Episode 37 - Tear Down This Wall

podcast episode Apr 21, 2014

Fisher welcomes new radio stations to the family of affiliates.  News this week includes a conclusion that Hitler may have married a Jewish woman!   Hear how the DNA trail of Eva Braun led to this remarkable story.  Also, plans for major freeway construction has led to the discovery of remains of a 250 year old French settlement in St. Louis.  And, an alumnus of Virginia Military Institute has been tracking down descendants of VMI Civil War soldiers who fought in the Battle of New Market.  Find out why.

Research Authority Stan Lindaas, from HeritageConsulting.com, returns with great advice on how to break down “walls”… those lines that just can’t seem to be extended over long periods of time.  Stan talks about one of his own walls, and the remarkable story behind how he cracked the case!

And Tom Perry from TMCPlace.com, our Preservation Authority, continues his discussion on reliable drives, the long term viability of various disks, and tells us about a new disk that is just around the corner that will blow your mind!  He’ll also tell you what kind of drive NOT to rely on for storage.

Transcript of Episode 37

Host: Scott Fisher

Segment 1 Episode 37

Fisher: And welcome back genies! It’s Extreme Genes Family History Radio and ExtremeGenes.com where we shake your family tree and watch the nuts fall out. Hi, it’s Fisher here your Radio Roots Sleuth and we want to welcome some great radio stations to our growing family of affiliates, Fox News, KZNU 93.1 FM and 1450 AM in St. George, Utah and in Cedar City, Utah, KENT AM and FM. We’re excited to be part of Carl Lamarre’s outstanding line-up in Southern Utah. We’ve got a couple of great guests today. First, in about ten minutes, Stan Lindaas of Heritage Consulting is back. He is our Research Authority. And even though Stan is a professional researcher, just like you and me, he has in his lines brick walls. That’s where of course you just can’t seem to find the records to push a line back any further. He’ll share one remarkable experience about breaking down one of his walls and give you some advice that may make all the difference. Then later in the show, a listener named Blair Paulman called our Extreme Genes “Find Line” to fill us in on the successful conclusion to a hunt for a grandfather that spanned over six decades. Yeah, his father started looking for his dad in the early 50s and Blair carried on the search, only recently breaking down the wall and finding his man. I think you’ll find it intriguing to hear the lengths Blair went to and what happened along the way, including the U-turner too before his case was finally cracked. If you have a story you’d like to share or a question or comment just call our toll free Extreme Genes “Find Line” at 1-234-56-GENES. That’s 1-234-56-GENES, G-E-N-E-S. We really love hearing what you’re up to. Our ExtremeGenes.com poll from last week shows 63% say, “Yes,” they have a proven line to royalty. They voted “Yes, bow to me,” 37% voted “No, I’m just a commoner.”So, thanks for voting. 

Our poll for this week asks, “Is there an ancestor on your tree whose story is so incredible it makes you wonder if it could possibly be true? Now, I have a few like that. You can vote now at ExtremeGenes.com and we’ll share the results next week. And by the way, if you’d like to tell us about one of those ancestors drop me a line at [email protected]. Here is this week’s Family Histoire News from the pages of ExtremeGenes.com. Think of it as your “drudge report” for family history news. We start out with this from Discovery.com. It now seems possible if not likely, that Hitler married a Jewish woman! We all know that Eva Braun was Hitler’s long time lover who he married in the bunker in Berlin in 1945 just before their dual suicide by cyanide capsules. When the war ended an American Army Intelligence Officer brought home a little souvenir from Hitler’s Alpine home in Bavaria, a hairbrush with the initials E.B. The brush was purchased by a man named Mark Evans for $2 000. Evans is a British TV host on Channel 4 there who has a series called “Dead Famous DNA.” Well of course, there were hair still in that brush and Evans had a DNA analysis done. What did he find? The person who presumably owned the brush belonged to the N1b1 Haplogroup. One group is particularly well associated with N1b1, Ashkenazi Jews who compromise about 80% of the Jewish population throughout the world. Eva met Adolf in 1929, but the future dictator was concerned that having a relationship might somehow sully his image. So, he had her quietly kept basically at the home in Bavaria. Many of the Ashkenazi Jews became Catholics in the mid nineteenth century. And so, despite Hitler’s background check into Eva’s Aryan purity, Evans says it’s unlikely he ever would have known his mistress was Jewish. A pair of surviving female relatives of Eva Braun refused to provide a DNA sample to compare to what was found in the hair on the brush. So the result can only be called inconclusive, but certainly intriguing. The story was written by Rossella Lorenzi. Read the full article at ExtremeGenes.com.

