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 their Family Histoire News with word that our Neanderthal DNA is not reducing over time. David explains what science is telling us. Then, they share the wonderful story of how a baby was found in an ash can in Korea in the early 1950s by some US Navy men and what has happened to his life since. David then talks about a couple of identical twins that got some consistently odd ethnicity results with their DNA tests. Then David talks about a remarkable find he made in the divorce records of his maternal grandfather and reviews Peter Jackson’s World War I documentary “They Shall Not Grow Old.”  David’s Blogger Spotlight this week shines on a blogger simply known as “Zoe.” Zestyz.wordpress.com is something of a new blog which talks about ancestors and early Hollywood.

Next, Fisher visits with Tyler Stahle of RootsTech. Tyler fills you in on this year’s speakers, features and highlights of RootsTech 2019, February 27-March 2, in Salt Lake City, Utah. Tyler also has a special discount for Extreme Genes listeners!

Then, Fisher talks to Lucy Mimna Goodwin of San Diego. Lucy was not a fan of her middle name. But when her research told the story of the Mimna branch of the family, it changed everything. Hear what Lucy learned about her family ties to automobile pioneers.

Then Tom Perry, the Preservation Authority from TMCPlace.com, talks about a wowy new camera that might rock your world as you prepare your family histories.

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

Transcript of Episode 269

Host: Scott Fisher with guest David Allen Lambert

Segment 1 Episode 269

Fisher: Welcome to America’s Family History Show! It’s Extreme Genes 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. And we have as usual some incredible guests today. First of all we are going to talk about RootsTech. If you’re not familiar with it, it is the world’s largest family history conference, and it is in Salt Lake City, Utah coming up at the end of February and early March for four days. And if you cannot physically be part of it there, there are ways that you can participate online. We’re going to talk to Tyler Stahle, one of the Roots Crew in about ten minutes about what you can expect at this year’s conference, and how you can participate from wherever you are. And then later in the show, we have a woman on, a researcher from San Diego named Lucy Mimna Goodwin. And for the longest time she didn’t like her middle name till she got into family history and discovered what her ancestors of that “Mimna” name actually accomplished. It’s a pretty cool story, so we look forward to having both Tyler and Lucy on the show coming up in just a little bit. Hey, if you haven’t signed up for our “Weekly Genie Newsletter” yet, it is time to do so. Just go to our website ExtremeGenes.com, enter in the box there and we share with you of course, a blog every week, links to great stories and past and present shows as well so you can get caught up. Right now it is time to head out to Boston and David Allen Lambert the Chief Genealogist of the New England Historic Genealogical Society and AmericanAncestors.org. How are you David?

David: Well, we’re doing fine, except for slip-sliding on the ice, and it’s finally hit winter and it’s slippery.

Fisher: All right, let’s get going. We’ve got a lot of Family Histoire News this week. Where do you want to start?

David: Well, this week goes back about four to five thousand years ago, so it’s old news but good news.

Fisher: Yes.

David: A new report from the perceiving of the National Academy of Sciences has proven that we actually have more Neanderthal in our roots than we had previously thought. They thought that the DNA of homo sapiens had wiped it out. No, this new report says that there’s a lot of it still hanging around. So Fish, if you ever meet people that can climb the heck out of trees, you now know why.

Fisher: [Laughs] Yeah, they say we’re just not losing our Neanderthal DNA from back then.

David: Yeah it’s very true. I think it’s funny because my half-sister and I compared our results. Of course, 23AndMe will give you that percentage, and she had more than me, and I said, “Well, you know you were better at climbing than I was.”

Fisher: Um hmm there you go.

David: [Laughs] Where we’re going to next is back to the Korean War where 21-year old Norm Van Sloun, back then, he walked by an ash can and well, picked up a baby. This baby was half Korean and half Caucasian was abandoned. Apparently, the homes that took in orphans did not take this blue eyed blonde haired baby. Guess what? They’ve been reunited sixty odd years later.

Fisher: Wow!

David: What a great story on Extreme Genes.

Fisher: Yeah, this guy is in his sixties and he’s met this man who rescued him in his eighties. And that whole crew took care of this baby. They had to get Richard Nixon who was then Vice-President to get a visa issued for this baby so they could bring him back to the United States and he’d be adopted. And that’s how it worked out.

David: Yeah.

Fisher: So, this baby was on the ship and taken care of for months!

