Host Scott Fisher opens the show with David Allen Lambert, Chief Genealogist of the New England Historic Society. David notes the 74th anniversary of the D-Day invasion of France, the turning point of World War II. Leading off Family Histoire News, Fisher and David discuss the recently discovered hacking of MyHeritage.com and the impact it is likely to have on the industry. Then, scientists are interested in renting or buying your DNA! David will explain. Fisher then shares a new find concerning one of his wife’s relatives from a digitized newspaper story from 1903. It will blow your mind. Next, one company is cashing in on the tattoo craze… and yes, it has to do with preserving family history. In a really odd way. David then shines his blogger spotlight on Renee Schmidt. Check out her blog here. Then David shares exciting news from NEHGS concerning a new database many genis will be anxious to visit.

Then, Fisher chats with Joe Dooley, Past President General of the Sons of the American Revolution. The S.A.R. is currently in a partnership with Kings College in London, reviewing the personal papers of King George III and other high officials of the British government from the time of the Revolution. Joe reveals the goals of the project, and a story or two that has already come forth that had never been revealed before.

Finally Tom Perry, the Preservation Authority from TMCPlace.com talks reunion preparation. There’s a lot more to it than you may think!

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

Transcript of Episode 241

Host: Scott Fisher with guest David Allen Lambert

Segment 1 Episode 241

Fisher: You have found us! It’s 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. This segment of the show is brought to you by FamilySearch.org. And coming up today, a unique new partnership between the Sons of the American Revolution and King’s College in London. My guest today is going to be Joe Dooley. He’s the past President General of the SAR and he’s going to tell us about this partnership, what they’re expecting it to bring to us In terms of new outlook on what happened on the other side of the pond during the Revolution and some new stories that have come as a result of this, some new discoveries in the papers of King George III. This is going to be good stuff coming up starting in about 10 minutes. And here’s our guy with our Family Histoire News every week. He’s the Chief genealogist of the New England Historic Genealogical Society and AmericanAncestors.org. From Boston, Massachusetts please say hello to David Allen Lambert. Hi David, how are you?

David: Hey, I’m doing okay. Back from Ontario at the Ontario Genealogical Society in Canada which was great. I’m flattered to say they asked me to be their keynote next year in Lonsdale, Ontario in June 2019.

Fisher: That is fantastic! Congratulations.

David: Thank you.

Fisher: And speaking of which by the way, I’m keynoting at the FGS Convention coming up in Indiana in August. So, it’s going to be a lot of fun and we’re look forward to seeing a lot of the genis there.

David: Absolutely. Well, I’ll tell you, we start off with the news remembering something that happened 74 years ago, and that is the anniversary of D-Day, Operation Overlord which changed the course of the war for the good with the landing of the Allies on the beaches, including my own uncle who was only 19 years old.

Fisher: Wow!

David: Well, the big news in genealogy is obviously the 92 million accounts from My Heritage that have been compromised.

Fisher: Yeah, this is huge news obviously. Ninety two million accounts. Apparently it happened last October, but My Heritage has just found out about it here recently. And the first thing they’re saying is change your password. There’s no real word right now on whether or not there’s any data relating to family members or anything that has been compromised, They don’t know.

David: Well, they can always download my ancestors and do the research for me. [Laughs]

Fisher: [Laughs] Well, this is kind of a shot across the bell for the entire industry though David.

David: Sure hard shot.

Fisher: Obviously, there’s going to be a lot of information coming out about this and if you had an account prior to, I want to say, I think it was October 17^th of last year, then you are affected by this as most of us are. Obviously, you don’t build up a database of 92 million users without that going back some way. So, make sure you get your password changed and keep an eye open on things. They’ve set up a 24/7 hotline, but it’s a miserable thing and obviously everybody’s worst nightmare. There’s no mention though David about DNA, the raw DNA data being compromised.

David: No, I haven’t heard anything about that either and that’s obviously a big concern, but actually leads me to my next story in regards to what you might want to do with your own DNA, sell it or rent it. 

Fisher: Yeah [Laughs]

David: Luna DNA of Solana Beach and Nebula Genomics of San Francisco, California, start ups, are trying to figure out how much they would be paying people for their DNA either to buy it or to rent it. So, with all your DNA information out there and possibly now compromised, why not sell it anyways?

Fisher: Yeah, [Laughs] that’s a good way to look at it. You know, the interesting thing about this is of course it will be used for health issues. And they say if you get enough DNA in there people that have provided it willingly and have actually been paid for it, we can solve a lot of disease issues. And wouldn’t that be incredible?

