Host Scott Fisher opens the show with David Allen Lambert, Chief Genealogist of the New England Historic Genealogical Society and AmericanAncestors.org. David begins the conversation talking about his recent membership in a society that honors his War of 1812 ancestor. Then, David tells the tale of the rescue of hundreds of glass negatives that were headed to the dumpster in the Boston area. Some date back to the 1860s!  Next, it’s one thing to have your crime discovered through the DNA of your cousins… it’s entirely another when you post your OWN DNA and are found! David has the story of this knucklehead criminal. It seems that every major initiative results in some new advancement, such as with the space program in the 1960s. David shares the advancements caused by World War II… and they are significant. And finally, hear about the latest Viking treasure hoard, where it was found, and the time it has been dated to.

Next, Fisher chats with Brandt Gibson from sponsor Legacy Tree Genealogists. As a long time DNA researcher, Brandt has some remarkable stories that have emerged from his client research. You’ll want to catch these!

Then, Jonny Perl, creator of DNAPainter.com joins Fisher from London talking about the origins of the unique site and the most popular tools that have been added to it since the beginning that can help you break open your lines.

David then returns for a pair of questions on Ask Us Anything. One has to do with writing a family history, and the other with why someone’s grandmother would be working on a census for the government during the Depression.

That’s all this week on Extreme Genes, America’s Family History Show!

Transcript for Episode 387

Extreme Genes, America’s Family History Show

Host: Scott Fisher with guest David Allen Lambert

Segment 1 Episode 386

Fisher: And welcome genies, to another round of Extreme Genes, America’s Family History Show and ExtremeGenes.com. My name is Fisher. I am your Radio Roots Sleuth on the program where we shake your family tree and watch the nuts fall out. I can’t believe we’re at the end of July and into the beginning of August. Coming up here in just a few minutes, we’re going to talk to Brandt Gibson. He is with Legacy Tree Genealogists, one of our great sponsors. Talking about and sharing some of the great stories that he has from discoveries he’s made for certain clients. You’re going to love what he’s got to share with you. And then later in the show, one of the guys who has just emerged from out of nowhere is one of the giants in our space, Jonny Perl. The creator of DNA Painter is going to be on. He’s going to talk a little about the history of what got him going in it, some of the latest innovations on the site, how you can use it to help you in your research, and how you can just have some fun seeing how all your DNA kind of matches up with a little chromosome painting on DNA Painter. And if you haven’t signed up for our Weekly Genie Newsletter yet, we invite you to do so at ExtremeGenes.com or on our Facebook page. Right now, it’s time to check in with David Allen Lambert, the Chief Genealogist of the New England Historic Genealogical Society and AmericanAncestors.org. Hello, David.

David: And how are you, sir?

Fisher: I am great. I’m getting ready to go on a little trip out to a national park in California, here in a few days. So, next week we’re going to take a break and share one of our classic rewinds and get back at it right after that. But I’m so looking forward to getting out and having some fun on the road.

David: The road is always fun to be on, especially when you’re driving and not walking or thumbing. [Laughs]

Fisher: Yes, exactly. Good point.

David: Such a pleasure going someplace with a car.

Fisher: Yeah.

David: Well, you know my ancestor back in 1812 didn’t actually have a car to go to Plattsburgh, New York, but I got my membership certificate today in the mail, this huge certificate from the General Society of the War of 1812 because I’m now a life member with Massachusetts. I’m really excited about it. Of course, I had a new word on the document that I had to explain to my children.

Fisher: Which is?

David: Artificer.

Fisher: Really?

David: Do I have to explain it to you also?

Fisher: Yeah, go ahead. You’ve done it before. I’ve not heard that word.

David: [Laughs] It’s okay. It’s essentially somebody who is skilled in carpentry and he was in the Light Artillery. And essentially, if the cannon carriage broke or something needed to be repaired, he was there.

Fisher: Really?

David: So, he served with the U.S. Light Artillery from 1813 to 1815 and now I have a certificate.

Fisher: The only thing I’m concerned with Dave, if it’s a lifetime certificate, then when you die do they come and take the certificate back?

David: No, I’m being buried with it.

Fisher: Oh!

David: Well, that way at least I can be an interesting archeological find.

Fisher: [Laughs] All right, let’s get on with our Family Histoire News, David, where do you want to start?

David: You know in 2021 if you want to get rid of a photograph you basically delete it off your smartphone or your digital camera. Back in 1891, it wasn’t so much the same way. You had a glass negative. And if you had thousands of them, well that might be something that someone had to take care of. In 2020, a local photographer here in Massachusetts, got a phone call that somebody was dumping four thousand antic glass negatives and wanted to know if she wanted them before she threw them in the trash.

Fisher: Oh wow!

David: Well, I can tell you that Terri Cappucci originally thought, “Uh, probably not.” well, she relented and now she has them all. Some of these images are amazing. And this is a story that was in the Boston Globe and the sharpness of these photographs from the glass negatives will blow your mind.

Fisher: What time period are we talking here?

David: 1860s to the early part of the 1900s.

Fisher: That’s fantastic! What a great find and I’m glad she said yes. Those are not things to be lost. And besides, she could donate it to organizations like yours or other places in Boston if she didn’t want to deal with them.

David: Right. Most of them are for western Massachusetts and sadly the paper envelopes that a lot of them have don’t say the names or the dates, so there’s a lot of speculation. So, people out there might be looking at an ancestor when they look at the article and just not now.

Fisher: Wow!

David: You know, occasionally, police will find someone who has committed a crime from a long time ago, because somebody’s a cousin, they’ve got that DNA match. Yeah, well, this person committed an assault a number of years ago and he submitted his DNA for genealogical purposes to a testing company.

Fisher: [Laughs]

David: Guess what? He’s now arrested for an assault that occurred back in the early 2000s. He must have forgot.

Fisher: Maybe so. Where does he live?

David: He lives in Florida.

Fisher: Oh, well, that explains it all! So there you go.

David: He has a smaller room now though.

Fisher: [Laughs]

David: You know, I love the story that you shared with me about the six World War II innovations that changed everyday life, I mean that includes flu vaccines, penicillin.

Fisher: Yeah.

David: I mean, there’s so many things. How about jet engines? If we didn’t have World War II, I mean, we probably wouldn’t be jetting around and who knows how long it would have actually taken to appear. And there’s other things like blood plasma transfusions, electronic computers, yeah back in World War II.

Fisher: Yeah, this has really brought all these things along. Although I wouldn’t say that I’d rather had the war so we could have these things. I wish they just kind of developed in their own due time.

David: And the last thing that’s on the radar, that’s radar. That was developed during World War II as well.

Fisher: Wow!

David: You know, the idea that I want to get a metal detector and go out on the beach and hopefully find treasure and not just find crushed aluminum cans has always been a problem. And in the Isle of Man, they found another Viking hoard and this goes back to the 11th century, Fish with coins from Ireland and England and Germany and of course some minted on the Isle of Man and there were over 87 coins, 13 pieces of cut silver, arm rings and other associated objects and they believe that the man that had it just basically decided to bury it in the ground, because that’s what they did back then.

Fisher: That’s what they did.

David: Perhaps you know where there’s treasure.  Yeah, you didn’t go to the bank, you know.

Fisher: Right. [Laughs]

David: Well, apparently he forgot where we buried it.

Fisher: Yeah, or he died before anybody else found out where he buried it.

David: Well, the Vikings found him immediately after he buried it. Well, that’s all I have from my side of the world here, signing out from Beantown. But don’t forget that if you’re not a member of American Ancestors, we’d love to have you. And you can save $20 on membership and use the coupon code “Extreme” on AmericanAncestors.org.

Fisher: All right, David. Thank you so much. We will talk to you again in a little bit at the back end of the show, we get back to Ask Us Anything. And coming up next, we’re going to have one of the DNA specialists from our fine sponsors over at Legacy Tree Genealogists, talking about some of the discoveries he’s made for some of his clients, some amazing stories. You’re going to want to hear those when we return, coming up in three minutes on Extreme Genes, America’s Family History Show.

 

 

 

Segment 2 Episode 386

Host: Scott Fisher with guest Brandt Gibson

Fisher: All right, back on the job at Extreme Genes, America’s Family History Show and ExtremeGenes.com. I am Fisher, your Radio Roots Sleuth and everywhere I go since we started Extreme Genes back in 2013, I hear from people saying, ”I love the stories. I love the stories.” Well, this week we got Brandt Gibson on the line. He’s a researcher on the DNA team over at our sponsors at Legacy Tree Genealogists, and Brandt has stories and I thought we’d share at least a couple of them with you today. Brandt welcome back. It’s great to have you.

Brandt: Thanks. It’s great to be here.

Fisher: You know, as a DNA specialist, you get to put together all kinds of different cases, these little jigsaw puzzles. I always tell people, with a regular jigsaw puzzle, when you’re done you break it up, you throw it back in the box, you put it on a shelf in the closet and that’s it. But when you put together a DNA jigsaw puzzle, it’s framed, it’s put on the wall, and everybody talks about it forevermore. And you’ve got a couple of great stories I think people are going to be talking about in their families for a long time to come. Let’s start with the story about Ernest Martson Floyd Hull.

Brandt: Yeah. Sure. That was a really interesting case where the client was two children of Ernest Marts who passed away some years before. And he’d been a little secretive about his past. Wouldn’t say a whole lot about where his family was from. Just that he was born in the Seattle area, supposedly at a logging camp.

Fisher: Oh.

Brandt: And he said his mom had broken up with her husband. There wasn’t a whole lot of detail there. And his kids just wanted to know more about their father and where his family was from. So, when we first got the case, we started digging into and we found in the records that he’d given two different sets of names for his parents.

Fisher: Wow. [Laughs]

Brandt: And that came directly from him.

Fisher: Yeah.

Brandt: Why would it not match? That didn’t make any sense.

Fisher: No, it doesn’t.

Brandt: We tried all kinds of permutations, combinations of the names, nothing came up. We couldn’t find these people anywhere. So, we focused in on DNA tests. Fortunately, both of them had done DNA tests at Ancestry, 23andMe, and we started finding some close matches with family with the last name of Hull. Like, okay, it’s not anywhere on their tree, let’s go beyond here.

Fisher: Really? So, this is a third name now that’s come up?  

Brandt: Yeah, one that didn’t come from Ernest or from either of his kids. Nobody had seen this name before.

Fisher: Okay.

Brandt: So, we started digging into this tree and we zeroed in on the family of Floyd Hull, and we found that the clients had matches on Floyd’s mom’s side, and Floyd’s dad’s side. We were like, okay. When you see something like that coming together, usually it means you’re a descendant of both families unless there’s some kind of weird case where relatives of both sides married somewhere else.

Fisher: Sure.  

Brandt: We looked at the DNA that they shared with these people, and everything fit for them to be a descendant of Floyd’s mom and dad. So, we checked into Floyd. Turns out he had the exact same birth date as Ernest Marts.

Fisher: [Laughs] Hmm, what a coincidence!

Brandt: I know, right. And Floyd disappeared from the records about a year or two before Ernest showed up in Illinois. There’s no connection to Seattle or Washington State or anything.

Fisher: Wow! So, was in known in the Floyd Hull family that this guy had just disappeared, nobody knew what happened to him. Were there rumors of murder and intrigue and things like this?  

Brandt: There actually was. There was a family tree by a descendant of Floyd’s brother. He didn’t have any documentation for this or anything, but he said that Floyd had died in South America in the early 1920s or something. There’s no newspaper or anything. I have no idea where he got the information from. But the family knew that Floyd had disappeared, they just had no idea what happened to him.

Fisher: Um hmm. So, at some point, this legend came about that he was in South America and died down there.

Brandt: Yeah. I guess they had to have some reason to explain his disappearance, but it turns out he just completely fabricated a new identity and sold that to his wife and to their kids. And his kids have the last name Marts. To this day that is just a completely made up name.

Fisher: Wow! [Laughs] Are they thinking about changing it back to Hull?  

Brandt: I was wondering about that. I hadn’t heard that they were. As far as I know they were going to stick with the name that they were given.

Fisher: Wow! So, what was the wrap-up of this and how was the response of the family when you gave them the big reveal that Ernest Marts was actually Floyd Hull and he was supposed to be dead in South America?  

