Episode 463 - Coal Mining Disasters and Your Ancestors / Juneteenth: DNA Is Changing African-American Research

Host Scott Fisher opens the show with David Allen Lambert, Chief Genealogist of the New England Historic Genealogical Society and AmericanAncestors.org. David is reporting from Scotland! In Family Histoire News, David explains how a well known influencer submitted a DNA sample and learned she had an identical twin. Only it wasn’t! Hear how this happened. Then, a project headed by a school teacher in Connecticut has resulted in the marking of homes and other places where the enslaved lived, mostly in colonial times. Next, hear how recently found 4,000 year old DNA is impacting our understanding of various plagues. Finally, check out Buzz Feed and their list of 26 family secrets of all types.

Next, Fisher visits with Stu Richards, an author and expert in coal mining disasters. So many families have been impacted by the losses of loved ones in these horrible accidents. Wait til you hear the numbers! Stu talks about causes, employee battles with coal companies and so much more.

Then, Adrienne Abiodun of sponsor Legacy Tree Genealogists is back. She talks about Juneteenth and the impact of DNA on African-American research.

David then returns for Ask Us Anything.

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

TRANSCRIPT

Host: Scott Fisher with guest David Allen Lambert

Segment 1 Episode 463

Fisher: And welcome America to America's Family History Show, Extreme Genes and ExtremeGenes.com. Fisher here, your Radio Roots Sleuth on the program where we shake your family tree, and watch the nuts fall out. Well, today we're going to talk to a guy who specializes in understanding coal mining accidents. I don't know about you, but I've done a lot of work with other people and there always seems to be a coal mining disaster in there somewhere, someone who's died as a result of a collapse or an explosion or some sort of thing. You're not going to believe some of the stuff Stu Richards has to tell us a little bit later on about coal mining accidents and how common they are and what causes them, and some of the ethics and problems dealing with companies that coal mine over the years. He's got a lot to say. Plus, we're going to talk to Adrienne Abiodun from our friends over at Legacy Tree Genealogists, one of our great sponsors, talking about African American DNA, how it is changing research, and Juneteenth. She's got a lot to share with us as well. And right now, it's time to head out to Scotland to speak to our good friend, David Allen Lambert, the Chief Genealogist of the New England Historic Genealogical Society and AmericanAncestors.org. Hello, David.

David: And how are you my friend across the pond?

Fisher: [Laughs] I am well what do you doing over there?

David: Well, NEHGS leads a research tour there. Not every year, but every few years we go back to Scotland. So we're in Edinburgh and we're researching at Scotland's people, the record center of Scotland's nearby, and taking in all the sights and sounds, and I've been tagged on a couple of extra days for myself, including walks in the old tunnels and crypts underneath the city, under the bridges, a ghost trail, cemetery walking tours at night. I'm going to go up to Loch Ness and take a cruise on Loch Ness and see if I see Nessie there.

Fisher: [Laughs]

David: So I'll be reporting live if I do with a video.

Fisher: And can you drop in on my ancestor, Robert the Bruce. He's a proven guy. He's got to be there somewhere.

David: Well, he's at Dunfermline Abbey, the last time I checked, which is one of the places I plan on visiting.

Fisher: All right.

David: And then I'm going to head over to England onto the border. And I'm going to check out Hadrian's Wall and some old Roman forts. Figured there’s some ancestral footprints on there I might be able to step back into.

Fisher: Nice! I am so jealous. Well, let's get on with our Family Histoire News, David. Where do you want to start?

David: Well, I want to start with a funny story that people ran, and it's about Chrissy Teigen, who is an American model, of course influencer on social media and a cookbook author. She found out after doing her 23andMe test, that she had a twin. So she paid for upgrades and found out what part Neanderthal she was. But the identical twin thing threw her for a loop. She even called up her dad and said, “Dad, you were there! Were there two of us?” And obviously he said no. But then it dawned on her, Fish that she had done a DNA test awhile back and did it as anonymous. Her identical twin is herself.

Fisher: [Laughs] I love that.