David: It really would.

Fisher: All right, I’ve to share with you a story that I found this week. This is from a digitized newspaper account out of Indiana, and this is one of my wife’s relatives, not one of her ancestors, looks like a cousin branch, okay?

David: Sure.

Fisher: This is from 1903. “David Early was arrested Monday on complaint of his former wife Mrs. May Kramer in Goshen. She’s charging Early with peering at her windows and depositing dynamite upon her front step.

David: [Laughs]

Fisher: “During Early’s examination he was asked if he did not tell the prosecuting witness, while yet his wife that it was he who blew up Dr Sweatland’s office in Mottville in 1895, injuring a man who was sleeping therein, and that he secured acquittal for one Thomson, who was accused of the crime by falsely swearing an alibi.” [Laughs]

David: Wow! That story’s quite a blast from the past.

Fisher: Yeah. [Laughs] Yes it is a blast from the past.

David: [Laughs]

Fisher: But I love what you can find in digitized newspapers and there’s a great example.

David: Well, I tell you, one thing that might be a surprise for future genealogists when you go and view the trunk. You might find grandma’s pictures. You might find grandma’s wedding dress. How about grandma’s tattoos?

Fisher: Yeah, yeah I know.

David: You can now preserve forever body art. Tattoos can be removed, then preserved by a company called Save My Ink Forever.

Fisher: Hmm. This has gotten a lot of comment on our Facebook page. [Laughs]

David: Yeah. I don’t have any tattoos personally and photographs work really well.

Fisher: Yeah, right. Right.

David: I just don’t think I need to touch and have it as a bookmark.

Fisher: Hmm. [Laughs]

David: One of my relatives…

Fisher: [Laughs]

David: So, any distant cousins that want to do DNA, more than happy to have it. You want to send your tattoos after you’re dead? Not interested, thank you.

Fisher: No thanks.

David: Well, I tell you, every week we like talk about our blogger spotlight, and this one, pretty young, she’s still in high school or probably just graduating. Renée Schmidt out of Virginia has a blog called FamGenealogy.blogspot.com and go to Extreme Genes for the full hyperlink, it’s a little longer. But she talks about her adventures in genealogy and it’s really nice to see the next gen of genealogists. This is someone who’s right in that generation though we keep what we’re doing now for the future generations to look back at. It’s great stuff. Well, NEHGS has some exciting news. We have launched the fifth generation of Mayflower Silver Books for our members on AmericanAncestors.org and it has over 193 000 records. It’s the fifth generation from the immigrant and it has all the data so you can search it. The first four are still in print so you’d still need to refer to the books, but this is a way to get in and find out if you have a potential Mayflower line for 2020 which is right around the corner. And remember, if you’re not a NEHGS member, you can join and save $20 by using the coupon code “Extreme” on AmericanAncestors.org. Well, that’s what I’ve got from Beantown for this week. Dig for some more news for next week for you Fish.

Fisher: All right David, take care. Thanks so much. And coming up next we’ve got the past President General of the Sons of the American Revolution, Joe Dooley, talking about their new partnership with King’s College and some of the information about the Revolution from across the pond that we didn’t know before. He’s coming up in three minutes on Extreme Genes, America’s Family History Show.

Segment 2 Episode 241

Host: Scott Fisher with guest Joe Dooley

Fisher: Welcome back! It’s America’s Family History Show, Extreme Genes and ExtremeGenes.com. Fisher here, your Radio Roots Sleuth, proud member of the Sons of the American Revolution, going back to 2013, at the time my next guest became the President General of the SAR. He’s Joe Dooley, and Joe, welcome to Extreme Genes. Nice to have you along!

Joe: Thanks Scott. Good to be here.

Fisher: You know, I’m kind of excited about some of the things that are happening right now and I wanted to get into that and that’s the reason of your time on the show here. But I wanted to talk about the one year that you were President General of the SAR, some of the things you accomplished because I thought they were pretty amazing at the time. It was my first year in there.

Joe: Oh great! I didn’t realize you joined the SAR in 2013 while I was P.G.

Fisher: Yes.

Joe: Wonderful, wonderful. It was a good year.

Fisher: [Laughs]

Joe: I don’t know if you remember reading into the issues of the SAR magazine, but when I became President General I challenged the membership to raise a million dollars during my term and at the time I had a full head of hair.