Next, Smithsonianmag.com tells us that south of the Arch in St Louis is an overpass. And it’s there that the Missouri Department of Transportation is planning major highway construction. Now, before any of that can happen of course, the National Historic Preservation Act requires that archaeologists review the site. In this case the result of that inspection was the discovery of remains of a French settlement dating back 250 years. It was thought that nothing was left of this settlement until this find, which includes the remnants of a home that records tell them was built in 1769 by a man named Joseph Bouchard. Now, we’re not talking about a lot, a piece of a ceramic bowl and some post holes so far, but the archaeologists are more than thrilled. We’re talking about the first physical evidence of a settlement that lasted for forty years before the Louisiana Purchase and a home that was built only five years after the settlement of St. Louis as a Fur Trading Post in 1764. If you had French ancestors in that area you may take special interest in seeing these finds soon on special display in a museum below the St. Louis Arch. The Washington Post reports that an Alumnus of Virginia Military Institute has been tracing down descendents of VMI cadets who served in the Battle of New Market for the Confederacy in the Civil War. The 150th Anniversary is in May and VMI Alumnus Ken Dice took it upon himself to use his genealogical researching skills to track down as many living descendents of these soldiers as possible. In 1864 two hundred and fifty seven VMI cadets reinforced battered confederate troops and turned what look like a union victory in the Battle of New Market into a win for the South. Ten of their number died in the battle. VMI will be performing a re-enactment next month for the anniversary and all the living descendents Dice has found, over a thousand, have been invited to attend, with 177 accepting the invitation.  Interestingly twenty are themselves VMI Alumni, two more are currently enrolled there and three have more than one ancestor who fought at New Market. Wouldn’t that be a fascinating call to get? “Hi, did you know you’re a descendent of so and so, and that he fought in this battle in the Civil War?’ [Laughs] I mean, we should all be so fortunate! Find the link to this and all this week’s stories at ExtremeGenes.com. And coming up next, he’s our Researcher Authority, Stan Lindaas from Heritageconsulting.com. If you’re having trouble breaking down your brick wall wait till you hear what happened to him with his brick wall and the great advice he’s got for you. It could make all the difference. It’s coming up in three minutes on Extreme Genes Family History Radio and ExtremeGenes.com.

Segment 2 Episode 37

Host: Scott Fisher with guest Stan Lindaas

Fisher: And welcome back to Extreme Genes, Family History Radio and ExtremeGenes.com. It is Fisher here with Stan Lindaas, our Research Authority from HeritageConsulting.com. Welcome back Stan!

Stan: Hey Fisher. It’s always fun to be with you.

Fisher: Always fun, and of course one of the keys to research and why you professionals exist, is because so many of us run into what they call “The brick wall.” You just can’t get behind it. You put the sledge hammer to it, nothing budges, and then finally something happens, the little linchpin and it comes tumbling down. And I thought we’d talk a little bit about some of these today. Some of them of course are just the result of bad records. Some of them are the result of people just wanting to disappear, for various reasons. 

Stan: Yeah. And you have to know even professional genealogists have their own brick walls. 

Fisher: Absolutely. 

Stan: And we’re going to talk a little bit about one of the brick walls that I had.

Fisher: All right. Who do you have? Who was it?

Stan: I have a great grandfather by the name of Alfred Bosworth He was out of Hartford Connecticut and ended up in Northern Illinois, and he married my great grandmother in Northern Illinois, had a couple of children. Well, Alfred worked at a shoe factory in Rock Island, Illinois and he was a hard working man. He was just very diligent. He was at the plant late at night and his wife thought that he needed to have dinner, so she packed up a lunch.

Fisher: What a nice wife, you know.

Stan: She was very sweet and kind. And she went down to the shoe factory to give Alfred his meal. Well, she wandered around the shoe factory and she finally found him in a storage room, where they have shelves and shelves and shelves of shoes.  

