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Episode 140 – Genealogy Roadshow’s Mary Tedesco on Italian Genealogy/ What Does Fisher’s DNA Match Really Mean

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Fisher opens the show with David Allen Lambert, Chief Genealogist of the New England Historic and Genealogical Society and AmericanAncestors.org.  Their “Family Histoire News” starts with the story of a World War II vet in his 90s who had a reunion with a man he rescued from Dachau concentration camp at the end of World War II.  You’ll want to hear their story.  Then it’s talk about hair… long, beautiful HAIR!  It was Thomas Jefferson’s.  And it has sold at auction.  How many strands?  What did it go for?  We’ll tell you!  America’s oldest veteran has turned 110.  Who is he and where did he serve?  Listen to the podcast.  David’s Tip of the Week concerns school photographs, but wait til you hear what Fisher did with some of his father’s.  And of course David shares another NEHGS Tip of the Week.

(Beginning at 11:10) Mary Tedesco of the PBS series “Genealogy Roadshow” then joins Fisher to talk about their third season!  Mary will tell you about what they’re up to on the show this year, and give you a little history of how she came to be one of the hosts.  She’ll also share some tips on Italian genealogy and a great story about her Italian grandmother.

(Beginning at 24:47) Next, Fisher shares a genealogy breakthrough he just had after decades of effort.  It was capped off with a DNA match to a sixth great grandparent couple.  But Fisher is concerned that a match from that far back is something less than a confirmation.  Enter Paul Woodbury, DNA analyst from LegacyTree.com.  Paul and Fisher discuss the math behind when a match is most significant and when it’s not so much.  How significant is Fisher’s match?  Don’t miss this segment.

Then Tom Perry, the Preservation Authority, visits talking about the importance of knowing who your end users are going to be when deciding how to digitize your materials.  He’ll explain why it can affect how you choose to format your materials, and how much money it’s going to cost you!

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

Transcript of Episode 140

Host Scott Fisher with guest David Allen Lambert

Segment 1 Episode 140 (00:30)

Fisher: You have found us! Extreme Genes, America’s Family History Show and ExtremeGenes.com.  It is Fisher here, your Radio Roots Sleuth, on the program where we shake your family tree and watch the nuts fall out.  Great guests this week! Excited to have Mary Tedesco on the show. She is one of the hosts of “Genealogy Roadshow.” And the new season has begun and we’re going to get caught up on what cities they’re visiting this year, maybe get a little hint of some of the stories that they’re going to share with us through the course of the season. Good stuff coming up in about nine minutes. And then later on in the show we’re going to have Paul Woodbury back.  You may recall he’s a DNA expert and just a week ago or so I had a little breakthrough after only, oh, thirty some odd years. And as a result of that breakthrough I added the names of some ancestors to my tree and wound up with a DNA match to the ancestors that I had connected to.  Now the question is… how significant is a DNA match when you get back to, say, a sixth great grandparent level?  Does it really make a difference in solidifying your research? We’re going to find out about that from Paul later on in the show.  But right now it’s time to head out to Boston, Massachusetts, and my good friend David Allen Lambert, Chief Genealogist of the New England Historic Genealogical Society and AmericanAncestors.org. David, how are you?

David: I am doing great! It’s a nice sunny day here in Beantown and I’d say spring has definitely finally sprung. There’s a lot of news in the world that you know kind of want to change the channel, and kind of sad and depressing but I must say that the most heart wrenching story in the longest time with a historical twist.  I don’t know if you heard about Sid Shafner? He’s 94, he was part of the American army that went in and liberated about 30,000 holocaust prisoners from Dachau concentration camp in southern Germany in 1945.

Fisher: Yes.

David: Well this story is amazing! The video is online where he meets with a 90-year-old gentleman by the name of Marcel Levy. Marcel was only 17 at the time, and he embraces this American vet and tells him that he’s basically responsible for him being alive, his children, his grandchildren and great grandchildren. I’ll tell you the old saying “Bring a tear to a glass eye.” This one is definitely worth the watch.

Fisher: Yes, I agree.

David: Being a child of a World War II veteran I know the emotional attachment we have with this generation that we’re losing more and more every day. But this is just a really great story.  And I want to tell you, the next time that you go out to get your hair cut save a few strands of it because it might be worth some money some day.

Fisher: What?!

David: Yeah! Well have you heard Thomas Jefferson when he passed away 14 strands of the former president’s hair were saved by the doctor and these were just sold off at auction for $7,000, which comes down to about 500 bucks per strand.

Fisher: 500 bucks a strand. You know it’s a shame too because unless they pulled it out through the roots there’s no DNA to be had from that hair as I understand it.

David: And that’s a shame because he was dead it probably wouldn’t have hurt very much.

Fisher: No! Exactly!

David: Getting back to veterans again I couldn’t let this go by without wishing a happy 110th birthday to America’s oldest veteran, Richard Overton, who actually attributes his longevity to his chain smoking cigars.

Fisher: [Laughs]

David: A splash of whiskey in his morning coffee and a steady diet of catfish, butter pecan ice cream.

Fisher: Oh!

David: I tell you, I would say that I could live off of butter pecan ice cream, catfish isn’t bad, don’t smoke cigars, not much of a drinker.

Fisher: [Laughs]

David: But I tell you something’s working for him. This veteran was with the 1887 Engineer Aviation battalion in World War II. This all-black military unit started up as a 1942 and he was stationed as a corporal in Hawaii, Guam and Iwo Jima. And he was a skilled sharp shooter, so happy birthday Mr. Overton, many more!

Fisher: Wow!

David: Well you know digging into history is one of my loves. I love genealogy and I love archaeology, and I think if we dig deep enough we’ll find our ancestors one way or the other.

Fisher: It ties in!

David: It really does. And while they were building a train station extension over in Italy they found an old Roman barracks.

Fisher: Wow!

David: Right near the Coliseum, and it housed Hadrian’s Praetorian Guard, and it[s a hundred meter hallway with over 39 rooms and many of them were detailed Roman mosaic floors.  And that’s amazing to think that it’s just been there all that time.

Fisher: That is just absolutely incredible.

David: Well you know speaking of things that have been there all that time. I was going through some of my late father’s belongings and I happen to cross a school photograph and Dad unfortunately wasn’t archival minded if you know what I mean.

Fisher: [Laughs]

David: A piece of it has silver masking tape to hold it together.

Fisher: Ooh.

David: And this group picture is in great shape except for the picture of good old George Lambert who has a circle in pencil around his head because he wanted to mark where he was probably when he was a child.  I love school pictures! It’s the only one I have of my Dad. In fact it’s the only one of two pictures I have of him as a child.  You must have some of your mom and dad that you’ve come across.

Fisher: Oh well absolutely! And it’s interesting because a few weeks ago you brought up reaching out to schools to see if they had old yearbooks.

David: Correct.

Fisher: And I did this. And I actually called my Dad’s elementary school which is still an elementary school in Bogota, New Jersey. It was actually built in 1909 I think.  And so I called to ask how old their pictures might be that they had or yearbooks and they say said, oh they didn’t have anything like that.  I said, “Well you know I have pictures of my Dad’s classes from Bogota from the early to mid ‘20s, 3rd grade, 4th grade, 5th grade. The 3rd grade pictures are actually marked with the names of all the classmates.”  She said, “Oh! Could you scan those and send them to us?”

David: [Laughs]

Fisher: And so we did and I just heard back from them that they’re setting it up as a display at the school!  So hopefully some of the descendents of some of these kids will get to see their parents in these photographs from way back 90 some odd years ago!

David: That’s really great and it just kind of leads to the Tech Tip. If you have school photographs from when you were a kid, identify the people in the picture because you never know, you could be giving a genealogical clue to somebody down the road. I mean many of the ones of me back in the ‘70s and the ‘80s, I know who they are. Will my kids know? No.

Fisher: That’s right.

David: Well at NEHGS we always have a free guest user database, this week is no exception. So on AmericanAncestors.org sign up for a free guest user subscription and you can get Caribbean, birth and baptisms from 1590 to 1928.  Marriages from 1591 to 1905 and deaths and burials from 1790 to 1906. I’d say, I’d like to go there and actually do the research myself.

Fisher: [Laughs]

David: But this is a nice way to actually visit the Caribbean from home.

Fisher: All right David, thanks so much. We’ll talk to you again next week!

David: Take care, my friend.

Fisher: All right and later on in the show we’re talking about DNA, the significance of DNA matches. How much do they matter when you get far back?  And coming up next we talk to Mary Tedesco from Genealogy Roadshow on Extreme Genes, America’s Family History Show, in three minutes.

Segment 2 Episode 140 (11:10)

Host Scott Fisher with guest Mary Tedesco

Fisher: And welcome back to Extreme Genes, America’s Family History Show and ExtremeGenes.com.  It is Fisher here, your Radio Roots Sleuth. And I’m very excited, it’s the first time I’ve gotten Mary Tedesco to come on the show.  She is of course of one of the hosts of Genealogy Roadshow. And the new season is underway. It’s the third season. It’s exciting. This is a new opportunity for you!

Mary: Absolutely. It’s a pleasure to be here, and on my second season of this wonderful show, Genealogy Roadshow.

Fisher: Well, for those who aren’t familiar with it, Mary, fill people in on what you do and how it works, because it’s a great program.

Mary: Great. So I’m one of the three hosts of Genealogy Roadshow, along with, of course, Kenyatta Berry and Joshua Taylor, which I’m sure that everybody knows.  Well, Genealogy Roadshow basically is the acclaimed PBS TV series that features participants from around the country with unique family claims and histories.  So we also get to have a lot of fun researching these, along with our research team and collaboration with our producers.  It’s just a really great time. We have a great season in store for you. I know many of your viewers probably saw the episode last Tuesday we have another great one for you this week.

Fisher: Right. Now you were in Albuquerque last week, and you’re off to, what is it, Miami this week?

Mary: Sunny Miami.

Fisher: Tough work.

Mary: [Laughs]

Fisher: You know I worked in Miami at one time in my life, and it is a lovely place.

Mary: It was a fantastic place. Rich with culture. We have some great stories for this week. One of my stories… a lady came to us and she wanted to know whether she was related to Pocahontas. Just to give you an example.

Fisher: Ah! And was it a DNA thing? Or how did this work?

Mary: Well, Fish, I can’t tell you how we did it, yet.

Fisher: [Laughs] You’re holding back on me! You’re holding back on me. Come on, give me something. Throw me a bone, Mary!

Mary: Just a little bit. Well, let’s just say that other folks that may have similar claims to Pocahontas or another historical figure may be able to benefit from this in terms of research technique and other things.  And is this Florida woman related to Pocahontas? Well, you’ve got to tune in on Tuesday.

Fisher: That sounds like an interesting episode. You know, that’s the thing that’s so fun about genealogy… it doesn’t matter if it’s your ancestor or not, because you can relate to the stories, and then you can learn from the research techniques to apply to your own efforts.

Mary:  Exactly. As a host on the show Genealogy Roadshow, I learn a lot about new documents myself because, as genealogists we’re always learning.  And we hope of course, that the folks at home can also benefit from seeing new document types or new research techniques or different ethnic groups.  It really rounds us out and makes us all better genealogists, which is something that I really love about this show.

Fisher: Yeah, absolutely. And we feel that here too. A lot of people benefit from the stories of other people’s ancestors on Extreme Genes, and it’s a lot of fun.  So do you actually ever get involved with DNA testing on Genealogy Roadshow?

Mary: Yes, Fish. Though some of our stories this season and past seasons do incorporate DNA into the stories and sometimes use it as a technique to solve the family mystery at hand.

Fisher: I’m really looking forward to seeing the show. What other cities are you in this year?

Mary: In this season we’re in Albuquerque of course as you saw, Miami this coming week. Houston, Boston, Providence, Los Angeles, and we have an episode, Fish, with some of our favorite stories from the past couple of seasons.

Fisher: That sounds great. You’re going to be all over the place.

Mary: Coast to coast, Fish, just like we like it.

Fisher: Let’s talk about how you got in the show, Mary. This is an unusual thing. I mean, you’re a genealogist, as are Kenyatta and Josh. What brought this whole thing together and how did you become a part of it?

Mary: It’s a great story actually. So, the first season of course, as folks know there were two hosts, Josh Taylor and Kenyatta Berry. So for the third they were looking for a third host to be part of the show. And I’m very honored and flattered of course to say that Josh and Kenyatta recommended my name to interview to be a part of the show.  So basically I auditioned for producers and PBS executives, and I was invited to join the show as one of the three hosts.  And not a day goes by that I don’t realize and understand what a wonderful decision that was, and I’ve never looked back. It’s been a great experience and a pleasure to be honest.

Fisher: Boy, what a great opportunity for you, that’s right. Now you’re an Italian specialist in your research. Tell us a little about that.

Mary: That’s correct. So Fish, I run a research firm called Origins Italy. Now we specialize in Italian and Italian American genealogy research.  So we deal with cases like dual citizenship. Like folks needing documents or assistance getting dual citizenship.

Fisher: Sure.

Mary: And also we really include in-depth Italian American and Italian research projects. And what I mean by in-depth, Fish, is that we go fly to Italy and we get to the bottom of the story.  We not only concern ourselves with names and dates, but we dig into other records like notary records, military records, etc. to really paint a full picture of your ancestors.  So it’s a pretty unique approach, but we try to go so far beyond names and dates to really tell the whole story, something that I’m so excited about.

Fisher: You know that’s really true. If you don’t get the stories, then you really can’t know the ancestor, and you know, you can’t love them. That’s the bottom line, right?

Mary: Exactly.

Fisher: There’s no relationship to be had with just a name and a date. You have to dig. How long have you been doing this?

Mary: So, I first got exposed to genealogy just about ten years when a colleague loans me a login to a big name genealogy site. Now of course I’ve since gotten my own login very soon after that.

Fisher: Well, that’s good! [Laughs]

Mary: [Laughs] I need to practice by that. And then I was exposed to these early records in my research like passenger lists from my grandparents.  That really inspired me, Fish, to want to know more, to explore more. And at the time, ten years ago, there weren’t a lot of resources for Italian genealogy so I was self taught.  And I went out there. I went to Italy to dig up records on my ancestors, which is a great way to learn.

Fisher: Isn’t that funny how we’ll go about this work you know, which so involves helping other people how to find their roots and dig up these stories.  And then, when we want to take a break, we research our own doing exactly the same thing as a respite.

Mary: Exactly. Those of us whose passion is also their profession have got to keep ourselves in check.

Fisher: [Laughs]

Mary: Because it’s really easy to just get carried away. I know you and I were talking about that on the phone recently, but when we get fixated on an ancestor, we cannot stop, you know.  Us genealogists – we genealogists are up until two or three in the morning trying to track down an ancestor. Pretty normal stuff I would say. Wouldn’t you?

Fisher: Oh yeah. My wife was out of town visiting grandkids in Nebraska and we were having rain all through the weekend, so I was just – it was great, the cat was away.

Mary: Right. Right, and the mice, they danced….

Fisher: [Laughs] Yeah, it was a great time. All right, so let’s talk about some of the things you found in Italy, and what people could actually expect to find if they went over there and attempted to do some of the things you’re doing.

Mary: So, the church and the city hall are great places to delve into your Italian genealogical research first. Now with the city hall you can find birth, marriage, and death records, and also some demographic records.  And you can write to the city hall from home. From Italy.  You can start tonight in your pajamas which is pretty exciting!

Fisher: Nice. By the way, how far back do those births, death, and marriages typically go?

Mary: So it really depends, Fish, where your family is from in Italy. So for example, in Calabria, which is in southern Italy where my grandfather was from, civil records start from the early, early part of the 1800’s.  Whereas if you’re up in Rome for example, Italian civil registration would start in 1871 when that area became part of Italy. So you have to look to history first, Fish, in order to determine where those records begin. So before civil registration, there’s also church records which could take your family back into the seventeen, sixteen, or even fifteen hundreds.

Fisher: Wow! And that’s typical?

Mary: That is pretty typical. Now, of course, there are records that are missing. That were destroyed either by natural disaster or war. But until you have that information that’s missing, you can assume it’s there and then confirm with an email or a phone call to that local repository, and I’m sure they’ll be able to stir that up for you.

Fisher: Well, and of course, anytime you take a genealogical trip you’ve got to do your homework beforehand, because your real currency on a trip is time.

Mary: Exactly.

Fisher: And you want to spend as much of it at home first getting ready and figuring out where you’re going to go and what you’re really looking for and trying to accomplish some of that before you get there.  You talked a lot about some of the stories that came out of the record, what other records might yield some great fruit?

Mary: So some other records in Italy to be aware of are some notary records, which could usually be found at the Archivio di stato system.  Notary records could have things like marriage contracts between a couple or land transaction, things to help you paint a picture of the socioeconomic status of your family.  You can also find military records which are great. Now, Fish, on military records, Italian military records, you could find potentially a physical description of your ancestor.  Including height, hair color, nose, etc; it’s a pretty fascinating thing.

Fisher: Okay, Mary, so you know that any time somebody comes on the show, they’ve got to have one killer story for us. So what’s yours?

Mary: So growing up, my beloved grandmother often spoke about her father Mario. And he was from Trentino, Alto Adige, in northern Italy.  So my grandmother mentioned many, many times that her father was very handsome, very tall, over six feet. Photographs seem to confirm this, Fish. She also says that he served in World War I for the Austro-Hungarian Army. Now remember, northern Italy, this part of northern Italy was part of Austria at the time.  So I said, I’m a genealogist, I need to go and prove this.  I need to see how tall Nono Mario actually was.

Fisher: [Laughs]

Mary: So I tracked down my great grandfather’s military records from Innsbruck, Austria and discovered that he was, how tall? How tall? Just 5.5, Fish!

Fisher: 5.5! Well no wonder he survived. Nobody is going to hit that little guy.

Mary: Exactly. Exactly! So I brought this information home, I reported it to my family members, and my grandmother in her classic Italian accent, “Oh really? He seemed a lot taller to me!” [Laughs]

Fisher: [Laughs] I love it!

Mary: You know, I still have an aunt, Fish, that doesn’t believe this. You know and I’ve shown her the original records and she says well it might be wrong, you know. Such is the power of family law.

Fisher: Right. Such is the power of family law. Yeah, that can’t be right, you know, because my aunt told me! Oh my goodness. Well, Mary Tedesco, it’s been a delight having you on, and I’m excited about the new season of Genealogy Roadshow. It’s on PBS Tuesday night, eight, seven central, right?

Mary: Correct.

Fisher: And I can’t wait to see what you guys come up with this time.

Mary: Thank you so much, Fish, it’s been a sincere pleasure to be on.

Fisher: And coming up next, it’s a personal story about a breakthrough on one of my lines, and DNA match that may confirm it. But how reliable is that match?  We’ll talk to DNA expert Paul Woodbury next, on Extreme Genes, America’s Family History Show.

Segment 3 Episode 140 (24:50)

Host Scott Fisher with guest Paul Woodbury

Fisher: In the course of your research, you have had a DNA match, how significant is that really?  Hi, it’s Fisher, the Radio Roots Sleuth on Extreme Genes, America’s Family History Show and ExtremeGenes.com. And I just had a breakthrough a couple of weeks ago. My wife was out of town. I stayed up late just researching in my underwear till the middle of the night on a sixth great grandparent.  Somebody I’d had a long struggle with. She had married her husband in Vermont in 1765. And the question was where did she come from? Whose family did she belong to?  She died at age seventy seven in 1816, late 1816, pretty much placing her directly into 1739 as a birthday. Well, there was only one person named Olive Hill born in 1739 in that area. And she was born to Asa Hill and his wife Sarah, in Sherborn, Massachusetts. Way to the east, the eastern side of Massachusetts, 160 miles away from Pownal, Vermont, where my Olive Hill married her husband Josiah Noble.  So I had a real difficult time saying, “Well this must be the same person. Because how do you get them in the same neighborhood at least to get married?”  Well a little traditional research yielded that Asa started moving west. He fought in the French and Indian war. He was wounded. He escaped from a fort. I mean all kinds of great military stories going on there. And as a result, he was awarded the land grant for 200 acres in what they now call “The Berkshires,” Washington, Massachusetts.  And that actually took him and placed him and his family halfway between Olive Hill’s husband where he was from in Southwick, Massachusetts and Pownal, Vermont.  She was now just thirty miles away. And so it seemed to me pretty obvious when you look at the population charts from back around 1739 when she was born, there were only 900,000 people in the entire country at that time, which is roughly the population of Delaware today.  So I put this father and mother combination onto the chart as parents of Olive Hill, and some grandparents and the like, just to see what happens with DNA matches.  And wouldn’t you know it a few days later, in came a DNA match for a seventh cousin under “Asa Hill!”  The father, Asa, and mother Sarah.  And so the question came up, “Well, how significant is this in proving that this is the correct relationship?”  So that’s why I wanted to get my good friend Paul Woodbury on. He’s a DNA analyst for LegacyTree.com. Hi Paul, how are you?

Paul: I’m doing great. Thanks for having me, Scott.

Fisher: I was going through all the math here over the weekend. Spent a lot of time mapping out how this works.  And I guess it’s kind of interesting when it comes to DNA matches. When we start out, the first four, five generations, there aren’t that many couples. For instance my second greats… we all have eight second great grandparent couples, right?