Brandt: Yeah. They were pretty surprised. I think for me, the icing on the cake was that we were able to find a picture of Floyd in his younger years. He looks like maybe in his early 20s or something and he was like tall and confident looking guy. So, it’s just a total mystery why he left his family, why he changed his name. There’s no court record or anything that indicates he had gotten into any trouble or anything. It’s just sort of like, “You know what, I want to start over. Bye everyone. Have a nice life” kind of thing I guess.

Fisher: Wow! That’s a good one. All right, what else you got?

Brandt: All right. We had another one where a client named John, he had an unknown birth father, his mom had already passed away, and he wanted to figure out who his biological father was, where his ancestors were from, that kind of thing. So, we started looking into it and he had matches from the Southern U.S. and he had good matches. They all came together like you kinda hope they do in these kinda cases.

Fisher: Right, of course.

Brandt: Where you want to be able to find some kind of answer. And so, we were able to pinpoint his biological father’s likely family. So, we researched that family and they had two sons that were the right age to be his father. Unfortunately, both sons had already passed away several years before. But we were able to track down one child from each of those two boys.

Fisher: Okay.

Brandt: We put together contact information for those children, sent that out to the client. At that point we were basically out of time so we said, “Here’s what we have. If you feel like reaching out to these two, they might be able to give you some information to help you figure out which of the two brothers are your biological father.” When you come to that kind of situation, unless you have a direct descendant of that person already tested, usually you have to go out and find somebody else to either do a DNA test or provide you the information to help you figure it out.

Fisher: Sure, of course.  

Brandt: So, some time passed. The client reached out to these children of the two boys eventually. And the son of one of them came back and said, “Hey, my dad told me some years before he died that he had a relationship with a young lady and she got pregnant, and they decided to end the relationship at that point.” And the timing was right, the place was right for him to be the client’s biological father. He was like, “Wow, this sounds like they knew about me. This is really cool.” And so then, this son started going though his dad’s old photo album. He kept everything, thankfully. I love it when they do that.

Fisher: [Laughs] It’s the best.  

Brandt: And he started going through his dad’s old photo album he said, “Hey, would you be interested in seeing some old pictures from my dad’s old album?” And he said, “I would love that! It sounds like we’re siblings here, so the more information I can get about our dad would be better.” And so he started taking pictures with his phone and sending them to the client, and then he looked at these pictures and was like, “Oh wow, this is cool. This is cool.” And then the second picture comes in and he stops and was like, “Wait a minute, that’s my mom.”

Fisher: [Laughs]

Brandt: You got a picture of my mother in your photo album.

Fisher: [Laughs]

Brandt: This son had never known who this woman was. He just thought it’s one of dad’s old friends or girlfriends or something. It turns out, that was the client’s biological mother sitting in his photo album for almost 60 years.

Fisher: Wow! And that kind of put a little bow on it, didn’t it?

Brandt: Oh that did. He said, “Okay, now I know for sure that this is where I’m from.”

Fisher: Yeah.  

Brandt: Because the odds of that picture just randomly showing up there’s no astronomical way.

Fisher: No. There’s no way. And the other aspect is obviously you could have tested this guy to see what the relationship was.

Brandt: Right.

Fisher: But that’s pretty amazing though to find a photo of your mother in somebody’s photo album. That’s great! What a great story. All right, we’ve got time for one more. Let’s talk about the Buler case.

Brandt: Right. This one was another client who had an unknown biological father, and his mom had already passed away. He didn’t really have a whole lot of information about who his biological father was. So, he came to us and said, “I’ve done DNA testing everywhere. Can you help me find my father’s family?” So we said, sure. We went through all of his match lists and everything else, and it looks like his biological father was Jewish. So, we reached out to all these people and look, we put together a pretty big family tree of who the client’s matches were but there wasn’t really one branch that shared a lot more DNA than another. So, it was kind of like well, you fit in somewhere in here. We’re just not entirely sure which one because there’s a couple of different places where you could fit. So, we kept working on it, time went on, and towards the end of it we were kinda like well, okay, let’s just throw one more Hail Mary out there and reach out to all of your close matches one more time and say, “Is there any information you know about your family that could help us try and figure out how our client is related to you.” And so, a couple of them wrote back you know, “Here’s this. Here’s that.” It was like, okay. One lady wrote back and said, “You know, I had this cousin who lived down on the East Coast somewhere and he had a girlfriend named Bambi. I remember that because the name was so unusual. They broke up and they never found out what happened to her after the fact. So, he saw the message on 23andMe system and was like, “Wait a minute, my mom went by Bambi in the 1960s.”

Fisher: [Laughs] Wow!

Brandt: Hold the phone here. And so he started researching this guy and he was in the right place at the right time. We double checked the DNA and everything fit for this guy to be the client’s biological father.

Fisher: Still living?

Brandt: No. No, he had unfortunately passed away a few years ago as well.

Fisher: Okay. Wow! So, you’re into the family. At least now you’ve got the lines. You’ve got the whole thing the way it fit.  

Brandt: Um hmm.

Fisher: Isn’t it amazing what DNA can do. And I don’t get tired of it. I mean, supposedly it’s this kinda old had at this point, but are you kidding me, every time there’s a breakthrough there’s a life changed and history created that’s going to go on and on and on for generations. So, thanks so much for the stories Brant. Those were terrific and inspiring and fun and exciting, and look forward to catching up with Legacy Tree again next month!

Brandt: All right, sounds good. Thanks!

Fisher: And coming up next, direct from jolly old London Jonny Perl who’s rapidly becoming something of a legend in our space. He is the creator of DNA Painter. It’s your chance to do a little chromosome mapping with a lot of color, and maybe even break open some brick walls. He’ll explain how this whole thing got started, some of the new tools that have come along that have enhanced the site, so hang on for that it’s coming up for you next in five minutes on Extreme Genes, America’s Family History Show.  

 

 

Segment 3 Episode 386

Host: Scott Fisher with guest Jonny Perl

Fisher: All right, continuing to talk DNA on Extreme Genes, America’s Family History Show and ExtremeGenes.com. And my next guest is based in London as you’ll certainly hear from his voice. He is a guy that all of us in this space have gotten to know over the last several years. He is the creator of an amazing website called DNA Painter. And Jonny Perl is our man. Jonny, it’s great to have you back on the show. It’s been like over three years.

Jonny: Amazing how long it’s been, isn’t it Scott? Thank you so much for having me.

Fisher: Yeah. And we keep running into you of course at conferences and you’ve really established yourself as a player in our field and it’s so great to have you back on the show. And for people who aren’t familiar with DNA Painter, explain what it is, what it does, and how you got started doing it.

Jonny: Sure. So, DNA Painter is a website which you can find at DNAPainter.com. And it’s really a website for anyone who has taken an autosomal DNA test and is curious about some aspects of the results. I guess, I’ll embellish that statement a little more in a moment. It’s a website I launched back in the autumn of 2017. I had done a test right at the end of 2016 and I was slightly baffled at how to understand the results. And I was interested in this thing called Chromosome Mapping, which is where you can assign segments of DNA that you share with a match to the ancestor that you inherited them from. That’s a bit of a mouthful.

Fisher: Oh, no that’s well said. That’s the short version of it and very precise.

Jonny: [Laughs] So, what you end up with is this rather beautiful tapestry of color which is kind of a companion piece to your ancestral charts, your pedigree chart, you kind of have your genetic version of that showing who you inherited DNA from which can be a very enjoyable thing to do. But I also got other tools which are maybe a more practical use to people with immediate burning questions. So, I did a bit of collaboration with a lady called Leah Larkin on a very popular tool called, “What are the odds” and that allows you to use the amounts of DNA that you share with different people where you know which tree they’re in. You know how they’re related to each other. You can then try to fit yourself into that tree based on those amounts of those DNA that uses probabilities and math to help you out with that. That’s a very popular feature.

Fisher: Yes.

Jonny: And, what else have I got? I’ve got lots of other features for genealogists basically. [Laughs]

Fisher: [Laughs] Well, you started this thing because of your own curiosity. You weren’t much of a genealogist yourself up to that point. And I can’t believe it’s only been four years coming up this fall because it’s such a standard item in any genealogist’s toolkit these days. But What are the Odds, plus you’ve joined forces with Blaine Bettinger, rolling out his Shared Centimorgan project, at least the latest version of it and tied that into what’s going on there. So, you’ve got math, you’ve got science, it’s really a piece of art when you consider that you’ve got the 21 chromosomes all painted with different colors, each one representing a different ancestor or ancestral couple. What have you found has been most satisfying in this whole project for you, Jonny?

Jonny: I want to say it’s probably connecting the people around the world. I think, I was a genealogist going back maybe 10, 15 years, but I wasn’t very connected to other people. And I didn’t really know anything about DNA. So, I’ve learned an enormous amount myself and because I’ve kind of been asked to teach things to other people, that’s helped me learn even better.

Fisher: Sure.

Jonny: So, I’ve kind of come on quite a bit myself and I got to meet lots of great people around the world and interact with them. I’ve done conferences in Sweden for example. And I cherish the connections I’ve made with people really. That’s been really, really great and to know I’m helping people that makes me feel good.

Fisher: Well, have you had some stories come back to you that people have discovered as a result of DNA Painter that you can share?

Jonny: Sure. I’m not going to any enormously specific ones but I can tell you that the What are the Odds tool has clearly had a big impact. I’ve personally used it myself to find three different people’s parents now. If I was doing it fulltime I’m sure I could have done more but these are the three people who came my way.

Fisher: Sure.

Jonny: I have a good friend here in London whose mother didn’t know who her father was. She knew he was an American GI, but that’s all she knew. So, I just tentatively said, no pressure at all, but if she would like to test, I think we could figure this out. And eventually over a period of a couple of years, she did come around to the idea of testing and yeah, it came pretty quickly. So, I do find that tool very helpful and I think probably that’s the one that makes the biggest impact on people. One of the things you asked me, Scott, when we spoke more than three years ago was, “Can you just explain why people would do it and how it helps?”

Fisher: [Laughs] Yeah.

Jonny: And I remember pausing because I didn’t really know what to say because for me it was just so much doing chromosome mapping that it didn’t matter what it was for or how it would help. It was just because you can.

Fisher: It looked good.

Jonny: Exactly. And of course it is more useful than that. If you’re super interested in inheritance and the proportions you inherited from each ancestor it’s fabulous. If you want a to quickly identify a match whose on a different site from another match, then it’s enormously helpful. But in terms of immediate impact, breaking through those brick walls, actually, the probability based approach of What are the Odds is probably of more immediate practical use. So, I’m really glad to have this on this on the site because it’s less artistic perhaps but still a mouthful.

Fisher: So, for people who are not familiar with this site, first of all, it’s essentially free but you have some paid features there which people can delve into as they get deeper into it. But explain, What are the Odds, how does that tool work?

Jonny: Okay. So, if we imagine a situation, Scott, where I look on my match list and I see two or three, or four people who are clearly related to each other and they’re also related to me. That means, I’m in a tree which features all those people and me, but maybe if I don’t know how I fit into that tree I can do the genealogy work to connect those people and I can build a tree down from a common ancestor. Then, What are the Odds allows me to hypothesize about how I might fit into that tree based on those amounts of DNA that I share. So, in any one position in that tree that might make me a second cousin to one of these people, a third cousin once removed to another. So, What are the Odds will do is suggest places in the tree where you might fit and then it’s going to score them according to which is most likely mathematically speaking based on those amounts of DNA. I’m probably making it sound more complicated than it is because it’s famously more hard to describe than it really is.

Fisher: [Laughs] Yeah.

Jonny: It’s a powerful tool that lets you see where you’re most likely to fit based on those amounts of DNA that you share. Now, of course you might not fit in the most likely place.

Fisher: Right.

Jonny: I tried it on myself and it suggested I might be somewhere else because of course inheritance is a bit random and sometimes you might share 200 centimorgans with a second cousin, sometimes you might only share 60. So, it isn’t completely full proof but it helps give you this framework that lets you review what seems most likely.

Fisher: Right. I mean, at the end of the day, it is a tool and it points you in a direction and it would just essentially rank where you want to investigate first, right?

Jonny: Yeah.

Fisher: This is the one the odds say are most likely, so you research that. And if it doesn’t pan out then you go over to another one that’s on the next level down and try it from there. I think that would be great. What relationship ranges would you say it’s most affective for, Jonny?