David: That's great. But you know what? I hate to say it, there's probably one or two listeners out in our audience that said, “Oh, wait a second. That's me.”

Fisher: Yeah, it happens. That's true.

David: I’d love to hear from our listeners who actually had that happen.

Fisher: Right.

David: Well, the next story actually comes from your home state of Connecticut, where a history teacher decided where he lived in Guilford to look into some local history. Now, he knew about his own English and Scottish and Irish immigrants. And he knew about the Native American, Nipmac people that preceded them. But he didn't know a lot on the African American story. Well, this project spiraled out and is gone so far now that it has affected 12,000 middle school and high school students in 45 communities across five states, where these students restored the history and the story of over 125 individuals.

Fisher: Yes.

David: These are amazing stories, amazing work. And I tip my hat to him, because this is an important piece of American history. And thank you, Dennis Culliton, for your article, and being the executive director of Witness Stones Project and that’s what he's working on.

Fisher: Yeah. And they're putting these stones basically in different places to mark the houses where slaves had lived back in the day and places where they worked as well. So, you can see that history all around you.

David: Well, I think this is appropriate, because Monday will be Juneteenth.

Fisher: Yeah, amazing stuff.

David: Well, you know, I always get excited when people dig things up, you know, may even be your ancestor in upstate New York.

Fisher: [Laughs] Yes!

David: But this case, this is looking for something I hope that remain buried. This is the DNA of the bacteria that caused various plagues through Europe. The oldest portion of detectable plague dates back, Fish, what is this, 4000 years ago to the Neolithic times. I always thought it was something in the middle ages.

Fisher: Hmm. And they found this stuff and now they've connected it to these plagues, various plagues throughout the generations.

David: And what they're basically doing, Fish, is they’re taking old teeth from these individual burials, and drilling into them and the dental pulp inside actually contains the infectious disease to some degree.

Fisher: Wow!

David: Well, you know, I think all of the stories we have touched, our listeners, something may hit home, BuzzFeed put out a recent article, I'm not going to name all of them, because you take the whole episode, but 26 secrets that families have found, kept from other members of the family really range from being very heartbreaking to extremely dark.

Fisher: Yeah.

David: One of the stories started off with someone who was 21 years old, wanted to volunteer as a missionary with their local church and they required to get medical history on both sides of the family. And yes, parents and they’re like, “Yeah, yeah, we'll get back to you.” Well, later on, got a page to report back home. And to find out the woman that he believed was his older sister was actually his biological mother.

Fisher: Yeah. And that's one of just 26, so if you do a Google search of BuzzFeed, 26 secrets, it'll pull it right up. And these stories are terrific!

David: Well, you know, that's all I have from Edinburgh today. And don't forget, if you're not an American Ancestors member, you can join for $20 off if you use a coupon code, “Extreme” on AmericanAncestors.org.

Fisher: All right, David, thank you so much. Of course, we got more questions to answer at the back end of the show. And coming up next, if you have a coal miner back there, you're going to want to hear the stories that Stu Richards has to explain to you about all the dangers that have been involved for your ancestors and what may have led to their deaths, when we return in three minutes on Extreme Genes, America's Family History Show.

Segment 2 Episode 463

Host: Scott Fisher with guest Stu Richards

Fisher: Hey, welcome back to Extreme Genes, America's Family History Show and ExtremeGenes.com. Fisher here, your Radio Roots Sleuth. You know, over the course of decades of researching and writing, I've discovered so many different people and so many different friends who have family lines that include coal miners. And so many of these people have wound up dying in the coal mines. I thought I'd talk to an expert in this whole area. Stu Richards, he's the author of a book called, Death in the Mines, basically centered around Pennsylvania mining, because this is where Stu’s relatives are from. Welcome to Extreme Genes, Stu. Great to have you on the show.

Stu: Thank you very much.

Fisher: Now, you were not a coal miner yourself, but you said you have relatives who were.

