have an image to the record, you can view that original document And then full source citations are going to show up if you decide to accept that into your tree, so that you've got a really well documented trail that you're climbing your tree and not somebody else's tree.
Speaker 1:And am I right by saying as well that you can connect your DNA, can't you? to your family tree? So if you've done a DNA test, you can connect that as well.
Speaker 2:Yes, ancestry does have a DNA service. So Ancestry DNA, and if you take the DNA test with Ancestry, you can connect it to the tree that you have on Ancestry. And there's a couple of things that that does. One is it allows our algorithms to look at all those DNA matches that you get And if you've got a tree and your match has a tree, we can provide you with a suggested path for who your common ancestor might be, and that could be a great-grandparent or it could be a five-times great-grandparent, and we can kind of put together a path for that relationship for you to investigate further.
Speaker 1:How have you found the whole DNA thing? I follow you on social media and I think it was a few weeks ago. It seemed like the middle of the night where you were and you said you just solved a DNA puzzle. How have you found it? Has it enhanced your research, Christa?
Speaker 2:Not only has it enhanced my research experience, it's also accelerated the rate at which I make discoveries. Dna was, you know, ancestry released it back in March of 2012. And so we're a decade into this and I continue to make new discoveries. As new people test and they're matched to myself or to my parents or my grandmother, who all have tested, then that becomes this mystery or this puzzle to solve.
Speaker 2:I love the word that you used there This thing that I just have to figure out who is this new second or third or fourth cousin and how do they fit into the family tree. And then, once I've solved that, as thrilling as that is, hopefully that becomes a new connection or a new relationship to pursue, because one of the things that often happens in families is, you know three times, great-grandma had 12 kids and only one of those children oftentimes inherited all the photographs and the stories and the information, the family Bible and whatever right, and so you have to sometimes track down other branches of the family tree to find some of those additional rich details about those common ancestors that you share. Dna is a great way to do that.
Speaker 1:I must admit it's changed my research. It really has revolutionized my research. I'm waiting for a test to come back, actually on somebody that I've done that's going to come on the podcast in a few weeks, because his great-grandmother hasn't basically put on the birth certificate who the father is. So his surname technically is not the surname he is using at the moment. So I'm not saying I'm going to be able to find out who you know what his surname technically should be, but I thought I'd have a go when the DNA test results come back. So fingers crossed, right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and that has been game-changing for people who have unknown parentage in particular Whether that's an adoptee or a foundling or someone who was raised by a single mother with no knowledge of who their father was that taking a DNA test is probably the fastest way to solve that particular mystery. Now, on the other side of that coin, those of us who know who our parents are and have fully built family trees. If we are taking DNA tests and attaching those to our trees, it makes those who have no documentation available to them more easily able to solve that mystery for themselves. When they take a test and show up as your second or third cousin, you then become the one who can provide that information to them. So really, it's almost kind of a service that we do to others to enable them to find out more about who they are and what their original surname would have been.
Speaker 1:Now we've already mentioned that there are billions of records on Ancestry. Do you have any favorite records or could you maybe throw out five record sets that you think it's worth us checking out on Ancestry?
Speaker 2:Yeah, of course. So as a genealogist, the foundational records that I think that most of us use is the census, and luckily you and I, mikaela, both come from countries where that is prevalent. Right In England they take a census every 10 years on the ones. In the US, they take a census every 10 years on the zeros. They also take a census every 10 years in Canada, and then the governments in all three countries have different rules regarding whether those records are public or private, for how long. And really they're the only three countries in the world that consistently take a census and have made it publicly available. So Australia, for example, they take a census every 10 years, but their national laws are such that they tabulate all that data and then they destroy the census, So it's not publicly available ever for genealogy. So we're really fortunate, if we come from one of those three countries, that we have that foundational record set available, because it gives us a snapshot every 10 years of what the structure of that family was, who was living there, How old they were, what they were doing for work, and sometimes you get extra little bonus details thrown in.
Speaker 2:The 1931 census for Canada was just released, the 1st of June, so it's only been out for a few weeks, and one of the questions that the government asked on that census was does this household own a radio? Which seems like an odd question until you realize that they were trying to implement a national broadcast, emergency broadcasting system And they needed to know who would even be able to hear that, or to get that, to receive that message. And so that's the question the government asked for their purposes. But genealogically, that gives us an insight into how much money they may have had or how they viewed advancing technologies and whether they were up on the latest things or whether they were kind of followers in that way. And so those, those censuses, that's the, for me, the best record available. For sure You wanted four more. I can keep going.