Jonny: A very good question. A lot of people will have identified a family, but actually that family is one of your very distant matches. I saw someone similar on Facebook the other day who done a lot of researching and he only had 20- 30 centimorgan matches and I had to gently say to this person, well, actually the DNA signal is not strong enough. You know that you’re related to these people but from that DNA, from those amounts alone we can’t say if you’re connected to fourth great grandparent level, fifth, sixth.

Fisher: Yeah.

Jonny: It’s really hard to be precise. So really, ideally, you want to have at least one match that’s three figures, that’s 100 centimorgans or more. And even with that, that might be quite hard because you probably have to go back to third great grandparent level, fourth great grandparent, perhaps to find the common ancestors. So, it’s most useful if you’ve got a few people above 100 centimorgans. But even if you’ve only got people on the low level maybe 40, 50, 60 it can still be really, really useful for mapping it out because it’s a simplified tool. If you imagine an ancestral couple, within What are the Odds it just has one person’s name and then you can say their spouse. So it’s a kind of simplified way of seeing a tree and you can import a GEDcom file into it as well. So, potentially, it’s just a really nice way to visualize things. I know a lot of people do like it and I find it a really nice simple way to visualize it.

Fisher: He’s Jonny Perl. He is the creator and owner of DNAPainter.com. If you’re getting into DNA you’ve got to take a look at this site, take advantage of the tools there, a lot of fun and a lot of practicality also in trying to achieve some of your goals. Jonny, great to catch up with you, talk to you again in three and half years…. Wait a minute, we’ve got to do it sooner than that.

Jonny: [Laughs] Let’s do that.

Fisher: [Laughs] Thanks for coming on.

Jonny: Great.

Fisher: And coming up next, David Allen Lambert joins me once again for another round of Ask Us Anything on Extreme Genes, America’s Family History Show.

 

 

Segment 4 Episode 386

Host: Scott Fisher with guest David Allen Lambert

Fisher: All right, we’re back for on Extreme Genes, America’s Family History Show and ExtremeGenes.com. It is time once again for Ask Us Anything. David Allen Lambert has returned from Boston. And Dave, out first question today is from Athens, Georgia. Ted Smith asks, “Guys, I’ve decided to take my first crack at writing a family history.” Good for you, Ted. “What advice might you have?” [Laughs] Boy we could go for an entire show on this, couldn’t we?

David:  Well, you know, because it really depends what you want to include in your family genealogy. I mean, you and I have both been working on ours for years and limitations are the only thing that you really have in front of you.

Fisher: It’s really true. I have written 15 or so of these books, and the thing that you have to understand is, you first of all have to identify which branch of the family, how inclusive you want it to be, do you want it to include all the descendants, do you want to take the ancestry all the way back? Remember, genealogy is kind of a specific sub category under family history. So, family history includes a lot of stories, as well as the charts and that type of thing. But you want to make sure also that you don’t make it so detailed that younger people who might otherwise be interested in it will be turned off by too much information.

David: And that’s true, because I think that a lot of times, people think about how many generations they can go back and fill it with names and dates. But what you’re really going to catch the next generation with are the stories, and it’s really a matter of getting the stories that are going to entertain, preserve your family history and not bore them to tears.

Fisher: Yeah.

David: Every time your ancestor showed up in the tax rolls, it’s probably not going to cut it. But when they marched off to Lexington and conquered, or the hero in Gettysburg or saw Charles Lindbergh land a plane, that’s what’s going to catch them.

Fisher: Exactly. And photographs, too, you know. There are a lot of things that you can do to reach out to siblings and cousins and aunts and uncles to see what they might have in that department, because photographs are fabulous, and you can take those photos, load them up to MyHeritage.com, you can clarify them, you can clean up cracks, you can colorize them, even give them motion. Of course you can’t put that in a book. But nonetheless, there’s so many tools there to help you make your photos much better. In fact, I just redid an entire history that I originally wrote in 1995, made some corrections in there, added some stories, and re-indexed the whole thing. But all the photos, including those from the late 19th century are in color now. And it is a whole different look than I was able to do back in the ’90s.

David: Oh, sure. And the thing about photography is, maybe you don’t have a picture of an ancestor, but you know where they’re buried, you can take a picture of their gravestone.

Fisher: Yep.

David: Or the house they lived in or the church that they attended, something that adds a physical location. Even if it’s an empty lot that’s now a Walmart parking lot and you can have your child stand there and say, “And this is where great, great grandpa lived once upon a time.”

Fisher: [Laughs] Well, you laugh about that. I actually had an ancestor who lived where there’s now an old Sears parking lot and the store itself is closed, so it’s been abandoned by individuals and by corporations, so I don’t know what they are ever going to do with that property that’s going to last, you know.

David: I don’t know. Maybe build your family’s farmhouse back there again and then they can actually just start it all over again. [Laughs]

Fisher: I suppose. You know, this is the thing, you’ve got to limit to some extent how much you do. I would also advise that you make sure that you create an index for this book. It’s very important that people are able to open the back and find a name they’re looking for. So it’s got to be accessible, interesting, entertaining, informative. Also, you might throw in a few documents that are really interesting. For instance, I added in this recent book, the Declaration of Intention to Become an American Citizen with their signatures at the bottom. But you don’t want to flood the book with those types of things.

David: And the thing about it is, if you can do something like this and include where you got the information from, sources are so important.

Fisher: Yep.

David: Footnotes that we all learned when we were in high school writing those book reports are going to be useful. And the other thing is, if you have oral traditions, write down the source who you heard it from.

Fisher: Great question, Ted. And good luck with the effort and we look forward to hearing to how it’s coming along somewhere down the line. Hey, we’re got another question coming up next when we return with Ask Us Anything in three minutes on Extreme Genes, America’s Family History Show.

 

Segment 5 Episode 386

Host: Scott Fisher with guest David Allen Lambert

Fisher: All righty, back for Ask Us Anything on Extreme Genes, America’s Family History Show and ExtremeGenes.com. My name is Fisher, that guy over there is David Allen Lambert, he’s from the New England Historic Genealogical Society and AmericanAncestors.org. And David, this next question comes from Elena Jackson in Washington DC and she says, “Dave and Fish, my grandmother once told me that she worked on indexing a census during The Depression. It couldn’t have been for genealogy. Any idea of why she might have done that?” Good question.

David: Ooh, yeah, actually that is a government job that came up during the WPA days. In fact, the censuses that were indexed, actually as genealogists we take for granted completely indexed censuses now, but it all harkens back to when they started  to index the 1900 census, then they did the 1920 census, and then the one you think they would have done first.

Fisher: Yeah.

David: The 1880 census was done only partially. Now, the story about the 1880 census is interesting, because that project began in 1940 and took until 1941 and it used 2 million hours of work and cost a $1,100,000, so you can imagine 80 years later what it would cost to index all of that.

Fisher: Wow!

David: Of course now they’re doing it all manually and it’s only partial. Now, do you remember the 1880 soundex of the census?

Fisher: Yes, yeah.

David: Okay. It only indexed children under the age of 10 in a household. So if you had your great, great grandparents alive, you had to trudge on through the films to find them, unless you lived in a small town. That was a hard thing to do until people like Ancestry and Family Search indexed these censuses for us.

Fisher: So, why in 1880 did they only do children from 1870 to 1880, the kids who were born in those years?

David: Well, the story that was told to me is that because the social security administration was coming out, any children that would be 10 years old or younger by 1880 would soon be retiring.

Fisher: Yep.

David: And that way they would be putting in for social security. Now, there’s a great article on Archives.gov from 2002 called, The WPA Census Soundexing Projects and it talks all about this whole setup of the WPA and the works progress administration that started back in 1935 and how they tried to get America back to work. Well, some of them were clerical jobs for both men and women and they helped genealogists down the road. So yes, your relative actually worked for genealogists today.

Fisher: Yeah, wow! So that’s a good story. I’ve never heard a lot of that information there Dave. You know, usually when we think of the WPA and all the good things that came out of that for people who needed something to do, some way to make a living, they were building dams and roads and things like that. We don’t usually think of them as being clerical workers, putting together information on censuses from 50 to 60 years before that, that’s amazing!

David: It is. In fact, what was the key thing that brought us out of the Great Depression? World War II.

Fisher: Yeah, absolutely. All right. Well, thank you very much, Elena, great question. We appreciate it. And thanks to everyone who sends us questions. We try to answer as many as we can. All you have to do is email us at AskUsAnything@ExtremeGenes.com. David thanks so much. We’ll talk to you again in a couple of weeks!

David: Have a good vacation.

Fisher: Thank you, sir. And that is our show for this week. Thanks so much to Brandt Gibson from Legacy Tree Genealogists for coming on and sharing some of his stories of discoveries he’s made as a DNA researcher working for his clients. And some of these things are just absolutely amazing. This is the thing about DNA stories, they never get old and they’re always just a little bit different. So, you want to go back and listen to that if you missed it earlier on the podcast. Thanks also to our friend, Jonny Perl from London, the creator on DNA Painter for coming on and talking about how that all came about and some of the tools that you can use that are kind of recent to help you break through your brick walls. If you missed any of the show or you want to catch it again, of course listen to the podcast on iTunes, iHeart Radio, ExtremeGenes.com, TuneIn Radio or Spotify, we are all over the place. Thanks for joining us. We will talk to you again in a couple of weeks when I’m back from vacation. And remember, as far as everyone knows, we’re a nice, normal family!

 

 

Host Scott Fisher opens the show with David Allen Lambert, Chief Genealogist of the New England Historic Genealogical Society and AmericanAncestors.org. Fisher begins the conversation revealing coming changes to the Extreme Genes website and some coming new video courses. Fisher then talks about researching Civil War figures he’s reading about to see who he and his wife Julie might be related to. In the process he learned a remarkable thing about Lincoln assassin John Wilkes Booth. Wait until you hear this! Then David talks about a fascinating story about how people kept cool back in the 19^th century. (They were pretty creative back then!)

Next, Fisher visits with author Lori Erickson. Lori discovered family history research after losing several family members and describes her journey in her new book “Soul of the Family Tree: Ancestors, Stories, and the Spirits We Inherit.”

Then, Professor Christopher Magra of the University of Tennessee talks about British “Press Gangs” and how their virtual kidnapping of young men to man their Navy contributed to the breakout of the Revolutionary War.

David then returns for two questions on “Ask Us Anything.”

That’s all this week on Extreme Genes, America’s Family History Show!

Transcript for Episode 385

Host: Scott Fisher with guest David Allen Lambert

Segment 1 Episode 358

Fisher: And hello America! And welcome to America’s Family History Show, Extreme Genes and ExtremeGenes.com. It is Fisher here, your Radio Roots Sleuth on the program where we shake your family tree and watch the nuts fall out. Well, it is great to have you along. If you are new to the show, what do we do here? Well, we share great stories, we talk to expert guests who help you figure out how to trace your family history and we just have a lot of fun. So, we’re glad to have you. We’ve got some great guests today. First of all, we’re going to talk to Lori Erickson. She’s an author of a new book called, Soul of the Family Tree: Ancestors, Stories, and the Spirits We Inherit. That’s coming up in about ten minutes. Then later in the show, I’m going to talk to Professor Christopher Magra from the University of Tennessee, talking about the British Navy and impressments and how that impacted the Revolutionary War. This is basically where the British folks would come along and to say, “Hey, you!” and kidnap you and put you on a ship and take you away from your family and friends for who knows how long, totally against your will. It was a long standing practice and you’ll want to hear that segment. Hey, if you haven’t signed up for our Weekly Genie Newsletter yet, hey, we’ve got a new format coming out. We’d love for you to see it. Just sign up at ExtremeGenes.com or on our Facebook Page to get it and get a blog from me and a couple of links to past and present shows as well. Right now, out to Boston, Massachusetts where David Allen Lambert is standing by. He is the Chief Genealogist of the New England Historic Genealogical Society and AmericanAncestors.org. Hellooo, David!

David: Can I ask you, do you ever sleep? All this stuff that you get going on with the website and the courses.

Fisher: Yes!