David: Exactly. So their port of immigration was the USS Point Cruz and the crew became surrogate dads to this little baby.

Fisher: Unbelievable. Great story.

David: Well, you know identical twins, you’d think their DNA is going to match up 100%, now that’s not the case. In fact, in all cases and the story you’ll find on Extreme Genes, it talks about how there are actual differences on identical twins. Case by case there may be a little bit different on different testing companies, but you will still find it different. There’s no mirror image.

Fisher: Isn’t it amazing? Yeah, they’re off just a little bit on each of the tests and they did like five of them each.

David: Well, it just goes to show that you get a little bit different from mom and dad.

Fisher: Yeah, that’s right.

David: Well, I’ll tell you I’ve got a great PBS File. You know, you used to say you get a letter in the mail, now it’s pdf file [Laughs] from the archives in Ontario. My grandfather was previously married and I know that he had to get a divorce, and well, this divorce file had a big surprise, a photograph of him in 1919 when he was eighteen that he sent as proof that it was him when he was filing for his divorce when he was here in Massachusetts.

Fisher: [Laughs] Now wait a minute. This was in the ‘50s?

David: Correct. So this is a picture of him. It looks like he could’ve joined Capone’s gang. He has a long overcoat, a fedora, and holding a cigarette, but he’s eighteen years old and 1919 written on the back of the picture, and this was in his divorce file.

Fisher: Wow!

David: He got married when they went to Niagara Falls on a whim.

Fisher: I love that! Great story. All right, great find David.

David: You know, over the weekend I decided I was going to see a movie, and originally it was going to be Mary Poppins, but I held on that because there was a limit engagement and I got a last ticket for “They Shall Not Grow Old.” We talked about this before on the show that Peter Jackson movie. What he did was that he was contacted by the British War Museum. They wanted to do something different for the centennial. So he went through thousands of hours and silent film footage from World War I and colorized it. Now this is a better colorization than what Ted Turner did back in the ‘80s.

Fisher: Yeah.

David: So you know when you watch old silent movies and the go really fast or really slow, he fixed all the timing on it, but he added in the voices of hundreds of former World War I veterans that had been interviewed on BBC back in the 1960s and’70s. So, they narrate the story. It seems he’s added the sound of cannons. It’s great because they read the lips of some of the veterans of the silent movies and filled in what they probably were saying.

Fisher: Isn’t that amazing? Isn’t that fun? So you can actually get a kind of taste of the conversations on the battlefield more than a hundred years ago.

David: So, “They Shall Not Grow Old,” if it comes to a theater near you, it’s a limited engagement. It’s well worth the wait. I never thought I’d go see a documentary at a theatre, but I did and enjoyed it. Our blogger spotlight this week shines on Zoe. Zoe has an interesting blog where she talks about her own genealogical DNA research as well as her passion for old Hollywood. She’s a 1930’s film fan. So, who knows, maybe she’s got some connection with seeing a movie your mom was in Fish.

Fisher: Yeah, that’s true. That’s possible in the ‘40s.

David: Yes, so it’s Zestyz.wordpress.com and you’ll find her stories that are entertaining and Fish, might be a fun guest to have on the show eventually down the road. And of course, down the road if you’re finding yourself in Beantown, stop at the New England Historic Genealogical Society. We’ve been here for 174 years and we’d love to have you come in the door. And if you can virtually visit us, you can go to American Ancestors and you can join by using the code “Extreme” and save $20 on membership. Well, back to my ice skating on the streets of Boston. I just wanted to check in and give you the Family Histoire News this week.

Fisher: [Laughs] All right, thanks so much David. We’ll talk to you again next week. And coming up next I’m going to talk to Tyler Stahle. He’s with RootsTech and there’s a lot to cover about what’s going to happen at the world’s largest family history conference coming up in a very short while. That’s in three minutes on Extreme Genes, America’s Family History Show.

Segment 2 Episode 269

Host: Scott Fisher with guest Tyler Stahle

Fisher: Welcome back. It’s America’s Family History Show Extreme Genes and ExtremeGenes.com. It is Fisher here, your Radio Roots Sleuth, and everybody in the field of family history right now is getting very excited because RootsTech 2019 is closing in, in Salt Lake City, Utah. It has become the Disneyland basically of all family history conferences, and it’s huge. It started with like only 3,000 people attending about eight or nine years ago, and now it’s around 30,000 people over a four day period. And I have Tyler Stahle on the line. He’s the Marketing and Communications Manager for RootsTech 2019, and we’ve got to get caught up. How are you, Tyler?