Paul: Exactly.

Fisher: And I placed mine at the average time of birth, somewhere around 1815. So roughly I’m thinking, okay, nine million people in the country at that time.  But some of my couples may not have been born within the country, right?  And of course of the nine million people in America in 1815, only some of them lived in the area that my people were from.  So bottom line, though if you had a DNA match for one of your eight second great grandparent couples, that’s pretty significant because it’s a very small number of couples out of a very, very large population.  As you go back of course, we see this thing double every generation until you get to what I’ve been talking about, 128 couples at the sixth great grandparent level. So the odds of actually finding a match get better and better the further you go back, except that we all don’t inherit the same DNA from the same ancestors.  And some ancestors, we don’t get any DNA at all, right?

Paul: Exactly.

Fisher: So the question is… how significant is this DNA match that I found in confirming the paper research that I’ve done?

Paul: Well, I think the key in this is that you are incorporating this DNA match as part of your traditional genealogical research. That is, you’re using it to confirm information that you’ve been able to ascertain through your own traditional research. It’s important that as we’re evaluating some of these more distant cousins and some of these more distant matches that we need to evaluate their entire family trees for other possible origins of that shared DNA.  Another element that you mentioned briefly is that eventually there will be a point in our own family trees where we will not have inherited significant amounts of DNA from many of our own ancestors.

Fisher: Right.

Paul: And we kind of call it the difference between genetic trees vs. genealogical trees.  And at the point of around seven to eight generations is where your ancestors begin to fall off of your genetic tree.  Around 10 generations you’re only going to inherit significant portions of your DNA from about half of your ancestors.  So it’s important as you’re evaluating some of these more distant matches that you also make sure that you have genetic matches for the intervening generations.

Fisher: I guess the idea is… what you’re saying is… it helps to prove that there is some DNA flowing from that far back, right, because we don’t obtain DNA from everybody?

Paul: Yeah. And DNA is not going to skip generations.

Fisher: Right. [Laughs] Good point. So it’s amazing, though when you crunch the numbers on this… I mean, what the population of our country was back in the day. Like in 1650, we had all of 50,000 people here.  That’s about the population of today’s Northern Mariana Islands.

Paul: Yeah.

Fisher: In 1740, we had what is today the population of Delaware. And in 1770 just before the Revolution, 2.1 million, which is today’s population of New Mexico, so in a really small population but they’re spread out. So we’re not even dealing with populations that large. And then of course, many of the people in the population of that time were children or single individuals or even couples that didn’t have children, right?

Paul: Exactly. And so because of that, we really want to make sure that we analyze all of the entire tree for each match to make sure that they don’t have other lines of their ancestry from the same small pockets of populations.  So that we can lend greater credence to the fact that this common ancestral couple that we have identified for this distant cousin is most likely the common source of that shared DNA.

Fisher: Right. Only in the most recent generations going back to, say second, maybe third great grandparents, are those DNA matches exceptionally significant, yes?

Paul: Yes.

Fisher: When you go back beyond that, then it gets more and more challenging to really place significance on it.

Paul: Yeah. And part of the challenge of that is, that with the closer generations we have distinct levels of DNA sharing that we expect for different levels of relationship. But once you get back to the level of fourth cousin to fifth cousin, sixth, seventh, eighth cousin… you know, an eighth cousin may have exactly the same chance of sharing and given amount of DNA as a fourth cousin.  And so it’s a little bit harder to say, “Yes, this is the common ancestral couple that gave us this DNA.”

Fisher: Yeah, it’s fascinating to try to put this all together and figure out, “Okay, here’s a person who shares some DNA with me to some level. And we share this ancestor on this chart, but is that really important?” Great insight as always, and always great to have you on the show!

Paul: And let me add before we go that these genetic cousins that are more distant can be significant for your research.  But it may be necessary to identify additional cousins that are also shared in common that also have the same segments of DNA that you share in common.  And if you don’t have those, then it could be a good idea to begin searching out additional descendants of that ancestral couple to see how they fit into the known network of genetic cousins that you’ve already established.

Fisher: He’s DNA analyst Paul Woodbury, from LegacyTree.com. Thanks, great advice, Paul.

Paul: Thank you.

Fisher: You’ve got to love the science of family history these days. Love that DNA.

All right, coming up for you next, of course preservation with Tom Perry from TMCPlace.com, he’s our Preservation Authority.  And we’re going to talk about the importance of knowing who your end users are going to be when you decide how you want to digitize your materials.  It’s going to save you a lot of money, so listen up.  It’s coming up in three minutes on Extreme Genes, America’s Family History Show.

Segment 4 Episode 140 (37:10)

Host Scott Fisher with guest Tom Perry

Fisher: It’s Extreme Genes, America’s Family History Show and ExtremeGenes.com.  It is Fisher here, the Radio Roots Sleuth, and it is Preservation Time. Tom Perry, our Preservation Authority, is in the house.  And Tom, we were just talking off the air here a few moments ago about people who come into your store and they don’t really know the end game of what they’re trying to do in terms of digitizing.  And I’m sure this happens in places all over the country, and they wind up buying a Cadillac when really all they need is a Mini Cooper.

Tom: Oh that is so true! I mean it’s like buying a car, a lot of times when you go to buy a car they say, “How much do you have to spend?” not “What are your needs?”  And we’re just the opposite of that. We want to find out what somebody’s needs are, and whether you send stuff to us, bring it in to us or use one of your local players.  You need to be careful because some people will charge you as much as they can get away with, and there are a lot of real good honest people out there that will do what’s right.   But you want to make sure what, like you used the word “endgame,” is going to be. And that’s a perfect word.   What do you ultimately want to do with all your slides, your photos, your old reel to reel audio, your film/ video all these kind of things? What do you want to do with them?  Let me give you an example. We had a gentleman come in the other day that had probably about two or three dozen VHS tapes and he wanted them all on BluRay.  BluRay is a little bit more expensive to do than DVD and MP4s and so we tried talking him out of it saying, “Hey, you know we’re happy to do BluRays for you if that’s what you want, however DVDs are going to be just as good.” Because when you’re working with something that’s already electronic like a video tape or an audio tape, whether you go to BluRay or whether you go to MP4s or DVD whatever, it’s not going to change the content.  The only reason you go to a BluRay is because you want to go to BluRay, there’s no reason for it.  If you go with DVD you accomplish several things. It’s going to cost you less, they’re going to be done faster they’re going to be more compatible with friends and neighbors, and relatives that you’re going to send them off to.  And you’re not gaining anything at all. Some people say, “BluRays have the ability to play better.” That’s true.  However, if you have a BluRay player and you play a DVD in it most BluRay players will up-convert your videos anyway.   So if you have, whether it’s an old Disney DVD, whether it’s a VHS that you’ve turned into a DVD, if you play it in a BluRay player it’s going to actually look better than if you played it in your old DVD player just by the up-conversion that it does for you naturally.  So I mean, if somebody says, “No, I want BluRay, period.” That’s fine. However, we want to educate people, let them know, “You might not need BluRay.”  So if your only interest is to get your VHS or whatever, (I’m just using VHS as a generic term almost), to get your items preserved.  If you’re just going to want to email them to people you’re not going to make a whole bunch of copies, then I’d suggest you go to MP3s or MP4s, because they’re small enough.  But they’re really good quality that you can actually post them up on your Facebook page, you can put them in Dropbox or whatever kind of cloud device you want to use and get people to link to it.  You can actually email them, they’re small enough and then they have access to them immediately. They don’t have to wait for the disk. Some people you know actually want to have a physical disk and that’s fine.   A lot of the older generation they want to have that physical disk they don’t understand, “When I download this to you know, my thumb drive, and I plug my thumb drive into my TV.” They don’t understand that. But if everybody in your family understands technology, just go with MP3s or MP4s and it’s always nice to have a backup as a CD or a DVD because as we say on almost every show, we always recommend you have everything, all your memories backed up on a disk, whether it’s DVD or CD or an MDisk or BluRay, you have it on your hard drive and one or two Clouds.  Whether you use Google Cloud, whether you use LightJar, whether you use Dropbox, it doesn’t matter; you want to get up in at least one Cloud and possibly two.  And if you don’t have a ton of stuff you can usually get the free ones that’s good you know, for so many like maybe a terabyte or such.  And if you have a whole bunch, it’s not that much more expensive. I mean, we use tons and tons of that and we pay $100 a month for you know, a lot, a lot of stuff, and after the break we’ll go in and talk a little bit more about how you can best determine what you need.

Fisher: All right… coming up in three minutes on Extreme Genes, America’s Family History Show!

Segment 5 Episode 140 (44:20)

Host Scott Fisher with guest Tom Perry

Fisher: And we are back! Extreme Genes, America’s Family History Show and ExtremeGenes.com.  Fisher here, the Radio Roots Sleuth, we’re doing preservation here with Tom Perry from TMCPlace.com.  Tom, we’ve just been talking about the challenge of knowing the end use of what you’re doing as you digitize.  And how to save money and how to get the most bang for your buck with what you’re trying to do. How do people determine what their end use it?

Tom: The best thing is to listen to our shows and especially since they’re searchable now with the PDFs.  You can go and type in a topic and possibly find one of our episodes where we have addressed something.  Another way to do it is even if you want to stay local that’s fine, we’re here to help you in any way we can.  Just send your question to AskTom@TMCPlace.com and say, “This is what I have, this is what my end use is. What should I do?”  And we’ll let you know. And if you want to take it to a local place you know that’s great. We actually want people to support their local people but if you want to send it to us we’re happy to work with you as well.  So basically let’s talk about what we call “Boxes” whether you’re talking about MP3s, MP4s, DVDs, CDs, BluRay, MDisk, BluRay… all these different things.  Look at them as different size of luggage or boxes because they all pretty much can do the same thing. For instance a thumb drive doesn’t care what kind of data you put onto it.

Fisher: Right.

Tom:  You can put audio, you can put video, you can put actually video games whatever you want to put on it. So you need to understand what you want.  The majority of time when you want audio, like old reel to reel tapes or cassette tapes or dictaphone whatever you have, we usually transfer those to CDs and MP3s because a CD you have that physical thing you can save and put away. You’ve got your MP3s you can put on your iPhone, your Android, whatever you want. If you have video then we suggest MP4 and DVD so again, you’ve got the physical disk to hold.

Fisher: Right.

Tom: But then you also have an MP4 that’s on a flash-drive, you can email them, you can distribute them anyway you want real easy.  And then the next step up you’re looking at what we’ve mentioned DVDs and CDs you can put audio on a DVD, you can video on a CD you just limited with the size of the box. So most people when they’re say DVD they thinking video, when you’re saying CD you’re thinking audio.

Fisher: Yes.

Tom: So when we’re doing slides and photo we usually do those as JPEGs or TIFFs and so we can put them on a CD, we can put them on a thumb drive, and we can put them on a DVD, and the only thing that determines what we put on them is how much stuff you have.

Fisher: Sure.

Tom: You know like if you’ve got a two thousand square foot house, you know a hundred square foot carpet isn’t going to fill your house.  If you have a two hundred square foot house, a thousand feet of carpet is overkill. You need to know what you need.  You don’t need a DVD with four pictures on it because the problem is you’re not filling the whole disk and you say, “Well so what? They’re not that much more expensive.”  However, if someone you’re going with only has access to a CD reader they’re not going to be able to play your DVD, so you want to check on that.  And then BluRays are awesome! They’re a good way to store your stuff, you can get almost twice as much as on a DVD plus there are several sizes of BluRays.  You can get ones that are two and a half terabytes; you can get all different sizes. So you figure out “What my needs are.” Don’t buy the dump truck if all you need is a Ram pickup.

Fisher: So not to confuse people through when you talked earlier about, if you don’t need a BluRay don’t pay $5 extra for it. That’s because it serves a different purpose.

Tom: Exactly!  The only time you absolutely positively want to go with BluRay is if you’re using something optical, like we talked earlier about magnetic VHS tapes there’s no difference.  If it’s magnetic DVD 9 out of 10 times it’s going to be fine for you. And then they also have BluRay MDisks now.

Fisher: I still think that’s the best way to describe all these storage devices Tom, like little boxes or big boxes. Thanks so much for coming on!

Tom: Good to have been here.

Fisher: I cannot believe we are done for another week!  Thanks once again to Mary Tedesco for the PBS series Genealogy Roadshow. They’re back for a third season right now, you can catch it Tuesday nights. Check your local listings for times.  And by the way if you wanted to catch some of the things Mary had to say about Italian research, make sure you check out the podcast through iTunes and iHeartRadio and ExtremeGenes.com.  Thanks also to Paul Woodbury, the DNA expert from LegacyTree.com, for coming on and talking about the significance of DNA matches for ancestors further back than two hundred years. You’ll love to hear what he has to say. Don’t forget to “Like” us on Facebook. Talk to you next week, and remember as far as everyone knows, we’re a nice normal family!

Click Here to Listen to this Episode!

Episode 136 – Sam Roukin, “Simcoe” of TURN: Washington’s Spies Talks Revolutionary War and Playing A Historic Figure

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Simcoe Sam Roukin PR pic

Click Here to Listen to this Episode!

Fisher opens the show with Family Histoire News talking about the upcoming season of Genealogy Roadshow. He discloses which cities the Roadshow team will visit this year. He then talks about the amazing discovery of the remains of a Roman villa underneath a barn in England. Hear how it was discovered and what is happening to the site now. Fisher then shares the sad tale of the 1838 sale of over 230 African slaves by Jesuit priests in Washington DC. Here why they were sold, and which well known university exists today because its debts were paid by the sale. Also hear about why major efforts are being made to find their descendants.

In segment two (11:09), Fisher visits with actor Sam Roukin who plays Captain John Graves Simcoe in the AMC series “TURN: Washington’s Spies” talks about his development of this despicable character, based on a real historic figure. Sam also talks about his immersion in the history of the Revolution.

In segment three (24:47), Fisher continues his conversation with Sam Roukin. Sam talks about what responsibility he feels to the real man and how he squares the character he portrays with the man who did some very good things after the Revolution. Sam also reveals that, despite being very British and portraying a brutal British officer in the Revolution, he is likely to do something in the not so distant future that will please many Americans.

Tom Perry then returns, the Preservation Authority, to talk about some special programs he is analyzing for personal use in editing video and digitized home movies. Some of the things these programs can do could only have been done in Hollywood just a few years ago!

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

TRANSCRIPT of Extreme Genes, America’s Family History Radio Show

Host Scott Fisher

Segment 1 Episode 136

Fisher: Hey, welcome to America’s Family History Show, Extreme Genes and ExtremeGenes.com. I am your congenial host, your Radio Roots Sleuth, Fisher, on the program where we shake your family tree and watch the nuts fall out. Do you have an interest in the American Revolution? Do you have ancestors who fought against or maybe on behalf of the King? Well, this week, Season 3 of AMC’s ‘Turn: Washington’s Spies’, about the Culper Spy Ring begins. The first episode is Monday night at ten o clock Eastern Time.  This season takes us to the key moment of the Revolution, ‘The Betrayal of Benedict Arnold” and I’ve identified five ancestors who were actively involved in the Revolution in the northeast, and thirteen on my wife’s side, all from the south, mostly Virginia. Well, the guy who plays the very warped, the very evil, Captain John Graves Simcoe, an actor named Samuel Roukin, is going to join us in the show later today and we’re going to talk to him for two segments about what he’s learned about the history of the Revolution. The character that he plays, who was an actual person, in fact, he became the Lieutenant Governor of a province in Canada and freed slaves in 1791. So I’m very excited for you to meet Sam Roukin who plays John Graves Simcoe, on Turn, a little bit later on on the show. And of course Tom Perry is going to tell you about video editing and a video editing program that you can use for your old home movies and videos. It’s cheap, like free, and you’d be able to do things at home that only Hollywood people could do just a few years ago. That’s later in the show. Well, as you know, David Allen Lambert, the chief genealogist, for the New England Historic Genealogical Society and AmericanAncestors.org usually joins us on the show. He’s in London these days. We had him on via Skype the last couple of weeks. Well, this week he went to an area where we found out the wifi was just a little bit weak and so it just isn’t going to happen today, so I’m going to have to carry the whole thing myself. I’m exhausted just thinking about it. So we start our Family Histoire News with this:

Genealogy Road Show is returning to PBS, with its premiere for this season happening on Tuesday, May 17th, and the cities they’re going to be visiting this year include: Albuquerque, Miami, Houston, Boston, Providence and Los Angeles.  They kind of picked these places because they feel its representative of the cultural crossroads for diversity and industry and history.  Deep pools of riveting stories, so it’s going to be interesting to see what Kenyatta Berry, Josh Taylor and Mary Tedesco come up with this season. Remember again, PBS, May 17th.  Well, it wouldn’t surprise me at all if David Lambert wasn’t aware of this, there’s a rug designer over in England in Wiltshire named Luke Erwin, and he and his family wanted to convert a barn on their new property that they just bought.  They wanted to convert it into a ping pong room. So they brought in the electricians to do this underground cable and put the barn in lights. Well, when the workmen began drilling into the ground, they hit this layer of mosaic tile, yeah, intricate red, white and blue.  Well, this guy Erwin he knew the significance of this. He said that no one since the Romans had laid mosaics in Britain to use as house floors. So they were able to actually put an end to the work of the workmen before they actually started busting it up.  Erwin called in archaeologists and they ran tests, and they found that this mosaic went back from sometime between 175 and 220 AD, and it was remodeled over several times since.  But they determined it’s a Roman Villa courtyard!  So there’s an actual artist rendition now to see what this thing looked like 1800 years ago. It’s from Smithsonian Magazine. You can see the link at ExtremeGenes.com.  Well, here’s a story that’s been making a lot of news this week:

Georgetown University was founded centuries ago by Jesuit Catholic priests. Well, it turns out that in 1838 the university which was then a college, got into some financial problems. Well, they owned slaves, a lot of them, over 230 of them, and they decided the only way that they were going to get out of debt was to sell the slaves to the market in New Orleans.  This is all very well documented and found within the archives of what is currently George Town University. Well the story is beginning to gain lots more traction as people have come to understand who these people were.  There were families, there were babies, women, men, old, young, the ship’s manifest as they were sent off to New Orleans, really tell a story of great hardship. There’s one account from a Jesuit priest associated with this school, who didn’t approve of all this, as saying, that one woman was actually on the dock begging and wondering and asking what she had done to deserve this.  Well, the university had obtained a lot of money as the result and wound up paying off their debts. Today, Georgetown University still exists because of the money they raised by selling their slaves down to New Orleans.  Now the Catholic overseers of the school in Rome at the time disapproved of this move. It was made contrary to their orders.  So now an effort is underway to identify the descendants of these 230 some odd slaves that were sold by Georgetown University and try to determine is there some way to make reparations for what was done to their people, and next week we’re going to talk to one of those descendants about this experience.  She happens to be the president of a genealogical society in Washington. It’s going to be fascinating to hear what she has to say about her viewpoint on this incredible story from the 19th century. You can read about it in the New York Times and find the link at ExtremeGenes.com.  Well, good news from AmericanAncestors.org and the New England Historic Genealogical Society, their long running published quarterly The New England Historical and Genealogical Register, with over four hundred million searchable names, is now complete and in digital format in their databases.  So you can log in now with your NEHGS membership or guest account and check out all this incredible information that’s waiting for you now.  And just a reminder, all of our shows are now entirely searchable. Yeah, we transcribe them. So if you want to remember some of the things we talk about or find something further about it once you’ve heard it, just go to ExtremeGenes.com go to our podcast section and search the transcripts. And coming up next! We’re going to talk to the man who plays the very evil Captain John Graves Simcoe, on the AMC series ‘Turn: Washington Spies.’ The series is coming back for their third season starting Monday night at ten o clock Eastern. Samuel Roukin joins the show, coming up in three minutes on Extreme Genes, America’s Family History Show and ExtremeGenes.com.

Segment 2 Episode 136

Host Scott fisher with guest Samuel Roukin

Samuel Roukin: My name is Captain John Graves Simcoe, and I’m your new commander, by orders of Major John Andre.

Fisher: And that is the voice of Sam Roukin, he plays Captain John Graves Simcoe on the AMC revolutionary series ‘Turn: Washington’s Spies’ the Culper Spy Ring.  Hi, it is Fisher, and you’re with Extreme Genes, America’s Family History Show, and if you have followed our program for any time at all you’ll know that I’m a huge fan of this program and for some time now I’ve been working to get one of my favorite characters from the show on this show and Sam is on the line with us now.  How are you Sam? Welcome to Extreme Genes!

Sam: Thank you! It’s good to be with you.

Fisher: I’m just absolutely astonished by your character, and has it changed your life a little bit? I’m sure you get an awful lot of comments because let’s face it, as you portray John Graves Simcoe, he’s bloodthirsty, he’s twisted, he’s ruthless, he has enemies on both sides, he’s fiercely loyal to the king, but he also needs love.

Sam: Yeah. He’s a complicated guy, and yeah it’s had a huge effect in my life, you know it really put me on the map here, and he’s such a divisive character and you know people have a really strong opinion about him.  On the whole people are very nice. Usually the comment is that they just love to hate me, so I’m all right with that.