Speaker 1:The post is when you're leaving this.
Speaker 2:So the next step is always, for me, birth, marriage and death records, and just having access to some of that basic information helps us fill in the blanks on a family tree. It doesn't help us fill in the blanks in a story, though, and so the third, probably most important, record set for me is going to be newspapers. Anywhere I can find a newspaper, it's going to give me some insight, some story, some scandal, some everyday snippet of information that's going to help me understand these people better and their lives a little bit better, and I know you have a particular fondness for newspapers as well.
Speaker 1:I love a newspaper. I've literally written two books based off articles that I found in new in newspapers. Krista, I love them. Can I just ask, just going back slightly you know what you were saying about, like birth, marriage and death records What is the difference, Have you found, between the information they would get on an American record and the information they would get on a British record? Is there a big difference? And like, obviously over here in England when we want to order, say, birth certificate, we go to the GRO. It costs us a loving quid. It seems like it takes months for them to send it out. Honestly, I don't know what they send it by. Mine was apparently posted yesterday. If I get it this week I'll be shocked. Right, But in terms of information, what is the difference? Like, do we get anything different on, say, an American record and what we get over here?
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's a great question. So a couple of differences. One is England, of course, started keeping birth, marriage and death records back in 1837, which I think is brilliant and lovely And their countrywide records, and it's so orderly And I appreciate it so much. Ancestry has the indexes to all of those GRO records, which is great because you can get a hint or you can do a search and find if a record exists. Now of course the challenge is y'all tend to use very common names And so I might get five or six people with the exact same name born and with their birth registered in the same quarter, and at 11 quid a pop I have to order sometimes two or three different certificates to figure out which one is my person. But the consistency in the nationwide coverage in England is so much better.
Speaker 2:Here in the US all of the birth, marriage and death records are regulated at a state level. So the first problem is you have to know what state they were born in. Just the US is not sufficient because there's no countrywide coverage of that. The second challenge is that every state then controls when they started keeping records, and that's different for every state, and then they also control the privacy level of those records. So in England the GRO index is public all the way through today, you know. But in the US it varies by state. So here in Utah, where I was born, there's a 100-year privacy on birth records, but in California, where my siblings and my parents were all born, there is no privacy law. It's very similar to England where the indexes are freely available, and so you have to understand all the different places.
Speaker 2:The last thing I would say about that is just that in England oftentimes when we get that register entry from the GRO, it has very limited information as opposed to a birth certificate here in the US. The one I just looked at from my grandfather last week from Arkansas, listed the names and ages and occupations and addresses of both of his parents. It listed the name of the doctor who showed up to record the birth. It listed the address where they had lived. It listed how many children had been born to that mother, so we knew he was number six. It listed trying to figure what else was on there the residence of the parents, the place where the baby was born. I mean, they just have a lot more information.
Speaker 1:So that is the one thing over here you can see on some sites. Some mothers made a name. But to get that information you know you have to order it, as I've said, and then it takes a bit of time to come And then you kind of feel a bit shortchanged because you're not really going to do anything with it other than just look at the information. But you know it is what it is And I said as I mowed on, i think, last week's podcast, there isn't really a lot we can do about that.
Speaker 1:Picking up back with your favorite records. It's funny that you actually mentioned newspapers because when I was looking for my ancestor who, i've already mentioned, moved to California he was an actor to find out what happened to him, which then led me on to more records I found in the newspaper. So I found that in 1933, he'd stopped being in silent films with Oliver and Hardy. He was now a make-up artist. I think he was working for Warner Brothers at the time and he had a heart attack And that's sadly how he died. But I wouldn't have known that had I not found that in the American newspapers. So I, as you well know, i love a newspaper. Have you used newspapers a lot in your research.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so much. So. Ancestry actually has a sister site called newspaperscom And if you have the top level Ancestry subscription, it's called All Access. You do get access to those. We have English titles as well as Canadian titles and, of course, a very large collection of US newspaper titles that go back in some cases to the 1700s, which is brilliant, the further back you get in your research to have that resource.