Stu: My entire family on my paternal side were coal miners. And my life as a kid took place all around that type of talk with my grandmother. And my grandfather was killed in the mines and his brother too, which would have been my uncle back in 1940s. They were in mining accidents. For me, I used to go all around with my uncles, and they would take me down in old mines and talk about that. Every Sunday, we'd go visit different parts of my family. And that was what the main subject was always about.

Fisher: Fascinating.

Stu: Who worked in the mines and how they worked in the mines. It's a point now as a writer and trying to do this type of history. One of the best things I had as a reference was my grandmother. All she wanted to talk about was that stuff. And as a kid, what did I want to do? I wanted to go play football, go play baseball. I didn't want to hear this stuff.

Fisher: [Laughs]

Stu: And now I could kick myself for that.

Fisher: Well, we all go through that, right, where we wish we had asked this. We wish we had asked that. But as you look back on it, I mean, was the conversation negative or positive? I mean, so many people died in the mines. There's the black lung disease and all that. How did they feel about it? Obviously, they're taking you down in the mines for tours. They must have thought you'd be interested.

Stu: Yeah. Well, it's a sad, sad occupation if you want to put it that way. These people suffered immensely. Before my grandfather was killed, he was 52 years old. I unfortunately never met him. But my dad and my grandma told me that he could hardly walk up two flights of steps without stopping to breathe. And after he was dead, my grandmother tried to collect and get what was called a silicosis or black lung benefits from the state. And she couldn't get them for reasons of which we don't know. But we had to get a congressman to try and get it for her. And they finally did when she was like 75 years old.

Fisher: Ugh!

Stu: And that amounted to about $30 a month benefit for that. That is one of the big reasons that coal mining has been such a problematic thing. I mean, the anthracite coal region where I live, it runs from Scranton in the northeast to about 120 miles southwest to what we call Dauphin County. It's about 60 miles wide and 120 miles long. That's the actual anthracite coal region in Pennsylvania, the harder coal region. Between 1870 and the present day, they have kept mining records. Now we've been mining here since 1840. So, from ‘40 to ‘70, they never kept any records, actual records. But between 1870 and the present day in that small quarter of the anthracite coal region, 35,162 men and boys were killed in mining.

Fisher: Oh my gosh! 35,000?

Stu: Yep, that would include inside the mine and outside the mine, what we call the whole colliery. That's what it's called the whole working aspect.

Fisher: Insane! And did that include the black lung disease?

Stu: No, no, that doesn't even include the black lung. That's its own separate thing.

Fisher: So these are just mining accidents you're talking about here.

Stu: Mining accidents.

Fisher: And are there records that exist for the public that people could look at these things?

Stu: Yes, there's one online where you can go look for anthracite coal mining accidents, if you Google something like that. And it will show all the record books. Now the record books go from 1870, as I said, all the way up to about 1960, then they sort of stopped that and put it more on computer type of environment. But the best books are the ones from 1870, through the early ‘30s and stuff like that, because they are totally detailed into what happened.

Fisher: So, what was the usual cause of a coal mine disaster? I mean, there's dust explosions, I'm aware of that, there must be collapses, of course, people getting trapped. What was the most common?

Stu: The main accidents that you would have happened would have been gas explosions, roof falls, and water. Water is a big one, because water will accumulate in the mine and there's like mule kicks, you know, kicks from mules back in the old days.

Fisher: Wow!

Stu: That's what my new book is going to be about, about mules in the mines, because it's totally interesting how they operated with that. But mostly roof falls, collapses, and water. The biggest accident that we had happened in Pennsylvania was called Avondale. This was back in the 1860s. What happened here was, every mine today has to have two entrances and two exits. But back then, they had one entrance and one exit in the same port. So, what happened was, the tunnels and the shaft caught fire, burned all the way down into the mine. Now there was like 100 and some guys down there, couldn't get out and suffocated and were burned. That was the beginning of when they needed to have the two entrances into exits, so you could get in and out of the mine.

Fisher: Sure. Yeah, so these records that you're talking about, do they mention the names of all those who died? Is this a database?

