Episode 9 – Guest Ron Fox On Finding Ancestors in Digitized Newspapers

podcast episode Sep 13, 2013

On this week show, Fisher’s got the latest on battle over the body of King Richard III.  In fact, scientists revealed something he wishes had never been brought up!  He also reviews the story of Trisha Yearwood on “Who Do You Think You Are.”  Guest Ron Fox joins the show to talk to Fisher about using digitized newspapers to find your ancestors. And Tom Perry talks about another aspect of preservation.

Transcript of Episode 9

Host Scott Fisher

Segment 1 Episode 9

Fisher: Hey, welcome back! It’s Extreme Genes Family History Radio and ExtremeGenes.com. I am your Radio Roots Sleuth Fisher brought to you by TMC, The Multimedia Centers preserving your memories for over 40 years. And this segment is brought to you by Heritage Consulting Genealogy Services your family history resource. Call 877 537 2000. Listen to this genies, comments from last week’s show on family history gifts from Janet Hovorka from FamilyChartMasters.com included this one. Fisher, the best gift I ever got was a brick. [Laughs] My brother retrieved it from the ruins of my great grandfather’s farm in Iowa. Three generations lived in that place and I love having it. My husband and I had a metal plate engraved and put on it and it sits on a shelf in our living room. Everyone always asks, “What’s with the brick?” When I tell them, they’re always interested in the background story. Sometimes the best gifts don’t cost a lot. Great email, thanks so much for that. You can email me at any time at [email protected]. If you missed last week’s show check out the podcast at ExtremeGenes.com or subscribe to our podcast on iTunes. Final poll results on last week’s survey on kings or queens. Do you have at least have one on your chart? I’m surprised two thirds of you said yes. So, you’re doing your homework to find that out. Just makes you wonder why we all have to work so hard being descendants of kings and queens. Our new poll is up now on ExtremeGenes.com. We’ll talk about that in just a few minutes. Did you catch the Trisha Yearwood episode of “Who Do You Think You Are?” on TLC? Finally, an episode where someone’s featured ancestor was not a hero, a legend or a royal. I know when I first started researching our family’s background the older family members always thought we’d find horse thieves back there. We actually did, by the way on my wife’s side. Trisha Yearwood’s English ancestor was actually ordered to hang for theft, but somehow managed to avoid the noose, and what a twist came in his life. You can read the story on ExtremeGenes.com. It was a really good episode. Speaking of kings and the English, of course, there is more news to be learned on King Richard III, the royal whose body was found under a parking lot. We recently told you how the body barely survived total destruction by some disturbance probably back in the 1800s [Laughs] but was spared by, get this, an outhouse placed over his grave. Does it get anymore humiliating than that for a hunched back king? And of course about the battle over where he’ll finally be laid to rest which will create a lucrative tourist attraction for somebody. But the latest story has to be the most disturbing of them all. And I’ve really tried all week to think of a way not to bring up this story on the show because well, there’s a good chance you might be eating, planning to eat or recently ate. [Laughs] Sometimes I think the scientists should hold back just a bit on the graphic descriptions of their discoveries so I will give you just a hint on this story. It involves roundworms. If you really want the rest read all about it, it’s on our website ExtremeGenes.com. You know, we say it’s like a Drudge Report for family history news for a reason because it’s all there. Also, on ExtremeGenes.com a writer named Thomas Harding has learned that his great uncle, a German Jew became a war crimes investigator for the British after the war. Yeah, he was the one who actually tracked down the commandant of Auschwitz concentration camp Rudolph Höss, not Rudolph Hess, Hitler’s colleague, but still a very important war criminal who did not avoid the hangman’s noose. In fact, Höss gave graphic and compelling evidence at the Nuremberg war trial. In fact, I saw this on YouTube. I was able to look it up. It was an amazing thing to watch. This guy speaks so calmly about what they did there. It was disgusting, really. The story of how Harding learned the details of his great uncle’s story including how he was able to interview with Höss’s daughter in the United States makes for some real compelling reading. So, go to ExtremeGenes.com, keywords “Nazi hunter.” And for anyone who’s really dug into their ancestor’s story or thinks they would like to someday you will find this an awesome read.