Fisher: Kind of like a library, right?

Stan: Yeah. Much like the books shelves in a library. And she found him. Well, Alfred was a very busy man as was the young lady that he was with.

Fisher: [Laughs] 

Stan: Yeah. You got the idea. 

Fisher: Uh oh.

Stan: Well, Mrs Bosworth discovered rather quickly that shelves of shoes could tumble just like dominos.

Fisher: [Laughs]

Stan: And the young lady and Alfred were buried in shoes. 

Fisher: Ooh!

Stan: Well, Alfred showed up at home not long after that and his bags were packed and on the door stoop, and he was never heard of or from after that. 

Fisher: Now what era are we talking about here?

Stan: Well, we’re talking the very early 1900s. And no one ever talked about it. Until my mother would sit in the attic with her grandmother and there were chests of all kinds of memorabilia amongst which were some letters and some pictures. And so grandma told my mother the story. 

Fisher: Wow. That’s kind of unusual isn’t it though, for anybody from that era? 

Stan: Well it is, because it was a painful story. 

Fisher: Sure.

Stan: It was a painful story, and in that day and time secrets were important. Well, for years I tried to find Alfred. Find out what happened to him. I looked high and low, and one day while in the Family History Library in Salt Lake City working on a very boring project, I looked up and there was a young friend of mine who was arranging the books on the shelves in the Family History Library. I walked over to visit with her, just to take a break, and as I looked up, in front of me were three volumes of the Bosworth family history organization.

Fisher: Yeah. It’s a very well known name back in Connecticut. 

Stan: It is. It’s a very well known name. And I had already looked at the first two volumes of this set. But I’d never seen the third volume. I pulled the third volume off, I flipped through it. Well Alfred was a junior so I already knew dad’s name was Alfred. I also had some idea of what his mother’s maiden name was. And lo and behold, I fund just enough information to link Alfred. This is after years and years of looking for him. Well, I made some quick notes. It’s a beautifully footnoted book with great bibliography and index, everything.

Fisher: Well documented.

Stan: Yes. It was a fabulous piece of work. Well, I went back to work and it took another couple of weeks before I got to get back to dear Alfred. I went back to the shelf and there was not a volume three on the shelf. 

Fisher: Oh no.

Stan: Not only was there not a volume three, there was no space for a volume three. Yeah, it was strange. 

Fisher: [Laughs]

Stan: I looked high and low for this book and I went ahead and I took the notes that I had and I went, and sure enough I found Alfred based on the information. But the citations that were in the book, never ever existed. 

Fisher: Excuse me?

Stan: Okay, the book was footnoted, I took note of those footnotes, not to be too redundant, and then I went to look for those records which were in the footnotes. Those records never existed. 

Fisher: So was it fraudulent? Is that what you’re saying? They just made it up? 

Stan: Well I can’t say, Fish, because over the next twenty years I have looked for volume three. About ten years ago I contacted the Bosworth Family History Organisation. We have never published a volume three. 

Fisher: Oh... that’s interesting.

Stan: So, who do I complain to? 

Fisher: Right. [Laughs]

Stan: I have no idea. But I’m not giving the information back. It got me on to the Bosworths, so brick walls can be torn down in the most bizarre ways sometimes. And it doesn’t mean, in my case, that it took a professional to do it. 

Fisher: So this is something that we might call a little serendipity?

Stan: Yes. And there are a lot of those. There are some publications with serendipitous experiences for genealogists that are great. And these things happen on a regular basis. Not just to professionals but to individuals. 

Fisher: Oh no, I’ve had them happen myself. There’s no explaining it. [Laughs] But it’s exciting when it does. 

Stan: And you don’t give the information back.

Fisher: No. Once you’ve got it, it’s yours. 

Stan: That’s right.

Fisher: And you save it and you go forward from there. So, let’s talk about breaking down the walls. Because I think a lot of people get very frustrated because they feel it’s not possible to get there, it’s never going to be possible. In my mind it’s like, wait a minute, things are changing very quickly. There’s always something new coming up. 

Stan: Their perception, that very perception is usually what the wall is built from. 

Fisher: That’s right. 