Stu: Yep. When I worked at the historical society, I used to do a lot of research for people. If they knew the time and the period where their relative worked, we could easily find it. It will have everything there about what caused their accident, like a fall off the roof, a car fell off the track, like you were telling me before, and things like that. It'll have all of that listed in there. And you know, the sad parts about that, back in those days, you worked for the company. The company that these fellas worked for back in the day was the Philadelphia Reading Coal and Iron Company. And it was horrible. That's when they started the Union. It was called the Working Man's Benevolent Association, in 1876 that was started. What they asked for was a fair day's pay for a fair day's work.

Fisher: Yeah.

Stu: And the company messed them over with that and wouldn't give it to them. And then that goes all the way into another thing about the ethnicity of the areas. Did you ever hear of the Molly Maguires?

Fisher: I've heard the term, yeah. Tell me about that.

Stu: That's an Irish group of miners that worked in the anthracite regions here. And in the 1870s, they rebelled a lot. Not only the Irish, my family were all Welsh. They came from Wales early on back in the 1870s to work in the mines here. And they were trying to fight the owners of the company. The big thing was The Company Store. I don't know if you've ever heard of that.

Fisher: “I owe my soul to the company store.” Yeah, I’ve heard that!

Stu: Exactly. Yeah, “16 tons, what do you get?”

Fisher: Yeah.

Stu: In that aspect of it, you worked for the company. You lived in a company home. This always was a main interest to me, was if you were minor, and you had, say, three children, if three of those children were women, girls, and you got hurt, they kicked you right out of your house. That was it. So if you had two sons, that's fine, because they could still keep working and still pay for the rent. But with the aspect of working for the company like that, you went to a company doctor. You bought all your tools that you needed to mine from the company. Then on top of that, if you got hurt or anything like that, it wouldn't be possible if you weren't hurt that bad they would put you back to where the young men were, the young boys, the eight, nine and 10 year olds in the what they call the breaker.

Fisher: Ugh!

Stu: They would be the breaker boys. It's an old term in the anthracite region called, once a man, twice a boy, which means I was once a man, then I got hurt, and then I went back with the boys again, you know, the young boys.

Fisher: Yeah, yeah. It makes sense.

Stu: So that's the big problem with the company store. They were fighting, totally fighting against that. Back to the Molly Maguires. They would burn these company stores they would burn breakers. Some of these guys who were the Molly Maguires were not totally doing this for the benefit of the other miners. There was a lot of vendettas and stuff like that happened. Well, on June 21st, this midsummer's eve there they hanged 11 of them in Schuylkill County here. And they were hanged for different murders, like murdering a coal mine boss and things like that. But that's a big part of the history here in Schuylkill County.

Fisher: Wow!

Stu: Pretty interesting.

Fisher: Yes. Stu, tell me then, I mean, you just talked about a region here that's not very wide. What is it, 100 miles long?

Stu: About 120 miles long, 60 miles wide.

Fisher: All right. So, and you lost 35,000 people in there. There must be other coal mining areas throughout the country that has similar kind of numbers.

Stu: Yeah, I don't know. I've never done any research into the bituminous fields out west, you know, like Pittsburgh area and down into West Virginia and Kentucky, you know. That's where we always see those types of miners and stuff like that, you know. I always show them on TV. And, you know, it blows your mind, when I take people down in the mine and tell them that, they look at me like, are you crazy? And you got to think to this, between that time period, say, 1917 was the peak of coal mining in the anthracite region. There were over 10,000 underground mines.

Fisher: Wow!

Stu: In that small area. Today, there are six. Six underground mines and they're all independent coal miners, not unionized fellas and they're all working with their families. So, you might have one mine that's employing seven people. Were back in the 1900s, back there that you know, you have 200, 300 Miners down in the ground working. Politics has killed mining for one thing.

Fisher: Sure. Unbelievable!

Stu: Everything around here now is surface mining, what they call strip mining, taking it down from the surface.

Fisher: He's Stu Richards. He's the author of the book, Death in the Mines. You can find it all over the place, Amazon.com. And, Stu, this has been a real education. Now I'm getting an idea of why I keep running into coal miners dying in people's family history. It happens all the time.