Speaker 2:I have found that newspapers I like to call them the Facebook of their day right, like sometimes in some of these small newspapers you had editors who were just trying to fill column inches And so they'll have like a little society column and they'll just get little like one or two sentence snippets of what's happening around town. And I have broken through more brick walls with some of those little society snippets. For example, i had looked forever for this woman's maiden name and I couldn't find it. I couldn't find it And it wasn't showing up on any records that I had access to.
Speaker 2:And there was this little two line thing in a newspaper that just said something to the effect of Mrs John Smith just returned from Omaha where she was visiting her daughter, mrs William Johnson, who just had a baby. Well, it was William Johnson's wife's maiden name that I was looking for and now, knowing that her mother had come visit, now I could go and dig into that information to verify that as her maiden name. And it was just from a little little snippet in a newspaper. So I love the big, dramatic, juicy articles. Of course I have an ancestor who's a bigamist who made all the headlines, but I also found those little society snippets.
Speaker 1:I've been chasing a bigamist, christa, honestly for about five years. Yeah, i've been everywhere with him. I've been to. I started off in Ireland, then I went to Italy, then I went through London, then I went all over England because he went on a bit of a tour And I'm on about wife number five in Ireland. He's just left her. Now He's on his way back over to London.
Speaker 1:I do know kind of how it ends because we covered it on. I did a podcast with Brad called Behind the Headlines of History an ancestry podcast. It's still out there, i'm sure it is. If you want to have a little Google search, i'm sure you can find it. And I spoke about him with Brad on that podcast and I've been obsessed with him ever since And I know how the story ends.
Speaker 1:I know that in 1864, he ends up in prison for the final time for his Bigamy and also he stole money. He was stolen money off these women as well. So I know he goes to prison. I do not know what happens to him after that. So I think it's probably gonna be another decade of research before I can answer the question. I need more records to be released, but I'm presuming he probably just changed his name and got on a boat and may have ended up in America. You know, changed his identity and just Um Just left, left the country. So we've mentioned newspapers, we've mentioned census records and birth, marriage and death records. Are there any other records that you enjoy reading or that really helped you with your research?
Speaker 2:Yeah, i think I'd say my fourth favorite record set is military records of all variations, but in particular pension files.
Speaker 2:I love service records and enlistment records because they kind of give you a timeline and you understand a little bit more about that.
Speaker 2:But those pension files, when you know when the pensioner is applying to the government, they have to often prove who their spouse is and who their children are, or if the widow is the one applying, she'll have to provide affidavits, and about her relationship with her husband and and that she was still happily married to him and hasn't married somebody else and and so sometimes you get just basic forms that have been filled out, but sometimes you get, you know, like just meaty files full of letters and pages of family Bibles, and You know letters from other relatives who are claiming that this person really is who they say they are and that they really were in this relationship, and I just It helps solve genealogy problems, but it also gives this really unique insight into the bureaucracy of the day, when, when you know so many of these men in most cases had served their country, and Then they have to come begging or their widows have to come begging for a pension just to survive the last part of their lives.
Speaker 2:And Yeah, it's an interesting, just a really interesting file. Here in the US in particular We have those pension files dating all the way back to.
Speaker 2:I guess here we call it the Revolutionary War, there you call it something a little different, but we have those then through that, through the War of 1812, through the Civil War and then in the UK of course, and we see some of those records as well which are just brilliant.
Speaker 1:So we've mentioned military records. last one I'm not very good at counting, but I think the last one would be number five, yep.
Speaker 2:Yeah, number five, my probably the fifth set of records I use the most are immigration records, records, you know, inbound, outbound passenger lists. Of course England is is fantastic because not only did y'all keep track of who came in for a period of time, you kept track of who was leaving as well. And then you know just kind of the ancillary records around, that not just passenger lists but citizenship records, passports, like all of those different kinds of records that talk about the movement of people, and sometimes it's permanent movement And sometimes it's not, sometimes it's just trips back and forth across the pond. Oftentimes we find people, you know, people were much more mobile than we give them credit for. I think.
Speaker 2:We think, oh, somebody got on a ship and never came home. No, like I have a Scottish great, three times great grandfather left Edinburgh And in 1830 to go to Canada, thought he was leaving forever. But in 1839 he had the opportunity to go home for about six or eight months and Took it. And then we see him on another ship coming back to the US, in in, you know, late 1839, and this time, you know, he left from New York to go to to Liverpool and then, you know, made his way up to Scotland to visit his family, and then he sailed out of Liverpool and ended up coming back Into the US through New Orleans.