Tyler: Great, Scott. Thanks for having me on. This is exciting to talk to you again.

Fisher: Boy, we’re coming right up on it. I know a couple of years ago the dates got moved back from early February to late February and now in to March, which is much better weather when you’re in Utah, right?

Tyler: That’s correct. Right. It’s been great to have the dates a little bit later now. Yes, it’s a little bit further from Christmas you know, and that post-Christmas swing that we all go into. So, this year RootsTech is February 27^th through March 2^nd at the Salt Palace Convention Center in Salt Lake City.

Fisher: And so, what is the first day about now? It used to be about innovation. The Innovation Summit was a big thing. And now it’s another full day of everything.

Tyler: Yeah. RootsTech has grown exponentially especially over the past seven or eight years, where we’ve just seen you know, the end consumer in the genealogy industry just wants more and more. And so we’ve changed our conference format now. It’s a full four day conference. Come Wednesday morning, classes start at 9:30 a.m. and you can choose from just over 300 classes on anywhere from DNA, genealogy research, to how to use church records to find your family, to even classes on things like how do I use Instagram to preserve my own family history. So, there’s just a plethora of things to choose from at RootsTech each and every day and that’s what makes it exciting and fun.

Fisher: And if people are thinking about actually going to Utah to attend this, you should know it’s at RootsTech.org that you can sign up right now. In fact, you’ve got like a 10% discount for us as I understand, right?

Tyler: Yeah, for your listeners Scott, anything for you. Go to RootsTech.org, you click the blue register at the top right hand corner, you’ll see that, and as you go through the registration process when you’re prompted to insert a promo code put in “19 Radio” that will give you a 10% off anything that you’re interested in purchasing, whether it’s a full four day conference pass or even just a one day conference pass. That’s 10% off for your listeners that way.

Fisher: Would that include the virtual pass that you’re offering?

Tyler: Correct. That does include the virtual pass. We’re really excited to announce this for the first time. We’re doing a RootsTech virtual pass. We’ve seen so many people watching our live stream. We do a live stream every year for free. But you know, we’ve seen and heard from these people that are watching remotely from Alaska, or Tennessee, or Florida, say, I can’t make it to Salt Lake City but I sure want to consume all this great genealogy concept that you have. We want more concepts so we’re offering a virtual pass. What that is, you go through the registration process, purchase a virtual pass, and you will then receive access to 18 recorded classes at RootsTech. Some of our best and brightest presenters will be included in the virtual pass. You will receive an email after the conference ends when the videos are ready for you, and you can log back in and watch these videos on demand for the next 12 months. So, that’s a great way if you can’t make it to Salt Lake. The virtual pass is a great option.   

Fisher: Boy, imagine that, 18 recorded classes available for 12 months for a 129 bucks from wherever you are. So if you’re listening in Washington D.C, or you’re listening to us in Atlanta, or Boston, or Dallas, wow! What a great deal. I love that. Now, let’s talk about the speakers this. You know, every year, well usually it’s been the beginning now it’s a little bit later in the day, we’ve got these keynote speakers and we’ve got some great names again this year.

Tyler: We are really excited. You know, the keynote speakers at RootsTech are kind of some of the things that help set up the part and brings some energy to the day. And we try to focus on having keynotes who come from a little more of a celebrity background. They may not be what you would consider to be a hardcore genealogist but they have stories about you know, family life and their family associations, and what they remember about their grandparents, and they share those on the stage, and it’s always a really exciting time. On Thursday at RootsTech this year we have our headliner Patricia Heaton. So, I don’t know if you’ve seen or if you are a big fan of “Everybody Loves Raymond” Scott.

Fisher: Yes.

Tyler: But she plays Debra Barone.

Fisher: Oh she was great. She’s absolutely a great actress and a lot of fun. Let’s see, we’ve had Laura Bush in the past and her daughter, and so Patricia Heaton will bring another angle to this and it’s so much fun. The keynotes really create a lot of buzz when you’re at the conference, everybody trying to get in and get the best seats because it’s quite a presentation and it’s going to be a lot of fun. So you’ve got Patricia Heaton and who else?