Stu: Okay, thank you. I enjoyed talking about it. Keep it alive!

Fisher: Absolutely. And coming up next, we're going to talk to Adrienne Abiodun from our sponsors at Legacy Tree Genealogists, talking about Juneteenth and DNA research for African American families and how it's affecting them, coming up in three minutes on Extreme Genes, America's Family History Show.

Segment 3 Episode 463

Host: Scott Fisher with guest Adrienne Abiodun

Fisher: All right back on the job on Extreme Genes, America's Family History Show and ExtremeGenes.com. It is Fisher here, your Radio Root Sleuth. And my next guest comes from our sponsors over at Legacy Tree Genealogists. It's Adrienne Abiodun. And Adrienne, we haven't had you on the show in a while. It's great to talk to you again.

Adrienne: It's really great to be here, Scott, thank you so much for having me again. It's been too long.

Fisher: You know, Adrienne is a specialist in DNA and African American research being largely African American herself. And with Juneteenth weekend at hand. It's great to talk to you about DNA and how it's affecting African American research these days.

Adrienne: Yeah, absolutely. I’m looking forward to the conversation.

Fisher: So, tell me about this because historically, and I remember back when DNA started becoming a big thing in the early twenty-teens, there were a lot in the African American community that were really hesitant to do DNA testing, obviously, for reasons of, you know, what might the government do with things like this? Do you still find that attitude is prevalent, or more people getting comfortable with it and starting to dig in and seeing what they can do with it to help extend their lines and learn about their history?

Adrienne: Well, I think that attitude is still there. People who were skeptical are always going to be skeptical or just really want to wait and give it some time to see what happens ethics wise with this what organizations. Who's going to have access to it? Who can't have access to it? I mean, historically, African American people have not the best rapport with government agencies at time. You know, there's a lot of distrust, just skepticism in the sense of how can this be used against us? So people have really just wanted to see how like, yeah, there's a lot of good that comes from DNA. But what could happen in the negative like sense.

Fisher: Sure.

Adrienne: What could really bad that could happen to them. But there are people who have moved along since I mean, this autosomal, DNA testing for family research came out in like 2011, which is when it was most popularized by Ancestry DNA, and 23andMe, and so forth. And you do have a lot of people who have come along since then didn't test right away, but maybe have developed a sense of comfort or feeling, you know, okay, can't do too much to harm. It hasn't harmed all those other people. So I might as well go ahead and dive in.

Fisher: [Laughs] Right, the guinea pigs have not been abused. That’s good to know.

Adrienne: Yeah, exactly.

Fisher: Absolutely. So let's talk about that, then as the database of African Americans grows right, on Ancestry, 23andMe, and elsewhere, what are people learning that they weren't able to find out about before?

Adrienne: You know, African American history is, so, I love it. I love the history. I love how the science has really come along and what it can do. And like I said, I think this is the best gift for African American family researchers who are really trying to piece together their families. For instance, an example would be you have families in Chicago, black families that maybe have been there for two to three generations. And you can ask a young, you know, African American person, like where's your family from? You know, they’ll say Chicago. Well, me as a researcher, I'm thinking, well, Chicago is really just Mississippi.

Fisher: Right.

Adrienne: African American people through various migrational patterns were brought in as enslaved people, possibly some of them may have been free people of color. But then they started off on the Eastern US, moved into the Deep South, and then branched out through these migrations out of the south to escape things like Jim Crow laws that were put in place, and so forth.

Fisher: Right.

Adrienne: And so you have a lot of people in like these major cities that are not connected to their ancestors just two, three generations ago, and they really don't know where to look. So things like Ancestry DNA communities, they recently had an update that is just phenomenal for African Americans. And if you're one of those people, like I don't really know much about my family where they came from, in the south. This recent update really zoomed in on a community that I'm aware of through, you know, just a lot of years of research. But for someone who does not have that information and they look and they say, what is this inland Mississippi, African Americans’ DNA community? Why do I match thousands of people that come from that? Maybe I have a connection to that community. Maybe that's where I need to be looking to do some research.