Speaker 2:And he was actually one of those first ships that came to New Orleans and then transported passengers from a Ocean vessel to a river ship and went up the Mississippi River with a group of about you know 40 or 50 people that had Immigrated with him from Scotland in England.
Speaker 2:So so people sometimes went back and forth. And so don't don't just stop at that one Passenger list that you find them on. You might be surprised to find them later and then as time progresses, right. So in the 1830s and 40s, a passenger list might have really scant information on it, but as time passes, those, those forms become more robust, and when you hit the turn of the century Now, you've got information about sometimes who they're coming to in the country that they're visiting, who they left behind, who their nearest relative is in the country They just left, how much money they have in their pocket, how tall they are, what color their hair and eyes are. Like you get like those forms just get more and more and more detailed, so that you start to get a really clear picture of who these people were.
Speaker 1:What motivated you at the beginning, then, to start looking into your family history, like where did this all start?
Speaker 2:Yeah, you know it's funny. I was raised in a family that family history was really important. But the origin story that I tell goes a little something like this my parents were both born and raised in Los Angeles and When they got married they decided they wanted to fly the nest and go to school somewhere else, and so they came to Utah for college and I was born while they were going to school here. And so you've got these two young newlyweds With two different degrees in college that they're pursuing and a new baby, and basically that meant they spent no time together, and for my mom that was not acceptable.
Speaker 2:So she told my dad that for their last two years of school they were going to take a class together every semester, and at Brigham Young University, where they went to school there, you can actually pursue a degree in family history, so they have a lot of family history classes, and so, even though my dad was an accounting major and my mom was an English major, what they chose to do was to take a family history class together every semester. But because they were both in the same class, they had to bring the baby with them. So I was with them in those classes and then one Friday a month, they would drive up to Salt Lake City, to the, to the old family history library, and shove me and my baby carrier under a microfilm reader And just tell me the stories that they were finding as they sat there doing research all day. Of course they now take full credit for my career, since that was the genesis of that.
Speaker 1:I'm surprised they don't want a bit of commission.
Speaker 2:Right, so yeah, so that was, that was kind of their start in family history. And then, of course, like being raised in a home with that as kind of a focus, having family pictures on the wall We always had a family tree on the wall. So I think just even having those things in my environment had we never spoken about it would have had an effect and an impact on me. And then I was just raised knowing, you know, i know all four of my grandparents, even though one died before I was born. I was hearing constant stories about him Going to family reunions, meeting my cousins. I know all 12 of my first cousins. I know, you know most of my dad's first cousins and my mom's first cousins and their kids and now grandkids, and so we're just a family who's always been very involved in one another's lives.
Speaker 2:And When I started meeting people when I was in college Who didn't have that you know some people who couldn't even name all four of their grandparents It was so baffling to me that I just Had this innate desire to want to share that with everyone. And so family history became this place where not only could I help facilitate those discoveries for other, but in the role that I specifically serve at Ancestry. I can educate people to help them make those discoveries for themselves. And there's there's just something so fulfilling about seeing Somebody's face light up for the first time when they see their grandpa on a census record and realize, oh my gosh, those are his parents and his brothers and sisters, and I had no idea these people Even existed, and yet they were such an important part of my grandfather's life. Um, i love that moment.
Speaker 1:Obviously, this isn't my day job for me. So, uh, I'm a lecturer in history during the day, but I've been doing this now for For 20 odd years and I regularly spend my spare time Helping people who don't know who their birth parents are. And I do that for free, never charge anyone. I do it for free and that's just me giving back, because I have those skills. I've acquired them over a long period of time. Dna now helps and makes the process a lot quicker, but that is just me Giving back.
Speaker 1:I also believe that nobody should Be buried alone. So over here we get coroners reaching out for family members of people that have passed away, and you know and you think if there's more people out there that can do this and There are. Look, it does cost money to research your family tree. If you have to buy certificates, as you know, they're not cheap. However, if you've got your local library card as I always say, first stop your local library, because often they have Some subscriptions to genealogical websites and if you've got a library card, you can research for free, and There are people there to help from local family history societies. So so you know, check that out.