Tyler: Yeah we’re really excited for Patricia. She’s going to speak a little bit about her family life. She’s not only played a mom on TV for the better part of the last two decades, but she’s also a mom in real life of four boys. She has a strong family heritage. She’ll also talk about going to family reunions as a child and her large family, extended family, so we’re really excited for her story. After her on Friday, we have Saroo Brierley come in. I don’t know if you have ever seen the movie Lion, but that was a popular movie in 2016. His story is actually really interesting. Growing up in India as a five year old boy, he accidentally got separated from his family. He got on a train, separated from his brother and the train left. Saroo eventually ended up being adopted by a family from Australia, and he lives in Australia with this family for the next 25 years.

Fisher: I have seen that show. I have seen this movie. It’s absolutely phenomenal.

Tyler: Yeah. It’s just inspiring, it’s heart wrenching, but it’s heart warming at the same time. Saroo uses Google Earth and other digital technologies to kind of trace his heritage, and he is able to use Google Earth to locate his hometown back in India, and eventually reconnect with his birth mother and his birth family. And that story is portrayed in that movie Lion. So, we are obviously very excited to have Saroo share his story on the main stage.

Fisher: Yeah, that is a family story for the ages.

Tyler: And it’s a testament to the technology that’s available to us as genealogists and family historians today that 20 years ago he wouldn’t have been able to use Google Earth or Google Maps to find his hometown.

Fisher: Sure. And then Friday night something really special, a little flavor from Dancing with the Stars, and I love this.

Tyler: [Laughs] One of the fun things we try to do at RootsTech is have an evening Entertainment event, you know, just to make it light, to have some fun. This year we are so excited to have Derek Hough join us from Dancing with the Stars, a professional ballroom dancer, choreographer, just a very talented artist overall. He’s going to join us as well as the BYU Ballroom Dance team from Brigham Young University and put on an inspiring evening and connecting through music and dance. So, Derek Hough is going to be really, really good on the stage there.

Fisher: Yeah that’s going to be outstanding. In the Exhibition Hall, you know that’s really worthy of a lot of mention because there are so many products that are available there, and the amazing discounts. I mean, I remember the run on DNA kits last year that was just unbelievable. The lines were going out the door because the discounts were unique to RootsTech.

Tyler: Yeah, we say that every year. If you’re interested in buying a DNA kit, whether it’s for yourself, for a family member, you know, your grandparents or your siblings to get their DNA test, RootsTech is probably the best time to do it other than when these companies have their big Cyber Monday or Black Friday sales, but these sales are equal to that. And it’s fun for me to walk into the Expo Hall. I totally see it as the heartbeat of the conference. It’s crazy to see over two hundred vendors from around the world with their products, technology, software that, you know, just helping us discover and share our family history in ways that wasn’t possible even 10, 15 years ago.

Fisher: Then we get the RootsTech film festival this year. I’m sure we’re overwhelming a lot of people listening to this for the first time about RootsTech.

Tyler: [Laughs]

Fisher: This is a chance for you to basically create your own family film and the winner of this thing is going to win a paid trip to an ancestral homeland, and it’s open till what, the end of the month right, January 31^st?

Tyler: Correct, yeah. So, if you know a talented videographer, a filmmaker, or if you’re one yourself, this is a great contest we’d love for you to enter. Submit just a three minute or less video of how you connect and how you belong to your family, to your friends and then the winning videos will actually be played on stage at RootsTech and we have a panel of expert judge videographers who will judge, and the grand prize winner will receive that all expenses paid trip to an ancestral homeland for two people. And we also have some interesting other prizes as well including video, drones, and laptops and some really exciting things to give away there, so RootsTechfilmfest.org is the place to go to submit your video.

Fisher: And we want to remind everybody once again, if you’re not able to make it to Salt Lake City, Utah at the end of February for RootsTech there is free live streaming at RootsTech.org. And there’s a virtual pass that you can purchase for like 129 bucks and you get eighteen recorded classes from RootsTech that you can watch over the next 12 months which is unbelievable, and yet there’s still more because for the first time this year there’s RootsTech London this fall.

Tyler: Oh man, see now you’re overwhelming me. [Laughs]

Fisher: [Laughs] Yeah.

Tyler: There’s a lot going on. We are so excited to expand RootsTech to London in October. So, we’re taking RootsTech on the road October 24^th to the 26^th. It will happen at the ExCel London Convention Centre which is located in East London, right next to the London City Airport actually. As you know Scott, the interest in one’s family history and family research is growing, and it is not just for us here in the United States, right, but it’s a global interest. And so you know, London is kind of that perfect spot for us to expand and reach a new audience. It’s a perfect melting pot of many people from different nationalities and different races, so we are really excited. RootsTech.org/London is where you can go to learn a little bit more right now and registration actually will open on February 27^th while we’re here at RootsTech, Salt Lake City. We love having you there every year Scott. I know you play a big role in a lot of our production and having you there is great for RootsTech. So we’re excited to see you.