Stan: It’s not that it can’t be found, that there’s not something out there. Yes, there are some instances wherein individuals have been on this earth and did not leave any sign or trace. But for most people, in the US especially and in Europe, and in the UK and Scandinavia, there is some record. Now, the further back you go, the harder it is to do. But, sometimes you have to just forget that notion that it is a brick wall, and what my advice to a lot of people is, instead if you looking at it, you who have built the brick wall, you sit down with someone who has never seen that material before, and you just give them the information about this specific problem. Don’t clutter their minds with all the things that you have gathered and that you have in your mind. Let them look at it in a pure form. And I guarantee you, they’re going to come up with some ideas that you are going to go, “Oh yeah, I should have thought of that!” Well, a lot of times it’s because you didn’t think about it because of the clutter that you have.

Fisher: And you determine in your own mind that this just wasn’t possible to do. 

Stan: Right. 

Fisher: And you know, I had this situation where, for thirty years I couldn’t find a set of third great grandparents. I had the wife’s first name and I had the husband’s full name, and I could not find any man by that name who married a woman by that name. 

Stan: Right.

Fisher: And it went on and on, and finally somebody accidently, I think, attached the name of the husband into another branch. And I contacted that person and said, “Why do you think he belongs to this family?” She said, “I don’t know, I just think he does.” [Laughs] Which was of course ridiculous.

Stan: Or Serendipitous.

Fisher: Well, it was interesting because she didn’t have any clue about it. She just thought it kind of fit there. I’m going, “Well that’s quite a ways away from where we are.” But it caused me to start and examine the whole thing all over again. And I’d kind of given up on it. It’s just like one of those things we would never get to. Well, as a result of the digitized newspapers over the last several years, I found an obituary of a man of that name who died at the right age and time to have been the father of my great, great grandmother.  And it’s like, “Okay, wait a minute. Could this fit? Whose he buried with?” Well, he wasn’t buried with the woman I thought he should have been, to prove it. But he was buried with a little girl who turned out to be a first daughter of my great grandmother who I didn’t know existed. So he helped me find the girl, and the girl validated that I’d found the right man. 

Stan: Right.

Fisher: And as a result then, I was able to find another digitized newspaper account of a minister’s marriage record that they published in 1886 and the record went back to the eighteen, teens and twenties and there is the marriage record. And off we went. And that line eventually took me back to the Mayflower. So it was an amazing thing, behind all these brick walls there’s a city. 

Stan: Oh yes. 

Fisher: And it goes on forever. These are still new people to me and I’m having a ball with it.

Stan: And you, a lot of times, have to just put it down and wait until the key in this case the assignment of the name that you were talking about, to another family, by this woman.

Fisher: And by the way, she was right! [Laughs]

Stan: Yeah. And so you have to wait until the key is there for you to have access to it. And that key can be resources that are not available now but may be available next week, five years from now, ten years from now, or the technology to do this. So wait, as hard as it is to do, put it down and wait a while. Have somebody else look at it. Have a professional researcher look at it. Go to a genealogical research facility and have one of the staff look at your problem. It’s a way to start tearing down the brick wall. Change your perception about the end of the line problem. It’s not a brick wall. It’s just a greater adventure and the reality is you and I have worked on our families for years and the portions of our pedigrees wherein we find generation after generation in a matter of a couple of hours, we don’t know those people. The ones that we have to work and work and struggle, we know them, almost to the most intimate level. We know these people and we remember them, far better than you remember those that you got four generations instantly. So, enjoy your “brick walls.” 

Fisher: Especially as it comes tumbling down. 

Stan: Yeah.

Fisher: Great advice. Stan Lindaas, our Research Authority from HeritageConsulting.com thanks for joining us. 

Stan: Thank you Fish.

Fisher: And coming up next, Blair Paulman, his father had started this search for his dad back in the early 1950s and now Blair has finally broken down his brick wall. We’ll tell you about that coming up next on Extreme Genes, Family History Radio and ExtremeGenes.com.