Fisher: [Laughs]

Joe: I said, “If you raise a lot of money, if you raise a million dollars I will shave my head bald during our next national conference” which we call a Congress.

Fisher: Right.

Joe: We did it. We raised over $1.3 million actually almost $1.4 million.

Fisher: So you’re like a school principle, right? I mean they do that. They incentivize. Okay.

Joe: [Laughs] They incentivize and so we did it. The other thing during my term as President General was, I established a relationship with Mount Vernon, George Washington at Mount Vernon. At the time Mount Vernon had a program took place. Portraits of General Washington in schools all across the country, and with the SAR’s help we were able to place well over fifty portraits of Washington in various schools. I also challenged members of the state societies and the local chapters to erect monuments, markers and memorials to Revolutionary War people, places or events, and we did that. And I’m very happy particularly down in North Carolina they erected a monument to a community of black patriots. They were a free community of people of color and many of them were patriots. So there are people of color in North Carolina descended from these black patriots and there’s an SAR monument honoring them.

Fisher: Yeah, I remember it was a very busy year.

Joe: It was.

Fisher: All right, I want to get past that because you’ve got so much going on right now and I know you’re right in the thick of this thing.

Joe: Yes.

Fisher: It’s a partnership with King’s College, and for anybody who is a descendent of the Revolution, for anybody who had ancestors living at this time, this is going to be of great interest to you because it’s opening up the personal notes and correspondence of King George III at the time. How did this come about Joe? Did you reach out and how did those folks across the pond feel about this?

Joe: Actually, the outreach came from the other side of the pond. Back in 2015 the Georgian Papers Programme was launched at Windsor Chapel. It’s a collaboration between King’s College London and the Royal Archives. And what King’s College has done is they have reached out to several entities in Europe and in the United States to help with the digitization of about three hundred and fifteen thousand records.

Fisher: Wow!

Joe: Only about 15% of these have actually been studied by scholars.

Fisher: Why? What’s been the hold up on that?

Joe: Well, King George III died in 1820 and his son and heir King George IV died in 1830. The Duke of Wellington was actually... he served as the executive to George IV and he took possession of the personal papers of both George III and George IV, and those papers sat in the basement of Apsley House which was the Duke of Wellington’s London residence.

Fisher: Oh!

Joe: They were labelled to be “destroyed unread.” But fortunately they were not destroyed.

Fisher: Wow!

Joe: They sat in his basement for maybe a hundred years or so.

Fisher: [Laughs]

Joe: Then in 1914 King George V, the grandson of Queen Victoria, the grandfather of the current queen, King George the V established the Royal Archives at Windsor Castle and he set out looking for things to put in his archives and they found these papers at Apsley House. The first Royal Archivist went to look for other papers and found papers from King George I, and George II, and George IV was preceded by his brother William IV. So these five kings are collectively called the Hanoverians. We have all these papers from George I, II, III, IV, and William IV in the Georgian Papers Program.

Fisher: It’s incredible. And I’ve got to ask though, I think about these papers sitting in a basement in an old musty castle, I mean, what was the condition of these things after all that time?

Joe: My understanding from the Royal Archives is that they were in remarkably good condition.

Fisher: Wow!

Joe: The Royal Archives took possession of them in around 1914 so it was another hundred years before they decided to digitize them. But in the meantime, the next hundred years they’ve been stored in a climate controlled environment and they’ve been well preserved and now they are being digitized. So, among the partners of King’s College, London are actually the Omohundro Institute of early American history and culture and the College of William and Mary. Other partners besides this under the American Revolution include the Library of Congress, and the Mount Vernon Ladies Association.

Fisher: That is just phenomenal. So, this partnership now has begun and the SAR is a part of it, and so what is the role of the Sons of the American Revolution?

Joe: So what we do is, the SAR makes a... let me back up, the digitization program is scheduled to take about five years.

Fisher: Okay.

Joe: And it began in 2016. So we’re looking through 2020. And so what happens is, the SAR makes an annual contribution to King’s College London and that contribution under writes an American scholar to go to London to spend time at the Royal Archives at Windsor Castle studying these papers. This position is called the SAR Visiting Professor at King’s College London, and he or she has eight weeks.

Fisher: Is this a professor or is this..?

Joe: Well no, the position is designated as an SAR visiting professor.

Fisher: Okay.

Joe: So we were inviting professional historians and academics from American universities across the country.

Fisher: That is phenomenal. So they’re going through basically 85 percent of King George’s papers that have never been reviewed before by historians.