Fisher: Thank you Tyler, looking forward to seeing you. Tyler Stahle. He’s the Marketing and Communications Manager for Roots Tech 2019 and RootsTech London as well. So, talk to you soon Tyler, thanks so much.

Tyler: Thanks Scott, appreciate it.

Fisher: And coming up next I’m going to talk to a San Diego woman named Lucy Mimna Goodwin. And she wasn’t too happy about her middle name for most of her life until suddenly she discovered her ancestors. You’re going to want to hear her extraordinary find, coming up next on Extreme Genes.

Segment 3 Episode 269

Host Scott Fisher with guest Lucy Goodwin

Fisher: You know, this is not the first time I’ve heard of this where somebody gets a middle name that they’re not particularly fond of. They change it, then they get into family history research and then they decided, oh, I really wish I had kept that name. Well, that’s the story for my next guest. Hey, it’s Fisher. It’s Extreme Genes, America’s Family History Show and ExtremeGenes.com. I’m talking to Lucy Goodwin. She is in San Diego, California and she’s found some interesting stuff digging into her family and this is why we do these segments periodically called ordinary people with extraordinary finds. How they found it, and Lucy, you’ve been into all kinds of stuff and it just keeps coming up on four wheels doesn’t it?

Lucy: That’s right, it does. My great grandfather was Charles Mimna and his brother was William Mimna and we always knew in our family that they were tankers. They were actually stonemasons by profession.

Fisher: Yeah.

Lucy: But they also were accredited with building the first gasoline powered automobile in Canada. I had always known this but it wasn’t actually until 2014 that I realized that this car was still in existence.

Fisher: Really?

Lucy: Yes.

Fisher: You mean they still make them today or you’re talking about the old model ones? And what years are we talking about?

Lucy: The old model. There were only two cars they were named the Shamrock 1 and the Shamrock 2.

Fisher: Wow!

Lucy: And the Shamrock 1 is still in existence. It’s in a museum in Ontario, Canada and I didn’t know this until a few years ago. I was back in the Detroit area which is my hometown and I took the time and went to the museum and I saw it. Getting back to the name Mimna which I have never cared for, it was difficult to pronounce.

Fisher: [Laughs] Right.

Lucy: People couldn’t sound it out but it gave me a little clout because when I went to the museum I said, my name is Lucy Mimna Goodwin and my great grandfather helped build this automobile. And I had photographs of my grandfather.

Fisher: Now wait a minute, you actually kind of fibbed a little there too, right? Because you kept actually your maiden name instead of the middle name.

Lucy: That’s right. That’s right.

Fisher: But I don’t blame you for playing it, absolutely right. [Laughs]

Lucy: Well, and tradition was that when you married you dropped your middle name. Your maiden name became your middle name.

Fisher: Yeah.

Lucy: Mimna was just... I don’t even think my children knew that was my middle name.

Fisher: [Laughs]

Lucy: But it’s come back to roost and I’ve loved it because it has given me entree I think into some of the history that I’ve been looking for.

Fisher: Yes. Sure.

Lucy: I have been back to the little town where my great grandfather Charles lived and worked. There’s a monument in the cemetery to the Ward family and at the bottom it says “Mimna Brothers” because they were the stonemasons that carved this.

Fisher: Ha.

Lucy: So, I went, that’s my name!

Fisher: Now well, when you went to the museum then and told them you were a Mimna, I mean, how was the reception? Where you suddenly royalty?

Lucy: I’d like to think I was, yes.

Fisher: [Laughs]

Lucy: Actually I was because I took a tour, just a regular tour, when I got to the car which was fairly early in the sequence. I said, by the way, my great grandfather and his brother are the Mimna brothers which I pointed to the sign. And they said, oh would you like to have your picture taken and what not? I said no please go on with your tour. But by the end of the tour I did have my picture taken and I understand that they did a story about the fact that Charles Mimna’s great granddaughter had come back but I have never seen the article. But yes, I think the name Mimna perked some interest.

Fisher: Wow. Now, when did you get started in researching your family?