Segment 3 Episode 37

Host: Scott Fisher with guest Blair Paulman

Fisher: And welcome back to Extreme Genes, Family History Radio and ExtremeGenes.com. It is Fisher here, your Radio Roots Sleuth. And you know, we're always telling you you've got to call our toll free Find Line at 1-234-56-GENES to share your success stories. Because you know, it encourages so many other people to pursue the impossible, and I think this guy on the phone right now is an example of that. Blair Paulman, how are you? Welcome to the show.

Blair: I'm doing well, thank you.

Fisher: You've been on the hunt. This is actually a multi generational hunt for your father's birth father, as I understand it, right?

Blair: That's correct.

Fisher: So your dad looked for him years back. Give us a little basic background here.

Blair: Well, my father's mother met my father's birth father in Switzerland when she was being a nanny for a travelling brief family. And they had gone to do the European tour thing and they went to Switzerland and went to a hotel in Geneva and that's where grandmother met grandfather. And all we had from that encounter besides my dad. [Laughs]

Fisher: [Laughs]

Blair: He's only legacy for that was a picture and a name. And the photograph was of Walter Roggen, his birth father.

Fisher: Okay. And he is from where?

Blair: Well, he was Swiss, and that's about all we knew.

Fisher: Oh boy.

Blair: And the hotel was in Geneva, but that's what we learnt at the family Roggen is not from. 

Fisher: Oh boy.

Blair: In Switzerland there are what they call Citizenship Books. Citizenship in Switzerland was based on the town you were from, not from the country but from the town. And so each town had its citizens and even if you went to another town to live you were still a citizen of the original town.

Fisher: Okay.

Blair: And the Roggen family was from a town called Murten, which is on a line between French speaking and German speaking Switzerland.

Fisher: [Laughs] Which further complicates things.

Blair: Right. It's between Berne and Neuchatel, and that town is only 6000 people now, it's a small place. Its only historical significance was that back in the 1400s the Swiss defeated Charles the Bold of Burgundy there, and so every June 21st they have their celebration of that battle and have parades and all that sort of thing, and people have their class reunions then. Anyway, I knew that much, I learnt that much that Morten is the home base of the Roggen family.

Fisher: You are relentless to find out all that stuff.

Blair: [Laughs] Well, yes. And then...

Fisher: Now, you wound up though up a wrong tree at one point, tell us about that.

Blair: I did. Well, let me just say that I got some, a couple of family trees, I found online an article in German which is not too hard to read though, about a Swiss yodeller from New Zealand who had come to compete in yodel contests in Switzerland, and he was originally from Murten. And so I had found his email address for a Ms Kiwi Yodel Group.

Fisher: [Laughs]

Blair: And yes.

Fisher: Wow! [Laughs]

Blair: Emailed him in New Zealand and said "Do you happen to know about Walter Roggen?" and he says "I happen to have a couple of family trees, and Walter Roggen's on the family tree." And so he and I thought that he and I have the same ancestry, Walter Roggen, born in Murten in 1872. 

Fisher: You and the yodeller.

Blair: Me and the yodeller. [Laughs]

Fisher: Right. [Laughs]

Blair: But then I learnt my sister had something that was an additional legacy from grandpa, it was a post card written from Saint Petersburg in Russia to Grandmother Holman in Holland saying "I will send some money when I can." But I had a picture of a hotel in Saint Petersburg, Russia on there, and I thought "Uh oh, there's a Russian connection."

Fisher: Uh oh is right. Now what do you do? Where do you go with that?

Blair: Well, then I looked some more, internet searches for Roggen in Russia and found a marriage record of Walter Roggen in Saint Petersburg to a lady named Fanny Rosenberger in 1906.

Fisher: Wait a minute, there are actual Russian records online now? I had no idea.

Blair: They are actually translated from Russian into Swedish, and they were published in a federation of European, east European Family History Society newsletter, and they're online now.

Fisher: Wow! I mean, you talk about obscure records. Look at you go.

Blair: [Laughs] Well, you just do a lot of internet searches.

Fisher: Yeah, you go where you got to go. Okay.

Blair: Keep digging and you find these things. And I looked at the side of one of the family trees and off to the side of the main tree that Oscar Roggen is on and the Walter Roggen. There's another Walter Roggen on a little twig off to the side. And there's a Walter Roggen also from Murten, Switzerland, born in 1873, and on that twig his wife's name is listed as Fanny Rosenberg, and not Rosenberger but Rosenberg, and so I thought, "Oh my." And at the bottom of the tree there's a fellow named Beat Rene Roggen. And so another internet search.