Joe: Well, they’re contributing to that review.

Fisher: Okay.

Joe: You know, obviously different historians have different areas of concentration. So they look for things that pertain to their particular interests. The first SAR visiting professor was Andrew O'Shaughnessy who was from the University of Virginia. A couple of years ago Andrew wrote the book “The Men Who Lost America” it was an examination of British leadership during the Revolution and so Andrew was interested in looking for things that touched on British leadership during the Revolution and he found a few interesting things. The second SAR visiting professor was Gabrielle Puckett from John Hopkins University. Professor Puckett is a Hispanic. She was very interested in the diplomatic correspondence between London and Madrid during the American Revolution. Spain as you may know, or as very few people may know, actually supported the American Revolution.

Fisher: Right.

Joe: Unlike France. They didn’t recognize the American Independence or sign treaties of amity and commerce, but they did support the Revolution. So, the diplomatic correspondence between London and Madrid could be enlightening. The next SAR visiting professor will be Katherine Engle from Southern Methodist University. Much of what Professor Engle has published deals with religion in the 18^th century and particularly religion during the Revolutionary period. So this is something I think has been little explored and that is the relationship between, you know King George III of course was the head of the Church of England and that included the Anglican community in the United States or what would become the United States.

Fisher: [Laughs]

Joe: And that became strange during the Revolution as you can imagine.

Fisher: Of course. Well, and of course the Episcopal Church wound up being a separate version of it and only fairly recently did it have any kind of reconciliation, which was interesting in itself. But I mean, I’m thinking about, here’s an eight year period from 1775 to 1783, when the Revolution was going on, but you also had the time leading up to it. I mean the causes of the Revolution have to be covered in there as well and I’m sure there are some amazing things. Now you mentioned that Andrew O'Shaughnessy discovered some interesting things. Can you share with us a couple of those things?  

Joe: Sure. To be honest with you, I know that Andrew has talked about this, I’m not sure if he made these discoveries, I know that he’s talked about them. But there was an essay that King George wrote entitled “America Is Lost” now the essay itself is undated but from the text you can tell that it was written some time after Colonel Wallace’s surrender at York Town in October 1781 and before the treaty at Paris was signed, so it’s in that period, less than two years actually. And it’s a bitter angry essay in which he just seeks to justify everything he’s done and he refers to Americans as these poor wretches.

Fisher: [Laughs]

Joe: As bitter as it may be also, I find it rather moving. This is a man, we as Americans may think of him as a tyrant.

Fisher: Right.

Joe: If you look at the Declaration of Independence, we have good course to think of him as a tyrant. But he himself thought of himself as a constitutional monarch, and he thought that he did everything that he could do and should do and was obliged to do by the British Constitution. So I think that the American Revolution really blindsided King George.

Fisher: He was kind of hurt that he was rejected that way with that much anger.

Joe: Absolutely. He absolutely had no idea or he could not understand why Americans were reacting the way they were reacting. Mind you, I’m not sorry at all about the way things developed.

Fisher: No. [Laughs]

Joe: As much as I might acknowledge the King really thought he got the raw end of the deal here, I’m sorry about that but I’m glad that we won.

Fisher: Well, I think there’s a lot of difference sometimes between how people are perceived and how they perceive themselves.

Joe: Absolutely.

Fisher: And obviously he’s trying to justify himself. I would imagine anybody who is born into a royal family in a position of leadership and all that their self view has got to be so different from anybody else who walks the earth.

Joe: Sure. It’s not a way to go through life that I can relate to at all.

Fisher: I mean, even different from presidents of the United States for instance, they go through a process of growth and seeking approval and building up support teams and then they get elected. I’m sure it must be surreal to be sworn in as President of the United States but you know your term is going to be only four years or eight years, one or the other, and it’s over. But these guys are born into it. They’ve got castles and they’ve got armies when they’re children. I mean it’s just absolutely astounding,

Joe: Sure. And American presidents have come from a wide range of backgrounds. You take somebody who has had a very humble beginning like say Harry Truman.

Fisher: Right.

Joe: But you know, somebody like the Roosevelts, probably privileged, very different, but I think that that reflects America.

Fisher: Absolutely. I’m talking to Joe Dooley. He’s the past President General of the Sons of the American Revolution, and they’ve got a partnership going right now with King’s College in England, and we’re finding out more about what was going o that side of the pond during the Revolution than has ever been known before. We’re going to talk more about this project coming up next when we return in five minutes on Extreme Genes, America’s Family History Show.                      