Fisher: [Laughs] But hey as an actor as long as they love you for anything that’s not a bad thing!

Sam: That’s true!

Fisher: And you were in ‘Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows’ as well. You were a snatcher in that, so obviously they have a tendency to bring you in for some, shall we say, ‘dark characters.’

Sam: Yeah. I’m going to start taking this personally. I don’t know what the problem is.

Fisher: [Laughs]

Sam: Yeah, I mean at the end of the day from my perspective as long as the characters have some depth and richness to them, then I get excited about it and as far as it goes with the more nasty characters, generally they are a little more complex and usually get written in that way. So I’m cool with it really.  I enjoy digging into these guys psyches and obviously I’m developing a bit of a knack for different types of characters.

Fisher: And speaking to you I’m sure a lot of listeners who are familiar with the show are noticing the same thing that I am, that you don’t speak like your character, you’re from a different part of England obviously, than Simcoe is. How do you work those accent differences?

Sam: Well you know, I mean, all of that stuff is so important like the costume and the hair and everything else. It’s the first thing we see and when he speaks it’s the first thing we hear. So I take those things really seriously. Because I think they’re a window into who the guy actually is or whoever you’re playing. So obviously basics are you know, ‘where’s this guy from? Where do we locate him in the world?’ and that’s one part of it, and then obviously my voice naturally is much deeper registered than his.

Fisher: Yeah.

Sam: And that only just came from discussions with Craig Silverstein, the show producer and when we originated the pilot, Rupert Wyatt, who directed it.  We were talking about the kind of guy that this is, and I thought it would be kind of obvious to have this kind of brute which could easily have come out as, you know… they were obviously writing a villain in this character, and it would have been very easy to sort of just make him like a typically nasty piece of work.

Fisher: [Laughs]

Sam: And I didn’t want to be typical with him because I thought there was something a little more interesting in there. So really it came about wanting him to have this kind of delicate touch and the question I asked myself was, ‘what would happen if this guy was really nice to everybody?’ So that it becomes about, you know, and then that sort of came out he had a lightness of touch in the way he spoke. So I thought it would be much more impactful if this guy is nasty because of the things he does rather than your initial impression of him, and that’s sort of how it started developing and then it just sort of took on a life of its own.

Fisher: Well let me ask you about this. One of the things I noticed in one of the early episodes is your over-pronunciation of names.

Sam: [Laughs]

Fisher: You talked about ‘Tall-madge’ and ‘Brew-ster.’ Where did that come from?

Sam: The good one is ‘Wood-hull.’

Fisher: Yes! [Laughs]

Sam: He has a love for language you know. John Simcoe, you know a lot of this is not just me having fun with it, there is some substance to it. You know John Graves Simcoe was a poet and in fact has the first recorded Valentine’s poem.

Fisher: Yes.

Sam: I was interested in his love for language. It wasn’t something I actually consciously did it just started happening you know.

Fisher: [Laughs]

Sam: I realized that I wasn’t saying these names like everybody else and then it just kind of stuck. But you know I read ‘Wood-hull’ I didn’t read ‘Woodull’ or something, I was just saying what I saw really as a character and that’s how it came out.  But yeah it does give him an individuality that hadn’t been planned for but obviously contributes to the whole thing you know, so, yeah, good observation!

Fisher: Oh, I loved it. I loved it when you came with ‘Tall-madge’ [Laughs] I thought it was great.

Sam: Yeah, ‘Tallmadge’ is a good one as well.

Fisher: Yes.

Sam: I just have to tell you, I really just was saying what I saw. I guess I was inside the guy you know and that’s how it came out.

Fisher: Well now that’s the question. Now this show is about family history and people who listen to it are also into history and my fascination with the program is the representation of how my ancestors may have lived under British occupation at that time.

Sam: Yeah.

Fisher: So there’s a tremendous realism, I mean you see the tavern wench emptying the chamber pot right outside the door of the place and then going in and serving food. [Laughs] I think, wow!

Sam: Yes. There was no health and safety department in Setauket. You know the great thing about it though is you know lots of great historical television and films that have come out, the reason why we care is because we realize, apart from knowing what our heritage is and learning how we came to be now and what came before us.

It’s also that you know, they were just like us you know, it’s a mind trick that we put the people in the past as almost like a different species and I think one of the beautiful things about portraying it in drama is that we have the opportunity to humanize history.

I think that’s a really key element to why we’re interested in it you know and when those human moments come out it’s really satisfying.

Fisher: Well I think you really hit it on the head. The fascinating thing is watching the challenges. I mean we’ve always thought in this country, of course, the Patriots are the good guys and you guys are the bad guys! And we’re seeing Abe Woodhull changing now, he’s becoming very much as blood thirsty as anybody else in this series. The evolution as he has to go through to fight to survive.

Sam: Yeah, that’s very true, and I think it’s really an indication of how war is a unique experience now and then and has a very unique effect on the people involved in it. And I think the optics in war are very different you know, and I think it has to change you, doesn’t it?  You know if you’re being occupied, if you’re compelled to do something about that. I think people do things during war time that they would never have imagined doing in another environment.

So yeah it’s a really good observation and I think particularly in someone like Abe who was just a normal regular farmer doing his thing and getting on with his life to suddenly be put into this extraordinary situation and we see his change before our eyes.

I mean, I think that’s a very compelling thing. But you know equally I think all the characters go through that. You know even someone like Washington or Benedict Arnold, or any of these guys who you know, John Andre, everybody really could change.

That’s one of the great things about season three, I think, is that we’re really seeing the effects of the war on these people and how it’s changing them and changing how they go about their lives. It’s fascinating.

Fisher: We’re talking to Sam Roukin, he plays Captain John Graves Simcoe, on the AMC Revolutionary series ‘Turn: Washington’s Spies’ and Sam, I actually have an ancestor who is buried in the same church yard with Caleb Brewster, in Fairfield, Connecticut.

Sam: Wow.

Fisher: Have you had the chance to go to some of these places that you’re portraying, have you been to Setauket yet?

Sam: I haven’t been to Setauket, no. I did actually… I lived in New Jersey for a while. Everywhere I would go you know I would see plaques and I started to become you know, a plaque hunter.

Fisher: [Laughs]

Sam: And where we shoot the show in Virginia, there’s also some really key Revolutionary sites around here as well. In fact we keep coming across places where Simcoe and his troops were stationed at one point. They moved around so much, especially the Rangers. Just by accident in fact I’ve come across a lot of places. But yeah I do try to go to as many relevant sites as I can. You know I recently went to Washington’s headquarters in New Jersey, and where one of his camps was. It’s cool to kind of be standing where they stood. So yeah I have been to some. I actually haven’t been to Setauket. But funny enough we do have fans who are in Setauket, we often get messages from those guys and they’re really happy that their town is being celebrated, you know.

Fisher: Well you know the whole story was fascinating. In fact I read a book about this and then a week later I learned that your show was coming on, and I just couldn’t wait and it was very exciting.  Hey, we’re going to take a break, and when we return we’re going to talk more with Sam Roukin, Captain John Graves Simcoe, from the AMC revolutionary series ‘Turn: Washington’s Spies.’  We’re going to talk about some of the real people Sam, and how those folks have affected your character and some of the other characters you work with, all right?

Sam: Sounds good, I’m looking forward to it.

Fisher: All right and before we take that break I should mention that ‘Turn Washington’s Spies’ returns for Season Three this coming Monday, April 25th. It’s a new time slot, new day for Turn, and this season we’re going to see the actual evolution as we start moving towards Benedict Arnold’s betrayal, and it’s going to be a great season coming up on AMC 10 o clock Eastern, 9 o clock Central.  Figure it out where you are. We’ll be back with our next segment with Sam Roukin from ‘Turn: Washington’s Spies’ in five minutes on Extreme Genes, America’s Family History Show.

Segment 3 Episode 136

Host Scott Fisher with guest Sam Roukin

Fisher: And we are back, America’s Family History Show, Extreme Genes and ExtremeGenes.com.  It is Fisher here, the Radio Roots Sleuth, talking to Sam Roukin. He is Captain John Graves Simcoe on the AMC Revolutionary series, ‘Turn: Washington’s Spies.’  And Sam, I’ve got to tell you right now, my wife is totally creeped out by your character, and she says, “Why do you have to talk to the bad guy?” I said, “Well, because, I think they’re more interesting.” Because you try to figure out just what is it that makes these people tick.  And I’m sure, as an actor, you have to kind of think that way yourself, don’t you?

Sam: I do. Your wife is a very smart lady!

Fisher: [Laughs]

Sam: [Laughs] I’m fascinated by human beings. I think most actors are, and that’s one of the reasons why we’re compelled to do it, you know?  We’re very curious about the way people think and why people do what they do and the way that they do them.  And so, it turns out that when you are dealing with, for example, sociopaths, we’re not like that in our normal lives, thankfully, so to make that journey and to go on that voyage of discovery, it’s kind of a really joyous thing for an actor.  So, what, you know, we’re as compelled to access the brains of these people as the audience is hopefully to watch them, you know?

Fisher: Well, and so that brings us to the question, how much of the real John Graves Simcoe, who went on to become what, lieutenant governor, up in Canada? He was the guy who signed off on the first anti-slavery bill in 1791.  I mean, he did a lot of really good things. Do you feel any obligation to him, [laughs] as you portray him?

Sam: Yeah, I think so. You know, it touches on what we talked about in the first segment when we were discussing this, which is, during war time I think people are changed, and I think they act in a way that they might not otherwise.  And so, for me, you know, first of all, you know, the only evidence we have of what the man was like, his own memoires, which necessarily are favorable towards himself.

Fisher: Right.

Sam: And what he did, and the listed historical events and achievements that he was involved in. We have some, you know, we have his delicate, more literary side to go on, you know, his poetry and then we have the things he did after the war. So, that fact, you know, we have not met the man and we don’t know what he’s like, we just know the things he did in his life, which vary massively. And there’s no question that the Rangers during the war were a ruthless and very precise operation. You know, really the way to think of them is they’re like, the Special Forces…

Fisher: Yeah…

Sam:  … of the army, you know? And they’re sent on very specific stealth missions and then carried them out really well and with great effect, and so, the answer to your question in a more concise way is that people are different during the war to afterwards.

Fisher: Um-hum.

Sam: As for me, you know, I can square away his behavior on the show with what he did afterwards, because I think, the more ruthless, more deadly you were during the war, the more you would want to appease that in your life afterwards.  And I don’t think that we have portrayed what we do… portray a guy that is ruthless, does make impulsive, deadly decisions and that are not necessarily on the moral compass of everybody else in the world.

[Laughs] At the same time there is a soul there, you know? And there is some tenderness, and we see it comes out in various different ways and, you know, I think there is some compassion there too. It’s just, he’s a guy you don’t want to cross, because it will end very badly.

Fisher: [Laughs]

Sam: But after the war, you know, I think it’s a different world and I think people adapt, and I think they vary experiences too and who’s to say that you couldn’t behave in an egregious manner during the war and then try to do better. Try to compensate for that.  Even if he wasn’t quite as nasty as he comes across, sometimes on Turn, it’s fair to say that he didn’t do the things he did during the war after the war. We know that and so, that’s really how I personally square away with what we do on the show, you know?

Fisher: Yeah. That’s makes perfect sense and it’s interesting too, because when the show started, I was immediately going to the internet to go, ‘Okay, how much is this true? Did this happen? Did that happen?’ And I found the timelines were different.  Abe Woodhull’s father was a patriot, not a loyalist, but obviously they were portraying this to show how families were divided and then, I was accepting of that. Yes, this is a historical novel brought to television. And it’s interesting to know that John Graves Simcoe actually brought the Queen’s Rangers in and beat up Abe’s dad to send Abe a message. In real life, that’s what really happened, because they had received word that Abe was a spy. A completely different scenario though.

Sam: Yeah, I’m really glad you brought that up, because that’s exactly the point I was making. So, you know, there is enough evidence to suggest that he did a few things that most people would say are egregious, and those are the things we know about. And you know, I also picked up on just a couple of, you know, a few things I’ve read in memoires, and I’ve read the diaries about the rangers and what have you, and a couple of things. There was a pattern that was developing, particularly in the third person with memoirs of Simcoe, which, they would arrive in a place and then they would stay in this house here and this house here.

Fisher: Right. They’d occupy.

Sam: Well, how did you get that house? Who was in it before you? And what happened to the people that were in it when you arrived? I’m sure you didn’t just say, ‘Would you mind if we stayed at home instead of you?’

Fisher: [Laughs] Right.

Sam: And so, things like that crop up, and I’m like, ‘Well, there has to be a story there that is just not being told.” And I feel like that gray area of history books is really interesting, and I think, allows for a little bit of poetic license. It doesn’t necessarily feel too farfetched, you know?  So, we never know for sure, really, just what gets written down, you know? The truth changes a little bit as soon as it’s written down. So, yeah, I think there’s some leeway in that.

Fisher: And it’s written by the winners.

Sam: That’s right.

Fisher: Yeah. So, one last thing, because we’re running out of time here, Sam, but it’s interesting because… you cannot be killed! I mean, I’ve seen you get stabbed, I’ve seen you get shot, I’ve seen you get knocked out, you know, you are not allowed to die. But in the pilot of this show, you were killed, and then brought back to life. [Laughs] Talk a little about that.

Sam: Well, it was extraordinary, really. Yes, originally I auditioned for John Andre’s character and got so far down that road, and then obviously, J.J. Feild was offered the role and played it exceptionally well.

Fisher: Yes, he’s fabulous.

Sam: I’ve got so much respect for him, and so, I thought, ‘Well, okay, that job’s not happening’ and then they said, ‘We’d love you to do Simcoe. He’s kind of just in the pilot, but it’s a great part.’ And so I said yes, obviously, and then we did it and yeah, he died. He got shot as he came out in the wash, Caleb kicks him in the face, and then he goes, you know, then they torture him for a bit in their cell. But in the original pilot he shot him in the face, and that was the end of that. But AMC found the character compelling.

Fisher: Right.

Sam: And I think, you know, he also serves a really important function dramatically on the show, you know. We needed like a regular antagonist and so, Simcoe provided that quality and it was a real constant to what I brought to the character.  I don’t think they quite saw it there originally, but I just kind of gave everything and you are supposed to be for longer then you’re not, but this was around… is kind of an extraordinary [Laughs] which I’m so very grateful for, you know.

Fisher: [Laughs]

Sam: It’s a great write.

Fisher: Well, I don’t think we’d be in the third season of Turn if you were not in that role. No doubt about it.

Sam: Thank you! That’s a very nice compliment.

Fisher: Well, Sam Roukin, thank you so much for your time, and thank you for all you put into this character and bringing the Revolution to life for those of us who love it.

Let me ask you this, you said you lived in New Jersey. You’ve obviously been here for a little bit. Are you looking for dual citizenship?

Sam: Well, my wife is American, so I’m currently a permanent resident. I have a ten year green card. I’m very much, I think, I’m just about allowed to become a citizen, and I think I probably will, yes.  I mean, I love America. This is my home now, so my family is here, and so, who knows? We’ll see.

Fisher: Awesome! Thank you so much. Sam Roukin from ‘Turn: Washington’s Spies’ on Extreme Genes, America’s Family History Show.

 

Segment 4 Episode 136

Host Scott Fisher with guest Tom Perry

Fisher: And welcome back to America’s Family History Show, Extreme Genes and ExtremeGenes.com

It is preservation time with my good friend, Tom Perry, from TMCPlace.com, the Preservation Authority. How are you, Tom?

Tom: Super duper, thanks.

Fisher: I was thinking about how, over the last several months we’ve been talking periodically about a software called Cinematize that you recommend very highly, and it’s gone the way of the dinosaurs to some extent and if you can find it, great! Buy it!

It’s probably on the cheap. But now you’ve been looking for something to replace that, some new kind of software and what have you come up with?

Tom: Well, we’re working with some kind of software that we’re actually testing right now in our studio, and so far, it’s very, very promising.  I don’t want to get into a lot about it until we actually get some of the bugs out of the way. But next week, we’ll be able to probably have some good information about it.  We’ve been using it so far, it’s been flawless, but there’s a couple of other things I want to check.   I want to check internet compatibility that will make it so you can share it with friends, it’s easy to use and if this software works out like we think, it is almost going to be the motherload of software. It’s very inexpensive. It’s under fifty dollars.

Fisher: Wow!

Tom: There’s some certain software requirements, and if you have anything older than Snow Leopard, it won’t work with it. But it is amazing software; in fact, it will actually let you deal with MP3s, MP4s, outside of the Apple format.

Fisher: Wait! Wait! You are taunting us here! You’re telling us all the great things it does.

Tom: [Laughs]

Fisher: And you’re not going to tell us the name for another week or so?

Tom: Nope! It’s like the cliffhanger. At least it’s going to be this season.

Fisher: [Laughs]

Tom: You don’t have to wait till the start of next season.

Fisher: All right. Can you tells us about another one you may have found that would be of use that you could tell us right now?

Tom: Absolutely! This is a great software, it’s called DaVinci Resolve 12, just like the famous inventor.

Fisher: Yeah, that guy, right. [Laughs]

Tom: Inventor, him and this is awesome software. I followed these guys from when they had DaVinci number 1.

Fisher: Wow!

Tom: And it’s great. It’s got editing capabilities. It’s got color correction. It’s just absolutely incredible, and the neat thing about this is, they have a version right now that you can download for free. No charge.

Fisher: Hello!

Tom: Oh, it’s great! It’s just really amazing. So, people that want to kind of delve in to color correction, this is a good option to go and get, because you can play around with it. It’s non destructible.

Fisher: And we’re talking about moving pictures or we’re talking about stills or both?

Tom: This is for movies, I’m sorry. This is movie type stuff. In fact, they use this software in Hollywood for your big blockbusters, like Avatar and shows like that.  So, it’s incredible software. This software’s so smart, people think, “Oh yeah, this is a high end software. I’m not into that kind of stuff. I don’t shoot in 4k.”  Well, what’s neat about this software,  you can set it up for different formats, whether you’re using standard definition from your old VHS tapes, whether you have one of those really cool 4k cameras, just about anything that you have, you can use it on this.

Fisher: Wow! So, this is exciting stuff.

Tom: Oh, it is. It’s great. You can do stuff, you can sync stuff. So, if you have some old movies that somebody shot in the old days, sometimes you’re shooting your 8mm camera and you have a side recorder. It’s not recording the sound on the tape, and they get out of sync.

People that do music videos, whether they’re for the family or whatever, that’s one of the biggest problems. And this has some sync capabilities that’s absolutely incredible. In the days when I used to do music videos, you had to do everything vocally.

Fisher: Right.

Tom: And you couldn’t see the vocal part. You can see picture and try to line align them up, but it’s really hard.

Fisher: The audio was a problem.

Tom: Exactly! Trying to get them to line up was really, really tough. With this, they’ve got this way you can put the time code on the clips, then you can put it together.  So, like if you’re using something from an old concert or wedding, if you have two camera interviews and you want to cut from person to person. For instance, say you’re interviewing grandma and grandpa, and you want to have a separate camera on each one of them, you can do this.

And this DaVinci software will allow you to go in and sync the two together. So, you can say, ‘Okay, here’s grandma talking, I want to use this part. Here’s grandpa talking, I want to use this part. I want to dissolve from here to here.’

Fisher: Wow!

Tom: So, you’re not sitting there doing one and then going back and figure out, ‘I need to do this.’ It makes it really nice.

Fisher: All right. And this is very good, by the way, for getting younger people involved with your projects if you get a little nervous about working with software like this.

Tom: That’s what’s neat about getting the kids involved with grandma and grandpa, you can do stuff as a family

Fisher: All right. What are we going to talk about next, Tom?

Tom: Let’s talk about some color correction.

Fisher: All right, getting to it in three minutes on Extreme Genes, America’s Family History Show.

Segment 5 Episode 136

Host Scott Fisher with guest Tom Perry

Fisher: Hey, it is the final segment of our show for this week, Extreme Genes, America’s Family History Show, and we’re talking preservation with Tom Perry, from TMCPlace.com

By the way, if you have questions for Tom, you can always send him an email at AskTom@TMCPlace.com

And Tom, we were just talking about this great new software that you’ve discovered, that you recommended moments ago, the DaVinci 12, very exciting stuff and another one you’re working on.  But you were mentioning color correction and, you know, this is starting to get, I think, above a lot of people’s pay scales. [Laughs] Just to think about some of this software.

Tom: And that is so true. I mean, we can just talk about five years ago. What has happened in the last five years is incredible.  Color correction in fact, even a year ago, talking to, you know, consumers who walk in our door or send us letters or send us stuff from across the country, color correction wasn’t even an option for people to do.

Fisher: Right.

Tom: It was like, “No, if you want it color corrected, we need to do it for you. It’s not very expensive; however, we need to do it.” Now with this DaVinci 12 software, the color correction option it has is absolutely incredible.

It has a dynamic track. So, when you’re actually looking at it on your computer terminal on your monitor, you can actually, physically see the sound. It’s like 3D.

Fisher: Wow!

Tom: So, you can see, “Oh, this is when, you know, the refrigerator kicks in, and I need to cut it off.” So, you go in and edit that out.

Fisher: You can edit that out. [Laughs] Wow!