Remember when Geraldo Rivera did an entire network special on the opening of a secret vault that once belonged to Al Capone? [Laughs] That was decades ago and really put a crimp in Rivera’s reputation because when he opened it, it contained nothing. As I recall he left humming in embarrassment and became the object of a lot of scorn for that one especially from his colleagues. [Laughs] Nonetheless, who doesn’t like the idea of opening a sealed vault, especially a big one in the States Capital? I’d want to be there to see what they found. In Massachusetts that’s exactly what they did. The State Government actually hired a “safe cracker” yet that wouldn’t let anybody film how they broke in because they didn’t want anyone to learn just exactly how one cracks a safe. What did they find in it? Well, you can check it out at ExtremeGenes.com, keyword “safe.” You know, heirlooms are treasured by most everyone because the good stuff often doesn’t survive. You know it’s lost to fire, yard sales, water damaged or is just thrown away. Then there’s the matter of theft and it really breaks your heart when you hear about people like this woman in Washington State who lost her family’s antique gun collection to burglars. Now, her father had collected dozens of antique guns through the years and she’d grown up in the ‘60s hearing the stories behind each one of them. The haul included an unused knife in a leather sheath that her grandfather had given her as a child that she knows embodied all the stories he had ever told her, so it’s an amazing loss, great photos with the stories by the way. Read more about this on ExtremeGenes.com, keyword “heirloom.” If you have a discovery or story you’d like to share we’d love to hear about it. You can call toll free 1-234-56 GENES. That’s 1-234-56 G-E-N-E-S. and while the show is on only an hour a week the Extreme Genes “Find Line” is open 24/7 so be sure to call any time and say what’s on your  mind. All right, the new poll is up and it’s in keeping with Trisha Yearwood’s “Who Do You Think You Are?” episode. “Have you found a thief in your family tree?” I have actually found one on both my side from the 1840s in New York City and from my wife’s side in Indiana in 1875. The New York guy, he stole like a saddle and some other things. He kind of created a business for himself out of this and he even escaped police custody at one point. The guy on my wife’s side swindled trusted business colleagues out of money for many heads of steer and then changed his name and ran off with the young wife of a farm hand on his ranch. Yeah, you can learn these things. Oh by the way, that was after fathering nine children with his wife. Somehow he didn’t end up in prison which I still don’t understand [Laughs] but had to return home to face the scorn of his family and neighbors. And when he died he was referred to in the obituary as “highly respected.” So, our poll is, “Have you found a thief?” And we’ll include any kind of crook in there on your family tree, “yes or no.” The poll is on our homepage at ExtremeGenes.com. I hope we have at least a few yeses on this or my family is going to look really bad. This segment was brought to you by Heritage Consulting Genealogy Services your family history resource. Call 877 537 2000. Coming up next, newspaper writer and researcher Ron Fox on researching digitized newspapers, next on Extreme Genes Family History Radio and ExtremeGenes.com.

Segment 2 Episode 9

Host: Scott Fisher with guest Ron Fox

Fisher: Welcome back to Extreme Genes, Family History Radio and ExtremeGenes.com brought to you by TMC the Multimedia Centers Preserving your Memories for over Forty Years. It is Fisher here and you know, a few moments ago I was telling you about [Laughs] the horse thieves that we found. It was one horse thief in the family on my wife’s side, and the thief on my side that was stealing stuff in New York and wound up escaping the police and all that, people will often ask, “How do you find out stuff like that when you’re doing your research?” And that’s why we have Newspaper Reporter and Researcher Ron Fox on the phone with us. Before, Ron has been here to talk about photographs in the past. Ron welcome back. 

Ron: Thank you very much. It’s good to be back.

Fisher: You know, newspapers are being digitized now all over the place and I thought we’d start out maybe by sharing some of the things you can find in newspapers, specific stories that you’ve run across in your research that you’ve never found before until this era with the digitized papers.  

Ron: It’s really a treasure trove and one of the most exciting things for genealogy or family history as you develop your stories surrounding just the names, dates and pictures of individuals. And you will find the most minute details sometimes, a miniscule detail in a newspaper that might lead you on to other types of research online that have been difficult for you to find.

Fisher: Yeah that’s a really good summary. Yeah.

Ron: I’ll give you some examples. You know, there are stories that come down from families but it’s really neat if you can collaborate, a story with an actual newspaper account.

Fisher: Right. You’re talking about an oral tradition or something? 

Ron: Yeah. I’m talking about you know, one family talked to me recently about a specific relative that came over here from Norway and went to South Dakota, and basically went to the end of the line and was basically almost promised, well, was promised in marriage. And when she got there they held a blowout of a party.

Fisher: [Laughs]

Ron: And I guess this particular family, they had beer and they basically had about thirty six hour food filled fest. 

Fisher: It was a bash. It was a bash. 

Ron: It rivalled anything that we could think about putting on today.

Fisher: Now, was this in the family tradition that they were aware of this? Okay.