David: So, I think it’s time you tell people about it. [Laughs]

Fisher: Okay. Well, yeah, we’re doing a new format for the Weekly Genie that’s coming out right away and then very soon on the heels of that, our new website will be unveiled and all bright and shiny, and then we’re going to be offering some courses, the very basics of genealogy and genetic genealogy, the fundamentals of that as well. So, if you wanted to get into DNA and understand how it works in dealing with the matches, we’re going to have that up for you here real soon, so pay close attention. We’ll let you know when you can get it, so thanks for asking about that.

David: I wonder if we should call you the genealogy professor.

Fisher: Ahh, there you go! [Laugh]

David: [Laughs]

Fisher: I’ve got to tell you, I’m very excited about this book I’ve been reading and this is an old one. I think a lot of people are familiar with it. It’s called Team of Rivals from Doris Kearns Goodwin. And she wrote about all these people who ran for president in 1860 in the Republican Party against Lincoln. They lost and he brought them all into his cabinet and just brilliantly managed all the different personalities and egos and ambitions. So I thought, David, you know, as I read this book, it might be kind of cool to find out how any of these people might be related to me or to my wife.

David: Oh, sure.

Fisher: Because it just makes for a better read. I don’t know if you’ve ever done that with a history book where you go through and say, “Hey, I’m I related to any of these people?” so I thought I’d try and do that. I discovered that I’m related to Stephen Douglas a couple of times through Yelverton Crowell and William Hough and Sara Calkins and then there’s General Sherman and General McClellen and the Vice President, Hannibal Hamlin through Henry Howland who was the father of the Mayflower passenger, John Howland, and my wife had Clara Barton and Edwin Stanton and Schuyler Colfax, all these people from the Civil War era, so it’s really interesting. And then I decided to go look up, well, what’s the tree look like for John Wilkes Booth? And you know what… I discovered something really interesting.

David: Oh. What was that?

Fisher: And that was that there were eight people named John Wilkes Booth to Booth family members and presumably not related to that Booth family.

David: Sure.

Fisher: But they named their sons John Wilkes after John Wilkes Booth after Lincoln was assassinated and all eight of them were born in the South before 1900!

David: Interesting!

Fisher: Oh yeah. And I thought, okay, so they’re naming their child after an assassin. And then I thought, okay, there are a lot of people who name their kids after somebody and they give them the full name as first and middle names and then they add their surname. 38 others were named “John Wilkes Booth (Something).” Most of those were also from the South. There were a few actually born in the 20th century as well, so you can really see an indicator of the bitterness of those who were in the former Confederacy in the decades after they got beat. So I write about this in our Weekly Genie Newsletter this week. I just think it’s amazing. By the way, David, I went and looked to see if there were any other assassins that people named their kids after and I found there was one Native American family that named their son after the assassination of William McKinley that would be Leon Czołgosz. And yeah, they gave him the full name. I guess they were kind of pleased about what he did. And there was someone where the father was named Earl Ray (Something) and he named his son, James Earl Ray (Something) for the assassin of Martin Luther King. But those were the only ones.

David: Did you find anybody named after Lee Harvey Oswald?

Fisher: Nope, nobody, and nobody after…

David: John Hinckley Jr.?

Fisher: No, and nobody after Charles Guiteau, the Garfield assassin. So, isn’t that interesting though that people would name their kids after an assassin?

David: Well, that’s pretty crazy.

Fisher: Yeah.

David: Well, summer had been pretty hot out in your part of the country and it’s not been much more pleasant in my part of the world. In fact, on my birthday, it was the hottest day on record in Boston, like 97! So, I thought it would be fun to share the wonderful article you have on ExtremeGenes.com on the Eight Creative Ways People Kept Cool Before Air Conditioning. I’m not going to go through them all, because I want them to see the story.

Fisher: Yes.

David: But fan chairs, a patent from the 19th century, this chair that you rocked that generated a fan above your head, kind of ingenious.

Fisher: [Laughs] Yeah.

David: The one that is scary is the sleeping porches and the photograph of this little baby hanging in a mesh net over a tenement window.

Fisher: Yeah.

David: That they could have easily climbed around and fell to their deaths, but it kept them cool.

Fisher: It did keep them cool, yeah.

David: Yeah. I don’t know how the mother kept cool though, canvas awnings on buildings. We thought they were just ornamental. No, they actually helped people keep cool. Then there was one, I love that description, it says, “An immense pressure blower and an ice chamber of tremendous proportions.” [Laughs]

Fisher: Wow!

David: Good sales pitch items. So, the last thing I want to say is, summer is here, NEHGS is open, we’d love you to come in, make an appointment. And if you’re not a member, go to AmericanAncestors.org and use the coupon code “Extreme” and save $20 on your membership.

Fisher: All right, David, thank you much. We’ll catch you at the back end of the show for Ask Us Anything. And coming up next, we’re going to talk to Author, Lori Erickson, she has written a new book called, Soul of the Family Tree: Ancestors, Stories, and the Spirits We Inherit, when we return in three minutes on Extreme Genes, America’s Family History Show.

Segment 2 Episode 385

Host: Scott Fisher with guest Lori Erickson

Fisher: All right, my next guest on Extreme Genes, America’s Family History Show is Lori Erickson. And Lori lives in Iowa City, Iowa. She is the author of a brand new book called The Soul of the Family Tree: Ancestors, Stories, and the Spirits We Inherit. Welcome to Extreme Genes, Lori. Great to have you!

Lori: Well, I’m happy to be here.

Fisher: Tell me how you got going on all this because this is quite an adventuresome book.

Lori: [Laughs] Well, the book got started in one sense because I entered my 50s and I started losing family members.

Fisher:  Hmm.

Lori: My mother died. My brother died. And I think even though genealogy hadn’t been an interest of mine before, I think once you start losing living relatives you become more interested in those who have passed on.

Fisher: Absolutely.

Lori: So, that was the impediment for it. And I am also a writer with a long standing interest in the intersection of travel and spirituality and I was really struck by the ways in which searching for family roots often involved physical travel and often is a kind of pilgrimage for people.

Fisher:  Yes.

Lori: And so I think there’s a layer of spirituality in genealogy that hasn’t been written about a lot, and so I thought well, that’s what I want to do, so that’s what the book is about.

Fisher: So, you went exploring into your Norwegian ancestors, and let’s talk about that.   

Lori: So, I grew up in Decorah, Iowa, which is probably the most Norwegian/ American town in the United States. It was a center for 19^th century immigration, sort of a mother colony in lots of ways, and still has a very strong Norwegian/American identity there. And like many people who grow up surrounded by a certain sort of character, you know, I took it for granted and not that interested in it.

Fisher: [Laughs]   

Lori: Until I started thinking more about my family roots. And then suddenly it became a real passionate interest for me; why is the town the way it is, and how did my ancestors contribute to that, and also, this larger story of Scandinavia. Not just Scandinavian Americans, but also the history of the Vikings.

Fisher: So, did you have any older relatives left that could talk to you at that point?    

Lori: No.

Fisher: There were all gone at this point.  

Lori: They were all gone, yes. Uh huh, and I was really starting from zero in terms of genealogical knowledge in fact.

Fisher: Okay.  

Lori: But I did go to the Family History Library in Salt Lake City, but the real help came from the Norwegian-American Genealogical Center in Madison, Wisconsin. And they helped me identify two people in particular. And you know, the book couldn’t be about all my relatives because I’m not sure how much of interest that would be to the rest of the world.

Fisher: Sure.

Lori: So, I chose two as sort of representatives, you know I picked them somewhat at random off of my family tree because I like the sound of their names.

Fisher: [Laughs] What were their names?  

Lori: Hans Olbrich Henriksen Boriger and Sila – some long…and it had all those odd Norwegian vowels, the “o” with a slash there. I said, “Oh, they sound so Norwegian,” but what was a really nice piece of serendipity is that they really turned out to be interesting people to follow.

Fisher: Sure.  

Lori: For example, they both were baptized in the most beautiful church in Norway, a stave church. Looks like the sort of church Vikings would build, you know, it’s got dragons coming off the top and everything. And it was such a wonderful coincidence. You know, if I was sort of choosing ancestors to have, I think I would have chosen ancestors who came from this beautiful part of this affluent country and this beautiful church.

Fisher: Absolutely. Yeah.

Lori: So, their story is started through the book, but then also cultural history and also this real theme of spirituality.

Fisher: So, had you ever been to Norway before, and did you go?  

Lori: I went, and I went with my two sons and my husband and my sister and so it was a real family pilgrimage. And I got the chance to go to this small where Hans, my great, great grandfather was basically a sharecropper. He never owned any land. It’s just this tiny rocky little place. I took a little bit of soil from there and my husband said I took like half the soil that was there.

Fisher: [Laughs]   

Lori: It was all rocks.

Fisher: Why didn’t you take the rocks?

Lori: Well, because I knew that I wanted to have some soil to sprinkle on Hans and Sila’s graves in Northeast Iowa.

Fisher: Ah!   

Lori: And I was really struck by the difference between the rich fertile soil of Iowa and the rocky soil of Norway.

Fisher: Right.  

Lori: It just sort of symbolized the two strains of my heritage. So, it was actually dirt. I never even thought of the rock. I wanted to have the soil instead.

Fisher: You know, it’s not like you can just get one or the other. You can have both if you wanted. I’ve done this before. [Laughs]

Lori: [Laughs] That’s right. But truly that was one of the most meaningful parts of my genealogical journey, was to stand in the spot where my ancestors had been. And to get there was somewhat of an adventure that’s described in the book too.

Fisher: Well, it’s really a feeling, isn’t it, when you stand where they stood, and you walk where they walked, and you see the places that they were so familiar with. I mean, there’s just such a connection that you have with your people when you that. I’ve actually been inside the home of my fourth great grandparents over in England, because it’s a pub now. [Laughs] It used to be a butcher shop but it allowed me to be able to go in there. And then their apartment overhead is where they lived in the 1700s.

Lori: Oh, wow.

Fisher: And so I got invited up there, and of course it looks pretty modern today but still, the building went back to the 1500s. And it’s just so astonishing to be in a place like that. Especially the first times you’ve done it.  

Lori: Right, right. And I think it’s really about the power of place, you know. Much of genealogy is about the power of story, I think, and the power of research and imagination. There’s also the power of place, and that’s why I think people want to go to a grave and they want to go to a farm, or something concrete that they can touch and relate to.

Fisher: Yeah, I think that’s kind of the debate a lot of people have about do I get buried, or do I get cremated?   

Lori: Yeah.

Fisher: Because there’s no place when you’re cremated, unless it’s everywhere, and that’s just too broad, you know?

Lori: Right.

Fisher: Tell me about some of the conclusions you came to about spirituality and spiritual DNA. You mentioned that in your book.

Lori: So, one of the things I describe in the book is doing a family tree on my spiritual influences. I’m Christian, I’m an Episcopalian, but I also have wandered in my spiritual path and have gained a lot of inspiration from other faiths, especially Buddhism. So, I put together a family tree of all the influences on me, and I really liked that sense of being connected to and influenced by a lot of different parts of the world and a lot of different people, a lot of wise people, wisdom teachers, and many traditions. And so that really got me thinking about the fact that we are a product of our genetics. We are a part of our cultural heritage. But we also are a part of the spiritual beliefs of those who came before us, and our own spiritual quest.

Fisher: Yep.

Lori: Part of my book is arguing against sort of extreme individualism. This idea that we are self made and that we sort of create ourselves out of home cloth. Instead, I think we should appreciate and at times examine what we’re given because sometimes it’s not a positive legacy. And I think sort of confronting that and examining that, and looking at the broad sweep of your family including the cultural tides of it. It gives you a much deeper understanding of who you are, and then I think it also can help you pass on better patterns to your descendants and those that you influence. There’s a metaphor from pre-Christians Scandinavia that relates to wird w-i-r-d, which is the Old Norse word for something like faith or destiny. And the web of wird was this belief that wird connected everything in the past, in the present, and in the future.

Fisher: Ha!

Lori: I really play with that in my book, this idea that genealogy really is the web of wird. And another fun thing about the web of wird w-i-r-d is where we get our word “weird” – strange.

Fisher: Yeah. [Laughs] Okay.  

Lori: But the Vikings had a much deeper sense. Wird in their sense was something that would make the hair rise up on your arms, you know, it was some sort of sensing of a connection that was a brush with a numinous with something beyond. So, that’s what I think genealogy can be. Not just connecting their ancestors, but connecting with something with larger kinds of spiritual forces.