Lucy: I started about six years ago and the reason I did was because I wanted to know about the stories and that was when I discovered that this car was still in existence. I always knew that my great grandfather being a stonemason had gone to Chicago. Why was he in Chicago? Well, the Great Chicago Fire. They had to rebuild it.

Fisher: Um hmm.

Lucy: They left in 1894 right after the World’s Fair. So, he might have worked at the World’s Fair and then gone back to Ontario to be with his brother. So, those were the stories in history that I wanted to tag to these dates that I had.

Fisher: Sure. That’s amazing.  So they worked on these cars then in the 1890s. Where does that fit in, in terms of the timeline of mass manufacturing of automobiles and the development of them in the United States?

Lucy: Not bad actually. When I went back to Wardsville and spoke to the historian that was there. He gave me a newspaper article with William Mimna. And William had tried to develop the car. He had a lot of mechanical problems with it. They couldn’t get the engine right. So, by 1904 he could not get an engine that would work and by that time Henry Ford was going into production.

Fisher: Making his black cars.

Lucy: Yes and according to one of the newspaper articles that I found William was not happy that he had been usurped by Henry Ford.

Fisher: [Laughs] Right. It was kind of a race wasn’t it?

Lucy: It was. In fact, this one photograph I have of William Mimna. The title is “Rival of Henry Ford.” So, they did talk about it but it was in 1904. That seems to be the critical date.

Fisher: Um hmm.

Lucy: The first Shamrock was constructed or put together they built it from parts, end kits and things like that. It was credited with 1893.

Fisher: Oh wow. And it ran, it worked.

Lucy: It ran. It ran.

Fisher: Yeah.

Lucy: It wouldn’t go up and down hills. That was part of the problem.

Fisher: [Laughs] It was like the Flintstones’ car, right?

Lucy: [Laughs] Yes. Then, they got an engine from France which also did not go up and down hills. And there actually seemed to have been a lawsuit with this company in France. By the time the lawsuit was filed I think Charles had probably passed away. Henry was in full production with his cars in Canada. And as William said in his newspaper article, he said he had just lost interest.

Fisher: Really? Because Ford had pretty much taken over at that point and they were way ahead of them.

Lucy: Yes, yes that’s exactly it. And he was an older man at that point.

Fisher: Sure. And it probably just lost some of the fire in the belly for the competition it would take because obviously that was going to be a huge market for those pioneers but he was a pioneer.

Lucy: He was. He was a pioneer and I’m proud of that. [Laughs]

Fisher: Sure, of course.

Lucy: I’m happy for that fact, yes.

Fisher: You know, it’s fascinating, it makes your family interesting and you know that’s the joy of it. And there is a difference between just genealogy and family history. Obviously family history encompasses genealogy in tracking your tree and documenting every link. But it’s the stories, the photographs, the audio recordings, the newspaper articles, and all those things that really I think make it rich and I’m right with you that’s what I really love the most you know?

Lucy: Yes, yes. Just the creativity of these people, the curiosity of these people, one thing that I thought was very interesting is that Detroit and Niagara Falls are about four hours apart and people would travel through the Wardsville where my relatives lived and I’m sure they were exposed to ideas and what was going on in the major cities because even though Wardsville was a prosperous town, it wasn’t a major city.

Fisher: Right.

Lucy: So, all those details I have to bring into my family.

Fisher: Well, I hope you write a great history that is available to them for generations. That’s fantastic.

Lucy: It is and I have tried to document it because I think it’s important for people to know where they come from.

Fisher: Yeah, no question. And you know, you ought to check eBay, put in some search terms there. You might find advertisement or something related to the Shamrock or even go to YouTube maybe there’s an old interview with somebody who talks about it. You never know.

Lucy: Exactly. Well, there was some discussion about the fact that one of the cars ended up in Boston and then some of the other sources that I’ve read said that it never ended up in Boston, it was destroyed. So, I’m not sure what’s in Boston. [Laughs]

Fisher: Yeah. [Laughs] Probably not much at this point right.

Lucy: [Laughs] Could be the Shamrock, exactly. 

Fisher: Absolutely. She’s Lucy Goodwin. She’s in San Diego, California. A family history researcher who’s discovered her ancestors built cars right around the same time as Henry Ford. They lost the race though. Otherwise you’d probably still be living in Detroit, Lucy, and a lot better lifestyle than you do now, right?

Lucy: That’s right.