Ron: They were aware that there was this thing because there were some notations, a couple of family histories about it. But the thing is, we’re talking about the 1870s and we’re talking about in the middle of nowhere in Southern Idaho. 

Fisher: So nobody left who can tell a firsthand account, yeah.  

Ron: I’m sorry, it was South Dakota. So, a local newspaper wrote the story about this event, and it was sort of like a seven brothers, seven brides type of a tale, but what occurred was a New York Times reporter picked up that small paper and reprinted it in the New York Times.    

Fisher: [Laughs]

Ron: And so here’s talking about the father of the bride who was still in Norway, and the groom’s parents, and all of these relatives, and you would not think that a small town story from South Dakota from the 1870s would appear in the New York Times. But it was very interesting that many newspapers when they had local stories and they knew that people were coming from other cities or if the people who were attending it or the principles like in a marriage or a death were there, they had a simple phrase they put on the bottom of the newspapers, “Saint Louis Newspapers Please Copy.”

Fisher: Yes. I’ve run into that. In fact, I had a second great grandfather who died in 1867 in New York, and I didn’t know where he was from in England and the first hint I got was one of those, it said, “London Papers Please Copy” [Laughs] it’s like those are not words you really want to hear because that means you’ve got this massive city to search for a person in, but nonetheless it was helpful to know where he came from. That’s great, yeah.

Ron: It’s very true you know. And what’s great about newspapers, I am a person from California and when I started doing newspaper searches online I searched in the area of Minnesota where my mother was from. And there in a Minnesota newspaper in 1953 was a story that mentioned my name, and my mother and father’s names, visiting their parents, and was there for a week, and said what events we attended. And so newspapers really detailed life in these small towns. And it was sometimes the gossip rag, you know what I’m saying?

Fisher: [Laughs] Yes it’s true. They often would mention the little trips that people were taking and who’s visiting the town from where, at a given point. That’s always really telling. I think though the stranger the story, the more fun it is to find. I stumbled across one that had nothing to do with my own family, just the other day. It was about some guy who had married a woman from France down in New Orleans. They had a child but he didn’t know about her because they broke up. She had left him, went back to France, had the baby, he then moved to New York City. Well, thirty years later the child, the daughter, moves to New York City and falls in love with this man. [Laughs] Well, of course she writes back to mother how very happy she is that she’s found the love of her life, and mom finally agrees to come over from France to meet her new son-in-law. So they’re sitting basically in some lounge area hotel and I guess he walked by the widow and the bride’s mother spotted him and said, “Who’s that man?” and then he walked in the door and of course the bride is waiting to greet her man and the mother virtually fainted and said, “You’ve married your father” [Laughs] and this was in 1870. And you know, you don’t find stories like that. Boy that would really create quite a little dilemma on your family tree wouldn’t it? 

Ron: That is what you all the rest of the story.

Fisher: [Laughs] The rest of the story, yes.

Ron: Paul Harber used to say, “You know, there are stories.” And as I said before, there are stories that list for example as you come across the planes and rail trains or on a covered wagon, there were opportunities for people to use the newspaper as either the mail or to tell that they were there in a specific city. And that might get reprinted back in Washington DC or New York because you know they had columns regularly in the major papers in New York and in Washington and Boston. They would have these stringers out along, or publishers that were publishing small papers. Send them things, and then they would continually reprint them in these major papers, but the names of these relatives and various other individuals coming through a town would be put into ink and then years later digitized and available to all of us.

Fisher: Right. You know the other aspect is of course obituaries often would tell, especially in small towns. Some of the great detail and stories of people’s lives, and that’s really interesting. You know it was about a year ago, I was searching for a sister of my great grandfather. She had died at twenty one years old and we had found her obituary that way. It mentioned the names of her parents otherwise she would have been lost in time. And I was wondering what it was that took her so young. You normally think in the 1840s that it has to do with a disease or something, and I stumbled across a story that was reprinted throughout much of New York State, and it talked about a fire in a Brooklyn area, and she and her husband had a shop there. I guess he was a tailor, and she had a baby who was fourteen months old. And they had what they called spirit lamps. Are you familiar with those, Ron, spirit lamps?

Ron: Yep.

Fisher: And spirit was the type of fuel they would use to make these things light up. 

Ron: Highly combustible.