Fisher: Sure, sure. The great thing too also is this DNA came along really at about the same time that digitized newspapers started flooding us with stories in the like, so you can really look up things now and get some stories about people that you wouldn't have been able to do in the past.

Adrienne: Absolutely. I mean, there are so many advances and they keep coming. You know, I tell people, it's still a lot of patients involved in this in.

Fisher: Yes.

Adrienne: Even though DNA has done a lot and you're hearing a lot of people make incredible breakthroughs, there's a lot of patients because within African American DNA results in those match list of relatives you do and do not know. But most of the ones you don't know, I tell people, it's kind of like the blind leading the blind, you know, you're relying on people and their genealogies to, again, develop leads to kind of help you extend your family tree, connect with families, maybe find a recent family member.

Fisher: Right.

Adrienne: But if you're coming from a community of people that were in their families have been severely severed, because of the institution of enslavement because people were fleeing communities and moving to bigger cities. You're going to have a lot of people who don't know, they just don't know. I don't know who my grandparents are. I don't know who my great grandparents are. So you're going to find sometimes the family trees aren't well developed, or there might be some inconsistencies. And it can just have a lot of patients involved in the process.

Fisher: Sure.

Adrienne: Now with my DNA match just hit the jackpot. [Laughs]

Fisher: Right. [Laughs]

Adrienne: My tree is as far out as I've been able to take it.

Fisher: Are you starting to see more and more people using DNA to identify their origins in Africa?

Adrienne: Well, I think as black Americans, that's always the first reason that they take DNA tests. That's one of the primary reasons. The ethnicity and, you know, ancestry compositions that the companies provide are always, “Why did you do this?” I wanted to see how much Nigerian I am how much of a particular you know, country and is it could be European, you know, African American people have been curious about their European origins as well. So it's usually their ethnicity estimates that get them in the door. And then they don't realize, though, that there's going to be all these DNA matches if they opt in to that part of it. And that is really where you can make some strides in your research.

Fisher: Yeah, DNA matching is the thing. And I tell people all the time really, the major companies have marketed DNA as being the way to find out whether you wear kilts or later Hosen, or whatever it is. And really from the standpoint of developing your family history and your genealogy, that's not necessarily the greatest help, you're going to get. It's going to be through DNA matching. And so I always encourage people, you know, go to that middle section on your DNA Summary page. That's where all the gold is lying.

Adrienne: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, I think three reasons African American people will take a DNA test, I think are for the ethnicity connecting with a particular country of origin. Then, for the genealogist, the family researchers who have kind of a, you know, an idea of how this works, there are those that will take exclusively for the matching, you know, they've heard people make success with that. And that's what I tell people, I've connected with a couple of African DNA matches. And what I mean by that these are individuals were all four of their grandparents were born in Africa, and so they have nothing but recent African ancestry. I use those people as my compass, and also to verify that what's being reported by the companies in my ethnicity and ancestry composition is accurate. You know, if I'm finding a lot of Nigerian DNA matches, well, and it says I'm 23% Nigerian, that seems to add up, right?

Fisher: Yeah, absolutely. It's just another puzzle piece, right?

Adrienne: Right.

Fisher: I mean, that's the whole thing. And that's the joy of doing DNA matching. I just think of it as a big puzzle where you kind of start in the middle instead of on the edges and you just keep building out and there are no edges. It just goes on forever and every direction as you can. It's, it's just such great fun. And what a great gift that would be for Juneteenth right, for somebody to do a DNA kit and find out a little bit more about their ancestry.

Adrienne: Yeah, the beautiful thing about it too is it coincides with Father's Day, so their tests are usually always on sale. So now's a great time to get a deal on a DNA test.

Fisher: She's Adrienne Abiodun. She's with Legacy Tree Genealogists, our great sponsor. And, Adrienne thanks so much for your time, fascinating conversation as always, and we'll talk to you again down the line.

Adrienne: Thank you, Scott.

Fisher: And coming up next, David Allen Lambert returns as we go through another round of Ask Us Anything on Extreme Genes, America's Family History Show.