Tom: Exactly! And when you’re doing the color correction, it’s the same thing. Everything is in 3D. It’s non destructible, so it’s not hurting your original files. You’re actually making a new copy of it.  So, it allows you to go in and do VHS tapes, do your film, your movies, just anything that you have.  Whereas in the old days, if you wanted a VHS tape color corrected, you were looking at a lot of money and it wouldn’t be worth it.

Fisher: Now, speaking of home movies, those would have to be digitized first, obviously before you could use it in this way.

Tom: Exactly! Everything has to be digitized as you mentioned, whether it’s your VHS tapes, your video H, your mini DVs, your super 8, regular 8, all of these have to be digitized first, into, we used to always go to hard drives, but now, we’re using MP4s a lot, because they’re convenient. We can get it to the customer faster.

Whether you’re in Dothan, Alabama or, you know, down the street from us, as soon as we’re done with the project, we don’t have to go and convert it to DVDs or Blue rays or AVIs or MOVs.

It’s really fast and easy to make it as an MP4, and then once it’s in MP4, we can drop it in a cloud. Whether it’s our cloud or Drop box or LightJar, whatever cloud you’re using, Google drive, any of those.

You can have it instantly, which saves you a couple of days and saves you a trip back to us and it doesn’t matter where you are.

And with this color correction, being able to go to the old VHS movies is so totally cool. Because a lot of time, when you have your old wedding movies, you might not have the first generation, and they’re kind of starting to look really, really bad.

Well, up till now what we had to do is, run it through kind of like a Procam and some different kinds of equipment, that basically, we could either correct all your stuff to make it lighter and add some certain colors in or make it darker, whatever your problem was.

However, it had to be consistent through the whole tape. So, we’d look at the first five minutes, set it up, and then run your tape.

But now, if you have dark areas, light areas, some places the color is correct, some places the color is not correct, you can go in with this Resolve 12 software and you can do it frame by frame, by section, whatever you want to do.

If you go and get fancy in it, start building certain kinds of filters that you can do and say, “Oh wow! This looks really cool here!”  And run it. And then, fifteen minutes later in the tape, you’ve got the same problem again or on another tape, you’ve already made up those filters and so, you’ve got kind of these different things in your quiver, and then you just go apply them to whatever you’re working on.

Fisher: You can AskTom@TMCPlace.com  Send him an email, and maybe you’ll hear your question answered on the show. Thanks for coming in, Tom.

Tom: Good to be here.

Fisher: Hey, that’s our show for this week. Thanks once again to Sam Roukin, the man who plays Captain John Graves Simcoe on “Turn: Washington’s Spies.” on AMC.

They’re returning for their third season, starting Monday night, April 25th at 10 o’clock Eastern time.  One of my favorite shows, because it really portrays what life was like for our ancestors during the British occupation during the Revolutionary War.  If you missed any of it, catch the podcast on iTunes, iHeartRadio’s talk channel and at ExtremeGenes.com, and of course, now we transcribe every show, so it’s entirely searchable. So, if you want to find a specific segment, go to ExtremeGenes.com, under podcasts.  Take care, talk to you next week, and remember, as far as everyone knows, we’re a nice, normal family!

Click Here to Listen to this Episode!

Episode 130 – “Relative Race” Is Hot New Genealogy Reality Show/ Ireland Senator Talk Irish Records for St. Patty’s Day

by

Relative Race

Click Here to Listen to this Episode!

This week, Fisher opens the show with David Allen Lambert, Chief Genealogist for the New England Historic Genealogical Society and AmericanAncestors.org, talking about the recent birth of a “Leap Baby” in North Dakota.  What made this one unusual was that it is not the first Leap Baby in the family!  Hear all about it on the podcast.  David then shares some fascinating DNA news about the Aboriginals of Australia.  Just how long have they been isolated from the rest of the world?  Now we know.  Plus, another family artifact has been found and returned to a family… only this one was from World War I!  It’s a century old piece.  Also, another Civil War vessel has been found.  What kind was it, what did it do, and where was it found?  David will tell you.  David also has another Tech Tip, and guest-user free database from NEHGS.

Fisher then visits with host/creator/producer Dan Debenham of “Relative Race,” an incredible new genealogy based reality TV show that everyone was raving about at last month’s Roots Tech conference.  Dan will tell you how it works, how his company came up with the idea, and what you can expect in the coming episodes on BYU-TV.

Then… who’d have thought a Senator from Ireland would appear at Roots Tech?  Fisher talks with Senator Jillian Van Turnhout, who is a passionate genie who traveled too many time zones to count to attend the conference.  Senator Turnhout shares a lot of good news about on line records from the Emerald Isle that are coming available for Irish Americans.  Then, Fisher chats with Denise May Levernick about the grant her family has set up in her mother’s memory to award a cash grant to a young adult student for genealogy!  Hear how to make your student eligible.

Tom Perry returns to wrap up the show to take on fears and offer advice on using “The Cloud” for storage of your digital material.  Concerned about security?  Usability?  As always, Tom has insight you won’t hear anywhere else.  Have questions about preservation?  Email Tom at AskTom@TMCPlace.com.

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

 

 

Transcript of Episode 130

Segment 1 (00:30)

Fisher: And welcome back to another week of “Extreme Genes,” America’s family history show and extremegenes.com! It is Fisher here, your radio roots sleuth on the program where we shake your family tree and watch the nuts fall out! And I’m very excited, finally, to get on Dan Debenham today. H e is going to be a guest on the show in about eight minutes.
He is the host and producer of this genealogy family history reality show that everybody’s talking about. It’s called “Relative Race” and it is nuts! It is so much fun, and you’re going to hear right from Dan himself how this idea came about, how it got formulated, where you can see it, where you can catch it on demand. It is a great show and it was the talk of “Root’s Tech” by the way, when we were there, because they debuted the first program.
Plus, later in the show, since it is St. Patrick’s Day celebration this weekend in many places and, of course, formally in the coming week, we’re going to talk to an actual Senator from Ireland, and find out about what’s happening with family history records for those of Irish descent here in the United States.
Great stuff! And if you have a young adult student, somebody’s offering a free grant as they develop genealogy and family history. It’s like five hundred bucks if you want to hear how your young student can get into this. We’re going to have that for you too coming up later on in the show.
So, great stuff lined up! But right now it is my… I wouldn’t say you’re my cabin mate for the coming cruise in September, from Boston to Nova Scotia, but you’re going to be pretty close I’m thinking David. David Allen Lambert, the chief genealogist of the New English Historic Genealogical Society and AmericanAncestors.org
Fisher: Hi David.
David: Hey! Greetings from Bean Town, and we’re very excited because St. Paddy’s Day is around the corner but it means something more to us here in revolutionary war terms. Do you know why?
Fisher: Because what?
David: We kicked the British out of Boston!
Fisher: [Laughs] Yes you did!
David: A nice little Virginian named George Washington decided to stop by, and evacuation day is why we have closed schools in Boston, not for St. Patrick’s Day as many people think. [Laughs]
Fisher: Interesting.
David: Nice to hear from you as always. You know I’ll tell you, we were talking about leap year week and I just want to say that the odds of this family and this might not be told, probably have the bookies scrambling for the next four years.
Did you hear about the Allison family, new baby?
Fisher: Yes! It’s insane a new baby on February 29th Congratulations! Pretty rare, but…
David: the strange thing is it happened four years before and both daughters.
Fisher: [Laughs]
David: You know it’s a 50/50 chance for a boy or a girl but the idea to be born on a leap year that is some pretty good timing.
Fisher: I know, four years apart, so I guess they only have a birthday every four years when they’re 16 they’re celebrate their fourth and the other one would celebrate the third.
David: What a happy first birthday for the sister of little Abigail.
Fisher: [Laughs]
David: My goodness! So Brandy and Abigail, happy birthday and happy birthday! [Laughs] Well you know, speaking of birthdays going across the other side of the world, the archaeological and anthropological work being done with DNA studies is just mind boggling.
In recent years they’ve always thought that South East Asians about four thousand years ago intermarried with the aboriginal families in Australia. Well, that’s not the case. New DNA evidence shows that they have had no contact for fifty thousand years.
Fisher: The Aboriginals?
David: The Aboriginals are isolated genetically going back fifty thousand years. So if we think about our ancestors coming up and going into Europe, we weren’t even into Europe yet.
Fisher: No [Laughs] wow!
David: That’s amazing. So it’s always exciting to hear this news. So a new aspect of genealogical DNA is unfolding. Digging a little closer to home we talked about that mess kit well I’m going to go….
Fisher: Right. That was a World War 2 story last week, right?
David: Exactly. Well, I’m going to go a war before. A gentleman named Michael Babin, who lives in France, is a retired banker, and collector of World War 1 ephemera. At a flea market recently he bought an aluminium dog tag that belonged to Frank L. Smith, of the U.S. army, and the thing about that is he’s tracked down through gravestone records and talked to this man’s 73 year old daughter, and this girl lost her dad when she was twelve. So, Dotty Wright has been reacquainted with an artifact associated with her father nearly a century ago.
Fisher: Incredible! What a great story.
David: I love what metal detectors find. I’m a metal detectorist myself.
Fisher: Really?
David: Oh yeah! It is a lot of fun digging in the ground and finding what other people lost. I haven’t found any Anglo sacks and gold or coins, but I’m still looking.
Fisher: [Laughing]
David: That being said, if you were off the coast of North Carolina, in 18 feet of water, they have found the wreck of what they believe is one of three blockade runners. So this vessel was set up during the civil war to stop the running of the ironclads and to block the coast and the Union Army’s blockade, if you will, and this is fabulous! This is perhaps one of three boats, the Agnes Fry, the Georgianna McCaw and I’m really hoping it’s the third one, the Spunkie.
Fisher: The Spunkie! I hope it’s the Spunkie, yes!
David: I hope it’s the Spunkie too.
Fisher: [Laughing]
David: So while I waited for the Spunkie too, that will be the one name for the Spunkie.
Fisher: Right.
David: In any event, so that’s really some exciting news. My tech tip for the week, I talked about it last week that I was going to give a test drive to Research Ties, which is researchties.com And this is a company out of Provo, Utah. And we all have our research logs where you may print one off and write it down or you might use a notebook. This is a professional program which you can even beta test for free. Our subscription annually is for $30. It gives you three logins and 10 gigabytes of space. I can put in the repositories I want to visit, I can put in the film numbers, I can create all the shopping lists so when I go to the family history library in Salt Lake City, the National Archives in Washington DC or my local public library, I can access it online by logging in. I don’t have to, “Oh I forgot my notebook” or “Why am I here?” This is a great program online to try out. It is a cheap service, but very efficient.
Fisher: What’s the website again?
David: The website is www.researchties.com
Fisher: All right.
David: And speaking of data bases, on americanacestors.org, every week we give a free data base to our guest users. And this week we have the Chatham, Massachusetts and Harwich, Massachusetts metal records to 1850 help you with your pilgrim ancestors. You probably have some Cape Cod family. If you have ancestors in the northeast then hopefully this will help you find it. Well, that is all I have from Boston until next time Fish.
Fisher: Alright. Thanks David, talk to you next week. And coming up for you next in three minutes we’re going to talk to Dan Debenham, the host, producer, creator of Relative Race an incredible new genealogy reality show on Extreme Genes, America’s family history show.

 

Segment 2 Episode 130 (25:20)
Host Scott Fisher with guest Dan Debenham
Fisher: Welcome Back to America’s family history show ‘Extreme Genes’ and extremegenes.com. It is Fisher here, your radio root sleuth and I will tell you, at Root’s Tech we were exposed to all kinds of new products and ideas and services, but I don’t think there’s anything that got a bigger reaction, a bigger positive reaction than the debut of a television show that they provided there called ‘Relative Race’ and the producer and host of that show, Dan Debenham, is with me right now.
Fisher: Hi Dan, Welcome!
Dan: It’s good to see you Scott! Good to see you again actually.
Fisher: I know! I haven’t seen you in a long, long time.
Dan: Fifteen years I think.
Fisher: Something like that. But this show, where did you get the idea for it? How did this thing get started? And look at where you’re going with it.
Dan: Great questions. BYU- TV who has a mantra of ‘Seeing the good in the world’ they approached us about a year ago and they said “We have a general concept and a need that we’d like to see created for our programming” and they talked to us about this idea, and I mean really from the fifty thousand foot level.
Fisher: Right.
Dan: Just generically speaking about this idea of a show that would kind of hunt down relatives and gee, wouldn’t that just be great?
Fisher: [Laughs]
Dan: Now when we heard about this project we got pretty stumped and we came up with this concept where we would cast four couples. We flew them to San Francisco, and then every day we provided them with clues to run across the country and discover relatives that they never knew they had and had never met before, and they were racing from San Francisco to New York City, and along the way each day the last one to find their relatives receives a strike, three strikes and you’re off the show.
Fisher: Uh oh.
Dan: If you make it all the way to New York, you pick up twenty five thousand dollars and even that came with a twist and the twist was, now that you have really earned this money, congratulations! Because believe me, this trek across the country, this race, is full of ups and downs and highs and lows and happy and sad, and everything in between, but we then said “You can keep the money, or you can give a portion, or all of it, back to the relatives that you’ve met along the way”
Fisher: Oh how cool is that.
Dan: Yeah, so in fact, just this past…
Fisher: That’s easy; I’ll keep it all [laughs]
Dan: [Laughs] I believe you will. It was very interesting to see what these couples and those that made it to New York and ultimately the couple that won first place, what they were going to do with that money.

Fisher: Well you know people who are into family history are very giving people, they don’t only share of themselves but they share information, they find photographs, that type of thing. I’m not surprised that, that carries over in the financial side.

Dan: Well we didn’t know quite what to expect as we researched these couples. They submitted DNA to Ancestry DNA, and Ancestry DNA’s pool at the time was less than a million, so we had to find a route that went from San Francisco to New York City. We provided them with rental cars; we took away their cell phones, all GPS devises.

Fisher: So let me get this idea here; you took the DNA from them and then you had to literally track down descendants that fit the route so that they were all going to the same places?
Dan: Now that’s what we wanted to do at first was to go to the same towns.
Fisher: That’s crazy because it’s not possible.
Dan: That was impossible. So they were going to different towns, and what made the race fair is that every day they were given an allotted time, an allotted time to get to the different towns because they were all racing to different towns.
Fisher: You have to adjust it.
Dan: Yeah. And so it was the couple that came closest to their allotted time that won, and the couple that came furthest from their allotted time that received a strike, three strikes and you’re off the race.
Fisher: You guys must have been up till two, three, four o clock in the morning every day trying to work these little problems out.
Dan: It was wild. It was a wild ride, and the show is… you mentioned that episode one debuted at Roots Tech, and we received a standing ovation.
Fisher: Oh it was nuts! “Did you see it? Did you see it? It was great!” People were really enthusiastic about it. This is the thing about family history, if it’s entertaining the people who aren’t into family history, you know you’ve got something great, and that’s what it looks like to me. So tell us now, I was looking at this debut, now BYU-TV by the way is a cable station, available on a lot of markets
Dan: Fifty six million homes in America.
Fisher: And there are plenty of places that they do not get into, so I would assume you could watch online?
Dan: Absolutely. Binge watch the first two episodes right now because coming up, we just saw episode two this past Sunday, and every original episode is every Sunday night 8pm eastern time, and then you can back it up from there. 7pm central, 6pm mountain, 5pm pacific. You can watch it online at byutv.org, so anytime. Catch up episodes one and two and then you can watch it on either byutv.org or you can stream it at relativerace.com but again we hope as you get caught up that you’ll join every original episode airing every Sunday night.
Fisher: Sure.
Dan: It’s really fun. It’s wild.
Fisher: It’s just a good thing to set your recorder on no matter what you’re watching and catch the show.
Dan: Exactly, that’s what I do.
Fisher: I was just thinking. I’m looking at your bad luck, the first night you’re on against the Oscars, your debut night. The next week you’re on against the closing, the last episode of Downton Abbey
Dan: And the Presidential debate.
Fisher: Well that we can all skip to watch this, but still, I mean that’s your first two shows, your first two weeks, that’s a tough line-up to be up against.
Dan: You know what, we just filmed this past weekend episode 11 which we flew all the couples back and shot this episode 11 which is called ‘After the Race’ where the four couples come back and then talk about their experiences more and we toss them different vignettes, different parts of the episodes and we have them comment on them more, and there were representatives there from BYU-TV and I actually asked them I said “Can you explain to me what the thinking was here?” and they said “You know, it was a little bit of an error on our part when we put this in place, like eight months ago” and they said “But you know what they said, we’re finding that social media and the streaming is really peaking upwards already” so people are saying “I wasn’t able to watch it Sunday night against the Oscars, but I am streaming it and watching it online”
Fisher: So when you pick these couples, were these people who actually applied to be on the show?
Dan: Yes. We put out a casting call through a number of different mediums including a lot of the social media, and we created a website called ‘TRRCASTING’ which stood for ‘The Relative Race’trrcasting.com. Over a thousand people went to the site, and we asked them to submit a video, 1 to 2 minutes that explained who they are and why they should be on the show, and we gave a little bit of a premise of the show, they didn’t know the details in fact episode 1, which again we really hope you watch episode 1.
Fisher: [Laughs] it’s kind of important to watch episode 1.
Dan: Well it gives the back stories of all the couples, and you find out on episode 1, when they arrive in San Francisco, one of the very first things that is asked of the host, (me) so I’m standing there at peer 39 overlooking the ocean and I said “Welcome to Relative Race” I said “You’ve come from all over the country and you have four thousand five hundred miles in front of you. Now first thing I want to know is, how many of you like your phones and have brought them here?” They all raise their hands of course, and I said “How many of you think you could do without them?” Their jaws start dropping.
Fisher: Oh boy.
Dan: So we took away all of their cell-phones, we took away every GPS device. I then said “Welcome to your new GPS navigational device” and I raised it up and I said “This is what we call a map, a paper map” And so the age group is all over the map of our couples, we actually thought the youngest couple who were in their twenties, would just implode.
Fisher: [Laughs]
Dan: And they actually did pretty well. There’s much more than a dynamic here of discovering new family relatives. The interesting dynamic is that they have up to 8 hours together in a rental car everyday and they trying to figure out how to get to different…
Fisher: With a film crew.
Dan: Exactly. With six people around them, multiple cameras, Go-Pros inside their car, everything is recorded and it is fascinating to see how they get through this journey.
Fisher: So do you have each team basically have their own editing crew that puts together their package and then somebody else assembles the whole thing?
Dan: Yeah there is a media manager on site and then all that media comes back to us in our studios, and we’ve been spending about five months editing everything and we’re very close to editing the entire series. So again, now is the time to catch up and get hooked because… we’ve done a number of original television shows throughout the years and we feel fortunate to be able to do that, this is, I can honestly say, the best show we have ever created. It is really good!
Fisher: Well that’s what I keep hearing from everybody and I wouldn’t say it if that wasn’t the case. So give us one little hint of one story from this entire season that hits you most right here.
Dan: You know what it’s actually the next episode. Episode 3 happens to be my favorite episode. I got chills right now saying it. In this episode, one of the couples, it’s the husband, because you never know when you show up whom am I related to, is it the wife or the husband.
Fisher: Right.
Dan: And the couple discovers a cousin, and it’s the husband that finds a first cousin that he never knew that he had.
Fisher: Really?
Dan: Oh there are nieces that have never been met. These aren’t like sixth cousins; some of these people are first cousins and uncles that they never knew they had, one is a niece, in this case it’s a first cousin, and for me it was so poignant, it was so strong to see two strong, big, American men hugging each other and the moment they grabbed each other, they just broke into tears. They’re just sobbing and they say; and the statement is made by the couple that’s racing, they say “If we hadn’t done this, we would never know about our family” and he said “And here’s my cousin” and the moment I looked at him, I went “You’re my mother!” He said “Everything about you” his demeanour, the way he acted, was his mother who he lost fifteen years ago.
Fisher: Wow!
Dan: And he just looked at this man and they both just started sobbing and they said “The same blood is running through our veins.” And it’s a poignant moment, and these moments, the series is just riddled with them. But there’s also plenty of drama, there’s some compelling… it’s not all these incredibly emotional moments. There are some times when they met relatives where they were kind of like “Nice to meet you…can we get on with our race?”
Fisher: [Laughs]
Dan: Like all relatives.
Fisher: You’re not getting any of the twenty five grand. Okay, don’t like them.
Dan: It’s a good show.
Fisher: Well you know that’s what family stuff is all about.
Dan: Exactly.
Fisher: There’s politics even with this.
Dan: Exactly.
Fisher: So who knew? Well it’s ‘Relative Race,’ it’s the name of the show. It’s on BYU-TV which is on many cable networks throughout the United States. Otherwise you get it where?
Dan: Dish and Direct TV both have it nationwide. Everyone who has Dish or Direct or you can go online at byutv.org and stream it, or its own website at relativerace.com
Fisher: Dan Debenham, the host and producer, thanks for coming on!
Dan: Scott, it’s a pleasure, great to see you again.
Fisher: Alright, good to see you.
Coming up next; it’s a “two-fer,” we’ll talk to an Ireland senator who visited Roots Tech, and talk about what’s happening with Irish research… very important with St. Patty’s Day coming up, and another woman who’s offering a family grant to your student for genealogy, in three minutes on Extreme Genes.