Fisher: Highly combustible. And you had to fill them up. And in this case I guess, one of the people in the household came too close to my great, great aunt as she went to fill the spirit lamp, came too close with a candle, and the thing exploded into flames. She dropped it on the floor and three people went up in flames. I mean the description was just horrific, that the flames were above their heads. This is in 1844. So the description and the story were quite detailed and dramatic to get something like that from that early. It talked about the neighbors coming in and putting out the fire, and learning that this poor relative of mine lingered on with her burns for five weeks before she died at twenty one years old. And then going about the process of finding out did she have any kids who were involved. We found out that she had one son, and that fourteen month old died the next day. So it was a very dramatic discovery for me, and it’s interesting how emotional it is when you stumble upon something like that all these years later and you feel like it just happened yesterday as you get to know your ancestors. 

Ron: It’s really true. Let’s talk about a couple of other things that you can find in these newspapers. It’s dissolving of partnerships, forming a business, bankruptcies, inviting partnerships into stores, and merchant type of credit issues where people have left town and not paid their bills, there are horse thieves as you say, there’s the public notices, but then you get into the more interesting things, if there’s like a coroner's inquiry into someone’s death, or if you published of course probates, and individuals names are always coming up in probates.

Fisher: Right. It leads you to a will.

Ron: It leads to a will but even more so, probates, you can take the probate record and the date, many states have kept their probate records, and the first thing usually in a probate is, is identifies all the relatives and where those relatives live. And so that data is very important that you pull off of that newspaper because then that date can go back to the court record in the county in which the person passed away. And remember, newspapers are not new things. They have been around in published versions of course starting in England, is where I’ve done work, but I mean we can talk into the 1500s and into the 1600s.

Fisher: Wow!

Ron: And get relevant and important information, family history wise.

Fisher: Yes. You just reminded me of another one I stumbled across from 1786. A fourth great grandfather riding with his baby on a horse, and the horse stumbled over a rock and it threw the baby and took the child’s life. And that story was reprinted throughout several papers in Connecticut in 1786. You know, where do you find information like that? You know, often you’ll find a little headstone maybe with an initial or that says that this is the child of this particular couple, but it’s a rare thing and it’s really you know, one of the great explosions of information for our time to be able to go back and dig things up from that far back or even earlier, or even find things on your parents or like in your case Ron, yourself. 

Ron: That’s correct. And we’re talking about you know, the 1950s. You think about information and stories of that early periods 1785, 1789, you know I read a story once, I sort of fell into it when I was working on a book, and found out there was an interview towards Washington’s mother about him becoming president of the United States. 

Fisher: Wow! 

Ron: I had no thought that George Washington, his mother was even alive to see her son become president in 1789. 

Fisher: Who would have known?

Ron: I didn’t even think about that.

Fisher: Right.

Ron: So there are things like that. I’ve got to tell you one story about British papers, they were excellent with respect to shipping information. So when you have ships that go across and you know the ship, you can actually go back to the British papers and see where that ship left England and on what day, and who the captain was, and a personal quick story is, I found and crossed the sea with my personal name Fox, through the old way with court records that were printed in the newspaper and found that my grandfather and my grandmother who met on the ship coming across which was a prison ship because they both made a petty theft in England in the city of London.

Fisher: What year are we talking about here Ron?

Ron: 1758. 

Fisher: Wow! 

Ron: And there were eight stories in five different newspapers which mentioned them in the city of London. 

Fisher: All right, so the question now is, where do you find these digitized newspapers for people who aren’t familiar with them? We’re going to get into that coming up next as we continue our conversation with Newspaper Writer and Author Ron Fox, coming up next on Extreme Genes, Family History Radio and ExtremeGenes.com.          

Segment 3 Episode 9

Host: Scott Fisher with guest Ron Fox

Fisher: Welcome back to Extreme Genes Family History Radio and ExtremeGenes.com, brought to you by TMC The Multimedia Centers preserving your memories for over 40 years. And this segment is brought to you by Heritage Consulting Genealogy Services your family history resource. Call 877 537 2000. Fisher here, your Radio Roots Sleuth and genies we are having a great visit today with Ron Fox. He’s a newspaper writer, family history researcher and we’ve been talking about digitized newspapers and already talked about some amazing stories and the things that they lead to. And we really want to spend a significant amount of time here Ron on different sources for digitized newspapers because many of them are free.

Ron: Many of them are free and many other newspapers are available because they have been collected by private companies and then they basically put these various collections together. And a lot of companies today are offering free digitization to a university and colleges and to state libraries to get that information and then they put it online on their service. So, there's a number of ways in which to find some great content and some work to help you get back more generations in your own family history.

Fisher: Now, let’s just mention also too that among the free stuff is also some stuff that you would normally pay for, but it is available free in family search centers around the country, yes?

Ron: Yes, that is correct.

Fisher: And libraries?