Fisher: Uh oh. [Laughs]

Blair: To find him, his address in Switzerland online and the telephone directory. Online directories, and so I wrote to him an actual postal letter, I wrote to Beat Rene Roggen and sent him a copy of that picture of my grandfather, and he essentially wrote back and said "What are you doing with a picture of my grandfather?" 

Fisher: Oh! [Laughs] Victory!

Blair: Victory! [Laughs]

Fisher: Wow! 

Blair: And so he and I have been corresponding since, and sent me some more information about the Roggen family in Russia, how the family had gone for Murten to Russia and had had a hotel there that they owned, and they had to leave shortly after the Russian Revolution of October 1917, lost the hotel, lost their money, well, lost everything, had to come back to Murten flat broke.

Fisher: You've got to be kidding me. What an amazing adventure.

Blair: That is an adventure. That is an adventure.

Fisher: Now, you were telling me that your father actually started this search, how long ago?

Blair: Oh, not too long. I guess probably back in about 1950 or so, and he was never able to find his name because the records were not that good for that part of Switzerland.

Fisher: Okay.

Blair: However, now there are, and it just happened go online last year, census records for the Canton of Fribourg in Switzerland, which includes Murten. Now, they're not indexed, but you can search every name in that place through there and add up, and, you know, get more names on your family line. And I did that and I also through that I found another website called Genea Net from Paris, France, but there's a man there, Patrick Randidea who had more of my family line on it back into the late 1600s.

Fisher: I think it's about time you go back across the pond here, Blair.

Blair: I think I'm taking a trip to Switzerland in a month or two and see what I can find in the archives there to fill in some more of this story.

Fisher: Now, are you going back to meet your first cousin?

Blair: I hope to do that.

Fisher: And where does he live now?

Blair: He lives in a town called Nussbaumen Bei Baden just outside of Zurich.

Fisher: Wow.

Blair: And, but he's a travelling man, so he's often gone from home. I hope he'll be there when we're there.

Fisher: And who was the first guy you found? What was his occupation again?

Blair: A yodeller.

Fisher: A yodeller. So what's happened to the yodeller? Is he out now? Is that what I understand?

Blair: He is still in New Zealand. He comes from New Zealand every couple of years to compete in yodel contests, and then he and his group go back to New Zealand. So he's in New Zealand right now.

Fisher: But he is related? 

Blair: He is distantly related.

Fisher: Distantly.

Blair: A very distant cousin.

Fisher: Right.

Blair: Not as close as we first thought.

Fisher: I got you. But wow what an adventure, Blair! And what a fun thing to do and congratulations on your success! It really does go to show that you never give it up, even after all these years from when your dad started, what, over 60 years ago?

Blair: This is right.

Fisher: Absolutely. Great stuff! Thanks so much.

Blair: Thank you.

Fisher: And coming up next, our Preservation Authority, Tom Perry from TMCPlace.com, continuing the debate about the best way to store your data for the long term. He's going to tell you about the best discs and all about a brand new disc coming out soon, you're going to want to hear about it. It's coming up next on Extreme Genes, Family History Radio and ExtremeGenes.com.

Segment 4 Episode 37

Host: Scott Fisher with guest Tom Perry

Fisher: And welcome back to Extreme Genes Family History Radio, ExtremeGenes.com. I am your congenial host, Fisher with Tom Perry from TMCPlace.com, he is our Preservation Authority. And, Tom, last week you cause a little hornet's nest for people, talking about how we store data the right way, and making sure that it’s permanent, it lasts.

Tom: Absolutely.

Fisher: We did get a note from a lady in Des Moines, who wishes to remain nameless. She says, "I've kind of computer illiterate. What do I do? What's the best kind of drive to use to backup my stuff?"