Segment 3 Episode 241

Host: Scott Fisher with guest Joe Dooley

Fisher: Welcome back, it’s America’s Family History Show Extreme Genes and ExtremeGenes.com. It is Fisher, talking to Joe Dooley. He is the past President General of the Sons of the American Revolution, who have a new partnership going on right now over the last year or so with King’s College in London as they examine the papers of the King Georges, many of them. King George, let me make sure I’ve got this right Joe, King George the II, the III, IV, and William the IV, right?

Joe: That’s correct.

Fisher: Okay.

Joe: They go back up to George I.

Fisher: And George I, okay. And during the break we were talking a little bit about one of the discoveries that Andrew O'Shaughnessy made during one of his times over there examining these papers on behalf of the SAR. It involved King George’s son, William. Tell us about this.

Joe: So, the man who would eventually become King William IV was actually a teenager during the American Revolution and I believe he held the rank of lieutenant in the Royal Navy. He was stationed in New York. So, there came a time when he took a walk with Sir Henry Clinton.

Fisher: Um hmm.

Joe: Sir Henry Clinton was in charge of the British forces in America. I should imagine that it would have to be very difficult to be the commanding officer and have as one of the people under your command the son of the king.

Fisher: [Laughs] A little awkward.

Joe: But that’s the situation General Clinton found himself in. So, there came a time when Sir Henry Clinton and Prince William were taking a walk around the Bowling Green. Now, if you back up you may recall that the outbreak of the Revolution, New Yorkers were so moved by the first public reading of the Declaration of Independence.

Fisher: Yes, that night... [Laughs]

Joe: They went and they pulled down a guild bronze statue of King George.

Fisher: Now, just to hold you there for a moment, Joe.

Joe: Sure.

Fisher: I had a fourth great ancestor named Elisha Gallaudet who lived just around the corner from that Bowling Green.

Joe: Ah, he might have participated.

Fisher: He could have for all we know, but he was the engraver of the Continental Dollar.

Joe: I’ll be darned.

Fisher: At least he gets credit for that. Anyway, I just picture every time I hear this story the noise he must have heard if he was not himself participating in it.

Joe: Well exactly. Now imagine some years later, the Revolution is under way and the statue of King George is long gone. They melted down the head and made bullets from it. So now New York is occupied by the Brits and Sir Henry Clinton is taking a stroll with Prince William and they come across the Bowling Green. What we know is that Prince William later wrote a letter to his father and I find this uncomfortable myself if I were a king.

Fisher: [Laughs]

Joe: I would hate to have my son to address me as “Your Majesty” but that’s exactly how Prince William addresses his father. Even if I were a king I’d want my son to say, “Dear Dad.”

Fisher: Well, it’s protocol, right?

Joe: I suppose.

Fisher: It’s protocol back in those days.

Joe: But my son is my son you know.

Fisher: Yeah.

Joe: This is a British thing. I can’t relate I’m an American.

Fisher: [Laughs]

Joe: So, Prince William writes a letter to his dad and he says, “Your Gracious Majesty or Your Royal Majesty.” And then he proceeds to describe how he was taking a walk with Sir Henry Clinton along the Bowling Green and he writes, “We saw the pedestal whereon your Majesty’s statue lately stood.”

Fisher: [Laughs]

Joe: I mean, I find this teenage boy taking a little dig at his father.

Fisher: Yeah.

Joe: He sort of brought to his dad’s attention, “This is where these Yanks pulled down your statue.”

Fisher: Um hmm.

Joe: I think it’s a great letter and I’m not sure if Andrew found this letter himself or I think he might have but certainly he has written about it.

Fisher: Yes. Well you know, it’s just amazing the kid was like 16, right, at the time?

Joe: Exactly.

Fisher: And he’s a Commissioned Officer in the British Navy at 16.

Joe: If you’re the son of the king I guess that can happen.

Fisher: Yeah that can happen. So here he’s obviously giving a little tweak to his old man, saying “Hey Dad, your statue’s not there anymore!” And it kind of makes you wonder if he was having fun at Dad’s expense or was he maybe just trying to provoke Dad a little bit more into supporting the effort, you know.

Joe: Oh I think he might have been doing both. [Laughs]

Fisher: And this is just one little letter from the course of this partnership with King’s College in London.

Joe: Absolutely.

Fisher: And how many are there in total? I mean you were saying in percentages that maybe fifteen percent of these....