Ron: That is correct. Varies companies that sell their service to individuals, also provided at no cost to LDS Church Libraries and other research libraries, not the Daughters of the Utah Pioneers, but the Daughters of the American Revolution in Washington. I know that in the Department of Interior they have usage of several of the sites for the purposes of research on the part of the public if the public comes in.

Fisher: All right, so let’s go through some of the most common ones, the most popular. Ancestry of course has tons of digitized newspapers. And that’s growing isn’t it? Didn’t they buy one recently? 

Ron: Yes, they have developed a new site called Newspapers.com and that is a standalone which has… 

Fisher: A separate subscription, then?

Ron: Yes, that has greatly increased the number of newspapers that have been scanned in various locations throughout out the United States and they’re going to those where the greatest demand is, whether it be the South.

Fisher: Right.

Ron: And there are many areas of the country as you and I have chatted about in the past that have great resources and then there’s some that have very little resources. When you are talking about the territorial periods of North Dakota, South Dakota, Montana, Idaho, Washington State, they have newspapers and they are hard copy and they’re usually not what we call complete runs but they have not been digitized because the governments do not have the money or resources to digitize them yet, but other states have. But you’re certainly not seeing an increased number every day. And let’s talk about some of the free services that are out there.

Fisher: Okay.

Ron: If you’re a listener the first thing you should do is check with the college or university that is in your State to determine whether or not they have an ongoing project that is involved in accurately scanning newspapers that were printed within that State. The best one to look at from the standpoint of a collective group of colleges and universities that are supplying it in is the Library of Congress newspaper collections.

Fisher: Oh yes.

Ron: They have about 30 to 40 States where they participate and you can search anywhere from the earliest newspapers in America to 1923 or ’22 as the year they started off.

Fisher: I think it’s ’22. It’s Chronicling America, right? Isn’t that the name of it? 

Ron: That’s correct. That’s the title of it.

Fisher: Now, if you go to Chronicling America, I always have a hard time remembering what that address is. Just Google it and it will take you right to it. And it’s really easy. And it is free, but it doesn’t seem to be growing a lot right now. It seems like there’s kind of a hold on the periods that they’ve been covering. Maybe it’s a budget cut thing.

Ron: I think they’ve been sequestered. You’re finding that they may have content that’s been supplied to them but they don’t have the manpower to basically increase the database that they have to add in that material.

Fisher: Right.

Ron: And that’s happening all too much in government currently. 

Fisher: Sure.

Ron: They’re cutting back due to the fact that they’ve had a lack of funds due to the down turn in 2008, but they’re not the only ones.

Fisher: It’s a good source. I don’t want to say that it’s not. There’s lot of stuff there and I found things there. It’s just not growing a lot right now, that’s all.

Ron: Yes, and then the Library Congress also has a couple of other resources that are good. You can check out through either Ancestry or go right to Library Congress. You can find out when those particular newspapers in smaller towns actually ran and you can find it out through different libraries, county libraries, and historical societies.

Fisher: You know, it’s funny you mention that. You keep triggering thoughts here Ron. There are times where I’ve looked to try to find when somebody passed away where I got the date and I’ve actually telephoned a county library some place and asked if they had a service there where they could look something up for me. And typically they’ll do it the same day. It’s for free, and they’ll look up the obituary and they’ll even scan it and email it to you. Maybe they’ll charge you a buck. Maybe they’ll charge you nothing or they’ll just scan it or drop it in the mail. But usually they’re pretty fast with it, usually very responsive. And there’s a lot of information that comes from those obituaries and it’s very similar to the digitized thing.

Ron: That’s correct. And you are absolutely right. I was recently in Ohio and went to a county historical society and found that they had not digitized their newspapers. But I walked into a room that was probably 100ft x 300ft and it had from floor to ceiling nothing but these different journals and newspapers that were printed starting in the 1830s then going all the way to the 1970s and they’re the hard copies and they’re all there.

Fisher: You’re kidding me. [Laughs]

Ron: And we’re talking about numerous papers. Numerous newspapers!

Fisher: Wow! Wow!

Ron: And this was not a college. This was not a university. This was a county historical society.

Fisher: It’s a small area then?

Ron: It is. Circleville, Ohio.

Fisher: Wow! [Laughs]

Ron: It was, you know, a great historical society. And they had tens of thousands of photographs but the largest collection that took up space was the newspaper collection.

Fisher: That must have smelled really good though. 

Ron: Yes, a musty smell.

Fisher: You know there’s a certain scent when you go to a place like that. That musty smell, it’s good. It stinks of old and that’s what we like, you know.