Fisher: Well, and seeing how they actually helped you become who you are.   

Lori: Yes.

Fisher: I mean, I’ve looked back, my father was a well known musician. He was with The Ed Sullivan Show, and his brother had a big band back in the 20s, 30s, and 40s. And I looked back to see well, where did all that come from? And there’s a great picture of my grandfather in 1890 in New York in a little drummer boy outfit and he was playing the grand army of the republic.

Lori: Oh wow!

Fisher: And I found out that his father’s father had actually sung in his church meetings back in the 1830s and ‘40s, so you can see this thread of music through the family. All the way down to my dad and to my own children. But it skipped me pretty much! [Laughs] I don’t know why.  

Lori: Well, you’re in entertainment and larger media.

Fisher: True.

Lori: Well, in my case, my example of that is I have always said I’m a descendant of the explorer Leif Erikson who was the first European to be in North America that we know of at least. And he was Norwegian, and he loved to travel, and he was adventurous. And I really had him as sort of a role model all the time that I was growing up. And it’s somewhat tongue-in-cheek of course because I could never claim any real genetic connection to him.

Fisher: Right.

Lori: But this idea that he was an inspiration. He’s part of my clan. And then there was a woman, his sister-in-law Gudrid, the Far Traveler, who ended up being more of an inspiration through the course of the book. So yeah, I’m going to continue on my genealogical search, and I certainly have genealogy on my radar now in a way that I never had before. And I think it’s fascinating all the people I didn’t realize who are fascinated by tracing their family roots.

Fisher: So, what are the questions now that you wish you had asked your loved ones who’ve recently passed as a result of all this?

Lori: Oh, I wish that I would have asked about what their parents and grandparents talked about their first years in Iowa. What was it like in the boat coming over, why did they leave, did they ever have contact with the people that they had left behind, did they ever see any of their extended relatives, so, really about that immigrant era.

Fisher: She is Lori Erickson. She is the author of “The Soul of the Family Tree: Ancestor, Stories, and the Spirits We Inherit” and where can you get the book Lori?

Lori: Well, the usual place, of course Amazon, but your local independent book store is a great place. There’ll be an audio version of it as well, a kindle of course too, so it should be widely available once it comes out on August 24.

Fisher: Thanks so much for coming on Lori. Appreciate it.  

Lori: Oh, thank you for having me.

Fisher: And coming up on the other side of the break, we’re going to talk to Professor Christopher Magra from the University of Tennessee talking about impressments, yes, done by the British with their Navy, leading up to the Revolution, and you’ll want to hear it’s affect on that when we return in five minutes.

Segment 3 Episode 385

Host: Scott Fisher with guest Professor Christopher Magra

Fisher: All right, welcome back genies to America’s Family History Show Extreme Genes and ExtremeGenes.com. It is Fisher here your Radio Roots Sleuth and I’m very excited to introduce you to my next guest he is Professor Christopher Magra. He is with the University of Tennessee. He is a history professor there. And in recent weeks, David Allen Lambert and I were talking about this great article that was based on an article that he had written some years back about Naval Impressments by the British and how that affected the Revolutionary War and the War of 1812. And Professor Magra, thanks so much for coming on. This is a really interesting topic to me because I think many of us have heard about the British basically kidnapping people to put them in their Navy but I don’t think we understood the full extent of it and its impact on history.

Professor Magra: I’m happy to be here. Well, most people out there will know that Great Britain had one of the most powerful navies in the world in the 1700s. What a lot of people don’t realize is that navy was built on the acquisition of labor and that labor was not always voluntary. The British Navy was not the only navy to take men by force and force them into military service navies across Europe did this. It was common in war time, even extended into peace time. But naval captains wouldn’t be given orders to set sail with a full complement of men and if they didn’t have that didn’t have that full complement of men they could apply for press warrants that the admiralty office provided. That’s government sanction for you to go into coastal communities and you’re supposed to take men with seafaring experience into military service. At certain times that was not always possible. And what’s known as a hot press occurred where press gangs led by British lieutenants would enter into coastal communities and take anybody that they could and anybody that they needed for British war ships.

Fisher: So, what was the cost for resisting impressments in that circumstance?

Professor Magra: Well, that’s the thing. Just about everybody resented us as you could imagine.

Fisher: Sure.

Professor Magra: You are either taken off of a port before you’re about to go to work. You’re been taken off of a ship while you are working. And you have your earnings for yourself and your family that yourself and your family depends on, you’re being taken away from those earnings and out of your workplace, and away from your families and forced into military service for years at a time. And the British Navy had a bad reputation of not paying their men.

Fisher: Oh, wow.

Professor Magra: So, not only are you being taken away by force and separated from your family but also your entire future is up in the air.

Fisher: And I was reading here in this article that 40 percent of the British Navy was fulfilled through this impressments’ process.

Professor Magra: Yeah. The estimates run between 40 and 70 percent.

Fisher: Oh, wow.

Professor Magra: The conservative thing here with a book that I wrote, but estimates run as high as 70 percent. There’s no way to count and this is one of the difficulties of doing this kind of history. When press gangs took men they were given a choice, you could be entered onto the ship’s muster rolls as a pressed man, meaning you do not agree to this. You don’t want to be here.

Fisher: Right.

Professor Magra: And that you’re serving the British nation against your will. You’d be entered on the muster roll as a pressed man and will keep you below deck in chains when you’re not working. And when the ship pulls into port you will not be let off of the war ship. Or, you can enter into the muster rolls as a volunteer and be allowed to move about the ship at will and when we pull into port you can have your liberty to go on shore.

Fisher: Wow! So how many people ran off then when they went ashore?

Professor Magra: Yeah. Desertion was rampant in the British navy throughout the 18^th century.

Fisher: So, this was going on long before the Revolution.

Professor Magra: Yes, it was.

Fisher: And this article kind of argues and this story basically leads up to the fact that the Revolution was in part brought on by this kind of behavior by the British government towards its own citizens.

Professor Magra: Yes. I think your listeners will most appreciate the family separation involved in British Navy impressments.

Fisher: Sure.

Professor Magra: And they can appreciate the fact that women with children were writing letters to the British admiralty trying to get their husbands, their brothers, their sons off of these war ships. You’ve taken away our principle bread earner. The entire family is at stake and there’s a lot of resentment against the institution of impressments. And I want your listeners to remember three dates.

Fisher: Sure.

Professor Magra: 1708, 1746, and 1775. Those three dates I want you to remember. In 1708, the British government bans naval impressments in North America. Wonderful. Fantastic! The act in 1708 is specifically to benefit our economy. It says, naval impressments hurts overseas trade, hurts merchants, and hurts mariners and their families.  Wonderful, the British Empire works for us. This is fantastic.

Fisher: Sure.

Professor Magra: It doesn’t work for the British Navy though. They violate the 1708 law very year after it’s passed. And Americans continue to partition the British government saying, hey, this thing is still going on. You guys have got to do something about it. And other members of the British Empire are doing the same thing. And in 1746, the British government passes a second naval impressments law that bans impressments in the Caribbean to benefit the sugar planters and the sugar plantations in the Caribbean.

Fisher: Okay.

Professor Magra: And the Americans are up in arms about this after 1746. They say, “What about us? You don’t mention anything about North America in the 1746 law.”

Fisher: And you’re ignoring the 1708 law, right?

Professor Magra: Yeah, and oh, by the way, that’s still on the books. And the very next year 1747, the British Navy comes down the coast of North America from Halifax, Nova Scotia, from the naval base there. The naval squadron is ordered to the Caribbean to protect sugar planters there and they don’t have enough men. So where do they stop between Halifax, Nova Scotia and the Caribbean, where do they stop? The principle seaport in North America in 1747 was Boston. So, they pull into Boston and they have a huge hot press in Boston and Bostonians resisted, what’s known as the Knowles Riots. And Bostonians take over Boston for three days. They kidnap British naval officers they hold them hostage.

Fisher: Wow!

Professor Magra: And they say, “You will not press our mariners here.” And this leads to a whole string of protests and letters to the governor of Massachusetts, letters to the parliament. And in 1775, parliament says, “We’ve had enough. We are formally legalizing impressments in North America and we are keeping the 1708 act off of the books.

Fisher: Oh! And there we go. And that takes us right up to the Revolution.

Professor Magra: Yeah.

Fisher: Wow, what a mess.

Professor Magra: John Adams who is in Boston and his law partner react to this and talk about the disruption of family life in Boston that occurs as a result of this 1775 act. Adams refers to it as the piratical act.

Fisher: Yes.

Professor Magra: That’s meant to plunder America of their husbands, of their sons, of their brothers. And he said that this act above anything else has separated America from Great Britain he thinks forever. Adams then serves on a five man committee to draft the declaration of independence in 1776. And he includes one of the grievances written on the Declaration of Independence pertains to naval impressments, that the British government has constrained our mariners.

Fisher: This was a much more impactful series of acts then I think we’ve been led to understand over the years.

Professor Magra: That’s right. There’s long standing grievances and there are short-term grievances that caused the American Revolution, like the 1764 Sugar Act, like the 1773 Tea Act. There are also these long standing lesser known grievances like the 1708, 1746, 1775, Impressments Acts.

Fisher: Wow. He’s Christopher Magra. He is a professor of history at the University of Tennessee, talking about British Naval Impressments and what it did leading up to the Revolution and of course later the War of 1812 as well. I wish we had more time to talk about this, Chris. Thank you so much for coming on.

Professor Magra: You’re very welcome and I hope your listeners will read more history.

Fisher: Thank you so much.

Professor Magra: Thank you.

Fisher: And coming up next, Mr. Lambert returns as we go through another round of Ask Us Anything answering your questions about family history when we return in three minutes on Extreme Genes, America’s Family History Show.

Segment 4 Episode 385

Host: Scott Fisher with guest David Allen Lambert

Fisher: All right, on to your questions on Ask Us Anything on Extreme Genes, America’s Family History Show and ExtremeGenes.com. Fisher here with David Allen Lambert back to answer this question. It’s our first question today, David, and it comes from Robert Rust in Denver, Colorado and he says, “Hey, Fisher and David. I have a brick wall in my years long research into my immigrant ancestor, Henry Rust, 1618-1684. He was from Norwich, U.K., died in Massachusetts. He was made a freeman in Hingham in 1633 and he doesn’t appear in Robert Charles Anderson’s migration series and I can’t find his ship arrival information or the name of his wife. There was a published family genealogy from about 1899 that names her as Hanna with no maiden or surname, also no marriage information has been found. Hingham very early records seem to be lost before about 1640. Whatever help you can give would be appreciated. Cheers! Robert.” David, this is your neck of the woods.

David: Yeah. Actually, my Gilman family would have probably attended church with them in Hingham at that very same time, which would make Robert Rust’s ancestor friends with Abraham Lincoln’s ancestors, because the Lincolns were also from Hingham.

Fisher: Ah!

David: And it’s very true the old records for Hingham, a lot of the early ones are lost. However, what puzzles me is that freemanship, so I would love to have Robert contact me at NEHGS. It’s really easy to do. If you look at the staff directory, you’ll get all my contact information right there, because the earliest we know and this is according to Robert Charles Anderson’s Great Migration Directory, Henry is of unknown origin, so we don’t know if he’s from Norwich. We also don’t have a name of a boat, nor do we have him here anytime before 1637.

Fisher: Ah!

David: Now the reason that he would not be included in Robert Charles Anderson’s Great Migration series is because that really deals with 1620 to 1635. That being said, genealogy is like wet cement. If you have a record that states that he’s there in 1633 and you can pinpoint it to us, I would be more than happy to put you in contact with Mr. Anderson and we may have a new discovery to share with people. But again, just reach out to me at NEHGS, I’ll be more than happy to share that with Mr. Anderson for you.

Fisher: That’s a great question and that’s a great answer too, David, because sometimes we kind of get confused about why they’re not showing up in immigration records, and in this case, it sounds like the years might be off by a couple and he wouldn’t fit into that time period.

David: Right. And that’s really all it is. And a lot of times, these early genealogies that are written, like Albert Rust wrote a book called, The Book of the Rust Family and it was published in 1891. I mean, it’s possible that somebody made a conclusion or read a 3 as an 8, so that’s possible.