Speaker 1:But I always think that You know if people are Watching us on YouTube or they're listening to us on on Apple. We started with I started with very little information. I know you had more information than than me, but it is addictive, isn't it, and it's something that you know it's. It's such an enjoyable hobby and We are very lucky that we have made careers out of it to a point. But Anybody can do it, can't it can't make a stare. Anybody can do this.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you know it's. It's interesting. All families are messy and families have always been messy. But one of the things that I find in family history is that when we start asking questions, sometimes just the process of asking those questions starts to heal some of those messy relationships. One of the things I get to do here at ancestry Every two weeks as we have new employees starting, you know groups of a few people I get to sit down with them for two hours, you know, an hour their first day, an hour their second day and help them start their family tree. And and one of the homework assignments I give them on day one is Think about somebody in your family who knows more about your family history than you do and call them tonight.
Speaker 2:And just The act of making that phone call, of reaching out to that grandparent or that uncle or, in some cases, even a parent, i've seen some really incredible things happen over the years with these employees who, just having that conversation Right, dad was just waiting for you to ask the question and now he's gonna share all the things with you And it's a really beautiful thing. So, yes, anybody can do it. Sometimes it takes just a Moment of bravery to make that phone call or send that text message to a family member You might not have spoken to in a while, but family history has the power to heal some of those relationships And, if nothing else, to put things into perspective as you start to learn more about Who those people were and how the choices that they may lead to where you are today.
Speaker 1:Have you got any advice for people out there who have been researching and they've hit a brick wall? Could you offer any advice, christopher, to where to go, where to look, what to do when you hit a brick wall and you think, well, that's it, you know, can't go any further now.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's interesting because I often deal with this at genealogy conferences. I'll attend an event and somebody will come up to me just with desperation in their eyes. I've been working on this brick wall for 20 years and and Somehow they expect me to solve it magically in a five-minute phone. You know, tell the face-to-face conversation and and the reality is that Sometimes people are looking for a magic record that's gonna answer their question, and The further back in time you get, the less likely that is to happen. So this is gonna sound a little bit academic, but I promise I'll bring it back around In.
Speaker 2:In genealogy we talk about direct evidence and indirect evidence, and direct evidence is the record that states the name of the mother With her maiden name listed there. Right, that directly answers the question You're salt trying to solve. Indirect evidence means sometimes you have to take 10 or 20 different pieces of information and kind of piece the story together. And so, for example, you may not have a birth record that lists the mother's full name, including her maiden name, but you may have a census that lists a nephew that has a surname and you trace that nephew And you find out that he's the son of this woman and you find her maiden name And then you find some other record that lists that you know this woman had a sister with that first name and you string all those little pieces of things together to say, oh, i think, based on this Indirect evidence, that her maiden name was this.
Speaker 2:And I think sometimes, particularly When we've gone through building our family trees and just really easily accessing direct evidence that answers those questions, we don't ever develop that skill of stringing together that indirect evidence, and it is a skill and it takes practice. And so sometimes, you know, instead of trying to directly barrel your way through that brick wall looking for that direct evidence, maybe try climbing over the wall instead by piecing together lots of different information and think about Researching or looking into the lives of all the people surrounding that person, because very often the clue that you need or the little piece of indirect evidence You need, will be because of a sibling or because of a grandchild or somebody else in their life.
Speaker 1:What I will say as well and I know we spoke about this earlier on is we mentioned it on ancestry. You get like the leaf Mm-hmm. Also, you get Matches to other people's family trees. Yep, what I will say and I know you'll probably echo this is if you do end up being matched to somebody else's family tree, make sure that they have done the research correctly Before you go ahead and then add it all and realize actually they've gone wrong and then you've come on. That was like a rookie error that I think I made quite a bit at the beginning. I think I thought, yeah, they obviously know more than me. They must be right, you know, and then sometimes they're not. Would you echo that?
Speaker 2:Absolutely, michaela. Yeah, and you are not alone. I have made that same mistake myself over the years. I for a very long time thought I was a descendant of a Mayflower passenger, only in my more experienced years to come back and review it and realize I had copied some information somewhere along the line and assumed that these were the parents of this person. And when I had to disconnect that branch and break it off it was painful, but yeah, that's kind of how that works.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we just have to be really careful about what we're, what we're copying. There's a phrase I started my YouTube series The Barefoot Genealogist back in 2011 and have been doing it pretty, pretty consistently since then, and I always signed those shows off Have Fun Climbing Your Family Tree. And a lot of people for a long time thought I was emphasizing the word fun because it is fun, but now I tend to emphasize the word your family tree. Have fun climbing your family tree a little bit more, because it is really easy to just take a wrong turn and then discover later you've been climbing someone else's family tree, not your own.