Ron: The thing is with newspapers you get prior to the turn of the century of the 20th Century and newspaper was basically printed on cotton and so the cotton newspapers did not yellow, become brittle. They stayed for hundreds of years and they maintained excellently, but you get them wet they smell like you know, a wet cotton.

Fisher: [Laughs] Yeah. Hey Ron, we’ve only got about a minute and a half here. I don’t want to cut you off but there are several other sites I know we’ve got to get on to that are very important. Genealogybank.com, you use that?

Ron: Huge, huge one.

Fisher: Yeah.

Ron: There’s also besides Genealogy.com, there’s Newspaper Archives and again as I said before there’s Newspapers.com which is a division of Ancestry.com. And Ancestry.com under its membership has also selected newspapers that are out here and available. There are one favorite site that I have that is a free site. It’s called the Fulton Newspaper Collection.

Fisher: Fultonhistory.com yeah.

Ron: Fultonhistory.com. This gentleman went out and has digitized millions of pages of all these small newspapers in New York.

Fisher: Yes.

Ron: In the State of New York.

Fisher: This guy, he’s kind of a kook, okay? He’s an unusual man because he has gone and scanned over 20 million pages personally. There is nothing on there that is commercial and it’s just his passion. And so we are so appreciative of all the stuff that he has provided to so many people. It is an amazing service. It is not the best search engine that you’ll ever find, but it is a great resource. It’s Fultonhistory.com. If you have any ancestors from New York from pretty much any period you’ve got to know about that place. Ron Fox great to visit with you again and we’ll have you back because you have so much background in so many different areas. We look forward to hearing from you. 

Ron: Thank you for having me.

Fisher: And keep the stories coming, my friend.

Ron: We shall.

Fisher: And this segment was brought to you by Heritage Consulting Genealogy Services your family history resource. Call 877 537 2000, coming up next Tom Perry from TMCPlace.com on Extreme Genes, Family History Radio and ExtremeGenes.com.

Segment 4 Episode 9

Host: Scott Fisher with guest Tom Perry

Fisher: Hey welcome back, its Extreme Genes, Family History Radio and ExtremeGenes.com, brought to you by TMC, The Multimedia Centers, preserving your memories for over forty years. Your Radio Roots Sleuth, Fisher here with Tom Perry from TMCPlace.com. And Tom, I'm very excited to talk to you today about what you do with all this stuff, because we've been talking about how people digitize old photographs, old slides, old home movies, you've done that for me actually.

Tom: Oh yes.

Fisher: And old recordings as well. But once you've done that, you're basically often have just a bunch of disks, yes?

Tom: Exactly. In fact, we had a client came in that we compiled all of his hard drives together, DVDs, CDs, SD cards, everything. He had almost three terabytes worth of information.

Fisher: Ooh! [Laughs]

Tom: And it’s like, "Hey, this is great! I've got all this stuff of my kids and everything, but how can I organize it?" So we have some software that's free, there's no charge for it. You can go to our website, TMCPlace.com and click on a link that says "Heritage Collectors" and there's some free software you can download. And it will help you take all your photos, your slides, audio recordings, video recording, all kinds of stuff and combine them all together and make them so they're easy to access, easy to find. You can burn your own DVDs and CDs right from this software. And like I say, it’s totally free. And there's also a whole bunch of tips of how you can, you know, edit out the bad parts, how it’s easy to do, you know, different kinds of scanning things. It’s just filled with tips. And the best of all, it’s totally free, no charge whatsoever.

Fisher: Wow! So this will work for any kind of medium? Whether it’s audio or video?

Tom: Absolutely! Anything, as long as it’s been digitized, whether its photographs, slides, newspaper clipping as you were just talking about earlier. You can do audio files, video files, you know, just about anything you can imagine. And it will combine all the stuff together. And it makes it really, really cool, because, you know, we're living right now, but you know, two, three generations from us when we're gone, our great, great grandkids probably won't know us. But with this software, you can actually do like things called "rollovers" so if you have a family picture, you can roll over a mouse a say there's a picture of Jessie. And there'll be a drop down menu that comes out and says, "Okay, Jessie also has these audio files available." or some more photos or some more slides or whatever. And then you can go and look deeper for more stuff on Jessie, or an old newspaper clipping or anything that you have digitized, it will find it. It’s just amazing.

Fisher: Wow! So you tie them all together. So if there's a video interview maybe somebody did in the '90s that you've digitized, you can link that to the photo or backwards, you could do, "Here's the video." and you could put a mouse on that and you’d see a photograph?

Tom: Exactly.

Fisher: Or a link to these other things.

Tom: Right. It’s just like in, you know, the old days for us old timers where we had these different kinds of, almost like index cards, they would follow each other.