Tom: Okay, I'm sure everybody has their own opinions out there. What I like to use, what I've been very successful with, the only kind of drives I personally use is either a Western Digital or a LaCie. And some people say, "Well, didn't Western Digital buy Seagate?" Yes, they did buy Seagate, but I still won't use Seagate drives. In all these years that we've been archiving hard drives for people, I have never had a Western Digital fail, I've never had a LaCie fail. They're not perfect. They will fail like the other ones, but our track record with them is amazing. LaCie are by far the best, they're the most expensive. And you can get a lot of them, like Western Digital actually comes with backup software. It’s pretty much plug and play. You can be totally computer illiterate, plug the hard drive in, it will come up and ask you if you want to make this as your backup drive, it will ask you a few questions, it’s very intuitive. Just say yes, yes, yes, yes, and it becomes your backup drive. If you want something a little bit higher for those who are a little bit more into computers, at Digistors, which is spelt  D I G I S T O R S Rewind software is really, really good. You can use that for archiving video, film, just about anything you want for the people that are higher end. So hopefully that answers your question.

Fisher: Well, Tom, a lot of feedback from last week, also centered around your comment about CDs not going away. This is kind of the commonly understood thing that technology is constantly changing, and what we had yesterday goes away tomorrow and it’s replaced by something else. You want to further explain that?

Tom: Oh absolutely. It’s just like my dad used to have a 1928 model A Ford pickup. It’s a little bit different than an F150 today, but they're still vehicles, they still come along the same way. Just because something's a disk, doesn't mean it’s all going to go away. You need to look at your disk as different sizes of boxes, like a CD is a small box, a DVD is a medium box and a BluRay is a pretty good size box, and that BluRay box, not only is it bigger, its stronger, it’s made out of better quality materials. So the best way that a lot of people are doing is, they're going to BluRay storage now, because a lot of people say, "Oh, the cloud's the future, the cloud's the future. That's all we'll need." Well, not necessarily. The cloud can get full. And the more stuff you have on there, the more it’s going to start costing you a month. So, most of your big places are actually using BluRay. In fact, it’s really interesting that Facebook is backing up all their stuff on BluRay format, because of the cost savings, the durability and the reliability. BluRay is the future, there's no question about it. Even though there's other stuff out there, BluRay is wonderful. In fact, next summer, they're coming out with a new archival BluRay DVD, which Sony and Panasonic did a joint venture that's going to be capable of holding an entire terabyte of information on a BluRay disk.

Fisher: Wow! Is it possible then the cloud will become too expensive and won't be really worthy anymore?

Tom: Well, it’s kind of hard to predict that. Microsoft has kind of been in the shot for a few weeks, however, I think all of these different parts are important. I think you need all these things to work. But the cloud does have an end to it. In fact, some of our sponsors and some of the people that have been on this show are getting into the cloud based applications and things, too. So you have to kind of pick out which cloud you want, but don't rely on everything. You don't have control over the cloud. If the cloud goes down or something weird happens and you lose it right when you need it, it’s not doing you any good. If you've got a fireproof safe or a gun safe that's got some BluRay disks in it, at anytime if the cloud goes down, go to your safe, pull it out, you know, load it up and there's your information. It’s going to be a little harder to get to than just instantly on your computer, but it’s in your safe when you need it.

Fisher: You really have to think about this as data insurance, don't you?

Tom: Perfect! That's a perfect scenario.

Fisher: Because can you really afford to lose this stuff? And if you can't, then you ought to pay for it now, because again, you're going to pay for it later.

Tom: Exactly.

Fisher: All right, we're going to take a break. We're going to come back and what are we going to talk about, Tom?

Tom: Some newer BluRays.

Fisher: Ooh! We'll find out what he's talking about, coming up next on Extreme Genes, Family History Radio and ExtremeGenes.com.

Segment 5 Episode 37

Host: Scott Fisher with guest Tom Perry

Fisher: And welcome back to Extreme Genes, Family History Radio and ExtremeGenes.com. It is Fisher here with Tom Perry from TMCPlace.com, our Preservation Authority. And, Tom, I so appreciate what you're talking about here, because so many of us struggle with technology even if we think that we're  pretty good at this stuff. Most of us are beginners or intermediates. I'd say maybe I'm an intermediate, so this explanation of the various disks being similar to various size boxes is very helpful. And now you say BluRay has the next big thing?

Tom: Right. It’s kind of like the old Russian dolls where they just get, they often they get smaller and bigger and bigger and bigger.