Segment 4 Episode 463

Host: Scott Fisher with guest David Allen Lambert

Fisher: All right, time for Ask Us Anything on Extreme Genes, America's Family History Show and ExtremeGenes.com. Fisher here, your Radio Roots Sleuth. David Allen Lambert over in Scotland today to answer questions. And Dave, our first question comes from Dan in South Dakota. And he says, “Hey, Dave, and Fisher, I have found some historical pictures of my grandparents in a book and I'd like to copy them, but don't want to create a copyright problem. What should I do?” Great question, Dan. And you know, here's the thing that I think most of us deal with, Dave, in trying to figure these things out, when do things in copyright drop into public domain? And the answer to that is, after 95 years. And we had a long period of time, starting in 1978, where the government actually put a freeze on this thing. And it went on for a long, long time where nothing was changing. It was like, what, 1923, 1924 was the latest time that things were in public domain, because anything after that remained in copyright. And a lot of this had to do with the Disney Company.

David: Exactly. I was just going to say, you can blame this on Walt Disney and Mickey Mouse, because of the corporation. In fact, actually, I went to an exhibit recently in Philadelphia, and Disney is already 100 years old, even though Mickey Mouse isn't quite 100 years old yet.

Fisher: Right.

David: Because it was Oswald, which was another character that they had before Mickey Mouse, was a short lived character. There was also a character who was actually superimposed from a movie onto a cartoon back in the day too and back in the ‘20s. So yeah, Mickey Mouse might be in public domain before you know it.

Fisher: Yeah, actually, right now we're up to 1927. And I want to say Steamboat Willie came in around ‘28.

David: That’s exactly when it came out.

Fisher: Yeah. So pretty soon, people are going to be able to use Mickey Mouse from that era, in whatever they want to do. But, when you find your family members in a historical publication, such as you're describing, just because they're your relatives, doesn't mean you have the right to reproduce it. And so, if this does not fit into the period of 1927, or earlier, the rule now is 95 years. Next year, it'll be 1928, the year after 29, the year after that, we'll go to 1930. If your people are not in that time period, where it's public domain, then you're going to have to get some permissions from somebody. And that may require a little research into where the people who put the book together got the picture in the first place, because they undoubtedly needed to get copyright permission as well just to put it in their publication.

David: That’s very true. In fact, at NEHGS, what we've been doing to make life easier for our members is collaboration with digitization with Ancestry. So, we're taking many of the books, unless they are very, most often used, and putting a digital link that will ultimately be on our catalog and taking the book off the shelf. And in some cases, we're putting it in storage. Not getting rid of it altogether. But, there's also an exception to this. If somebody wrote a book in the ‘40s, or the ‘50s and they never put a copyright notice in the book, technically, you can actually reproduce it.

Fisher: Really?

David: Yeah. So we're finding that you can actually digitize. There’s a rule. Ancestry discovered all this for us that you can actually take and reproduce it. But you’re not reprinting it. It's like a fair use type of thing, like where you can download the book to look at it or view it online. That's also true with like, Hathi Trust, and Archive.org. There are some of them that you can log in to download for a short amount of time, the things that are more recent. So, you might have a book that you can contact the author too.

Fisher: Yeah.

David: I mean, if it's something recent, I mean, I always say, recent authors put an email address, there’s a mailing addresses and sometimes phone numbers. And you can Google the author and see if they're out there. I mean, you're a genealogist, find the living like you do the dead and see if they're around. Because I'm sure that they got the picture from somebody else if they don't own it themselves. And, you know, genealogists love to share.

Fisher: Exactly. Good stuff. All right, great question and an interesting one I think that impacts a lot of people. Thanks so much for it. We got another question coming up next when we return in three minutes on Extreme Genes, America's Family History Show.

Segment 5 Episode 463

Host: Scott Fisher with guest David Allen Lambert

Fisher: All right, final question time as we continue with Ask Us Anything on Extreme Genes America's Family History Show. And David, our next question is from Deanne in Portland, Oregon, she writes, “Guys, I have been researching some colonial wills and also English and Scottish wills. I know what pennies and half pennies are, but what are florins, crowns, sovereigns, demis, nobles, etc?” Good question. I don't know that stuff. Do you?