 

Segment 3 Episode 130 (44:45)

Fisher: You have found us! America’s family history show, Extreme Genes and extremegenes.com
I am Fisher, your congenial host. And, are you surprised at how much we continue to pull out of the Roots Tech family history conference that was held in the Salt Lake City, Utah, last month? I’m not! Only because I was there, and I can tell you, we continue to have things that came out of it that we have to pass along in the course of the brief time we have each week.
And since a lot of places are celebrating St. Patrick’s Day this weekend, it felt like a good time to share with you a visit I had with a woman who came all the way from Ireland for Roots Tech and she wasn’t just an Irish genie, she’s also an Ireland Senator with a strange name.
So, I’m talking to Ireland Senator Jillian Van Turnhout. I’ve got to understand, Senator, how it is that an Irish Senator has the name, Van Turnhout?
Jillian: It’s not a very Irish name. In fact, you will only find two of them there, my husband and myself. He’s Dutch and apparently Napoleon gave them all surnames when he was doing the census.
Fisher: Right, which happened in much of Europe at that time. So, you’re here at Roots Tech. I’m just amazed to have you here, and pleased and honored to have a little time to talk to you. Tell us about what’s going on with family history in Ireland, because we have so many Irish-Americans who’ve had such a hard time over there over the years.
Jillian: Well, the records are really opening up and becoming online. Our national library and archive are coming on board with some of the subscription websites and some of the free websites. We do have the 1901 census and the 1911 census are free online. You can see the images.
Fisher: They weren’t burned?
Jillian: They weren’t burned. You can see the images. You can see where your ancestors lived. And because we’ve had so many records that were burned, we’ve had to be inventive. But the Irish, we are inventive, and we’ve found a lot of work arounds. Like, I have been able to trace my family to the late 1700s. And very substantial and they were farm labourers, they weren’t anybody of any means, or anything of such sort, that you’d say they’d have land records. So, you can do it. It takes a little bit of digging, a little bit of work, but it is a great achievement. We’re also seeing more records now coming online. In Ireland, we’re celebrating commemoration this year of the 1916 Rising, so a lot of public are digging out records out of their attics. Coming forward with information and resources and our government are seeing the value that that’s encouraging more people in.
Fisher: For travel?
Jillian: Travel. I might be saying, my point is, people don’t travel to Ireland to find out if they have Irish ancestors. You come to Ireland to walk where they walked, to stand on the land, to see where they were buried, to see where they were born, see why did they leave that area and the government are waking up to that fact, and the state is beginning to put more and more records online. We see the Parish records are now online on our national library of Ireland, and I believe shortly to be announced, two major companies are going to have an index to those records. So, that would be great, because that’s all the parishes around Ireland. You’ll really be able to see the births and marriages of your ancestors.
Fisher: Well, and I’m noticing also that there’s a lot of talk about hotels now bringing in genealogical consultants to help people find their people while they travel to Ireland.
Jillian: Yes. Many of the top hotels are having consultants online, and many freelance people, genealogists in Ireland if you go to the association of genealogists. They’re there to help you. We want you to come to Ireland, but we want your experience to be rich and rewarding and that you really can. I say there’s somebody who travels to Wisconsin, to see three generations of women in my family, who went to a small town in Watertown, Wisconsin. And, I went, because I was able to access the records at home. I was able to go out, meet the historical society, find out even more rich information, and I feel I have a special link, because this town, were very welcoming and I hope in Ireland, we’ll return that type of welcome.
Fisher: Oh, I have no doubt that that will be the case. Thank you so much Senator for coming on, and it’s exciting to see what’s happening in Ireland now. It’s been a long time in coming, but new days are ahead for genealogists with Irish ancestry.
Jillian: It’s the time to start looking when it’s suspected if you have a name that has a slight Irish twinge to it, or you’ve always heard stories in your families. I’d say to start searching, you will have Irish roots.
Fisher: Awesome stuff! Thanks for coming to Roots Tech.
Jillian: Thank you very much for having me on.
Fisher: How cool is that? That Senator Van Turnhout would travel however many time zones that is to attend Roots Tech. Unbelievable. You know, people are passionate about family history. Enough so to actually start a family grant, to encourage high school and college students to pursue genealogy.
Denise May Levernick is behind this thing and she’s on the line with me right now from Pasadena, California.
How are you Denise?
Denise: I’m great, I’m great. Enjoying some wonderful weather here in California.
Fisher: I’m so excited for what you’ve got going on. Back in 2010, you lost your mom who was a fabulous genie, even researching her cousins right down to the end and you’ve set up a scholarship in her name for student genealogists. You want to tell us about this?
Denise: Oh, I’d love to. Thanks for asking. Mom was…she called herself a genie, and she was very excited about discovering where she came from, and when she retired, she lived here in southern California, grew up here in Orange County. When she retired, she moved to Arizona and became very active there with the genealogy groups, but every June, she came out to California and we would go together to the Southern California Genealogical Society Conference, the Jamboree.
Fisher: Right.
Denise: And mom just loved it. It’s a great conference. Three days and well over a thousand people attend. So, when she passed away, and we were looking for some way to honour her memory, it just seemed like a great fit. She always worked in volunteerism. She worked with students and young people. It just seemed like such a good fit, to set up a student genealogy grant, and tie it in with the jamboree, because, to be honest, I’m a little bit selfish, I get to meet the winner each year.
Fisher: Oh, how fun.
Denise: Yeah, it is fun, and we set it up in 2010, and we had five young people receive the award and each one of them have continued in their family history work and research. It’s just been so exciting to see them kind of grow in this field.
Fisher: Now, this is a $500 cash award, and it’s going to be awarded at the Jamboree, which be the way is going on June 3rd through 5th of this year so, it’s coming right up.
Denise: Right.
Fisher: And they have to be between the ages of 18 and 23?
Denise: Right. That’s it.
Fisher: That’s it, and a student? Okay, so they’ve got to be going to school.
Denise: Um-hmm and they have to also come to the jamboree to receive the cheque.
Fisher: Okay.
Denise: And, because part of it is, the whole conference will give them a free registration, so they get to attend at no cost, and we take them around, introduce them to people, and you know, they get to meet the genealogy guys, and David Lambert if he’s there from New England. It’s just a wonderful opportunity for them to kind of meet a bigger community of genealogists.
Fisher: Absolutely. Well, Lambert, you probably shouldn’t have mentioned that, I don’t want to discourage anybody, showing up there, but…hey, this sounds like a lot of fun. How do people get involved in this? How do they submit their application to possibly score this $500 cash award?
Denise: Well, send any students you know to the grant page, which is at my website, www.thefamilycurator.com/swf-grant
S.W.F. Suzanne Winsor Freeman, that’s my mom’s name and the whole packet is available there. We’re taking applications through March 20th, so there’s still time. I know students love to put these things off till the last minute, so we’re looking forward to that.
Fisher: Yeah, this kind of says right now, ‘Do it now or forget about it’.
Denise: Yeah.
Fisher: Absolutely. So the familycurator.com actually, you can find the links right there. We’ll link it on our page at extremegenes.com as well, so…
Denise: Great! Thank you so much.
Fisher: Great stuff Denise. Thanks for coming on, and we look forward to hearing who the winner is this year.
Denise: I will keep you posted. Hope you can win.
Fisher: And, coming up next, Tom Perry from tmcplace.com the Preservation Authority returns to talk about “The Cloud” Seems there’s some folks that have some concerns about preserving their digital family photos in audio and video there. Are they justified? Tom will set the record straight next in three minutes on Extreme Genies, America’s Family History Show.
MC Segment 4 Episode 130
Host Scott Fisher with guest Tom Perry

Fisher: And welcome to “Cloud Talk!” On Extreme Genes America’s Family History Show, and extremegenes.com
I am Fisher the Radio Roots Sleuth with Tom Perry from tmcplace.com
He is our Preservation Authority we have on every week and Tom we’re just talking about this off air. It is just amazing how quickly things are changing with the Cloud and how that is kind of confusing. You know what it really reminds me of? Going way back when fax machines first came out.
Tom: Yup.
Fisher: Remember this?
Tom: Yup, absolutely.
Fisher: Fax machines came out and business immediately went to these things because it was a huge boon in communication and yet there were so many people that hadn’t even heard of them yet and they were already in all the businesses around the country.
“Wait a minute, what does the fax machine do, we can have this at home?”
Remember?
Tom: Oh yes! Any place you had a phone plug they had a fax machine.
Fisher: Right. So everything has changed. Now that the Cloud has become, I think in some ways it’s very much the same thing as a 21st century version of the fax machine where it’s out there, everybody’s using it but there’s still a huge number of people left kind of scratching their head going “Wait, what do I count on, how to do I use it, what should it cost me, why should I use it?”
Tom: Oh exactly!
Fisher: All these things.
Tom: Oh you know, that is absolutely the best comparison I’ve ever heard of what the Cloud is. Even before this when there were copy machines which actually turned into fax machines, you’d go into the precursors to Kinko’s and they didn’t let you touch the machines. You’d hand them your stuff, they would run it and then started letting you do it. If you can power on your computer, you can store stuff in the Cloud, it’s really that easy. Not as hard as people think it is.
Fisher: Right and we’re addressing folks who are just getting started in this and in storage and preservation of their digital material. Scanning photographs, photoshopping them and making sure they’re not going anywhere.
Tom: Exactly, and some people they’re intimidated, they think “Oh I don’t want to learn this new software. I don’t want to learn how to fix my pictures up.” Storing stuff on the Cloud isn’t like that. It’s not something new you really need to learn
Anybody that’s even a virgin at computers can figure out how to do this. You have an icon on your desktop and you tell it that’s where you want to store it. Everything is on Lightjar, or Icloud, or Google Drive, or Dropbox, and once its set up it does it for you in the background. You just keep dropping it, dropping it, dropping it, and one of the neatest things about the Cloud that I love is whether I’m on the road, if I’m home, if I’m at work I can access any of my stuff.
I don’t have to “Oh make a backup of this drive, keep it on this thumb drive and haul it with me.” I can go any place where there’s an internet connection, even on the airplane and I can go to Dropbox and work on a photoshop document or work on my genealogy, or anything I want to and the neat thing about it is “Oh hey, my sister Diane might be interested in these photos that I just found.” So I send her an invitation, she gets an email, she has access to just that folder that I gave her permission to.
It’s almost like one of those too good to be true things. It is absolutely incredible and everybody needs to get some kind of Cloud storage. We had a friend that just lost her house just the other day burnt to the ground, and all her stuff was in it. They had nothing on the Cloud, so basically if their brothers or sisters or relatives didn’t have any copies of what they had just had in their house, they would have lost everything.
Fisher: That’s right. We just had a disaster at our home radio station of past storage. Now, fortunately of course everything for Extreme Genes is stored on a Cloud. So while it took some time to restore everything that had been lost locally, it was there and we were able to get back into business pretty darn fast. But this is such an important thing to understand if you’re just getting started in family history, that the Cloud is a simple thing that takes care of itself. In fact, I’ve got one that every fifteen minutes it goes through and looks for any changes I’ve made in my computer at all and makes those changes and duplicates them in this Cloud storage area. So, if I lose my computer, it goes down or somebody stole it heaven forbid. This is all available to me instantly to restore.
Tom: And like you say “instant” is what’s so important. In fact right after the break let’s talk a little bit about how instant this thing can be, but you don’t have to keep everything on every single computer. You can give certain parameters on what you want to keep on each individual computer.
Fisher: Alright. Great advice! We’ll get into it more, coming up in three minutes on Extreme Genes, America’s Family History Show.

MC Segment 5 Episode 130
Host Scott Fisher with guest Tom Perry
Fisher: We are back! Final segment of Extreme Genes America’s Family History Show in extremegenes.com
It is Fisher here the Radio Roots Sleuth. Tom Perry is in the house from tmcplace.com our Preservation Authority. We’ve been talking about, I guess you’d call this “Clouds 101.”
Tom: Exactly.
Fisher: Because like we talked about earlier, it’s a little bit like it was with fax machines. They came along very quickly and a lot of people were left scratching their heads going “Wait, do I have to have this, does it have to cost, is it hard to use, what do I do with it?” and this is a lot of folks who are just now perhaps getting into family history preservation.
Tom: Oh absolutely! Like we’ve done film transfers for people that we say “Hey, do you want us to put it on the Cloud? Then you have it instantly you don’t even have to come back in the store, we don’t have to ship it to you.” It’s like “Oh!” Like it’s this big haunting thing. “Oh no I can’t do the cloud, I don’t know a computer very well.”
I can spend ten minutes with somebody and show them how to use the Cloud. Because like I said in the earlier segment once it’s setup it rocks and rolls and the neat thing about having all your stuff in the Cloud, if you’re at home and you’re working on something and you say “Oh you know what, I was going to finish this thing for the report for the meeting in the morning, I’m going to work on that now instead of going in early. You go into the Cloud and you pull it down and there it is. Like I use one of those new mini ipads I use as a GPS in my suburban because that doesn’t have a GPS, it’s cheaper to do that.
Soon as I bought it, plugged it in and typed in my thing, boom! All my photos, all my apps, everything are right there, I don’t have to re-download them, I don’t have to go search for them, I don’t even have to pay for them again and because the way they’re set up. So this ipad I set up last night already has everything on it that I need and that’s the way it is with the Cloud. Sometimes I get a warning on my computer where it says “Oh you’re running out of memory.” So I go to my Dropbox and I say “Okay, well you know I don’t really need these things on this computer because I don’t access them.”
Fisher: Right.
Tom: So, I go in and say “hey I don’t need this on this computer anymore.” So it erases them from the computer but it’s still in the Cloud. So now I have all this memory but yet if one day I go “Oh you know what? I really do need that.” Go back in, click on it and in 5-10 minutes it’s all back through again.
Fisher: Right, downloaded again. And the question always comes up about security.
Tom: Oh yeah.
Fisher: Everybody is kind of concerned about that and certainly there’s risk of security with anything you do. I would suggest that there’s the possibility that security on your home computer is probably riskier than a Cloud like Google Drive or Dropbox.
Tom: Oh absolutely. Somebody could break into your home and steal your computer, they’ve got everything that’s on your computer and even if you have it encrypted with passwords, most people unfortunately don’t change their passwords very often, or they have something really easy like their birth date or the name of their dog or their first born kid
Fisher: Or 1,2,3,4!
Tom: Oh hey, I’ve actually had customers call and say “Hey, I need you to download this stuff off my phone I want it on a video DVD.” In fact, we tell them “Change your password, send that to us and then change it back so that we don’t have it.” They say “Oh no, it’s easy it’s just 1,2,3,4.”
Fisher: [Laughs]
Tom: And I’m going “Okay you just gave me your password. What other devices do you have with the same password?”
Fisher: [Laughing]
Tom: So, security is important. I have never heard of a breach on the Cloud. I’m sure some day it will happen. But these guys, they’ve learned from all the mistakes from Target, Home Depot, that their stuff is so redundant now. Nothing’s perfect. But I mean it’s getting close to being there. But it’s just so nice that any time you need anything its right there on Dropbox. And like I mentioned in the first segment, if you have relatives and you’re working on things with that, you want to collaborate. You open up a Dropbox folder that everybody has access to.
So they can drop photos in, you can drop photos in. They can look at it instantly. There’s not “send” or not getting disks or mailing them. It saves you so much time, it’s just absolutely a must have. Everybody needs to have a Cloud and as you mentioned, it’s not expensive, a lot of Clouds are even free if you keep your memory under so much. We have tons because we do lots of video for people, but yet we spend less than $100 a year, that’s less than $10 a month for a terabyte worth of storage.
So it’s awesome if you can get two Clouds, make sure the Clouds aren’t related whether you’re on Google drive, Icloud, Dropbox, Lightjar… get them.
Fisher: Alright. Good stuff Tom, thanks for coming on.
Tom: Glad to be here.
Fisher: We’ve covered a lot of ground this week. Thanks once again to Ireland’s Senator Jillian Van Turnhout, for talking to us about what’s happening in Ireland with Irish research as we get ready for St. Patty’s Day. Also, to Denise May Levernick who is offering a family grant to students who are in genealogy, and to Dan Debenham host and producer of the “Relative Race” a great new reality show everybody is raving about.
Talk to you next week and remember as far as everyone knows… we’re a nice normal family!

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Episode 129 – Genealogy Gems’ Lisa Louise Cooke on Mobile Genealogy and the Genealogy of a House!

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Click Here to Listen to this Episode!

Fisher and David Allen Lambert, Chief Genealogist of the New England Historic Genealogical Society and AmericanAncestors.com, open the show with news about a recently discovered World War II mess kit that has united a family.  Then David shares great new for Midwestern researchers at the Allen County Genealogical Library in Fort Wayne, Indiana.  David and Fisher then talk about finding your ancestors in the diaries of people who were involved in their lives… like ministers and doctors.  Wait til you hear what David found for someone recently in a minister’s diary!  Then David shares another Tech Tip, and this week’s NEHGS free guest user database.

Lisa_Louise_Cooke_Mobile

Fisher then welcomes to the show, for the first time, Lisa Louise Cooke, host of the long-running “Genealogy Gems” podcast.

Mobile_Gen_COVER

Lisa has written a book on Mobile Genealogy and shares some tips on how to maximize your research experiences while away from home.  You won’t want to miss what Lisa has to say!

Carolyn-Tolman-photo-Legacy-Tree-Genealogists-15011

Next, meet professional genealogist Carolyn Tolman from LegacyTree.com.  Some time back, Carolyn relocated with her husband to Pennsylvania where they moved into an old house.  Wanting to know more about it, the house’s “genealogy” turned into a whole new adventure!  You’ll want to hear how Carolyn did what she did, and what the result was!

Then, Tom Perry from TMCPlace.com, our Preservation Authority, joins Fisher for the final segments.  Tom talks about a turn-of-the-last-century photo brought Tom at Roots Tech.  It’s the earliest “selfie” he’s ever seen, and he coveted it!  He’ll explain how it was done, as well as how to salvage a picture with “outlaws” (former in-laws!) in it.

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

 

Transcript of Episode 129

Segment 1 – Episode 129 (00:30)

Fisher: Hello America! And welcome to Extreme Genes, America’s Family History Show and ExtremeGenes.com
I am Fisher your Radio Roots Sleuth, on the program where we shake your family tree and watch the nuts fall out.
Exciting guests today! I’m really delighted to have Lisa Louise Cooke on, and if you’re not familiar with Lisa, she is the host of a podcast called “Genealogy Gems” and she’s put together a book called “Mobile Genealogy” so this is kind of a way to help you when you go do research on your family history somewhere where you don’t have to be transferring things from one computer to another, and she’s got some great tips for you coming up in about eight minutes.
Very excited to have Lisa Louise Cooke on the show!
Plus, later on from our brand new sponsor Legacy Tree Genealogists, Carolyn Tolman is going to be here and she has a great story too. She moved into a house some years ago in Pennsylvania and what a house it turned out to be! Some incredible history, it was going to be removed and she went to work to save it. With a history on a house, how do you do a genealogy on a house and what would that mean to you? Carolyn Tolman will tell you about that later on.
But right now let’s check in with Boston and our good friend the Chief Genealogist of the New England Historic Genealogical Society and AmericanAnsestors.org
David Allen Lambert, how are you sir?
David: Things are wonderful in Beantown. How are things with you Fish?
Fisher: All right. I’m excited we have a long list of things to cover here today. Let’s get started on it right away. First off in our “family histoire news,” there’s a mess kit that’s caused a lot of attention.
David: It did. And actually it’s amazing. Metal detectors are always finding amazing things on battlefields but this thing reunited a family. The mess kit for Hudson Funk of the 83rd 330th infantry who was over at Normandy and as you probably saw in the story the unfortunate thing, he lost part of both of his legs and never talked about the war to his children. But this mess kit simply had HLF, his initials and part of a serial number but it was enough to catch the imagination of the metal detector to start searching for it. He found the family out in Pennsylvania, in a town called Roxborough where his sons and one of his brothers have now been reunited with this wonderful artefact and it’s brought a family together.
Fisher: They came from all over the country, they hadn’t been together in years, and they’re celebrating, there are pictures of them toasting this thing and holding this mess kit with a big dent in it with their relative’s initials in it. In fact, the brother is still living at 95 years old.
David: That’s wonderful, it really is. But in Allen County Public Library out in Fort Wayne Indiana, I give a hats off to Curt Wicher and his staff. They have just finished a quarter of a million dollar renovation that has helped in creating both their Life Story Center, where people can come in and do oral histories and they also now have a new auditorium that seats over 240 people on a theatre style amphitheatre.
Fisher: Isn’t that great. The Allen County Library is the second largest library in the world and serves largely the Midwest, so this is a big move for them. Very exciting.
David: It really is. An interesting thing happened here in our library in Boston, I had a lady come in and she was looking for her ancestor but she had a specific question “Where was his diary?” Do you have any diaries of your ancestors?
Fisher: I don’t. I have like one paragraph of an autobiography by my great grandmother and that’s about it. But I do have a second great grandfather who hand wrote five pages of his autobiography by about 1905. I have that original but no diaries.
David: They’re great things when you can have it. But I don’t have one from any of mine. However, I can tell you that the brother of my ancestor was a judge at the Witchcraft Trials. Samuel Sewall, and he published a diary for decades but also lots of details.
Fisher: Wow!
David: But getting back to this lady’s query, I could not find a diary for her ancestor but I did find a diary for the minister in her family’s town.
Fisher: Oh, wow!
David: And the minister had some peculiar things to inform.
Fisher: [Laughs]
David: About good things and also the confessed sins.
Fisher: Oh! The naughty and nice list!
David: Exactly. So you just never know when doing genealogy what things you might find and will get you an interview on Extreme Genes.
Fisher: Now wait a minute, were the sins very specific in this diary about the ancestor?
David: Oh yes! They were very specific!
Fisher: [Laughs] All right. So the minister had a diary on the ancestor, anything else?
David: The other thing I told her is “Look for doctors.” Couldn’t find one for her but the town in Maine where my family came from, Westbrook, Maine, there was a doctor in town who actually recorded the birth of all the children he had attended, and I can tell you that my great, great grandmother in 1822, cost a dollar twenty five when she was delivered first thing in the morning.
Fisher: Really? I have never heard of something like that. Of course also there are a lot of the stores that kept a record back in Revolutionary times of people who came through and bought things and how much they paid for it and what they bought, and I found material there that’s really interesting.
David: A couple of years ago one of our members gave us the family store account books from Roxbury, Massachusetts during the Revolutionary War, that gave things that were sold to the British troops and the American troops.
Fisher: Wow!
David: I want to give a shout out to the followers of Extreme Genes and myself DL Genealogist on Twitter, and because I participated in my first ever hashtag “Gen Chat” it happens every other Friday. This coming week they’re talking on Civil War research, but it’s free, you’re on Twitter #genchat it’s a great tech-tip to go in and network and follow a genie as I say, on Twitter. What I am investigating hopefully for the next show or the show after, is the company in Provo, Utah called ‘Research Ties.’ They offer for free a basic version of their research log which you can create right online. They also sell a version for 30 dollars annually which has 3 logins and it has 10 GBs worth of space. Basically you have a research log. Fish, you can go check at any time. You can print it out, you can add to it, you can create certain criteria, great stuff.
Fisher: Wow.
David: And speaking of databases, for the guest users of AmericanAncestors.org, we are very excited to have the Annals of Barra Island which is the Robert O’Dwyer papers of the 3 volumes of the studies from the Barra Peninsula in West Cork Island that covers from 1776 to 1992.
Fisher: That’s all free, of course?
David: Free exactly from the AmericanAncestors.org. One of the many guest user databases we do. Well that’s all I have from Beantown, catch you next week. Fish, have a good one.