Fisher: You know, you bring up a really important point here. I see this all the time, especially on Family Search where somebody goes in and changes information that is much more current and they quote a book that was written maybe in the 1880s or ‘90s, and often times, those books, they may be old, they may be closer to the ancestors than we are, but those books are loaded with errors in all kinds of families and we see it all the time.

David: Well, that’s true, because the early 19th century genealogies, of course we didn’t have Family Search and Ancestry and American Ancestors or access to genealogy libraries for most of America, they did it by correspondence. So if somebody says, “Well, I think my ancestor arrived in 1655,” it could be that they were just guessing that’s probably when he arrived. It may not be that they were looking at an actual record or a passenger list, so we can’t rely heavily on these 19th and early 20th century genealogies. We have to reexamine their sources, as many of them are even cited on the page where the source came from.

Fisher: That’s right. So, it’s great to have those books, but take it all with a grain of salt. You know, I’ve seen some books where for instance it gave the cause of death for somebody and how would anybody know that, except through a correspondence. But a lot of it, as you say, is basically hearsay. All right, Robert. Thanks for the question. We’ll have another one coming up on part two of Ask Us Anything when we return in three minutes on Extreme Genes, America’s Family History Show.

Segment 5 Episode 385

Host: Scott Fisher with guest David Allen Lambert

Fisher: All right, back for our final question on Ask Us Anything on Extreme Genes, America’s Family History Show and ExtremeGenes.com. It is Fisher here, your Radio Roots Sleuth with David Allen Lambert from the New England Historic Genealogical Society and AmericanAncestors.org. And Dave, this question comes from Curt Lambier in St. Paul, Minnesota. He says, “My great grandfather is thought to have been an orphan. He lived in the Midwest, but the census said he came from New York, so we’ve thought that maybe he came over on the Orphan Train. Anything you can tell us on how we can research this man?”

David: Ooh, well, that’s interesting, because that New York connection really echoes in perfectly. Well, the Orphan Train, Fish, operated in the middle part of the 19th century, right through to about right about the end of World War I. So we’ve got 1854 to 1919 of the rough dates, and between that times there were estimated 105,000 children rode the Orphan Train. And of course the trains would stop at different towns and cities and, you know, the kids would be filed out and then paperwork would be filled up. So, there are some forms of paperwork. Not so much on the early ones, but you may find something valuable. I always try the Family Search’s Wiki. And if you don’t know about Family Search, just do FamilySearch.org and then you can go to their Wiki. Their Wiki, then just add the word “orphan” or “orphanages” and you’ll find this great article on New York orphans and orphanages. And one of the things on it actually has a guide to the records of the Children’s Aid Society that cover 1853 to 1947. And this is in the Victor Remer Historical Archives of the Children’s Aid Society, located on East 22nd street in New York City and the collection has Orphan Train records, foster care, adoption programs operating between the 1850s and the 1940s. So this might be a great place to start. The other thing is, maybe there’s a court record, Fish, where in the Midwest this person was. Maybe there’s an official adoption record. So that’s a possibility. The other thing is, looking at DNA.

Fisher: Oh, absolutely. I wanted to go there, because I had a friend of mine recently who reached out. His grandfather was an Orphan Train adoptee. And he had never really used his DNA matches. He’s like a lot of people, did the DNA test, thought the ethnicity results is all you really get out of it and never really looked at the matches or understood how they could be used. So we worked on it, we eliminated all the other known branches and all their descendant matches and figured, “Okay, these are the people that relate to your grandfather.” and we were in fairly short order able to identify his second great grandparents and then eventually figured out which one of those children, it was a big family from Scotland, which one of them came to New York and became the father of this man. And now once we had that sliver of the DNA puzzle solved, we were able to figure out then who the birth mother was of this man. So, DNA is really a huge way to go to find out what their original names may have been. And then of course follow their history from there. But, when you combine the records, you combine the DNA. This is a solvable thing today, whereas 20 years ago, it was not.

David: Oh, right, exactly. And things that Family Search have done to digitize and make these finding guides available, it’s just tremendous. And of course with DNA, you pretty much can find people without even knowing the names. You’ve got the clues right there.

Fisher: Yeah, that’s it. Isn’t it amazing, you spit in a tube and all this information.

David: Out comes a relative. [Laughs]

Fisher: Yeah, out comes a relative, that’s the craziest thing. Dave thanks so much.

David: Absolutely.

Fisher: And thanks also to you, Curt for the question. And David, we’ll talk to you again next week.

David: All right, my friend.

Fisher: All right. And that’s our show for this week, genies. Thanks so much for joining us. Hey, if you missed any of it or want to hear part of it again, you can listen to the podcast on iTunes, iHeart Radio, ExtremeGenes.com, Spotify and TuneIn Radio. We will talk to you again next week. Thanks for joining us. And remember, as far as everyone knows, we’re a nice, normal family!

Host Scott Fisher opens the show with David Allen Lambert, Chief Genealogist of the New England Historic Genealogical Society and AmericanAncestors.org. The guys begin Family Histoire News with news about the 2022 RootsTech conference. Then, Fisher shares word of a landmark achieved by WikiTree research team with this year’s WikiTree Challenge. David then shares a DNA breakthrough story that COULD NOT have a better ending. For anybody. Ever. David then has a story of a remarkable archaeological discovery. Plus, who knew the Brits were kidnapping Americans to make the sailors before the Revolution? Hear what that led to!

Next, in two parts, Fisher visits with Jilayne Davidson of Calgary, Alberta. Jilayne never knew her father, a man, she was told, who was indigenous and from Oklahoma. Wanting to know about her indigenous side Jilayne began a journey that recently solved a mystery for two families who knew nothing of each other. One family knew what happened before 1958 and the other knew what happened after. And now, both families know the whole story.

Then, David returns for another round of Ask Us Anything.

That’s all this week on Extreme Genes, America’s Family History Show!

Transcript for Episode 384

Extreme Genes, America’s Family History Show

Host: Scott Fisher with guest David Allen Lambert

Segment 1 Episode 384

Fisher: And welcome to America’s Family History Show Extreme Genes and ExtremeGenes.com. It is Fisher here your Radio Roots Sleuth, on the program where we shake your family tree and watch the nuts fall out. Boy, have we got a story for you today! Yeah, it’s the story of Jilayne Davidson who was trying to find out about her birth father. She didn’t know anything about him. She knew that he and her mom had separated when she was a year old. And she knew a few things from her mom, but not much else. Meanwhile, there’s another family who knew this member of their family up until 1958 when he disappeared. Somehow the story comes together. You’re going to want to hear the whole thing out of the mouth of Jilayne Davidson coming up in less than ten minutes. Hey, if you haven’t signed up for our Weekly Genie Newsletter yet, this is my weekly reminder, get on the list. You can just sign up through our Facebook page or at ExtremeGenes.com. Right now it’s time to head out to Boston, Massachusetts where David Allen Lambert is standing by, the Chief Genealogist of the New England Historic Genealogical Society and AmericanAncestors.org. David, how you’re been?

David: I’m doing great. But I’m a little blue about next year because I got the news that RootsTech is going to be virtual. Now, mind you, I love virtual events and I’m looking forward to hopefully presenting and getting to see so much content, but I’ll miss our one on one experience that we haven’t had since 2020.

Fisher: Well, I will too, but I think what they’re doing is just playing it safe.

David: Absolutely.

Fisher: Just not knowing exactly how things are going to shake out through the rest of the year and all that, but they also have said moving forward after that we’ll see a combination of live and virtual. And you know, you can’t argue with the success this past year. More people saw RootsTech, I mean in multiples.

David: Over a million people, yeah.

Fisher: Yeah, it was crazy. So, it’s great and I’m excited that it’s going to be back in whatever form.

David: Exactly. As long as there’s a RootsTech, I want to be a part of it. You know, I know you’ve got the lead story with the gal with her dad that was found through DNA, but another great DNA story is with Jordan Myers, a young lady whose 21 years old, thinking that her dad was a Puerto Rican boyfriend of her mother’s, and it turns out she’s a little different. The DNA shows that she was actually half Afghan. Well, you couldn’t ask for a better success story because now she’s in contact with the dad and he wants to make up for lost time. Oh, by the way, did I mention, he’s rich?

Fisher: Yeah.

David: He wants to set her up for life! [Laughs]

Fisher: Yeah, set her up for life! [Laughs] How does a DNA story get any better than that? You know, we often hear people are very worried, how am I going to be received? And rightfully so, and I understand that. Most stories turn out pretty good actually, but this one, this is off the charts! [Laughs]

David: It is great and for those who watch Tik Tok, you can watch her exciting video explaining all this at “Jordan the first” on her Tik Tok page. Well, you know, I love archeological finds and of course, I think of the symbol from the American Medical Association, the staff with the snake.

Fisher: Yeah.

David: From Moses, The Ten Commandments of Charlton Heston and all that, the Old Testament. Well, something right out of the Old Testament was found, archeologists have found a 4,400 year old serpent staff in Finland. The boggy soil allows for many things to be preserved that normally would corrode. This one half meter length serpent staff was found and it looks like a snake that slithering along with the head of a serpent with an open mouth. It’s something you’ve really got to see to believe, but I’m like, who dropped that?

Fisher: Wow!

David: So, they don’t know if it’s some sort of a medicine man from long ago but they date it from around 4,400 years ago and it’s made out of wood.

Fisher: Wow! Of wood?

David: Of wood, yes.

Fisher: That’s incredible! And it survived. I hope that’s in a museum soon.

David: I hope that it is being treated immediately so it won’t disintegrate into sawdust soon.

Fisher: Yeah, interesting.

David: You know, I get a great story here, the role of Naval Impressment in the American Revolution and you may have probably seen this in your own ancestors if you had anybody in the Navy that they had to take out seaman protection papers. The magnitude in this story from the JSTOR Daily which you’ll find on ExtremeGenes.com, and this story is great because it talks about the roles of all of these sailors in and a high percentage of them that were put into the British Navy and were fighting against us, but were they in support of us because they were in there against their own will? You decide.

Fisher:  Yeah. Well, there was 40 percent of the British Navy is said to have been impressed from people all over the world, but a lot of them were American seamen, it was a virtual kidnapping.

David: It really was and it went on for years.

Fisher: Yes and it changed a lot of the opinions of people about the mother country and really help change opinions leading up to the Revolutionary War. But I just love the result of that for us as genealogists. That seamen protection database that’s on Ancestry, I was able to find the only known picture of my grandfather’s brother who decided to work for this cruise ship company for one year in 1923 and they had to take his picture. So, because of that I have the only photo ever found of him which is fantastic.

David: One of the reasons we got into the War of 1812 was because the British were doing this with American sailors. They were going on American vessels and taking American residents and putting them onboard and saying they were actually Brits. So, the seamen protection papers go back quite a ways and will tell you sometimes where in America someone was born and gives you a clue before birth records existed.

Fisher: Absolutely, and aside from the picture I found of my great uncle there are also two others like that before photography that gave me a lot of information. So, if you’ve never looked at the seamen protection program database on Ancestry, check it out there could be some real gems in there for you.

David: And don’t forget collateral relatives count too. [Laughs]

Fisher: Yes. [Laughs]

David: Well, that’s about what I have from Beantown this week, and don’t forget, if you’re not a member of American Ancestors you can sign up and use the coupon code EXTREME and save $20 on your membership.

Fisher: All right David, talk to you at the backend of the show for Ask Us Anything. And coming up next, a remarkable DNA discovery that united two families around one incident that took place in 1958, you’re going to want to hear what Jilayne Davidson from Calgary, Alberta has to say, coming up next in three minutes on Extreme Genes, America’s Family History Show.

Segment 2 Episode 384

Host: Scott Fisher with guest Jilayne Davidson

Fisher: Well, we all love what DNA can do for us these days. Hey, it’s Fisher, its Extreme Genes, America’s Family History Show and ExtremeGenes.com. And my next guest Jilayne Davidson has a really unusual DNA story. She’s in Calgary, Alberta, and Jilayne, welcome to Extreme Genes.

Jilayne: Thank you. Thank you for having me.

Fisher: I am so thrilled to talk to you about your story because it’s an amazing one. Your mother told you of course that she had split up with your father back when you were a year old and moved to where you are now in Calgary, and that he was an indigenous person, and that was all you’ve known for all these years, and now all of a sudden you’ve got a little bit more.