David: Well, I'm going to be honest, I had to look it up. So thank you for sending the question beforehand, because I wouldn't know it off the top of my head either. First off, the most common one’s a penny. And of course we still use that denomination here in America. In fact, we used to do half pennies. Coins from the early 19th century in 18th century for half pennies occasionally. Now, one that you may not know, but you probably have seen is a farthing. A farthing is basically worth a quarter of a penny.

Fisher: Oh.

David: So, two farthings is really worth half penny. Four farthings equaled a penny. So, if you think of a penny not being worth much, a farthing was not worth a lot at all.

Fisher: [Laughs]

David: But probably was a day's pay at some point in time in the 13th century.

Fisher: Yeah, sure.

David: Three pence is just like it sounds, three pennies. A Florin was worth two shillings and the Florins were around right through the 1940s actually.

Fisher: Really? So these were used in England? Colonial America? Where?

David: Well, in England, in some cases colonial America as well with legal tender over here.

Fisher: Oh.

David: In fact, some cases after the Revolutionary War, British currency was still passable. Sometimes they called it old tenor or new tenor based on the value. See that occasionally in probates. In regards to money that's specifically Scottish, one of them you may have heard of or maybe not, it's called a lion. And of course, a lion is on the flag of Scotland. It changed over time, but it was worth about five shillings.

Fisher: Okay. [Laughs]

David: Then half Guinea is 10 shillings or six pennies. You might find something called a demi. Those are only used in the 1400. So somebody's got a hold of a really old will. This is 1406 to 1437. That was worth nine shillings at that point in time.

Fisher: Okay.

David: There's also a demi lion.

Fisher: Really?

David: Which was two shillings, six pence. There's a bawbee, a BAWBEE, that was worth six pence and that was used roughly from the 1530s to the end of the 17th century.

Fisher: Wow! Some of these terms I've never heard before in my life. And it's funny, because you think okay, if they're using that in a will, it sounds like they're leaving certain amounts to certain people. It doesn't sound like much, any of it.

David: Well, I hope that if my ancestors were wealthy enough in Scotland, they may have left unicorns. It doesn't mean they're leaving somebody a unicorn. From the 15th century to the early 16th century, a unicorn was made out of gold, and was worth about 18 shillings. From the 1500s, it was worth 20 shillings. And by the time they stopped using it at the end of the 1560s, it was worth 22 shillings, but made of gold. And I'm sure if you find one with a metal detector, you're going to make front page news.

Fisher: [Laughs] Yeah, they're probably worth a little bit more now than they were back then. Any others?

David: Ah, well, let's see, a dollar. You've heard of them, right?

Fisher: Hmm, yeah.

David: That was made out of silver and for use with trade in the East. But of course, we use the idea of an American dollar after the Spanish coin, because if you ever look on the back of an old Spanish coin, it has two columns and with the wreath around it. I mean, I'm probably calling it the wrong thing. You put it together. It looks like the $ in a dollar.

Fisher: Oh! That's where that came from. Who knew!

David: Dollar symbol. Yeah, exactly. And remember, another great place to find this type of value is our friendly neighborhood Wikipedia.

Fisher: There you go. I'm sure they cover that too. Dave, thanks so much. Have a great trip in Scotland. And we look forward to talking to you again when you get back in a couple of weeks.

David: I look forward to it too. Hopefully, Nessie won't find me on my trip across Loch Ness.

Fisher: [Laughs] There you go. All right. And thanks to you for joining us this week. Thanks to Stu Richards for coming on and talking about coal mining disasters and accidents. And to Adrienne Abiodun from our friends at Legacy Tree Genealogists for talking about Juneteenth and how DNA is affected African American research. Hey, if you missed any of the show, catch the podcast, it's on Apple Media. iHeart Radio, ExtremeGenes.com, TuneIn Radio and Spotify. We'll talk to you again next week. And remember, as far as everyone knows, we're a nice normal family!