Fisher: Good work there. Well, thanks so much for coming on and really enjoyed the conversation and I wish you the best of luck.

Lucy: Thank you so much Scott. Have a great day.

Fisher: Thank you. And coming up next, Tom Perry talks preservation in three minutes on Extreme Genes, America’s Family History Show.

Segment 4 Episode 269

Host: Scott Fisher with guest Tom Perry

Fisher: Hey, we're back at it on Extreme Genes, America's Family History Show and ExtremeGenes.com. It is Fisher here, your Radio Roots Sleuth. And this segment is brought to you by Vivid-Pix. And Tom Perry is here, our Preservation Authority from TMCPlace.com. And Tom, we've got a brand new announcement from Sony, and I know that you're pretty excited about this.

Tom: Oh, this is absolutely amazing. Sony has really come into it. They used to sometimes be kind of a follower when it got into digital photography, but they've really become a leader in a lot of ways. There's a new camera, they just released the information, it should be out they're saying the end of February and it’s called the Sony Alpha, A is in Alpha 6400. It’s a mirrorless digital camera body and it is so amazing. This is really targeted at a lot of our listeners that do blogging where the iPhone just doesn’t quite go or any kind of a Smartphone or a tablet is just not working for them. This is the cat’s meow! It is awesome.

Fisher: The cat's meow. I have not heard that in a long time. But, so, you say it’s better than an iPhone, better than a Smartphone. What does it do?

Tom: One neat thing about it is what they call an SLR, which is a single lens reflex type camera, which means you can change the lenses on it. So you can have a wide angle lens, you can have what they call a macro lens if you're taking pictures of like little thumbnails of photos, like in the old days they had photos that were the size of postage stamps. And you can get real good pictures with that. If you have Canon lenses or Nikon lenses, you can buy an adapter. If you've got the Sony lenses, they'll go right on. So it makes it very, very versatile. And one of the neatest things about this why it’s so cool for bloggers is, it has a big, about a three inch monitor on the back side of it, like a lot of digital cameras.

Fisher: Right.

Tom: However, you flip switches and it flips all the way around so you can see it as you're looking into the lens.

Fisher: Oh wow!

Tom: Yeah, I mean it’s amazing. I mean, this is perfect for bloggers. So you can see exactly what the camera's recording the whole nine yards. Now one thing I need to warn you about the camera, which we always push all the time, whenever you're blogging or whatever you're going to be doing, you want to always monitor the audio. And this has audio built into it, full stereo audio. However, it does not have a place for a headphone jack. I guess they figured they just don't need too many jacks. So, I saw that and thought, "Oh, my goodness!" But then, it does have an HDMI out, so you can plug it like right into a big television to play it back. And they make adapters that you can get off of places like Amazon that plugs in the HDMI that carries all your audio signals, your video signals and it will split it. So you can actually put your headphones into the splitter, so you can still have ear buds in or full headphones if you want when you're blogging. I mean, you could actually set this on a wall and do skateboard tricks in front of it or biking tricks or whatever.

Fisher: You know, I do my skateboarding every Saturday. It would be great to have a camera that would be right there to capture that, Tom. That's good stuff though. I mean, you know, we've been doing this show for five and a half years and every year there's something that comes along that seems to just capture everybody's imagination when it comes to family history. And if you're really serious about, you know, your blogging photographs and your videos, this would be a great step up over the iPhone it sounds like. What's the price range we're looking at?

Tom: They have it listed as $1000, but I know, B&H Photo, which I tell everybody about all the time, it’s a great source to go. They had it listed right now as a preorder at $898. So the price is for sure going to come down. So it’s under $900. If you've already got lenses, it’s great, you can just get an adapter or if you don't have a lens, you can either email us or find us on Twitter, and I'm more than happy to help you in any way I can. But I mean, this is absolutely incredible, its full 4k. You can shoot almost in total darkness. And the neat thing about it, you can record jpegs, you can record the RAW files, you can actually do stills, but you can also shoot full time video. So like if you're blogging or whatever and if you have the right connections, you could actually use this and stream video as you're recording, which is absolutely amazing. I know we have a lot of listeners, because I see them that are in Europe, you can record either NTSC, which is a USA format or the PAL format. So you can actually record it in PAL and then send in the file in PAL, so grandma and grandpa don't have to figure out how to turn NTSC into PAL, they can do it natively.