Fisher: Yeah. [Laughs]

Tom: And that's what's neat about BluRay. Basically CDs are 700 megabytes, DVDs are 4.7 gigabytes, and then as we talked about the new quartz disk that are coming out will be 365 terabytes.

Fisher: Well, who would ever fill one of those?

Tom: I don't know. You look back in the old days, I remember when I had my first Mac, it was a 128k, and I thought, "Wow, this is incredible! I can put all my school stuff on this."

Fisher: 128k!

Tom: Right. And I remember, recently my one terabyte backup ran out of backup space, got to get a two.

Fisher: Stop it! Really, what did you have on that?

Tom: A lot of customer stuff.

Fisher: Okay.

Tom: A lot of my own stuff. And every night, I put it in a fireproof safe, but they just get bigger and bigger. And that's one neat thing about BluRay is, BluRay has the ability to put more stuff on it, and as they get more technology, they can stay with a good quality. It’s a BluRay disk, but put more information on it. For instance, Facebook, which we were talking about earlier, they have ten thousand disks with all added together is what they call a terabyte of data, which is a whole lot of data.

Fisher: Yes.

Tom: And you would think, what would you need more than that? A couple of hundred years from now, centuries from now, who knows what your storage needs are going to be? So it’s really important to understand that. Like right now, most of the BluRays, you can get them in 25 gigabyte to 50 gigabyte varieties. And Sony and Panasonic at a joint venture is going to release in the summer of 2015, so just about a year from now, a new BluRay that's going to hold a whole lot more information. In fact, it’s more setup as an archive. That's what you need to remember, these BluRay disks are archives. You're not going to be working on it every day like you do off your hard drive.

Fisher: Sure.

Tom: This is your backup. If your hard drive goes down, the cloud goes out, you've got your BluRay disks you can go back to.

Fisher: How expensive are these things?

Tom: I don't really know what they're going to be. Anything when it first comes out, it’s really pricey and drops down. And I think Sony has really learned a lot from past mistakes in coming out with something at too high of a price point. So when this new one terabyte BluRay comes out, you know, that's where you want to store your stuff. I'm going to do the same thing. I'll store stuff to it every night, put it in a fireproof safe, take one home with me, so I've always got it, send one to the east coast and one to the west coast, so you're covered. But a terabyte on one disk is a lot of storage.

Fisher: Yes.

Tom: And that's what anybody would need.

Fisher: I think the average person, a terabyte would take care of most everything from your lifetime.

Tom: Oh it is. It actually will.

Fisher: At this point.

Tom: In fact, we have customers that come into our store and come back five years later, "Do you still have my DVD? Do you still have a backup of my CD, because my dog ate it." Seriously, that's not a joke! I had somebody call last week that their dog ate their CD.

Fisher: [Laughs]

Tom: But with this new BluRay and this new quartz technology coming out, we will be able to store every client's CD, DVD, BluRay, whatever comes in the front door and have it as an archive, so when they need more, we can get it. There'll be a charge to have to go back, extract it and re interpolate it to a BluRay DVD or CD, whatever they need. But you know, just a year from now, we'll be able to have every client from that point forward’s stuff kept forever. So, disks are not going away, I promise.

Fisher: All right, we'll remember that, Tom. [Laughs] We'll hang you in effigy if they are.

Tom: That's right, go right ahead.

Fisher: And if you have a question you'd like Tom to answer, just drop an email to [email protected], and you just may have your question answered on the show. Thanks to Blair Paulman for calling our Extreme Genes Find Line with his remarkable story about the successful conclusion to a six decade quest to identify his grandfather. It shows you should never give up. New stuff is coming out all the time. And if you have a great story of discovery or questions, comments, we'd love to hear them. Once again, our Extreme Genes Find Line is toll free, 1-234-56-GENES. Include your contact information and we'll get back to you. And thanks also to our Research Authority, Stan Lindaas from HeritageConsulting.com for his thoughts on breaking down those brick walls. And boy, did he have an amazing story stuck in there! Hear the show again and catch up on our past shows by searching Extreme Genes iHeart, Extreme Genes iTunes or just find the link at ExtremeGenes.com. Talk to you next week. And remember, as far as everyone knows, we're a nice, normal family.

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