Fisher: Great stuff, thanks David. And coming up next in 3 minutes, we are going to talk to Lisa Louise Cooke, she’s the host of ‘Genealogy Gems’ the podcast about Mobile Genealogy, and why should it matter to you. On Extreme Genes, America’s Family History Show.

 

Segment 2 Episode 129 (25:20)

Fisher: And welcome back to America’s Family History Show, Extreme Genes and ExtremeGenes.com. It is Fisher here, the Radio Roots Sleuth, with a legend on the other end of the line. She is the host of Genealogy Gems, a podcast. It’s been around, what, about ten years now, Lisa Louise?
Lisa: Nearly. We started in 2007.
Fisher: Yeah, a long time ago, Lisa Louise Cooke, whom I’ve admired, well, from not too far a distance actually, over the last several years. She’s a great teacher, very knowledgeable in family history and coming up with little nuggets. I think those are the gems you talk about in the name of your show, Lisa. And I’m excited about your new book that you’ve got out, called, “Mobile Genealogy”. And this really kind of takes things into the 21st century. What got you started on this?
Lisa: Well, thank you for having me on the show. It’s great to be here. And what got me started on this was actually, several years ago, when the iPad first came out, I got my iPad and I was sitting there and my husband was looking at me and going, ‘Oh my gosh! Did you just buy the most expensive email checker in the universe?’ You know? Because that’s all I was doing. I said, ‘No! I’m playing Angry Birds. What else do you want me to do?’
Fisher: “I’m balanced!”
Lisa: Yeah, exactly. And he says, “Yeah, you know, well, you said you were going to do your family history on this as well, right? So, he set the challenge for me to say, I’ve got to learn more about how to use this device. How to make the transition from a laptop to going mobile with a tablet, and of course, our Smartphone is just a small version of a Tablet.
Fisher: Sure.
Lisa: So, my first book was, How to turn your iPad into a genealogy powerhouse. Because I had an iPad, that’s what I was focused on. And that one came about four years ago, of course, it’s already so obsolete.
Fisher: It happens that way.
Lisa: You know, technology moves so fast, doesn’t it?
Fisher: Yeah, it really does.
Lisa: So, Mobile Genealogy came out of, it was time for a new book, and I wanted to expand, because there’s Android, right? There’s Android, there’s Apple, there’s everything in between and the key here is that it’s all mobile. And so, the book addresses all the different platforms, all the different types of devices, and really digs ever further into, how to get the most out of them for family history, which is awesome if you don’t have to lug your laptop around, you’re in good shape.
Fisher: Well, that’s really true. You know, the thing is, I think, for a lot of people who have the time to do this, they haven’t necessarily come up in the age of the devices that we’re in right now. So, it’s a scary thing, isn’t it? And I think, part of the challenge for all of us, is not only for us to get comfortable with these devices, but to help other people to get there as well. And I’m sure you’ve had some people who are seniors particularly who are catching on to some of these things right now or having some success as a result of your teaching. Tell us about some of that.
Lisa: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, for most of us, we didn’t grow up with all of this, and it can be kind of intimidating, but the way I kind of approach it is to say, you know, we have to get into what I call, ‘Tablet Mindset’ and stop looking at it as something that’s going to function like the laptop.
Fisher: Right.
Lisa: Because they’re two different animals. When we start with that in the book, that’s where they kind of make the mind shift and then I talk about how to then approach it so that you’re using it from a Tablet Mobile perspective, and we’re really focusing on the tasks. What are the tasks that you do in your genealogy research? And if you’re focused on that, then the right apps will come to you, the right functionality, you’ll know how to move around, but if you’re going at it, first and foremost, how do I duplicate what I was doing on my home computer on this Tablet? You’re going to get snarled up.
Fisher: Oh boy.
Lisa: So, I find that people really like that approach. I think it makes sense and then we just in the book, dig right into a lot of the apps, and what I’ve been hearing from folks, is that they like the fact that, as geeky as I am, I don’t write techno geek, you know?
Fisher: Right, and that’s important.
Lisa: It is. You know, way back in the day, well, I’m dating myself now, but way back in the day when the TRS-80 computer came out, I was one of the only women working at RadioShack of all places.
Fisher: Oh, wow.
Lisa: And we had to explain what a computer was. What this device was supposed to do, and so, I’ve been kind of doing that for a long time and you know, if you’re not in the mode of trying to prove how techno savvy you are and smart you are, but you’re just trying to help people, then it goes a lot better, and that’s certainly my goal. I want them to feel like they’re getting the most use out of their Tablet. So, one of the apps that really has jumped out and that is new to this edition of this book, Mobile Genealogy, is Chrome Remote Desktop, and I think this one is like, changing people’s lives.
Fisher: Totally.
Lisa: Yeah, because it means that those limitations that the Tablet or the Smartphone has, and I keep saying ‘Tablet or Smartphone’ because they’re just pretty much the same thing.
Fisher: Right, yes.
Lisa: The limitations that you run into, like, it won’t play my flash video. It won’t let me use this form or whatever it is that you’re doing, or this app is kind of stripped down version of the full blown website or software. Well, Chrome Desktop just unleashes the power of your Tablet, because it gives you access directly into your full blown computer at home, which you can have open on your desktop and sleeping, if you want to. You can ping it. And now, you’re running your entire computer right from your Tablet. So, you have no limitations. You are back to being able to do all the functionality of a laptop.
Fisher: I love that.
Lisa: I think that’s one of the main chapters that’s just been blowing people’s minds.
Fisher: Well, it’s also, you save everything back to your home computer which is so nice.
Lisa: Yeah, and you put it in another app which we really go in depth in the book which is Dropbox or any other type of cloud storage. We think of those kinds of apps as being kind of Grand Central Station for our files. So if we are accessing our home computer with the remote desktop, and we’re making new files, but we want to access them back on our Tablet, how do we get them there? But we don’t want to email them to ourselves, we save them to Dropbox and then they show up in our Dropbox app on our mobile device. What could be better?
Fisher: Boy, I’ll tell you! What a great tip just right there. That’s make the whole thing worth it. All right, so that’s one great app, Lisa Louise. What else do you have?
Lisa: Well, I think another thing that we’re struggling with as genealogists is when we face the relatives in our family who get that ‘glazed over’ look when we start talking about family history. Does that ever happen to you, Scott?
Fisher: Oh, no, no. They light up like a Christmas tree!
Lisa: They light up like a Christmas tree? You have a special family!
Fisher: No, I don’t. There’s like maybe one person out of 17 at the end of the table during the holidays, maybe that one person. Like you say the geeks, you know? But it’s funny how it works, because usually by the end of a vacation visit or a holiday visit, everybody’s saying, ‘Hey, what was that story? Go ask Scott.’ you know? And they always come back. So, they have a lot of fun at our expense, but at the end of the day, they love what we do, don’t you think?
Lisa: I think they do, and the trick is to talk their language, right?
Fisher: Yes.
Lisa: To share a compelling story or do something – share is the key here – as one of my daughters says, if it’s not shareable, it doesn’t exist.
Fisher: Yeah, that’s right.
Lisa: To the Millennials, you know? It’s got to be shareable and that’s what’s enticing. And so, here’s an app that I love that I have in my photograph chapter, and it’s called, Retype, R E T Y P E, it by Sumoing LTD and it costs, I don’t know, $3, but I love this, because it takes photos and turns them into what we call ‘memes’ right? These are really fun, shareable images on Facebook or whatever. We see them all the time. It’s so easy to create your own, so I kind of walked the family historian through, let’s take some of your family photos, your old family photos, add the text and they’re really cool…it adds kind of a really fun font, there’s zillions of them to choose from and you can either use the saying that they offer up or you can give it its own caption yourself, but I’ve been using this constantly, not only personally, but on my Genealogy Gems website to convey ideas in really fun, shareable ways.
Fisher: And so, all these apps are coming along to basically take your family history and turn it into some form of art, and that’s what’s exciting too, because art tells a story in a different way.
Lisa: Exactly, and in a really quick way, don’t you think? That you can look at something and you get it. You get what that concept is.
Fisher: That’s exactly right. Yeah, exactly, and that’s the joy, but what’s the name of that app again for people who missed it.
Lisa: It’s called Retype, and like I say, it’s about $3. You’ll find it in the app store, and I’ve got loads and loads of other types of exciting apps like that. So, you can see, this book is not just, ‘These are the Genealogy apps’, but I’m really focusing on what are you trying to accomplish? If you want to snag and captivate those people in your family, here’s the app for you. We got to get outside that genealogy box and we’ve really got to focus on what we’re trying to accomplish and get it done, and that’s what I’m hoping that people will find that the book will do.
Fisher: Well, that’s the end game, it’s to get everybody excited about it and sharing and preserving at the end of the day, and in a way that is useable by future generations, because we all want…it sure beats writing in a tree, right? You know, carving your name someplace, because that’s about all there is otherwise. She’s Lisa Louise Cooke. She is the host of Genealogy Gems, a great podcast. It’s been around for a long, long time now and of course the Genealogy Gems website with all kinds of great things there. I’m just delighted to have you on, Lisa Louise. What do you have coming up on your show in the coming weeks?
Lisa: Well you, sir, will be coming up on our show in the coming weeks and we’re also going to have one of the couples from the Relative Race on the show, which is the NUBY, kind of DNA amazing race of genealogy TV show that’s come out and lots of good stuff. And if people are interested in more on mobile genealogy, we have a YouTube channel, youtube.com/genealogygems. You can also get to it from GenealogyGems.com, our main site, but I’ve got a class the we did at Roots Tech and I saw you at Roots Tech. We did it in our booth. We recorded it and they can watch it for free on video.
Fisher: I love the way you think. Great stuff! Lisa Louise Cooke, thanks for coming on. It’s good to have you finally.
Lisa: Awesome to be here. Thanks Scott!
Fisher: Lisa Louise always has tons of things going on at GenealogyGems.com. Hey, and just a reminder by the way, coming up in September, it’s going to be our very first Extreme Genes cruise! Yes, it’s a Fall Foliage Tour, but a lot of history mixed in as well. David Allen Lambert, the Chief Genealogist for the New England Historic Genealogical Society, will be joining me, giving lectures on days we’re at sea. Talking about the history of Boston, the Colonial Period, the Loyalists who settled in Nova Scotia, the area we’re going to be going to. So, if you want to find out more, go to our Extreme Genes Facebook page and you’ll see everything you’ll need to know. And coming up next, we’re going to talk to Carolyn Tolman from LegacyTree.com about the “Genealogy” of a house. That’s in five minutes on Extreme Genes, America’s Family History Show.

 

Segment 3 Episode 129 (44:45)

Fisher: And Welcome back to America’s Family History Show, Extreme Genes and ExtremeGenes.com. It is Fisher here, the Radio Roots Sleuth.
I am very excited to have a new guest on the show, someone we haven’t had on the show before. She is with Legacy Tree Genealogists, one of our new sponsors. Carolyn Tolman is here, Hi Carolyn welcome!
Carolyn: Hi
Fisher: It’s great to have you. I’m excited about what you’ve written on a blog here recently about doing the genealogy of a house. Now I’ve gone through this recently where I saw that the home my Dad and Mom built when I was 3 and we were in for 20 years, recently went on the market for only the second time since we sold it. And so all the MLS listings had all the pictures of what it looks like today, and I was able to actually create some side by side pictures, photos of us back in the day and what it looks like now, and it’s so much fun. But you actually went through – you moved into a home that you had never been in before, never even been in the neighbourhood before, and researched the house. What a great experience. Talk about this a little bit.
Carolyn: Yes my husband had the opportunity to go to the U.S. Army War College which is on the Carlisle Barracks Army Post in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, and because of the size of our family they assigned us to this old farm house that was on Post and no one could really tell me the history of it, and being a genealogist I just had to know.
Fisher: You just had to know. What year did it go back to?
Carolyn: We figured out that it was in about 1856, so before the Civil War.
Fisher: Wow, so Antebellum, yeah?
Carolyn: Uh huh.
Fisher: Wow!
Carolyn: And Confederate soldiers actually spent the night there, the night before they were called away to Gettysburg. They had invaded the town, and the mother in the home fed and sheltered them for the night.
Fisher: Now wait a minute, how’d you find that out?
Carolyn: There was a magazine that was from 1918, the author was the farmer at the farm house and he talked about a young woman visiting who had grown up in the house, who shared that story.
Fisher: So this was in the magazine, where did you find the magazine?
Carolyn: Okay, I found out that the house was going to be torn down and I visited the Cumberland County Historical Society, one of the great old historical societies in Pennsylvania, and they found out where I was living and they knew immediately that this was the Indian School Farmhouse and they brought out this magazine article and shared it with me.
Fisher: How cool is that.
Carolyn: Yeah. That’s what started the whole search.
Fisher: And so you decided you want to get into this a little bit more and see what had happened, because this place was going to be torn down after you left.
Carolyn: Uh huh. Once I visited the Historical Society, they said “Someone needs to document the history of this house” to convince the army that it does not need to be torn down.
Fisher: Well who better than a professional genealogist like yourself!
Carolyn: I felt like I was in the right place.
Fisher: So you started from there, you had a story from the very early years.
Carolyn: Yes.
Fisher: What did you find and how did you do it?
Carolyn: Well I noticed that the street behind the house was named Parker Springs, and there was also a big spring behind the house, so I knew I was looking probably for a Parker family. So I went to the land index and found a deed of an Andrew Parker selling his land to the army, selling his farm. So I knew that it was the family of Andrew Parker. I then went to the Cumberland County Courthouse, and for me, I’m used to going to the Family History Library and dealing with microfilms, but there they pulled out their big dusty books and let me look through them.
Fisher: That is special isn’t it, and just the smell of it, I like that.
Carolyn: It was all I could do to keep from rubbing my cheek on the page [laughs]
Fisher: [Laughs]
Carolyn: I was able to trace the owners of the house from the Parkers back to the farm owners. So I have this list of names and dates of owners. I then went back to the Historical Society who housed the tax records and because I knew who owned the house and where they were living, I was able to find those records and notice what the tax man wrote on them, and I found out that in 1855, the house on the property was a stone house.
Fisher: Hmm.
Carolyn: But in 1858 it was a brick house. So that’s how I figured out that they bought the property with a stone house and replaced it with the brick house that I was living in. So thanks to the tax records…
Fisher: So that’s how you got an idea of when the house was built, from the tax records.
Carolyn: Yes.
Fisher: That’s awesome.
Carolyn: Yeah. So normally a genealogist would use those to trace people coming and going in a county, but I used it to trace the house and the condition of the house.
Fisher: Fascinating.
Carolyn: Yeah.
Fisher: Absolutely amazing. So where did it go from there? Now you’re back just before the Civil War, you know what happens during the Civil War with the Confederates taking over and staying in there before they head off to Gettysburg, then what?
Carolyn: Well, that house was right next to the army Post and the Post needed training ground, and in 1879 they had been abandoned after the Civil War, the army wasn’t using it, and Richard Pratt who had been a soldier had been out fighting the Indians, and he realized in his dealings with them that they weren’t savages, they were humans, and he wanted to teach them. So he managed to get the Post as an Indian school.
Fisher: Wow.
Carolyn: So in 1879 the Indian School began and they wanted to teach these Indian students how to farm, so they needed a real working farm and they bought the Parker farm. So the farm house became a place where the Indian students would sleep and get their meals and then work on the dairy in the morning, and they also had classrooms in the house where they learned how to run a farm because they were teaching them how to compete with white men in white society.
Fisher: Wow. Now how long did that go on?
Carolyn: That school lasted until 1918 when the end of World War 1 required the Post to be used as a hospital. So the school shut down in 1918.
Fisher: What a history though. Civil War barracks to an Indian school, to a hospital for the military.
Carolyn: Yes, and then the Medical school used the farmhouse also to teach the soldiers occupational skills in going back into civilian society.
Fisher: Now how did you learn this? That it had become at this time a hospital?
Carolyn: I visited the library in Carlisle and every library has a local history room, and that’s a favorite place for genealogists.
Fisher: Yes.
Carolyn: And there was a history of Carlisle Barracks in that room and thanks to that history I was able to trace what was going on with the farm in connection with the Post which also meant I knew what was going on with the farmhouse.
Fisher: Wow, this is amazing.
Carolyn: Yes. The house continued to run the farm until about 1930 when the Post took over most of the farmland, and the house became quarters for soldiers. From that point on the connection that the house had to the Indian school became forgotten and diminished and it didn’t matter anymore. So that’s how it came to be on the list to be torn down. People didn’t realize the significance it had, the history that it had.
Fisher: Right. So you did all this work, you used tax records, I would assume some census records. Some land records to determine who the people were who’d been there.
Carolyn: Yes I did. I did use the census to trace the family and then the soldiers who lived in the house.
Fisher: And so now, you’re facing the potential of your work actually saving this historic home that you’ve come to love now as a result of this.
Carolyn: Very much.
Fisher: What happened from there?
Carolyn: Well I published the history on just a free website, I wanted as many people to see it as possible, I shared it with the army post hoping that they would realize that this was too valuable to tear down, and they were already very set in their plans to build new housing. But the word got out to the descendants of the Indian students and they started a partition and the local newspapers picked it up, and at the very last minute when the demolition was supposed to happen within just a few weeks, there was a conference of Native Americans on Post about the Indian School, and the army knew that they were there and they chose that time to have a round table meeting when they announced that they were not going to tear it down after all.
Fisher: What a victory!
Carolyn: It was.
Fisher: Now were you there for that?
Carolyn: I was.
Fisher: Oh wow.
Carolyn: I couldn’t miss that.
Fisher: You were probably answering a few questions too, weren’t you?
Carolyn: Yes, and interacting with these wonderful Native American people who cared very much about having a landmark. There are not a lot of Native American landmarks in this country, and that one serves as a great landmark because it’s where the Pan Indian movement began, it’s where the National Congress of American Indians got its start, so there’s a lot of significance to it.
Fisher: Using genealogy to learn the history of houses and save them from demolition, how cool is that?
Carolyn: That’s right.
Fisher: Carolyn Tolman from LegacyTree.com. Thanks so much for coming on.
Carolyn: It’s been a pleasure. Thanks for letting me share my story.
Fisher: And coming up next: He is our Preservation Authority, Tom Perry from TMCPlace.com. Talking about the oldest ‘selfie’ he has ever seen and how he coveted it! He’ll tell you all about it coming up next on Extreme Genes, America’s Family History Show.

Segment 4 Episode 129
Host Scott Fisher with guest Tom Perry

Fisher: And welcome back to Extreme Genes, America’s Family History Show.
It is Preservation time. I am with Tom Perry from TMCPlace.com our Preservation Authority.