Joe: I don’t know about specific correspondences. I do know that if you go, there’s a website the Georgian Papers Programme. And program is spelled the British way. http://georgianpapersprogramme.com/

Fisher: Of course, “m-m-e.”

Joe: mme, that’s correct. So if you go to Georgian Papers Programme, that website actually speculates that there’s about 315,000 pages.

Fisher: Wow!

Joe: So only about fifteen percent of these have been studied by professional historians.

Fisher: And do you think for a time with the sensitivity perhaps after the Revolution that they didn’t want this material to get examined and studied?

Joe: I think we probably have some evidence of that. For the most part I think that these papers are personal. I think there are relatively few state papers among this collection.

Fisher: Okay.

Joe: There may be some and I think that’s why these papers were labelled to be destroyed unread.

Fisher: Um hmm.

Joe: And we were fortunate that they were not destroyed and now we have the opportunity, really the luxury of reading them.

Fisher: Yeah and all the time in the world to get it done. I mean, I just can imagine the new books and new insight that’s going to come out as a result of this partnership.

Joe: Exactly and kudos to the Royal Archives. King’s College, the Royal Archives and the Royal Family are actually determined that all of these documents should be digitized and put online, made available online for free.

Fisher: Wow! Now, obviously 315,000 over whatever period of time, it must have been about a century’s worth of paper, right? They weren’t all written by the king?

Joe: No, no, no. Most of these papers as I understand are from the reigns of George III and George IV. There’s a smaller number of papers from George I and George II.

Fisher: Um hmm, but them personally or the Royal Family during that era?

Joe: Both.

Fisher: Okay.

Joe: Both. There are many documents from the respective kings but there are also documents from other members of the Royal Family and other Royal household.

Fisher: Fascinating. You know what’s going to be really interesting Joe? Is if we hear some references to specific individuals on this side of the pond.

Joe: Well, it’s actually funny you should say that because the SAR solicits resumes and we sift through these resumes to decide who will be the next SAR visiting professor at King’s College. One of the scholars who had submitted a resume is a fellow named Richard Samuelson at California State University in San Bernardino. And Professor Samuelson is an Adams Scholar. And as you may know John Adams is the only Founding Father to have had an audience with King George III.

Fisher: Right. Yes.

Joe: And so Richard was hoping that he could be named the SAR visiting professor because he would like to see if in fact George III made any private notation as to his impression of John Adams.

Fisher: [Laughs] Well, as we’ve seen portrayed at very least, it was an awkward meeting.

Joe: Absolutely. Well, I think it probably was more awkward for the king than it was for John Adams. Your audience is probably familiar with the musical Hamilton. As portrayed in that musical the king recounts that meeting and he was underwhelmed by John Adams.

Fisher: Yeah. [Laughs] Exactly. Well it’s quite the partnership and I’m really excited to hear about where this goes moving forward. What are you anticipating, any new books that are coming out anytime soon as a result of this?

Joe: Not anytime soon. I’ve learned the hard way that academic publishing happens very slowly. So, I think that these papers are going to be digitized and they’re going to be studied and I think what we’ll see probably within the next five to ten years, is we’ll see more and more papers being written.

Fisher: Journals?

Joe: Journals, pieces in history journals. And then eventually we will see some books from more in depth studies of what these papers might reveal to us.

Fisher: Yeah. Absolutely amazing and I would imagine this could go on and on for twenty years or more.

Joe: Well, the digitization process is scheduled for five years.

Fisher: Right but the study of them, you know once they’re available, will never end.

Joe: That’s correct and that’s the nature of academics. You know, the scholarship will go on and on, and on. People will study these and restudy these and will put the whole Georgian world, the whole 18^th century, the whole Revolutionary period in a different perspective.

Fisher: Wow, unbelievable. What a great project to involve the SAR and King’s College. Joe Dooley, thank you so much for your time and the insight on this. I’m really looking forward to hearing more about what we can find out about what was going on, on the other side of the pond during the Revolution.

Joe: Thanks Scott.

Fisher: And coming up next in three minutes it’s family reunion time, Tom Perry from TMCPlace.com, our Preservation Authority has some thoughts for you on that coming right up on Extreme Genes.

Segment 4 Episode 241

Host: Scott Fisher with guest Tom Perry

Fisher: It is time to talk preservation once again with our Preservation Authority, Tom Perry from TMCPlace.com. It is Fisher here, your Radio Roots Sleuth on Extreme Genes, America's Family History Show. Weather is nice and warm, Tom. It is reunion time and it’s time to think about what summer means when it comes to preservation. And there's a few aspects to this.