Jilayne: [Laughs] Well, I did know a few other things. My mom did tell me that he was from Oklahoma.

Fisher: Okay.

Jilayne: And she said that he was Cherokee, and she said that his parents’ names were Nora and Victor.

Fisher: Nora and Victor.

Jilayne: Yeah. So, that was the piece of information I got when I was 12 years old and my mom told me about my father.

Fisher: Now, what was your father’s name as you knew it?

Jilayne: William Baca.

Fisher: Baca…but your parents were separated obviously or they never married. And then eventually you found out that you father had passed away in an accident in 1980 in a car crash.

Jilayne: Yeah. I probably found that out about 1978, between 1978 and 1980. I can’t really pinpoint it down. I know I was a teenage girl and we got a phone call from a friend who knew both of us and knew our story and he told my mom, and he called me and talked to my personally and told me that my father was killed in a car accident.

Fisher: Hmm.

Jilayne: Yeah, and that was in Northern British Columbia. And being a young girl, I just kinda let it go like that. I just thought that I would never know my father. But my grandmother did tell me at the same time, once I did learn about him and about his death, she confessed to me that she had received letters from him over the years, but because I was adopted by my stepfather, and they had separated by this point as well, so she told me though “Your dad had been sending letters and unfortunately I’d thrown them out.” And she apologized to me, and had reconsidered and decided it was a mistake. So, that was a little sad.

Fisher: I’ll bet.

Jilayne: Yeah. He had been trying to keep in touch the best he could.

Fisher: Um hmm. So, at what point did you decide wait a minute, we have a new tool out here. We can take advantage of this. At what point did you say, “I’ve got to do the DNA test to see what I can find out”?

Jilayne: Well, since it’s come out I was held up. I don’t know exactly, it seems like something was always getting in my way and I think partly too is because I had searched for my father since I was I was in my 20s. And I did manage to find my half brother without the help of DNA back in the mid 90s.

Fisher: Okay.

Jilayne: For me, I did manage to go and meet my brother up in Terrace, BC. His name is Sam Baca. The only way I found my brother is that he was named after my father’s alias. His name is William Baca.

Fisher: Ha!

Jilayne: And everybody called him Sam. So, I was trying to find my indigenous heritage, and I was trying to prove that actually to be able to work for this organization. And I also heard my grandparents were Mormons. So, by this time I had written to several Cherokee nations and gotten nowhere. I had checked the Mormon registry and had gotten nowhere for Victor and Nora Baca. So, finally I thought I’m going to try and call the RCMP and find out about my father’s accident and maybe I’ll get some clues there. So, I called up the Terrace, BC and I spoke to a RCMP officer and she told me she knew William Baca. And I was really perplexed.

Fisher: [Laughs]

Jilayne: Because she said he was younger than me. She knew of him because he was a security guard at the mall.

Fisher: Oh, wow! [Laughs]

Jilayne: Yes! Yes, so that’s why his name rang a bell. And so she sent an officer and he went and got a hold of my brother, who was on vacation. But when he did call me and we compared notes that he was Cherokee, and Spanish, and from Oklahoma, his parents’ names were Nora and Victor. My brother had that information as well. So, yeah. I flew up. I met him. It was a surprise for Sam. So me and his wife, we connived together.

Fisher: [Laughs]

Jilayne: [Laughs] And I flew up there on Halloween and I knocked on the door and he opened the door and handed me and my daughter a bag of chips and shut the door. [Laughs]

Fisher: [Laughs]

Jilayne: We didn’t have any costumes on or anything. And his family was yelling, “Sam, open the door!” And he opened the door and he recognized it was me and the reunion was on.

Fisher: Oh my gosh! So, you started this long before DNA came along and you probably figured this has got to be it, whatever he knows about your dad would be all you’d ever learn.

Jilayne: That was it. I saw pictures of my dad, I went and we drove the highway between Prince Rupert and Terrace, which is the highway my father died on. And then we did go also over to my father’s grave. And for me, that did bring me an incredible amount of peace. And I kind of figured, you know, after everything else I had tried that this was the end of the road. [Laughs]

Fisher: Sure. Sure. And are you still in touch with Sam?

Jilayne: Yes. We’ve been in touch ever since, and we talk quite often. We actually have quite a strong connection, so that’s kind of been a very interesting thing too that we have this connection. Actually, we talk to each other a few times a month, so.

Fisher: That’s awesome. And I would imagine after all that’s happened since, you have a lot more to talk about.

Jilayne: Well, yes. He’s actually going to be down my way here so we’re hoping we’re going to have some time together here at the end of the month so looking forward to that for sure.

Fisher: Fantastic. So, let’s fast forward now to the DNA period here. You finally got on to this bandwagon.

Jilayne: I did.

Fisher: As you were held up over time. What was it that was keeping you from doing it? Did you just figure, no, I’ve got a good feel of this now, or did you finally decide well, maybe there’s something more to find?

Jilayne: Well, I kinda asked myself that question too because I was thinking about it. Something was always coming up, you know. I was kind of afraid that if I did this DNA, maybe it would come up empty again.

Fisher: Um hmm.

Jilayne: There was a fear of that and there was a fear of things just always coming up. And then just this past February I saw on Ancestry there was a deal, I said that’s it, I’m doing it. I just got on it right away and ordered the test. Ordered the rush test. [Laughs]

Fisher: [Laughs] Awesome. Yeah.

Jilayne: Yeah. Let’s get it done. Let’s do it now. Never in my wildest dreams did I expect the results that we got.

Fisher: Well, what did you see first of all among your matches? I would imagine though, you probably the first thing you wanted to see was the ethnicity results, right?

Jilayne: Yes. And that was a surprise as well because believing my father… well, I did get the indigenous part and also he has a little bit of Swedish in him.

Fisher: Okay. Wow!

Jilayne: Yeah. So, I was kinda like, hmm, that’s very different than what we knew. Because we thought it was Cherokee and Mexican. Of course, it didn’t specify the actual nation that he comes from. But yeah, so, from there of course, I went into the DNA matches of my cousins and first cousins.

Fisher: Were you aware of matches and how matching worked with DNA?

Jilayne: Not at all. Not at all. I was just kind of lost on the website because you know, once you get your DNA results, you get to register it and then I kinda delved in. And to be honest, the actual history of going back so long wasn’t really something that I was too terribly concerned with. I was more concerned with this hole in my soul that I’ve had for years.

Fisher: Um hmm.

Jilayne: Of wanting to know about my family and my father.

Fisher: And you didn’t realize that the matches could give you more than any of that ethnicity.

Jilayne: Oh, I was stunned.

Fisher: [Laughs]

Jilayne: I was stunned because they were Canadian the other matches that I had. [Laughs]

Fisher: Okay. All right.

Jilayne: So, I was like okay, my dad was living in Canada so perhaps everybody moved up to Canada at some point.

Fisher: Um hmm.

Jilayne: So, I sent a message to a few of them and then my second cousin’s wife, who manages his tree, got a hold of me. And I am so grateful to Ilene. She did write me back and we kinda exchanged information and I sent her a picture of my dad and I was able to look at her tree, which is something you can do when you have a DNA match.

Fisher: Right.

Jilayne: You can look at other people’s tree. And there I saw my grandparents’ names, Nora and Victor. Except, they were not the Bacas, they were another name, Sinclair. It was Nora and Victor Sinclair.

Fisher: Now, when you saw that, what was your first reaction, Jilayne?

Jilayne: Completely confused. [Laughs]

Fisher: I’ll bet.

Jilayne: I had never heard the name Sinclair and didn’t quite know what to make about it. But I did share that with Ilene and said, “These names sound familiar, but the last name not at all. I sent her a picture that I had that my brother had given me of my father, and she was in touch with my aunt, who is my Dad’s last living sibling. Darlene, and sent the picture to her. And she said, “Oh my gosh! He looks just like the Sinclair boys.”

Fisher: [Laughs]

Jilayne: And so she sent me back this poster that was just devastating because it was the Canadian missing person.

Fisher: Ohh!

Jilayne: Yeah.

Fisher: And so this is the first you really knew that your dad was a missing person.

Jilayne: Yes. When I saw that poster, I was overcome. I was shaking. [Laughs] I didn’t even know how to process it.

Fisher: Well, didn’t your mom kind of imply to you that your dad was quite secretive and that was one of the reasons that she broke up with him?

Jilayne: I don’t think she said… he said he wanted to marry her but couldn’t.  And of course, I was born in ‘64 so I’m giving away my age, but those were different times.

Fisher: Um hmm.

Jilayne: And you know, my mom wanted to be married.

Fisher: Sure.

Jilayne: I mean, she was having his child. You know, that’s it. So, she just assumed that the reason why he wouldn’t, because he kept telling her, “I want to marry you, but I can’t.” And he said, “I can’t tell you why.” And so she just assumed he was married and was refusing to get divorced.

Fisher: Right. And of course

Jilayne: And unfortunately, I mean…

Fisher: He wasn’t married though.

Jilayne: No. No. No. He had actually… his story is quite tragic when you start to think about it. Of course, I have [Laughs] and it’s quite emotional because it really changed the trajectory of many people’s lives.

Fisher:  All right. Let’s take a break right there then and come back and talk about that story and the trajectory that it changed when we return in five minutes on Extreme Genes, America’s Family History Show.

Segment 3 Episode 384

Host: Scott Fisher with guest Jilayne Davidson

Fisher: Hey, we’re back on Extreme Genes, America’s Family History Show and ExtremeGenes.com. It is Fisher here your Radio Roots Sleuth and I’m talking to Jilayne Davidson from Calgary, Alberta. And Jilayne has been telling us all about her dad, an indigenous man from Canada with a mysterious background. She never knew him. She actually tracked down a brother, a half brother some time back who has become very close to her. But, recently with DNA she’s made some fascinating discoveries including the background of why her dad was so mysterious. And Jilayne, let’s just go back there now from what you’ve learned about Mervin Sinclair AKA your dad William Baca.

Jilayne: Yeah. Back then it was 1958 of course that was a different time as well, a few years before my birth. My father went into the military and he had a bad experience there and he was supposed to head off to Vancouver, from what I was told and he decided to go home because of what had happened to him there. And when he returned home, that was in Saskatchewan. He went home for the long-weekend and reported to his siblings that somebody had attempted to sexually assault him, a corporal, somebody who was superior to him. And of course he responded and there was violence. He was afraid to return.

Fisher: Sure.

Jilayne: He was afraid to go back to the military base and afraid of what would happen once he did return because apparently the corporal had threatened him, and afraid to go to jail. So, he never did return. Apparently, somebody had seen him hitchhiking back to Wainwright, which is a piece that I still can’t quite put together from everything I’ve learned, but he never did show up, and he was gone. And the Sinclair family back in Saskatchewan some time later received his belongings which were full of blood, so that was very concerning for them.

Fisher: Huh!

Jilayne: They never knew what happened to him.

Fisher: Where did they come from? Were they from the military?

Jilayne: Yes. They were what he had left behind. The military had sent him his belongings home.

Fisher: Okay. So, the assumption was that he had likely been murdered?

Jilayne: They didn’t know. My aunt Darlene talks a little bit about it but just that they didn’t know. They heard so many things over the years. So, you know my dad, he left and ended up somehow in the Sundre area which is where my mom is from. He was working as a ranch-hand and my mom fell in love with him and he just carried on with his life under this assumed name of William Baca.

Fisher: Amazing.

Jilayne: Yeah, he managed to keep that. He said his parents’ real names but never actually gave the last name.

Fisher: Interesting.

Jilayne: And what an incredible secret to keep.

Fisher: Wow! So, you’d always heard Nora and Victor but you didn’t realize it wasn’t Baca, it was Sinclair.

Jilayne: That’s right.

Fisher: So, your dad actually has a sister still has a sister living right now. What was her response when she heard that you had emerged as a result of this DNA test?

Jilayne: Oh, she wanted to meet me right away, which I don’t blame her. [Laughs]

Fisher: Sure.

Jilayne: Their family has been looking for him for their entire lives. She came over to meet me pretty much immediately. I think, I met her the next day after she had learned that.

Fisher: Really.

Jilayne: Yeah. I was lucky because she actually lived in Calgary.

Fisher: Really?