Tom, you were having such a good time at Roots Tech and its fun, I mean we have stories that go on for weeks from what happened over just a few days as people were bringing things to your booth and asking for advice on some of these items, but the one thing that really lit you up that I noticed, what was it, a 19th century selfie?
Tom: Oh yeah, it was like late 18 early 19 hundreds, I wanted it so bad.
Fisher: [Laughs] Now have you ever seen anything like that before?
Tom: Never.
Fisher: And explain what this was. Because I think when we talk about ‘selfie’ most people picture a long stick, a little modern camera there, the remote control and the whole thing, but obviously back then that wasn’t the case. Who is the person? How old? How did they set this thing up in those times?
Tom: Yes, a pretty incredible fact. One of the things that made it so cool to me, I remember back when I started my career in photography back in junior high school, I remember they had this big mirror when you walked through the front door, and I did the same thing, before I had eye contacts, and I had the tripod set up, smiling in the mirror and pushed a little button, and it’s like flashback a 100 years earlier and here is this kid wearing the type of clothes they wore back in those days, the tie, he had his tripod set up, had a little brownie camera on top of it
Fisher: You saw that in that picture?
Tom: Oh yeah. Because what he’s doing is, he has his camera and he’s looking into the mirror.
Fisher: Oh I see, okay.
Tom: Yeah. So this mirror is on, I don’t know what they used to call them back then, kind of like a bureau, you could see the drawers, you could see the sides, because it’s back far enough, but he not only got the mirror, he got part of the surroundings of it, and he’s just standing there with his little tie on and his little period clothing, and just standing there smiling and took this picture. It’s so cool, and the thing that makes it so cool is that it’s not just a selfie, but you can see it’s not a fake selfie because you can see the things on the outside, the old mirror that it’s sitting on, the handcrafting around the mirror, and that was a cool thing. I saw this and I loved it.
Fisher: So that’s a mirror image of himself though, right?
Tom: Exactly.
Fisher: Which you could reverse and flip if you wanted to.
Tom: Exactly. So it was a selfie in the old fashioned way, because in the old days you didn’t even have timers on your camera so you couldn’t run and get into the picture, you had to have somebody else do it. So it truly was a selfie. Somebody took a picture of him and it was so cool, but then the one down side of the picture had a lot of spots on it, just from being old and wear and tear. The lady that brought it in told me the history that I believe, she said it was like an uncle or a grandfather.
Fisher: So it was a relative.
Tom: Right, it was definitely a relative and she told me a little bit about him, and this guy actually got into photography. There’s people who every once in a while do these selfie contests, send in your best selfie and they give away prizes and such. I told her “You need to make a copy of this and send it in because I guarantee this is going to be the oldest selfie anybody has ever seen!”
Fisher: It’s a winner.
Tom: Oh yeah, absolutely. But I wanted it so bad. It was awesome.
Fisher: What do you think something like that would be worth? Are you a collector? Do you collect photographs?
Tom: No I don’t collect stuff like that. I mostly just look for family things related to me, if I saw it on eBay and happen to run across it and it was a 100 bucks, I would have bought it without even thinking about it because it’s so special to me.
Fisher: Sure.
Tom: So I tried to bribe the lady, I said, “Give me all your pictures let me scan them for you and I’m not even going to charge you, I just want to have permission to keep one of these pictures and be able to use it on our store, it’s so cool”
Fisher: Did she agree?
Tom: Oh yeah, she’s totally on board with it.
Fisher: Oh that’s fine. So what are you having to do to fix it?
Tom: What we’ll do first is, we’ll scan it on a really deep hue since it is black and white, and we’re going to scan in color like we talked about last week because it gives you more information. Most of the spots on it are about the size or a little bit bigger than a pencil led, so they’re not huge, and so we go into Photoshop which is a great program to do editing, once we get all these things done it will look like the guy just took the picture and it will look awesome.
Fisher: Well isn’t that great. And Photoshop Elements too, a cheaper version with all those same tools on it for anybody.
Tom: You don’t have to get the full blown Photoshop like mentioned, if you’ve got Elements that comes free with a lot of scanners, you’ll be able to rock and roll just fine.
Fisher: All right. What are we going to talk about next?
Tom: We’re going to talk about what if my pictures got torn up, what if I got an a line on my picture that I want removed.
Fisher: Oh, boy! Coming up next in three minutes on Extreme Genes, America’s Family History Show.

Segment 5 Episode 129

Host Scott Fisher with guest Tom Perry

Fisher: We are talking Preservation with Tom Perry from TMCPlace.com, our Preservation Authority on America’s Family History Show, Extreme Genes. I am Fisher, your Radio Roots Sleuth. And Tom recently, of course we were both at the Roots Tech conference in Salt Lake City, Utah, and your had a lot of people bringing things to your booth for evaluation, for restoration and recovery, and talk about some those other items that you saw.
Tom: Oh, exactly, and the thing is, some people don’t want to give up their stuff, even though they flew in they don’t want to leave it. I understand that, so one thing that you need to do too if you’re in the situation where you don’t want to do yourself. You don’t want to ship it, you want to fly it in. I’m sure there are people in your area that can help you with this, and one thing you need to really do is look outside the box.
If you just want to go to a trasher place and you don’t think, ‘Oh they’re not really into photos they don’t know what they’re doing,’ go to places that do billboards. Go to advertising companies with good references and they might be able to tell you, oh yeah, there’s a color correction place that does billboards, and take it to them and say, hey here’s what I need done, and they can usually scan it for you right while you’re there, because they have their equipment set up always, to do things like that. Scan it, you can take the photo back with you, and they can do it for you.
Fisher: They can take a little tiny photo and blow it up to billboard size!
Tom: Oh, absolutely. So, these people definitely know what they’re doing.
Fisher: Right.
Tom: And if you still don’t want to leave it, that’s fine. Just have them scan it. And even if they say, hey, we don’t do photo restoration, but we can scan it for you at a gazillion DPI, then that’s fine. Have them put it on your thumb drive or a disk, take it home. You can email it to us or anybody and get a quote. And the thing is, if you email it to us and ask us for a quote, you don’t have to have us do it. You can just say, okay, this is what it would cost and then take it to somebody local. And if they’re in the same ball park, you know they’re being fair with you. So, we’re just more there to kind of help you out. We had one this person who brought us a photo that was torn.
Fisher: Right in half, huh?
Tom: Yeah, torn right in half. So, half the face was missing, however, we’re like detectives. We need to get as much information as we can, which we kind of alluded to, last week.
Fisher: So, part of it was missing? It was in two halves?
Tom: Oh, exactly. A whole part of the guy’s face was missing. Kind of like the thumb print we talked about last week, but not as severe, because, if you have a person’s face, you know they’re not asymmetrical. So, you can kind of take things and kind of know what you’re supposed to do. But anything you can give to us, like, type of clothing it was, other photos, even if they’re younger, or older, it helps our artist say, okay, this is when he was eight years old. Here’s a picture of when he was twelve, based on that, I can kind of do these things to fix the photo. So, be like a detective. Get us any information you can. If it’s a color photo that’s faded, let us know, oh yeah, so-and-so used to wear this colour. They had this. This is what their eye color was, so we can make sure we get everything right. So, you had a little sister that had green eyes, we don’t make them blue or brown.
Fisher: Right, Right.
Tom: We want to be as authentic as we can, so bring us this information. Even if it’s a black and white photo, get us that information, because you think, who wants black and white? Why do I need to know eye color? Well, in gray scale, blue eyes, brown eyes and green eyes are going to be different shades of gray scale. So, if you want to be authentic, get us as much information as you can, so we as a detective can recreate this picture and make everybody look right. Also, they knew that there was supposed to be somebody else in that picture that wasn’t there, because that half was torn and nobody knew where it was. So, if you can get us a picture of that person, close as you can to that age, we can make a new family portrait and put that person in.
Fisher: That’s incredible.
Tom: Oh, it’s amazing what technology will do now. We’ve even had people bringing us photos they had of “outlaws”, like ex-in-laws, there was such a bad situation that they wanted us to take them out.
Fisher: I’ve done that.
Tom: Oh, you have to. And we can take people out, even if they’re in front and blocking people, we can remove them, and rebuild people shoulders or arms or hands or whatever, to make it look like they were never there. And as we just mentioned, we can take people and put them in. We’ve had people that had lost a child that was really, really young and they still wanted the person to be in there, and so, we can either put him in at the age that they became deceased or if they passed away when they were fourteen and this picture was taken when they would have turned sixteen, we can put him in as a fourteen year old or even kind of age him and make him maybe sixteen.
Fisher: Really? You can do aging?
Tom: Oh, absolutely.
Fisher: Oh boy! Great stuff as always, Tom! Thanks for coming on.
Tom: Good to be here again.
Fisher: I cannot believe we’re done for another week. Thanks once again to Lisa Louise Cooke, host of Genealogy Gems. A great podcast at GenealogyGems.com, talking about mobile genealogy and why you need it. Catch our podcast at iTunes, iHeart Radio’s talk channel or ExtremeGenes.com if you missed it. Also to Carolyn Tolman from LegacyTree.com, talking about doing “genealogy” on a house. Talk to you next week, and remember as far as everyone knows, we’re a nice, normal family!

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Episode 125 – Handwriting Analysis on Ancestors’ Handwriting

by

Bottom of birth page second record

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Fisher and David Allen Lambert, Chief Genealogist of the New England Historic Genealogical Society and AmericanAncestors.org, open the show.  They anticipate reviewing Roots Tech, the largest family history conference in the world, that is taking place over the weekend in Salt Lake City, Utah.  David then talks about a remarkable discovery of remains under a bus station in Harlem, New York!  Just whose remains have been discovered and what is their history in New York?  David will tell you.  David then talks about another discovery in Yorkshire, England involving Roman gladiators.  He’ll share the incredible numbers and what has been learned from these recently found remains.  Black History Month is in full swing, too, and David shares a special database related to African-American ancestral information from NEHGS.  Fisher then fills in David on a unique app he found that allows any face to be placed over yours in photos or videos.  You can even put your ancestor’s face over yours and then tell that person’s story!  Hear what that app is.  David also shares news about an exciting new audio app coming from MyHeritage.com.

Fisher then visits, for two segments, with Nancy Douglas, a handwriting analyst with WriteMeaning.com.  Nancy explains the various regions of handwriting and what they mean in learning about someone’s personality, and how she got started in this field.  In the second segment, Nancy then reveals information on several of Fisher’s ancestors based solely on their handwriting samples.

Then Tom Perry talks preservation, and how to know about the formats of your current media, and how you can convert them for long term preservation.

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

Transcript of Episode 125

Segment 1 Episode 125 (00:30)
Fisher: And, Welcome to another edition of Extreme Genes, America’s Family History Show and ExtremeGenes.com!
It is Fisher, your Radio Roots Sleuth, on the program where we shake your family tree and watch the nuts fall out, and this of course is our Special Roots Tech Edition! It’s going on while Roots Tech is happening, and if you’re not familiar with that, Roots Tech happens to be the largest family history conference in the world! Something like twenty five thousand people converging on the Salt Palace in Salt Lake City Utah, right now.
If you’re listening to this, no matter where you are, you can follow along and hear some of the talks, see some of the classes by going to RootsTech.org, they’ve got streaming video going on there all the time, so check that out, and then next week we’re going to tell you about some of the things we’ve learned, new technology, some of the things happening in some of the classes some of the exciting directions that family history is going in.
But right now in the studio with me, my good friend from Boston, Massachusetts, the Chief Genealogist of the New England Historic Genealogical Society and AmericanAncestors.org, David Allen Lambert.
How are you David? Good to have you!
David: I’m doing great! Well we’re going to have lots to talk about next week with Roots Tech, but I have some other exciting news for our listeners with Family Histoire News.
Fisher: All right! Where do we start?
David: Well, we’re digging deep right into the old bus station at 126 Street, in Harlem.
Fisher: Well that’s right in the heart of Harlem, isn’t it?
David: It really is.
Fisher: Wow!
David: They found over a 140 bones from an Old Dutch Cemetery, but this isn’t Dutch settlers, these are African-Americans that were part of the settlement. Probably some of them actually would have been slaves and these are from the 17th and 18th century, and with DNA and all this they found it in this decommissioned bus station that they had speculation there was a cemetery under there and started digging in.
Fisher: Voila.
David: And Voila!
Fisher: Wow!
David: There seems to be a lot of that because going across the pond over to Driffield Terrace, Yorkshire, England, they have now been analyzing over 80 skeletons of Romans that they have unearthed a few years back.
Fisher: I saw the digital pictures of this and they have each individual Roman skeleton laid out on a table, and you can’t describe it as anything less than creepy.
David: It is creepy. But the results are going to be very exciting. Using the inner ear bone to extract the DNA information and it’s really interesting. You’d think they’re all from Rome, not really. Their descendents are going to be surprised; they’re going to find that they have some descendents that match with people that lived in Wales, and also surprisingly enough one of the skeletons matches with someone from Palestine or the Saudi Arabia area because obviously the Roman Empire stretched all over the place.
The injuries are interesting. It looks like somebody was mauled by a bear or something like that. And the interesting thing is a lot of them were decapitated. Now was this…
Fisher: I don’t know what that means.
David: I don’t either.
Fisher: They say, they’re all under 45 years old and they’re very strong men, and they were Gladiators is what they are determining with these guys and we’re talking going back now 1800 years, we’re talking about 200 years after Christ. Unbelievable!
David: It is. And you know with everybody out there that’s had their 23 chromosomes done and their DNA work, who knows they may have dug up great, great, great, great, great, great, great Grandpa.
Fisher: [Laughs]
David: Well you know we have exciting news in Boston to announce. It’s Black History month for the month of February, and we are always giving out a guest user database at AmericanAncestors.org and the one I want to talk about is the one that we have commemorating Black History month. So if you go onto our site, you can start as a guest user on AmericanAncestors.org and you can find rich content of an African-American study. We’ve gathered up databases that reflect African-American research and whether you’re of an African-American descent or you are a historian and journal and curious to what we have, take a peek.
I tell you, we get some interesting emails but the other day I got a video sent to me from President Nixon, how did you do that Fish?
Fisher: [Laughs]
David: That was kind of scary and creepy but I enjoyed it.
Fisher: [Laughs] All right for anybody listening who maybe doesn’t follow us on the Facebook page, there is a new app out and I didn’t even mention it in the page. I didn’t want to spoil it, but I guess I need to let the cat out of the bag. It’s something called ‘Face Swap Live’ its 99 cents you download it on your phone. And you can take anybody’s face and it can be put on yours.
So you know in my case because I do a lot of character voices and impressions and all that. I’d find famous people and I’d put their face on mine with this app and record something. In this case I recorded a thing as Nixon, and sent it on to David but it’s unbelievable. It’s better than a mask it looks like that person is still with us
David: Well you know for genealogists that like to really dig deep into their ancestry and get to know their ancestor, well guess what? Now you can become your ancestor.
Fisher: [Laughs] its true!
David: Get a great photo of Grandpa or great, great Grandpa and scan it and put it right into your phone and with this app all of a sudden voila! You are now talking to your ancestor or as your ancestor or something like that.
Fisher: Well, I was trying to figure out what the application would be for family history with this thing because first of all it’s so much fun you know for parties or just among friends.
David: Yup.
Fisher: It will also swap faces, so if you get two of you in a picture it will swap your face with somebody else’s face and you’ll be on each other’s heads it’s crazy. But when you do this other stuff you can actually record yourself using the face of your ancestor, for that ancestor to tell their own story. Now how cool and bizarre is that? [Laughs]
David: It really is and I can tell you that I’m going to really scare some of my family members in the next coming weeks with this app. When they have visits from people like former co-workers that they didn’t want to hear from.
Fisher: [Laughs]
David: Or better yet, I have some co-workers back in Boston that might get some interesting messages sent from themselves. Stay tuned!
Fisher: Yes! Those things can happen and again the name of the app is ‘Face Swap Live’ it’s just 99 cents, you just download it onto your phone and it’s right there it’s very easy to use just play with it a little bit and you’ll get the hang of it very quickly. You can download pictures, you can take pictures to use, they have a little supply for you to play with to start with but you can do anything. In fact, I did a thing with the Captain of the Titanic and did an interview with him.
David: It looked a little frosty.
Fisher: [Laughs] it did, he looked very cold.
David: Well, I’ll tell you tech tips are wonderful and next week with everything with Roots Tech, you’re going to hear lots of them. One of the apps that I’m going to be talking about will obviously be the exciting new one by ‘My Heritage’ their audio app that’s coming out. It’s going to be really a neat way of saving your family stories with your genealogy program.
Fisher: Yeah that’s a great way to go anytime you can add audio and video it really brings it alive especially when you can preserve a voice.
David: Exactly. Or preserve a video of someone who really isn’t on a video because the camera wasn’t invented yet Fish.
Fisher: [Laughs] But I love the idea that even if you just have nice photographs you can run the audio over those and mix those together to create a nice presentation.
David: Wonderful stuff, and let me mention that I’m going to be reporting live for your listeners from Birmingham, England at ‘Who Do You Think You Are’ live in England, coming up in April.
Fisher: Oh that’s going to be fun!
David: It will. It will be nice to go across the pond where my grandfather was from there so I’ve got some genealogy to do as well. NEHGS is doing a tour of London afterwards so I’m sneaking in to do “Who Do You Think You Are’ a little early with a couple of our staff and we can’t wait, and we can’t wait to meet all the people that are attending and get some stories from the floor of the conference live for our listeners.
Fisher: Oh it’s going to be a lot of fun! All right David, I am very excited today because I have shared with our guest Nancy Douglas, the Hand Writing Analyst, hand writing samples of some of my ancestors to see what she can tell me about their personalities and what they might have been going through actually at the time that they wrote these samples. How cool is this, huh?
David: Sounds exciting.
Fisher: Yes! So we’re going to do two full segments with her today. We’re going to talk about how she can actually help you know the personality of your ancestors through their hand writing and then and then another segment talking about my particular people. I haven’t told her anything about them, then I will share what I know about them with her and see how much of these stories match up.
That’s going to be coming up in about three minutes, so stay close on Extreme Genes, America’s Family History Show.
Segment 2 Episode 125 (25:20)