Tom: Right. There's actually, you know, two things that we'll cover in the first and second segment. The first thing is, you are going to be creating memories that are going to be important to your kids and your grandkids, so don't just blow them off and think, "These are happening right now. Who cares!" You need to preserve these things, so that they've got it. Now let's step back and look at things that you have received from aunts and uncles of grandma and grandpa, great grandparents, things that you found related to your family on eBay that you've been able to collect over time, you want to take all these things to your reunion and scan them, make them available for everybody in your family to be able to have access to. But yet you might have Aunt Gretel who will not let things leave her house, whether its film or slides or photos or whatever that is. You need to make sure that you still make that available. So what you might want to do is, if you've got your Shotbox or you've rented a scanner from Easy Photo Scan, which are high resolution scanners, before the reunion, go over to her house and scan all the stuff there, so she can sit there and look over your shoulder and make sure nothing's going wrong and your scanner's aren't eating her photos or whatever.

Fisher: Right.

Tom: And get all her stuff on an SD card or flash drive. I would also back it up on a CD just in case something happens to the flash drive. You want to make sure something's backed up. Also, put it in the cloud. When something's so important, you're going to a reunion with all these people, you don't want to rely on one source in case it goes south on you.

Fisher: That makes a lot of sense. Would you setup a cloud for everybody at the reunion to be able to access for material you put there?

Tom: Absolutely! And Dropbox is an ideal place to use. There's a lot of other ones out there that will let you use so many megabytes for free.

Fisher: Google Drive.

Tom: Exactly. There's so many good ones out there. Go and check them out, see what fits you best. And even if you have to pay for one month, that's fine. Just tell everybody, "Hey, all this stuff's going to be up for one month. You're going to have access to it." And then let everybody else before the reunion know what the site is, how to get to it, what the passwords are and all that kind of thing, because they might have some treasured memories that they're a little bit scared to let out of their home, too. So they can upload all these different things so they're there. And still remind them, "Please bring a DVD, a data DVD or a data CD, so we've got that too," just in case something happens with the cloud, it goes down, you know, something's going to mess up at your reunion, because usually they have like a four, five hour window on your reunion and don't want to mess that up. So make sure everybody knows that they've got a backup of everything that they have, too.

Fisher: Well, it will be like a virtual reunion online, right?

Tom: Exactly. And there will be some people, remember, some people can't make it because of work or whatever, so make sure for the people that aren't going to be there you setup something like a Skype account. Make sure the hotel you're going to or whatever has wifi access or you have a phone that you can use with your computer for wifi access. And just have it there the whole time and everybody can come and say, "Hey Mitch! Sorry you couldn't be with us. This is great! You know, this is what we're doing."

Fisher: Periscope is another one.

Tom: Exactly. If they have a good experience, maybe next year they'll be able to make it. And this is just a wonderful way not to leave anybody out.

Fisher: Well, and the good part about this especially is, this is the kind of thing that has to involve the younger people, because of the technology side of things, you know. The older folks aren't necessarily going to be playing with Skype and uploading and scanning and all this. They're going to involve the grandkids and the kids to be part of the thing as they anticipate the reunion and then being part of it later.

Tom: Absolutely. That is the best thing that you could mention, because so many times the little kids are, "Oh, this is going to be boring." Or the teenagers, "Oh, I'm going to hate this." Oh no, we need you to setup the Skype, we need you to run this, we need you to do all this kind of stuff. And their eyes get as big as baseballs and then they're going to go, "Oh hey, this reunion’s going to be cool!" And they're doing what their brain has been prepped to do that they love these iPads and all these kinds of fun electronics. And they're going to make it easier for you to do stuff. And they're going to be able to pull things off that you will not believe.

Fisher: Yeah. So make sure you plan this out and you involve the kids. So you're going to bring in the past and you're going to also create an experience that becomes the past and an important part of their youth. All right Tom, coming up in the next segment, what do you want to talk about?

Tom: We're going to talk a little bit more about what we can setup for your family reunion to make it totally awesome for everybody and you'll have your memories forever.

Fisher: All right, coming up in three minutes on Extreme Genes, America's Family History Show.