Speaker 1:I am nearly going to let you go, but I just want to ask you one question. There's about 14 questions wrapped up in one. You could invite anybody from your family tree for dinner tonight. Who would that be? What would you cook, and is there anything you would like to ask them?
Speaker 2:Oh, wow, that's a fantastic question. So I do have lots of favorite ancestors, but one that I've been particularly obsessed with. She's actually the previous wife of the Bigamist. Her name was Carrie Inman. She is my great, great grandmother.
Speaker 2:She was born in Ohio at the beginning of the US Civil War and orphaned at a young age. Her father died in the war. Her mother died shortly thereafter of an illness. She was raised by her maternal grandparents, but they were quite elderly and sickly, And so she pretty much fended for herself her whole life, And when she got married she thought that was going to be this great thing. And then he ended up being kind of a cad and left her with two boys to raise on her own. And then, when her older son got married and had four children of his own, he ended up pulling the same stunt his father did. And so now she's left with this daughter-in-law, who was from New Orleans and was Cajun, And here in the US it's a very different culture in different parts of the country, And she has these four girls and she's stuck in Ohio. And so Carrie told her daughter-in-law you know, if you want to go home to your family and raise your girls there near them. I'll go with you. And so she picked up her whole life and moved to New Orleans and spent the rest of her life taking care of those four little girls and helping to raise them and then some of their children as they started to come along.
Speaker 2:That woman is my grandfather's grandmother And he only met her twice in his whole life because she was so busy in New Orleans working and helping to raise these cousins of his And he lost touch with them. She died while he was serving in World War II And we had very little information about her and about her life And he asked me to find his cousins And unfortunately I didn't find them until after he passed. But I did find them. I have been to New Orleans a few times to visit them. I'm actually leaving tomorrow to go spend a week down there.
Speaker 2:And so I don't get to have dinner with her, but if I could, i would.
Speaker 2:I do get to have dinner with these cousins, though, and the oldest one remembers her and knew her and was, you know, raised, helped raise by her for the first six or eight years of her life, and to be able to hear those stories and get that information is just so precious to me.
Speaker 2:After looking for her for so long. She was my brick wall, and to be able to find a way around that and through that was a 30 year quest of my life, and so, yeah, so I would have a dinner with her. I would want to ask her about whether she understood the sacrifice that she was making and whether she really felt like she had a choice and did that voluntarily and sacrificially, or whether she felt like she had no choice. And then what would I fix for her? That's a good question. I would probably just make a comfort meal right, like meatloaf and mashed potatoes, and you know something that, for me, always just feels like I'm taking care of the little girl that I was, because I feel like maybe she wasn't as taken care of for most of her life as she could have been.
Speaker 1:In terms of your family tree. Is there anything left for you to find, krista or having you? do you feel like now you've gone as far as the records will take you? There is so much still to find.
Speaker 2:No, there's so much still to find. I actually have another brick wall on my mom's side of the family tree. Her great grandfather was an immigrant and maybe from Ireland, but we're not sure. So his name was John O'Brien. We just don't know whether he was born there or here, and that's what we're trying to solve.
Speaker 1:Krista Cowan. thank you so so much for being on the podcast today. As I said it is, we are with genealogy royalty today. Honestly, i am such a fan, so thank you so much for taking the time to jump on and chat to me.
Speaker 2:Thanks for having me, it was delightful.
Speaker 1:I really hope you enjoyed my chat with Ancestries Krista Cowan, otherwise known as the Barefoot genealogist. If you are listening to this podcast via your usual podcast stations, please remember to download, and if you are watching it on YouTube, please remember to like and subscribe And that way, every time I release a new edition of the podcast, you will get a notification. Thank you so much for listening. I've been amazed by the amount of people that listen to this podcast. So thank you so much And I hope you are enjoying it. If you have any questions or you want to contact me, you can do so via my website, wwwmackaylihuecom. I'll see you again next Monday.