Fisher: And, you have found us! America’s Family History Show, Extreme Genes and ExtremeGenes.com
My name is Fisher, the Radio roots Sleuth, and I’m very excited to have on Nancy Douglas. Now Nancy has a website called WriteMeaning.com, which has to do with analyzing the hand writing of your ancestors, and I’m sure there are other uses for this as well Nancy, but I’m certain that’s one of the emphasises that you like to place on what you do.
Nancy: Yes. That’s correct Scott.
Fisher: Now, how long ago did you start this whole thing?
Nancy: I started this when I moved to Utah, from 2007 and I moved in across the street from a woman whose best friend was a handwriting analyst, and I’ve always had a fascination with handwriting ever since I was little. I remember people by their handwriting and this girl had a series of courses that she offered and I took those classes and then I apprenticed with her for 4 or 5 years.
Fisher: Wow!
Nancy: Through that process I realized it could be one aspect of the services that I provide would be to provide personality profiles for people who happen to have ancestral writing. So it’s been something that has been very well received and successful.
Fisher: Now, you left Utah, for California some time back and you set up business there. What kind of applications have you applied other than the family history side of it?
Nancy: It’s for living people. Just general personality profile, personality insight. From a work perspective I offer employment screening for people who are looking for employees with certain personality traits. I can help them screen the people who have applied for those positions and get people into positions who most closely fit the profile of who they’re looking for. That’s been very successful as well. It’s an excellent way to make sure that people get fit into the correct position and it reduces employee turnover. I can also do team building, something similar to the ‘Myers-Brigg Type Indicator’ but using handwriting, where handwriting will reveal to your co-workers more about who you are and the ways that you can work together when you have this personality profile.
Fisher: Now, I was talking to a friend of mine once who was dating somebody she knew, she actually had his hand writing analyzed by somebody who actually does this work for criminal cases where they can actually determine if somebody has a past. Now, do you do things like that?
Nancy: I don’t do specifically forensic analyzing, that’s what that’s called when you do that for the court system. There certainly are many analysts who have this what they specialize in. but I do, do compatibility screening so whether it’s a business partner, if you want to make sure you’re going into business ‘will we be compatible as partners?’ or if it’s someone who you’re looking to have as a life partner. I can do compatibility screenings and talk with the people about the traits in each of their personalities that would be beneficial or not.
So in addition in this day and age of online dating and online profiles where you really don’t know somebody, it’s a good idea to get an idea of who they are and their handwriting is very revealing about that. So if you’re doing online dating and you really want to know, send me a sample of their writing and I can tell you if you if you should just run as fast as you can or if you should stick around. [Laughs]
Fisher: [Laughs] That is amazing. Well this has been very fun to talk to you about as we set up this interview because I did send you some samples of some of my ancestors handwriting for you to take a look at, just go ahead as to which ones you think are most interesting from the top and we’ll kind of go through them.
Nancy: Okay. That will be fine, I want to get this little bit of quick background on areas that we look at with someone’s handwriting.
Fisher: Sure.
Nancy: Just so your listeners have an idea. We look at the slant of someone’s writing and that is based on what is called the upper zone letters. So in the handwriting there are three zones… the upper zone, which will be for example an ‘l’ or a ‘t,’ lower zone letters, for example ‘g’ or ‘y’ and middle zone letters, ‘i’ ‘m’ ‘n’ those types of letters.
Fisher: Sure.
Nancy: And each of those zones has something to do with your personality; so upper zone letters represent everything going on in your head:
• Your philosophies
• Your ideas
• Your creativity
• Your imagination
• And your intellect.
Middle zone letters represent those reflect:
• The day to day
• The here and now
• What’s going on in someone’s life,
And the lower zone letters represent all things physical:
• Your physical drives
• Your desires around acquisition of money
• Your sexuality
• Your desire for change
• Level of restlessness
Those types of things show up in the lower zone. So we look at that, we look at the slants like I said, we look at the baseline and we look at individual letter formation and we look at how letters are connected together. Those are just a few of the things that we look at. Those are just a few of the things we look at there are many more things but I just wanted to give a little background to your listeners on that.
So, for you and your ancestors; you sent me basically four samples of writing and the first one I think you said is your second great grandfather?
Fisher: Yeah, actually there are a couple of second greats in there.
Nancy: Okay. So this is the small sample it’s from the Bible of John Hardy.
Fisher: Okay, yes.
Nancy: And, he was a person who was very driven and that shows up in the letter ‘t.’ He was a very restless person, he liked change. He liked to do rigorous things. He had very good leadership skills. At the time of this writing he was feeling a lot of personal pressure.
Fisher: Yes.
Nancy: And he was feeling very squeezed with everything that he had to do in his life at that time. He was very geared towards the physical aspects of life, like I said that lower zone. His lower zone really pops out being much more emphasized than the middle zone and upper zone in his writing.
Fisher: Um-hmm
Nancy: And so, someone whose very driven by material acquisition. Wants to make sure that he’s taking care of himself and his family from a monetary sense, those types of things and that’s also where the restlessness shows up as well. The other thing that jumped up again was he was a very tenacious person and again going back to that drive. That shows up in the variety of ways that he crosses his letter ‘t.’ So that’s a little bit about that grandfather.
Fisher: All right. Let me tell you a little bit about what I know about him. He was born in the area of Nottinghamshire, England, in the early 1800’s. He was married briefly to a woman who died that young, he lost a child and then he married my great, great grandmother and they came to America. He was what they called a boot-closer and they came to New York City and settled there. And at the time that he wrote that, they had just lost a baby girl and so inscribed this Bible to his wife at that time, obviously in my mind just based on the date, to give her comfort.
Nancy: Um-hmm. Very good, one of the things, this is a photo copy of that so I couldn’t see all the levels of details but it’s interesting that he also appears a little bit tired at this time.
Fisher: Um-hmm
Nancy: The up strokes on his lower zone letters, I don’t know if you’re looking at the sample with me at the same time.
Fisher: I’m not.
Nancy: The up strokes on the lower zone letters are much lighter. The down strokes are easy to make you’re going with gravity but when you’re pushing up against that if you don’t have enough sort of vital life energy when you’re doing that it will show up as much lighter and that’s a typical sign of someone whose feeling tired at that time. So it’s an interesting reflection of what he was writing about.
Fisher: Yes. Okay great, who else do you have there?
Nancy: The next sample that you sent was also out of a Bible.
Fisher: Uh-hmm
Nancy: Family Bible of the Fishers, and you’d have to look specifically at this, the smaller writing at the bottom of this but what’s interesting to know is that this is a great example of slants. So the person who wrote the top part has a very vertical to reclined slant.
Fisher: Yes.
Nancy: Slants tells us about how you go about making decisions. Are you an emotional decision maker or are you a logical decision maker? People with vertical writing are very, very logical they’re what we call the ‘head over heart people.’ They’re good to have around in a time of crisis, so they don’t let emotions run away with them and they don’t crack under pressure. So who’s that writing at the top?
Fisher: That would be Robert Fisher, who was another second great grandfather and he was raised by a stepfather whose name he took. At least I believe that’s the case, I’ve never been able to prove it but there’s a lot of reason to believe that was the case, and it doesn’t appear that he had much of a relationship with him so I think he grew up being a tough guy emotionally, became very involved with the Baptist Church in Brooklyn, New York, founded a church there, was part of it. He wasn’t clergy but he was very involved in that and I think he was a very stern father with his children.
Nancy: Um-hmm, I can see that in here. So we do have like I said this vertical writing too interestingly reclined and when you’re writing begins to get reclined its people who withhold emotion.
Fisher: Yes.
Nancy: And so he would not have been a very warm and giving person with other people. In that sense he was very reserved, emotionally reserved.
Fisher: All right. We’re going to take a break and when we return we’re going to talk more with Nancy Douglas, the handwriting Analyst from WriteMeaning.com and she’s going to look at some of the signatures of, shall we say, one of my more colorful ancestors, when we return in five minutes on America’s Family History Show, Extreme Genes, and ExtremeGenes.com

 

Segment 3 Episode 125 (44:45)
Host Scott Fisher with guest Nancy Douglas
Fisher: You know, a radio person once asked me if there was really enough material out there to talk about on a family history radio show every week. Well now on our third year of Extreme Genes, I think he knows the answer, and this visit with ancestral handwriting expert Nancy Douglas is a perfect example of how many different aspects there are to talk about.
So before we get back to the analysis of the writing in my 19th century Bible, let me ask you this Nancy, can you tell male from female hand writing?
Nancy: No. And that’s one of the interesting things about handwriting analysis; it’s a very neutral way to see someone because you don’t know if they’re male or female. There are masculine tendencies and traits and feminine tendencies and traits so you sort of just make a guess but really it’s just a guess.
Fisher: So my guess was that, on that Bible the top handwriting was male and the smaller hand writing at the bottom was by a female.
Nancy: It could be or not I really couldn’t tell you.
Fisher: Okay.
Nancy: Honestly there’s no indication. Now you’ll notice that the bottom writing slanting more to the right.
Fisher: And smaller.
Nancy: Yes it’s smaller but I wasn’t sure if there’s more information here. She or he, the writer had an area that they had to fit the writing into so I’m not sure I mean it is smaller but I don’t know if it’s an accurate reflection of the size.
Fisher: Okay.
Nancy: And the size of writing does absolutely say something about people as well. The interesting thing that I’ve noticed on this writing that I saw is the lower zone, the lower zone letters have what is called the ‘dumping stroke.’ What that means is people who feel extremely overwhelmed at the time of the writing and they just really need to get rid of responsibility and the writing is downhill and I think their health was not very good when they were writing this.
Fisher: Okay.
Nancy: Downhill writing is a sign of someone who is either extremely fatigued, not feeling well or emotionally depressed, and there’s other signs of this writing that shows there is a lightness like a lack of vitality, a lack of life vitality this time. But it’s also a person who had been balanced, very clear thinking but they were feeling overwhelmed at the time of this writing.
Fisher: Now see I believe that’s the widow of Robert Fisher, who wrote that. I don’t know for a fact because I don’t have any handwriting to compare it to but she would have written it just analyzing when the dates and when the hand changed within the Bible. There were five different people that wrote in this Bible. This was later in her life probably in her 80’s that she wrote this. Now all this seems to fit beautifully.
Nancy: Yeah. Yeah and then the last sample that you gave me is a series of signatures of your great grandfather. Is that right?
Fisher: Yes. Great grandfather Andrew (Fisher) the fireman and his wife Jenny.
Nancy: Very interesting and the thing that grabbed me right away was that she signed her last name like his. In particular where the word breaks so she does ‘F’ and a break and then ‘i- s.’ Then a break, then ‘h-e-r.’ And she does that very similarly because that tells me there is a level of maybe tradition in there following her husband.
Fisher: Okay.
Nancy: She is an interesting person. Both of them had a very similar slant. Which might have made them hard to be around because their slant is what’s called ‘very inclined’ which means a high level of emotional decision making, and so people who have that kind of a slant introduce a lot more emotion into their decision making and they can tend to overreact when faced with a crisis they don’t handle that too well and I mean, he’s a fire-fighter. That’s very fascinating to me.
Fisher: Yes. There’s a lot more to him too. [Laughs] Keep going.
Nancy: Yeah. He also has these very interesting hooks on his capital letter ‘A’ and those hooks are something that shows that he was hooked on something in the past or something he couldn’t let go of, and he also has a hook on the end of his letter, on the letter ‘r’ and that hook in its best form can be someone that’s very tenacious and worst form, someone whose extremely opinionated and could be sometimes cruel and sarcastic with others. So that was very interesting to me both of those hooking. He was a very analytical person, he had a great deal of personal pride, and he could be very sensitive to criticism.
Fisher: I believe all these things, absolutely! He was into politics; he actually ran for office at one time, he did not make it. He was a merchant with his brother but he was the junior merchant between the partners, and he had…. shall we say a lot of relationships. [Laughs]
Nancy: Okay. Interesting, interesting he was definitely a talker as well. He leans on the letter ‘d’ he leaves the belly of the ‘d’ open from the stem which indicates someone who liked to talk, and in many of these samples there’s a lot of what I call ‘pressure points’ which means that he was feeling like he was under pressure when he was writing these. There’s a very sharp angular quality in his writing which can indicate him being not in particular warm and fuzzy with other people.
Fisher: I think that’s true too. He was also the head of the Veteran Fireman’s Association, for the retired guys at one point. So we see a lot of newspaper quotes from him, he was very talkative.
Nancy: Interesting. Yeah and he also was an intuitive person. The way that he breaks up his letters in his name, they’re not connected. If you go back and look you’ll see that he writes the ‘A’ and then there’s the ‘n’ and then there’s a space, then he puts the ‘drew’ together and he does the same in his last name too, and when you have those disconnects in the writing it means that you are someone who rather than being a person who has to logically step through step by step by step you’re more of an intuitive seeker, so you think about many things at one time and can’t put puzzle pieces together.
And then, in contrast to that, your great grandmother Jennie, she was a softer person, softer than him, she probably had to be a counterpoint to his sort of sharpness. She was a cultured woman, I wondered if she might have been a musician, she had a great imagination and she was much more open and friendly to other people than Andrew was.
Fisher: Yeah, one story about them got passed down in oral tradition that came through my family that one day a neighbor came to Jennie in New York City, this would have been in the 1880’s probably, and said “I saw Mr. Fisher come home in the great cab last night and assisted into the house. Was he ill?” and she said “No. He wasn’t ill. He was just dead drunk!”
Nancy: [Laughs]
Fisher: [Laughs] so you know, I can see the softness of her just accepting the situation and I can see the hard living of this man, very interesting.
Nancy: Yeah. So that’s just a little bit about your folks, and when I do an analysis depending on how big my sample size is I should say it could take me a day’s work to actually…
Fisher: Oh I bet.
Nancy: … go through the writing and really understand. There’s a lot of variation, a lot of subtlety, it’s a science and it’s crossed referenced as a science in the Library of Congress. But there’s also a level of art to it, it’s classified under the same system as psychology is, so there’s bold aspects to that. So when I look, I almost inhabit the person and really try to get a sense of who they are and the feedback that I get from folks… nobody gives me free information because I never want that, I always get post information and its really exciting to see how stories match up and particularly if there are still ancestors who are alive who knows the person that I was analyzing. So that’s always fun to see.
Fisher: Well, all the folks you talked about lived and died in the 19th century. So it’s very fun to get that insight that you couldn’t get any other way.
Nancy: Right exactly, and the interesting thing is you can see in your own self are there personal traits that you inherited and that will show up in that person’s writing.
Fisher: Right.
Nancy: and that’s always a fun aspect of this as well.
Fisher: Well, this is great stuff Nancy, thank you so much for your time, your insight, fascinating! I know listeners are going to want to know more about this and they can go to your website WriteMeaning.com, all your contact information is right there, and by the way for people who have been listening to this segment who want to see these samples of the hand writing, I’ll have them posted on our Facebook page so you can check it out.
Nancy: Okay that’s sounds great. Well thank you Scott so much for your time! I appreciate that.
Fisher: All right, great stuff. Nancy Douglas from WriteMeaning.com, and coming up next Tom Perry, the Preservation Authority joins us to answer a couple of great listener questions about digitizing old photo albums and why a flash-drive works showing a video in a computer but not in a high def. TV, find out what Tom’s got to say about these issues coming up next in three minutes on Extreme Genes, America’s Family History Show.
Segment 4 Episode 125
Host Scott Fisher with guest Tom Perry
Fisher: And we are back! America’s Family History Show Extreme Genes and ExtremeGenes.com
It is Fisher here the Radio Roots Sleuth. It is preservation time with our Preservation Authority Tom Perry from TMCPlace.com
Hello Tommy,
Tom: Hello, it’s wonderful to be here again.
Fisher: Yes! And we do have a question here that has been emailed to AskTom@TMCPlace.com It’s from Lisa Sorensen. It doesn’t say where she’s from but Lisa asks “I’m interested in having a very old photo album digitized, two old albums actually. Do you work with very old photos and what would the cost be to have this done?”
Tom: Oh absolutely! You bet. We do photo albums. You know photo albums are really generic it’s like saying photograph. There are different kinds of albums, I’ve seen ones with the garrets types in them, I’ve seen ones that have the old glass plates, and we’ve seen ones that are torn, that are faded, all kinds of things. It’s going to depend on what condition your photos are in, how old they are, if you want any changes with them.
For instance we had someone who brought in a photo album that we were digitizing and then they called us and said “Hey, my mother’s just passed away we need a good photo for the obituary and my favorite photo of her is the one with her and me at my wedding. However I’m in the picture too and I don’t want to be in an obituary and if I just cut myself out I’m going to have to cut off her shoulder and it’s going to look really bad. What can you do?”
So what we did, we actually had our artist go in and remove him, rebuild her shoulder and then it looked just like it was a single picture, it looked wonderful.
Fisher: Yes.
Tom: It’s just amazing what you can do with apps, what you can do with PhotoShop, and different kinds of software. So the biggest thing is to figure out exactly what you want. If you want them just digitized and you want to do all your work with them, it’s pretty inexpensive to do photos whether you have us do it or a reputable place close by, you just make sure that wherever you get it done that they do it in house.
I hear all kinds of horror stories where somebody sends them off to India or something like that to save some money, there’s no way I would do that. There’s no way, so try to find somebody local. If you are going to ship it, I always tell people make sure you double box everything and put a label on both boxes just in case the worse case happens. We’ve been doing this for over 40 years and fortunately we’ve never lost anything in any transit one way or another and you might want to go back to one of our older episodes that are available on the podcast, a free podcast where we tell you actually how to make a box, the best way to do it.
Fisher: Yes. That’s right, that’s a good point, and you know when they use the term ‘old,’ an old photo album. What does that mean? You know maybe to Lisa, old is the 1960’s.
Tom: Oh absolutely.
Fisher: To me it’s the 1920’s and maybe to somebody else it’s the 1870’s.
Tom: Oh yeah exactly! We have people call us all the time and say “Oh I’ve got this film; it’s so old can you still transfer it, it’s from the 70’s?” and it’s just like “Okay.” [Laughs]
Fisher: [Laughs]
Tom: I mean we have stuff that’s playing in our store for instance that’s back in the old black and white days, the early 1900’s where you see these 1920 Model A Fords drive past.
Fisher: Really, you actually went and digitized some of those?
Tom: Oh yeah we’ve got them playing in our store. The customer gave us permission to play them. We had people that had to want to colorize black and white, we had people that want to go and take outlaws out of their home movies. All kinds of things just like this photo album.
Fisher: Wait a minute. You can actually colorize black and white home movies?
Tom: Oh absolutely!
Fisher: Really?
Tom: Oh yeah it’s not cheap and I wouldn’t do it. I mean I’ve got some old black and whites that my dad shot and I wouldn’t want to colorize them because that changes the whole thing. Just like some of the old ‘I love Lucy’ movies I watched them when they were black and white. I don’t like seeing them in color.
Fisher: Right. No I agree with you. I don’t like it for instance when they colorize something like ‘It’s A Wonderful Life.’
Tom: Exactly!
Fisher: It’s not right.
Tom: Right. Because you’ve got to understand when that show was done and they cast it and they got the costume directors etc. they knew it’s going to be in black and white so they used colors that looked good in black and white. They would complement each other not clash. When you take those and turn them into the colors that’s not what the producer had in mind, that’s not what the continuity people had in mind, and to me it’s just not comfortable.
Fisher: Right. But you can do it! I mean that’s the fun part.
Tom: Oh absolutely! We had a customer that has an ex-son-in-law, we had to edit him out of all the photo albums, we edited him out of all their movies, everything. So you see this water skiing and he was at the back of the boat so you see this water skier and just as it gets to him we’d have to cut, this time-lash thing is kind of lost. If you can imagine it we can do it.
Fisher: That’s absolutely astonishing! All right, we’ve got another question coming up, we’ll take a break. We’ll be back in three minutes with more from Tom Perry on Extreme Genes, America’s Family History Show.

Segment 5 Episode 125
Host Scott Fisher with guest Tom Perry

Fisher: You know I don’t know why Tom, we get people who write in and give us their name but not where they’re from and then other people who tell us where they’re from but not their name. [Laughs]
Tom: [Laughs] Exactly. That’s the case…
Fisher: … with this next question. Hey, it’s Extreme Genes, America’s Family History Show, with Fisher here, your Radio Roots Sleuth and Tom Perry from TMCPlace.com, answering questions about preservation.
This one’s from Santa Ana, California, asking about flash-drives and he says if you plug it into the back of his computer everything’s great. But if you put it into a flat-screen TV, nothing… what’s the story with that Tom?
Tom: Okay there can be several different things there. We had a customer the other day that actually stopped in our store and she said “Oh, I’ve got this flash-drive, I need these photos.” I take it and look at it, and what it is, is actually a USB adapter with a Micro SD Card into it. So she just thought it was a normal flash-drive but it’s not, it has a removable SD card in it.
Fisher: Okay.
Tom: So there’s all different kinds of things out there but the way they work the normal cliché so to speak is all the same.
Fisher: Okay.
Tom: So what you need to do is know what format it is, a lot of times we ask people when they call in or write in, what format are your files? And they go “Huh?” so what you’ll want to do is take whatever kind of format you have, whether it’s a USB drive, whether it’s a disk it’s irrelevant, put it in your computer and if you’re a Windows user for like a PC, what you want to do is once you see the icon on your desktop, you double click on just the icon you don’t want to open up anything inside that.
So that will expand the window and you’ll see all your files. Then you’ll want to go to the top of your screen and tell it to sort by ‘Properties’ that will show you the file name, the file size, if it’s an MOV, if it’s a PDF, no matter what file it is, and a lot of times if you’re going to have us do work or you don’t know even what these files mean. Do a screenshot on your computer and then you can email that to us or have it in front of you when you’re talking to us.
Fisher: Right.
Tom: Okay. If it’s a MAC, you don’t have to search under properties. The same thing you put the disk in or USB drive, double click so it opens the folder and then it will automatically on a MAC give you all that stuff generally and then you’ll do the same thing “Oh I have MOV’s, I have AVI’s, I have X, Y, Z whatever they happen to be and there’s all kinds of weird things out there and if you want to research them, all you’ve got to do is the dot (.) Whatever it is type it into Google and it will tell you what it is.
If you don’t want to deal with that give us a call we’ll find out which ones can be transferred to video, what ones are executable files so they’re not really something that you’d want to watch on a DVD, they’re more of a brain to tell something else what to do.
Fisher: Sure.
Tom: So once you get those to us then we can figure out “Okay, it’s this size, it’s an MP4.” So you can take normal software like ‘Power Director’ and edit your MP4 or do whatever you want to do with it. You’ll take that file and say “Okay, I’ve got this, this and this.” And I can say okay well you’ve got an MOV, your TV doesn’t play MOV’s, and most TVs only play MP4’s generally.
So the best thing to do is get out your owner’s manual if you lost it just go online, Google it and you can find your owner’s manual anyplace and find out what kinds of format it takes so when you call us you can say “Hey, my TV takes this, it takes and this, or it only plays MP4’s.” so when we transfer it for you or tell you how you can transfer it yourself, you’ll make sure you end up with the correct file that will play on your TV.
If your TV plays Mp4’s and we make you a QuickTime, you’re out of luck and vice versa.
Fisher: Yeah, not going to work too well.
Tom: Exactly. And so now be careful too, we had somebody that came in and had us make 300 flash-drives for him and we needed to find out what format you want it, people are going to be doing this, this, this and this. If you get a big enough flash-drive you can put an MOV on it, you can put an MP4 on it and you can put a QuickTime so no matter which computer or TV they have it will play on all of them.
Fisher: So you need to know some of this information before you get started.
Tom: Exactly. Just like when we teach you when you’re transferring films or videos, what is your end point?
Fisher: We’re talking fundamentals here and its great stuff. Thanks so much Tom, see you next week!
Tom: Thank you! We’ll be here.
Fisher: And that wraps up our show for this week. Thanks once again to handwriting analyst Nancy Douglas, from WriteMeaning.com, for coming on the show and talking about the personalities of my ancestors and she was able to determine it from old Bible records and I’m sure she could do some of the same for you. Hey, and don’t forget next week we’ll be talking about all that’s gone on at Roots Tech. It’s going to be a great show! Talk to you then, and remember as far as everyone knows, we are a nice, normal, family!

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