Jilayne: [Laughs] Yes. Yeah, so that is another fortunate piece of synchronicity that kind of worked together. So, I’ve been able to spend some time getting to know my aunty Darlene.

Fisher: And the sad thing is you also had an uncle who searched for your Dad for 50 years, who just died late last year.

Jilayne: Yes. Ralph Sinclair, my uncle. He was looking for my dad and actually did a piece with the Dawson City News about what had happened. What they suspected in the military. There was another story about my father being “Septic Tank Sam” which is another mystery here in Alberta where they found a body like 40 years ago in a septic tank that had been horribly murdered. And oddly enough, that mystery has now been solved as well. But before they had DNA, they just thought it was a possibly, but my uncles both submitted their DNAs so they were able to prove that my dad was in fact not Septic Tank Sam.

Fisher: Wow, what a name.

Jilayne: Yeah.

Fisher: So, how long has it taken you to get your head all around this amazing story?

Jilayne: I’m still working on that, to be honest with you. [Laughs]

Fisher: [Laughs] How has it changed your life? I mean, have you met all these people? Have you had reunions?

Jilayne: No, not yet. We just learned this like in February. And then of course now there’s been an RCMP investigation.

Fisher: Okay. For people here, that’s the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.

Jilayne: Yes. This is basically to close the missing person’s case for my father.

Fisher: Um hmm.

Jilayne: And we’re hoping from that point on we’ll be able to put him to rest properly with his correct name on his marker and stuff like that. But first, we have to be able to close the missing person’s case

Fisher: So, how are they going about that because obviously your DNA matched to Darlene and to Ralph’s son Podge? I mean, that has to be a big key to this investigation. Do they understand the power of DNA that they have in their hands?

Jilayne: Well, this has been a little bit of an interesting… I think it’s confusing for some of the folks even those in my family. Because there’s now the DNA from the Ancestry test that originally brought us all together and now there’s also been a DNA match through DNA from the RCMP. So, apparently the case is not completely closed yet. So, the police of course the RCMP don’t want to comment, I don’t believe until everything is finalized. But, seems pretty cut and dry like you said with the DNA that my dad is Mervin Sinclair and now we can all know what happened to him, know his story, and be able to put him to rest. And I really hope that somehow, someway he knows if he’s watching all this and feels some kind of peace.

Fisher: Oh, I imagine so.

Jilayne: Yeah.

Fisher: And it’s interesting because you would think for the Sinclairs, they now know what happened after he disappeared. And for you and your brother Sam, you now know what happened to him before he showed up in your life.

Jilayne: Yes, it’s a huge piece. The puzzle has been solved. So I am so grateful. Submitting your DNA you never know [Laughs] what might come up.  

Fisher: Right.

Jilayne: This is going to like bring peace to a lot of people. There’s still some stuff that we need to do. I do want to meet my family and I do want to know more and I have learned a lot, like it’s so weird, when I first did my Ancestry tree, I had my mom’s side of the family going back until my great, great grandparents, and then I just had William Baca on the other side. [Laughs]

Fisher: Right.

Jilayne: And now I have ancestors going right back to my great, great grandparents on both sides.

Fisher: Isn’t that a thrill.

Jilayne: That’s a thrill and it’s such a gift to be able to pass down to my grandchildren too.

Fisher: Yes, absolutely.

Jilayne: We know who we are.

Fisher: Especially as you add the stories of Mervin’s parents and grandparents.

Jilayne: Yes.

Fisher: And that’s just life changing stuff. Well, congratulations! What do you hope is going to happen next and is anybody writing a book about this?

Jilayne: [Laughs] Well, I have some very, very interesting people that are in my family. So, we’re hoping that we’re going to be able to get together and get to know one another and perhaps, there might even be a documentary in the works, but we’re not one hundred percent there yet. I think we’re all just assimilating this new information.

Fisher: Well, when you consider you’ve got a missing person case, it’s 50 years old, you’ve got the DNA component, you’ve got everybody wondering what came before, what came after nobody knows. And finally, it’s all resolved. I mean, it would make a great documentary and I would watch it. [Laughs]

Jilayne: Thank you.

Fisher: So, put on your makeup and be ready. We’re ready to see that whole thing.

Jilayne: [Laughs]

Fisher: She’s Jilayne Davidson from Calgary, Alberta, Canada. And she is the daughter of Mervin Sinclair AKA William Baca, and now they know who he is, where he came from, and where he went. Great story Jilayne, thanks so much for your time, we appreciate it.

Jilayne: Thank you for having me.

Fisher: And coming up next, David Allen Lambert returns as we do another round of Ask Us Anything, answering your questions on Extreme Genes, America’s Family History Show in three minutes.

Segment 4 Episode 384

Host: Scott Fisher with guest David Allen Lambert

Fisher: We are back for Ask Us Anything on Extreme Genes, America’s Family History Show and ExtremeGenes.com. David Allen Lambert is in the house. And David, our first question for this segment comes to us from Les Hongrin in Minneapolis and he writes, “Fisher and Dave, what records have an ancestor’s height? My family’s really tall and we want to see how far back tall goes. Les.” Good question. Wow!

David: Well, first thing that comes to mind is military.

Fisher: Yeah.

David: I mean, your draft registration cards of World War I, World War II always gives you some sort of a physical description. You may get it in surviving school records. Of course you want the later years, not the first grade. [Laughs]

Fisher: [Laughs]

David: Yeah, you want to wait for adolescence to kick in.

Fisher: Yeah. [Laughs]

David: How about you? Have you found anything that’s been good for height?

Fisher: Yeah, actually. This doesn’t have to do with military so much, as least not directly, but in the war of 1812, they kept track of enemy aliens in New York City.

David: That’s right.

Fisher: And so, they would go around and they would register all the people there. And there were actually two different versions of it, one was from the navy and one was from the county sheriff I believe over two different years. And they would put the height of the principle enemy alien in there. So, I had a British third great grandfather who had not naturalized yet, so as an enemy alien, they had to register him and his height was on that.

David: Do you know another thing that just came to mind, newspaper ads for people who were runaways, may have been enslaved person or maybe your ancestor was indentured to someone and he broke the contract and ran away, the other thing, jail records.

Fisher: Oh yes!

David: You want to keep track of those prisoners, you know, how tall they are when they run away.

Fisher: Right. And you have a lot of those in your family.

David: I do.

Fisher: [Laughs]

David: Grandpa was 5’10. [Laughs]

Fisher: [Laughs] Well, and I remember another one, speaking of which is, I had an ancestor in London who abandoned the family and that left the care of the family to the local parish church. They did not like that, so they put an ad in the newspaper described his height, they described what he looked like, They described the clothes he was wearing last seen, what he did for a living, who he last worked for, the name of his wife and the fact he’d left behind five kids and they were offering a “tuppence” for his return, something like that. Anyway, that gave his description that way. You can often get even a lot more than height, you know, you can get those physical descriptions on many of these different ads.

David: And MOD records. Check the drivers’ license files it will have your height on.

Fisher: Oh wow! That would be good.

David: Yeah. And of course in your kitchen if you had kids growing up, chances are you scratched or etched or sharpied their height on it. So, don’t forget, before you move or paint over it, take a picture of it and make a permanent record.

Fisher: You know, it’s always frustrating to me when I find a record like the military ones you’re talking about. Some of the draft registrations, especially in World War I, it wasn’t, you know, he’s 5’8 3/4, it was “tall, short or medium.” That was it. And the build was that way, too. And it’s like, oh, come-on! Give us a little more than that. I want specifics to see where I got my height or lack of it.

David: So I guess the real thing here is, write down in your own family record how tall you are, you spouse is, your kids are as adults, your grandkids once they turn the late teenage years, and you know, keep track of that thing, and also hair color, eye color, and all that. I mean, it’s all important, and DNA does tell us some things.

Fisher: That’s true.

David: But it may not tell us exactly how tall our ancestor is. So, if you get that fact in your head now, write it down.

Fisher: It just occurred to me that I also have a record that was passed down from some cousins. They kept a record of the family from the 19th century and they wrote a physical description of all these people with their height on there as well. So, yeah, those things are out there. You’ve just got to look in different places. You’ve got to get a little creative sometimes. But, great question, Les. And thank you for it. And coming up next, we have another one coming from Los Alamos, New Mexico in three minutes when we return on Extreme Genes, America’s Family History Show.

Segment 5 Episode 384

Host: Scott Fisher with guest David Allen Lambert

Fisher: Okay, back at it. It’s our final question this week for Ask Us Anything on Extreme Genes, America’s Family History Show and ExtremeGenes.com. Fish here, its David Allen Lambert over there from the New England Historic genealogical Society and AmericanAncestors.org. And Dave, this question comes from Debra Brink in Los Alamos, New Mexico and she says, “Guys, love the show. I’m trying to find out which of my ancestors were literate. How can that be determined?” Good question, Debra. Where do you want to start with that, Dave?

David: Well, I mean we can start with more recent things like our kids will show up in the newspaper for the spelling bees and so did maybe our parents and our grandparents, because the newspapers will talk about those who graduated from high school or from grammar school. But the federal census starting in the 19th century would record whether or not a person could read or write, so there’s a place, the census enumerator took down that information for you.

Fisher: Right. That’s really good.

David: There’s a lot of different records that are out there. Robert Charles Henderson who is a scholar of the Great Migration, for the early New Englanders who came over between 1620 and 1640, when he did these sketches, he includes education, and that doesn’t mean, Fish that they went to Oxford University, that means that in the inventory of their estate, they had a bible or another book or scripture or maybe some other books that shows that obviously he or she could read. And the other thing is, probate, because you know when you look for your ancestor’s probate, we may not have a photo of our ancestor, but the signature shows that they were literate, that they could write.

Fisher: Yeah. And in wills from the 18th, 19th centuries also can tell you whether or not they had books in their inventory. That would be useful. You know what’s interesting to me about all this too Dave is, a lot of people couldn’t write their names back in the day. They would put an initial. For instance, we have one on my wife’s side named Elisha Stout. Came from Monmouth County, New Jersey and he used the letter E for Elisha as his mark. [Laughs] And there are a lot of genealogists out there who said, “His name was Elisha E. Stout.”

David: Oh no!

Fisher: Because that’s how it appeared in the record. It’s like, no, no, no, that meant he couldn’t write. That was just his initial for his first name.

David: You know, this is even like with the middle initial that you find on ladies in the 1700s that maybe they’re listed as Mary S. Johnson. Well, the S isn’t her middle name is Susan, it’s the S, because her maiden name is Stuart and somebody may have jotted it down that way.

Fisher: Um hmm, yeah, it’s possible. There were really very few people who had middle names before the 19th century. I mean, it was really, really rare.

David: It is. And you start to see them come into vogue around the American Revolutionary War, where you get George Washington this and Thomas Jefferson that. But before that, it’s just biblical names for the most part and just one name, which makes it great when you’re looking for your John Smith in northern New Hampshire.

Fisher: Yeah. I can think of one though for the 18th century, John Paul Jones, right?

David: Well, yeah, yeah, and there were exceptions to the rules, of course.

Fisher: Not many.

David: No, no, not a lot. I mean, out of the percentage of 100, you’ll probably dealing with 15 maybe.

Fisher: Yeah.

David: And again, that’s just an estimated guess. But if you look at the vital records in 16 and 1700s, find the ones that have middle names and you probably will not find as many as you might find, say, on an online tree.

Fisher: There you go. Well, there you go, Debra. If you want to know if your ancestors were literate, could they write their name? Do they have books in their inventory of their estate or mentioned somewhere else in the records? I think those things are about it really, Dave.

David: Yeah, there really isn’t, unless of course you have personal family papers that might give you that clue, too, diaries that somebody may have kept, letters, post cards, whatever and that may give you an added clue, but that’s on a personal and family history level on your own family archive.

Fisher: Well, there you go. That’s Ask Us Anything for this week. Thank you, Debra for the question. And of course if you have a question for Ask Us Anything, just email us at AskUsAnything@ExtremeGenes.com. David, talk to you next week.

David: Talk to you soon.

Fisher: And that is our show for this week. Thank you so much for joining us. And thanks once again to Jilayne Davidson for coming on the show and talking about her amazing discovery that united two families around an event that took place in 1958. If you missed the story or want to catch it again, of course catch the podcast. Talk to you next week. And remember, as far as everyone knows, we’re a nice, normal family!