Fisher: Sure.

Tom: Well this is all done electronically. So you roll over Jesse's picture and this dropdown menu shows, "audio available, video available, photos" you click on photos, then there'll be another dropdown menu depending on how deep you go that says, "His first birthday" different things like this, or "Age this to this" however you want to set it up. It’s just absolutely incredible.

Fisher: Okay. And this is free software at TMCPlace.com.

Tom: Right. And you'll see a whole bunch of clicks down the left side. Just click on the one that says "Heritage Collectors" and it'll take you right to our landing page and show you where you can download the free software, where you can read our newsletters of, you know, different kinds of trips and tips and different things we're doing now. Like one new thing that we're working on right now, we're working on some facial recognition software. So when you have like a thousand pictures, you'll be able to go and do a batch recognition. And if you have a picture that has four people in it and it knows that's Johnny, that's Jesse, that's Dian, that's Alfa, it'll automatically take a copy of that and put it into each one of their folders.

Fisher: Each one of the folders [Laughs] Oh! This is phenomenal!

Tom: Oh it is!

Fisher: And this is where it’s going and it’s just getting easier and better. And as always, you're right on the cutting edge.

Tom: Oh it’s just amazing. A year ago, we couldn't even dream about something like this. And now, you know, it’s on the cusp. We should have it out pretty quick, hopefully for the holidays. It just depends how fast the programmers get everything done. But it’s just, it’s amazing! I can't imagine what it’s going to be like five years from now.

Fisher: Well, now Tom, you have digitized for me home movies and some audio, and if I were to go and get that software, does that help me with editing it at all?

Tom: Oh yeah! It can go in and show you basic things. And also, what we try to do on our website for, you know, very budget conscious people is, try to put up some links for free stuff. Because there's a lot of really good free stuff out there. And in the old days, the free stuff was usually you get what you pay for. But now there's some people that are really into preserving history and they don't, you know, they have regular jobs, so they don't care about making money off this. They want to design software to make our lives easier, for us to help find our ancestor, to get organized. And as more and more becomes available, we'll put links up there too that, you know, is totally free, no charge, no hidden costs or anything type stuff.

Fisher: Well you must have somebody who's gone on and done some of this already, although it’s fairly new. Tell us some of the background stories and their response to it.

Tom: Well it’s been pretty amazing. Like the biggest thing, like I said is people have all these photographs and they want to get them organized, so they can have a folder for Jonny and a folder for Debby and whatever. And it’s like, "Okay, I've got six kids. I've got to make a copy of this family photo six times to put in everybody's folder, yada, yada, yada." That's why we're trying to go to something like this software developing, because they come in and they just say, you know, "What can I do? I've got, you know, three terabytes of information. I need to organize it."

Fisher: It’s too much.

Tom: Yeah. And this is a good, easy way to do it, you know, different things, like you've talked about all these old autographs and stuff you've had that's off damaged paper that you've been able to fix, you go and scan that. You can put it in an autograph folder.

Fisher: Sure.

Tom: You can put it in, you know, whatever kind of folder you want. And it’s just, it’s making life so much easier.

Fisher: Well you know, you think about it, I think a lot of us feel good about going and digitizing something. And it’s great to have those disks of the video and the audio, but at the end of the day, if we can't identify who they are or where this all fits in, I think we're kind of kidding ourselves that we've actually accomplished anything different than we would have if we'd have just left the films, the slides, the photographs just the way they were.

Tom: Exactly. And that's why this other new software that we've been talking about before is going to be so amazing. We're trying to develop a site that will be, IDon'tKnowWhoThesePhotosAre.com or something like that.

Fisher: Yes.

Tom: That people can have all these photos and just upload them to them and then they'll start cross referencing them. And there's a lot of sites out there that have photos. And once we get all the software engineered, you’ll just be able to upload these photos and hopefully find them. I had somebody call me just a few weeks ago and says, "Hey, I have some photos to scan, but I have some old photos from the '20s and '30s I'm going to throw out. I don't know who the people are." I go, "No, no, no, no, no! Please don't do that! If you don't want them, donate them to me. And I will get them up on the website, I will get them up and we will try and find out, you know, where these people are and what they go. Like I believe we talked about an episode previously, we had somebody come in that had lost all their wedding videos.

Fisher: Yes.

Tom: Lost everything. And one of their neighbors happened to have their video8 camera and shot some stuff at the wedding and these people were totally oblivious this even existed and happened to be at their house at that time. So things like that too. We've talked about film, like when we did film. We went and made jpegs as well.

Fisher: Yes.