Segment 5 Episode 241

Host: Scott Fisher with guest Tom Perry

Fisher: All right, back at it, talking preservation with Tom Perry from TMCPlace.com, the Preservation Authority on Extreme Genes, America's Family History Show. And we're anticipating reunion time, Tom. And you know, as I think back on past reunions, I think of a lot of fun things, lot of funny things. I remember I was almost thirty years old, my mom slapping my hand that I couldn't touch some cake on the picnic table, because nobody started eating yet. I said, "Wait a minute! I'm a dad, I'm married, I have kids, I'll decide when I want to eat something," and slapped her own hand back.

Tom: [Laughs]

Fisher: But nonetheless, I mean, those are the silly little things you remember. And just those interactions with people that you rarely have the opportunity to interact with, preserving the memories of those things and the old videos, I mean, it’s so much fun to be a part of this.

Tom: And like we talked in the first segment about getting your past and bringing that to the reunion. Now let's talk about other people that haven't been able to do all this kinds of thing. I really highly recommend you do this. And if you're interested in doing it, I'd do it quick before they rent them all out. Get a hold of EZ Photo Scan out of Florida and rent one of their scanners, because you can rent it for a whole week. It’s very cost effective. Split it between your family, it costs hardly anything. You'll have a flatbed scanner for your big stuff, you'll have a really quick scanner for your 3x5s, your 4x5s and they also even have slide scanners that they can send to you also if you have a lot of people with slides.

Fisher: So people can bring their stuff to the reunion. They never have to let it leave their sight. They're not lending it to somebody else to create the scans. They get it right back immediately and then everybody gets to benefit from this.

Tom: Oh absolutely. And if you have altogether between ten people, each have a hundred slides, that's a thousand slides. The cost of the rental of it just paid for taking it to somebody else and having them do it. And it’s going to be fun to sit there, the younger kids and the teenagers are going to love to be able to do it, playing with this kind of stuff. And you can get it all organized, put it up in the cloud. But make sure, even if you don't have a CD drive or a DVD burner in your computer, run down to Best Buy or some electronics store, you can pick one up for $50 that's a BluRay burner. Take that with you, take a stack of BluRays with you, preferably Taiyo Yuden, and right there burn all the disks and give everybody a disk. So if the cloud goes down or something doesn't get uploaded right or something is glitchey when you get home and you're going, "Oh no! This is such an important picture and it looks all glitchy!" Well, you've got it on the CD too, so you're going to be fine. So make sure you do them right the first time. And as we were talking off the air, if you buy some cheap old scanner for $200 and you say, "Oh, we’ll later on we'll pick out the good pictures and redo it."

Fisher: [Laughs]

Tom: If you don't have time to do right, now, when are you going to have time to do it over again? You won't.

Fisher: Yeah. You won't. It won't happen. And that's why you've got to go ahead and do this. And I'd loved your recommendations from the past about finding one of eBay, buying it or buying something from Amazon, a really wowy, big end thing, you do all this work and then you sell it for maybe 80 percent. But the cost that you're into it is so minimal for what you've been able to accomplish, it’s fantastic!

Tom: Oh, its pennies on the dollar if you go that way. Like you say, buy it on eBay, resell it and you should be able on eBay get what you paid for it. If you buy a brand new one from like B&H Photo back in New York that are great, buy something from them, then sell it on eBay. The little bit that you've lost on selling it is nothing compared to what it costs to do 500 or 1000 slides at some outside source.

Fisher: Yeah, but keep in mind too, if you were to go to an outside source, that means that everybody has to get this material to you, that they'd be willing to get it to you. You've got to get it back to them. So if you had this device at your reunion and everybody brought everything for that event, you can get it all done at once. I mean, it’s just an unbelievably good idea.

Tom: Oh yeah, like you mentioned, it never leaves their hands, so if they're at all scared about even drop it off at a neighbor scanner, they don't have to do that. They can stand there and have one of the sixteen year old kids be in charge of the photo scanning. And they can sit there and show the people how to scan them themselves, so they don't even have to let them out of their hands and hand them to somebody else.

Fisher: Yeah, great advice and a great reminder, too. As always Tom, good to see you and thanks so much for the recommendations.

Tom: My pleasure.

Fisher: I know there are a lot of winter people listening, but I love summer time and all that comes with it. Hey thanks for joining us for another edition of Extreme Genes! We're done for this week. Don't forget to sign up for our Weekly Genie Newsletter, it’s absolutely free. You can do it at ExtremeGenes.com and on our Facebook page. We'll talk to you again next week. Thanks for joining us. And remember, as far as everyone knows, we're a nice, normal family!