Fisher: [Laughs] That's amazing stuff. All right, we've got to take a break, Tom. And when we return, we have some ask Tom questions from the email box, coming up next on Extreme Genes, America's Family History Show.

Segment 5 Episode 269

Host: Scott Fisher with guest Tom Perry

Fisher: Hey, back at it for our final segment this week of Extreme Genes, America's Family History Show and ExtremeGenes.com. Fish here talking to Tom Perry from TMCPlace.com, our Preservation Authority. And Tom, you have been getting emails at [email protected]. And what have you got?

Tom: Yes, we've had a lot of people email us with very similar questions, so I've kind of combined them into this. We have a lot of people that have questions about digital preservation, photos that maybe they've just scanned or photos they took ten years ago when digital photos were just first coming out. And there's a lot of people that tell you, you ought to check them every year or two to make sure that everything is good there, and I totally agree with that, because if you've gotten cheap disks from the store, there can be problems with that. If you've got SD cards or maybe the cheaper cards or maybe even the USB cards that are really, really cheapo, that's a problem which we'll get into in another episode. But so, you always want to check these things and make sure they are still good. Don't just assume, "Oh, it’s on an SD card and I know this is a good SD card. I don't have any kind of problem." There could be environmental problems, there could be, you know, all kind of things that can attack your cards or your disks or even your computer files. Go back and check them. You don't have to look at every photo. Just kind of go through the thumbnails. And what I suggest a lot of people do, almost every computer has what they call a slideshow. You can take all your photos, even if you have 5000 of them and tell them to play the slideshow, and while you're cooking dinner or you're doing something else, just have it playing in the background and just watch it, because if you have any digital artifacts and its playing on your computer or even on your big screen television from your computer. So you might say, "Oh, we've got a problem here. This picture doesn't look just right." Well, you can go back immediately and find it and hopefully you've done what we've always told you since our very first episode and you've got DVD backups of it, you’ve got CD backups of it, it’s in the cloud. So if you find that in your favorite place you've got a problem, you need to immediately delete that and replace it with a good one but just stay on the top of these so things like that don't happen. And a lot of times people are talking about documents, maybe they did something in a program years and years ago and they think, "Oh, that's fine. I've got it backed up every place." Well, if the software goes away and you've updated your computer, it may not be compatible with your same computer. So every once in a while, I would go back and check these things. And if you find you do have a problem, there's a lot of things you can do, which are really simple to do, which is just changing the dot. Like whenever you have files you have like .jpeg, .pdf, .word and you can go in and change them. You can go and make a copy of it and then change it to .pdf or something, and quite often, a pdf reader like Acrobat will go and open it. If not, there's all kinds of shareware out there where you can download programs that we call “can openers” that will open up just about any kind of file. But you want to do these and save these as, you know, permanent things like PDFs, Jpegs, TIFFs, all these kind of files that are going to be around forever or maybe some of the old ones may not be. So these are industry standards, so you know they'll be with us forever. So make sure you've got stuff stored that way so you'll be able to have them whenever you need them.

Fisher: Wow, that's all great advice, Tom. And we can talk for a long time about all of this, because losing that material, I mean, that would be the worst, you know, you spend your money and you go through the trouble of digitizing photos, and then you preserve them on a cheap disk!? Why would you want to do that and then have that thing fade away on your in no time, before maybe even you've had a chance to back them up.

Tom: Exactly, that is so true. You don't want to lose stuff. It’s like the old library burning down type thing.

Fisher: Yeah, absolutely. All right, Tom, great talking to you. And of course if you have a question for Tom, you can always send him an email at [email protected] or you can communicate via Twitter at @AskTomP. Thank so much, Tom. Talk to you next week.

Tom: My pleasure.

Fisher: Hey, that's a wrap for this week. Thanks once again to our guests, Lucy Mimna Goodwin and her great story about her ancestors that made her change her mind a little bit about the meaning of her middle name. And also to Tyler Stahle, part of the Roots Crew, sharing with us all the things that are coming up with RootsTech 2019 in just about a month. It’s going to be a great time. If you missed any of the show, of course catch the podcast on iTunes, iHeart Radio, it’s on ExtremeGenes.com. And next week, we're going to talk to the legal genealogist, Judy Russell, talking about some of those things you need to know about concerning copyright and terms of service when it comes to writing your family histories. Some of it might frighten you, but she'll be direct, you know that. Talk to you again next week. Thanks for joining us. And remember, as far as everyone knows, we're a nice, normal family!