Tom: So that picture you have of, you know several people in your family you didn't have together.

Fisher: My grandfather died when I was a year and nine months old. And my father died when I was seventeen. And I had a brother who died when I was eight. There's a photo of all four of us sitting together at a picnic table that came from the home movie. And what's interesting is, in the home movie, when you do it like you did, frame by frame, there's one frame where I'm looking down and grandpa's looking up, then I'm up, he's looking down. But there's one frame in between all this where everybody's looking up. And because its what, twenty four frames per second?

Tom: Exactly.

Fisher: You're able to actually get some of these. And of course with Photoshop and the like, you can improve the focus on a lot of these, because some of them have blurs from motion and some of it is just blurry because it’s a film. [Laughs]

Tom: Right, exactly.

Fisher: But it’s phenomenal. I have that picture blown up into a 5x7 in my office. And I love looking at it because it’s the only one of its kind.

Tom: Oh stuff like that's absolutely priceless. That's what's neat about old film with this new technology where it’s actually scanned frame by frame instead of projected. You can go in and take those jpegs and do something. Like you say, our eye is tricked into thinking everything's in focus because is moving by so fast. But like you say, you go through twenty four, forty frames that it almost looks the same.

Fisher: And that's in two seconds!

Tom: Exactly.

Fisher: Right. Forty eight frames is two seconds. That's like forty eight photographs. Think of a modern camera where you hold the trigger down.

Tom: The motor drive.

Fisher: The motor drive, and it just goes, [chu, chu, chu, chu, chu, chu], it can't keep with that kind of number.

Tom: Oh absolutely.

Fisher: You know.

Tom: Even the fastest Nikon aren't even that fast.

Fisher: No. That's it. And so, as a result of that, you can pick the exact frame you want to make your photo from. And I love having that.

Tom: Oh yeah. That's what makes it special. Like you say, some of them you're looking up, some you're looking down, but you found the golden one, you found the needle in the haystack.

Fisher: Yes, that's right. And I didn't even know I had that. That whole segment, but the way, in the film was ten seconds long.

Tom: Yep.

Fisher: But it ten seconds, I have 240 photographs from which to go through and say which is, “the one.”

Tom: Exactly.

Fisher: And I was lucky to get one, because that was the only one really that worked.

Tom: And it’s amazing. Like I say, it’s a needle in the haystack. But you know, there's a lot of needles out there in haystacks. And we've had customers come in with the same kind of things and it just makes it so exciting. In fact, another thing we do is, we have free webinars usually sometimes they're weekly. Sometimes they're monthly. And you can also go to our website and find out when the free webinars are. And we go in and teach you how to do this kind of stuff, how you can go through, you know, a haystack and find that needle, by going through, looking at it, you know, the way you can scroll it whether you're on a PC or a Mac, it just makes it so much easier.

Fisher: You know, and the beauty of this is, these are things you often already have in your home.

Tom: Exactly.

Fisher: This is not something you have to go out and research or hire somebody to do, maybe you have a sibling or your parents or cousins. And when you start getting these things together, there's a certain energy that happens within a family that suddenly, "Hey, I found this! I've got that!" And somebody grabs hold of the wheel here and starts taking control of all of it and suddenly everybody has copies, everybody has something that's usable and also great gifts.

Tom: Oh yeah, that's why it’s so exciting, like we've talked about before, you know, with scanning parties, when you have a family reunion and your family's scattered all over, have them bring their photo albums with them, you know, carry them on the airplanes and get together and scan them all. And then when everybody leaves, they can put it on a thumb drive for you, on a CD for you, whatever you want. Then everybody has got everybody's picture. And not only is it great to have everybody have that, if somebody has a disaster and their house burns down, aunt Martha’s got the same disk, you know, "Make me a copy. Get me another one. Duplicate the thumb drive."

Fisher: All right Tom, one more time, the address for the free software is TMCPlace.com. And then where do you look on the website?

Tom: Okay, once you're on that, you'll see some blue clickables down the left side, go to the one that says "Heritage Collectors," click on that, it'll take you to our launching page, it'll tell you when our webinars are, where you can download the free software. And as we get more free software and things like that, we'll update it, put new things on there. So it’s a great, you know, free resource.

Fisher: He's Tom Perry from TMCPlace.com. See you again next week.

Tom: Thanks.

Fisher: Wow, we're running real long this week, so we're out of here! Join us all week long at ExtremeGenes.com. We'll keep you up to speed on what’s happening. Talk to you next week on Extreme Genes, Family History Radio and ExtremeGenes.com. This has been a Fisher Voice Works Production.

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