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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!

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Episode 135 – DNA Breakthrough Identifies Parents of Woman Born in 1916 / This Season on “Who Do You Think You Are” on TLC

by

DNA

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Fisher opens the show explaining his recent family history research discovery of the itemized invoice from the funeral of his great-great grandfather in 1907! David Allen Lambert, Chief Genealogist of the New England Historic Genealogical Society and AmericanAncestors.org, then joins the show from London where his genealogical tour continues. David tells about his remarkable evenings during low tide along the Thames where he searches for centuries old items. He’ll tell you what he has found… including some items that will make your jaw drop! David then tells the shocking DNA story that has rocked England concerning the Archbishop of Canterbury. He’ll have another Tech Tip, and NEHGS guest user free database.

Next up on the show (starts at 11:09) is Paul Woodbury, a DNA genealogist for LegacyTree.com. Paul shares with Fisher the remarkable story of how he helped a client identify the birth father and birth mother of her grandmother, who was born and adopted in Alabama in 1916! How was it done? Paul will explain, but you’d better keep a flow chart. What DNA testing can reveal continues to amaze!

Then, Jenn Utley, head genealogist for TLC’s “Who Do You Think You Are?” visits to give us some behind the scenes info about the 2016 episodes of the program every genealogist loves to watch. You’ll be interested in how the show prepares the celebrity guests for travel to foreign lands. Who knew?!

Then, Preservation Authority Tom Perry from TMCPlace.com revisits the topic of audio as we move into reunion season. The tips he shares could just save your recordings of the seniors in your family before the record button is even pushed.

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

Transcript of Episode 135

Segment 1 Episode 135 (00:30)

Fisher: I cannot believe in all my searches, through all the years, that I’ve never run across one of these things, and when I finally do, it’s within my own family.

Hi, it’s Fisher here! Your Radio Roots Sleuth on Extreme Genes, America’s Family History Show. The program where we shake your family tree and watch the nuts fall out.

This past week I found this itemized invoice for the funeral of my great, great grandfather. Yeah, it talked about the cost of the carriages to carry the mourners, the cost to embalm him, by the way it’s like ten bucks to clean him and embalm him! The cost of his grave was five dollars and twenty five cents. I mean it’s insane stuff, and in thirty five years of researching I’ve never run into anything like that. Absolutely incredible.
Hey, I’m excited about our guests today! We’ve got DNA Day going on again today. Paul Woodbury is going to be here from LegacyTree.com. He is a DNA results analyst for them, and he is going to tell you about a recent case where they were able to identify the birth father and birth mother of a woman who was born and adopted in 1916. Unbelievable! That’s coming up in about eight minutes.

And Jenn Utley, the head genealogist for “Who Do You Think You Are?” is going to be here to give us some inside baseball on this season of the show, and that will be coming up a little bit later on.

And, Preservation Authority Tom Perry talks audio and microphones, as you prepare for the reunion season.
But right now let’s head out to jolly old England! And talk to my good friend the Chief Genealogist of the New England Historic Genealogical Society and AmericanAncestors.org, David Allen Lambert! How are your journeys going across the pond?
David: They’re doing great! It’s a little different, got that sleep deprivation going, but I’m caught up and I’m on England time now.
Fisher: [Laughs] Now you were telling me off-air a little bit, David, about some adventures you’re doing in the night time there along the Thames River. Fill us in on this, this is incredible.
David: Well, you know, I’ve been a lover of archaeology and I have a couple of friends of mine, they call it ‘mucking’or looking for pottery shards and things. Of course the Thames has had occupation for thousands of years, and as the tide recedes twice a day people will go out, and you can’t dig. You can’t use a metal detector, but you can surface hunt and you can find pottery there that goes back to the Roman era, and I thought to myself “There is no way”.
I’ve been there three times since. I probably have about 500 pipes stems from colonial pipes, some of the bowls still attached to them. Pottery that’s from the Roman Empire to the Tudor era, and a lot of little pieces of Victorian, but the really disturbing thing, and something I won’t be bringing back… are the bones.

Fisher: The bones?
David: The bones! Yeah, there’s probably a good share of animal bones, but I might be seeing some of the ancestors of our listeners!
Fisher: [Laughs]
David: We’re just going up to shore and going back.
Fisher: And this happens every day?
David: Every day.
Fisher: Twice?
David: Twice a day.
Fisher: So this remains have been in there forever?
David: They have! The bones are like chocolate brown and they are obviously not recent. I mean they’re water worn and stuff, but it’s been interesting.
Fisher: Sure.
David: But the NEHGS Tour to London has been great. We’ve gone to the London Municipal Archives, we just finished up two days at the Society of Genealogists, and we’ll be heading to the National Archives in Kew for the last two days of the tour. Then I take off on my own genealogical adventures. But there’s been a lot of adventures going on in the press in England, DNA related. Did you see the story about the Archbishop of Canterbury?
Fisher: Yes! Incredible story, and he’s been very open about it. Fascinating find for him.
David: It really is. I mean, obviously this DNA has opened up that, well his mother would admit, that there’d been a little liason after a little bit too much drinking, with Sir Anthony Montague Brown, who ironically was Churchill’s last private secretary.
Fisher: Right, and he only died what, in 2013?
David: Yeah, he was like about eighty nine years of age. So there was almost a chance he could have met him.
Fisher: [laughs]
David: But yeah, it’s crazy. Another exciting story is a World War II veteran out here from England, at the age of a 100, took a 10,000 foot skydive! He was a veteran of D-Day and he decided for his birthday he wanted to go skydiving. So my hat’s off to Verdun Hayes.
Well, I’ll tell you, there’s a lot of things that are interesting, but when you get to meet our listeners at “Who Do You Think You Are?” thousands of miles away, and that included two listeners from Germany…
Fisher: Wait, you are talking about Extreme Genes listerners from Germany? That’s awesome!
David: Extreme Genes listeners from Germany. I didn’t think the antenna went that far. Those podcast listeners are finding us from everywhere.
Fisher: Yeah.
David: Timo Kracke, he was there with another friend Sebastian, and they’re both listeners of Extreme Genes and I got to interview them. I also interviewed an interesting fellow by the name of Andrew Tatham. Andrew is an author of a book he worked on for twenty years called ‘A Group Photograph’. He found a WWI photograph for his great grandfather. A group picture, and researched everybody in the picture.
Fisher: What a great idea!
David: It’s great! I mean it’s absolutely great, because I tell people all the time “You have to adopt the regiment.”
Fisher: Yes.
David: In this case he’s adopted forty six individuals from this photograph and tracked them all down.
Fisher: Unbelieveable.
David: That’s kind of a Gen Tip, but my Gen Tip for this week is “Go out and have a portrait painted of your family.” Create a family legacy heirloom that you can pass on forever, and it doesn’t matter if it’s an amateur artist or a professional artist, someone who can capture an essence, something that a photograph can’t.

Julia Sterland, who is an artist in England, was painting portraits for free with a small donation to the Mary Curie Foundation, which is kind of like hospice here in the States.
Fisher: Right.
David: And I got a portrait painted by her and I’m going to treasure it. It’s a great thing.
Fisher: Post it! We’ve got to see it.
David: I will. I looked at it and I was like “Oh my gosh, you did that in like twenty minutes!”
Fisher: [Laughs]
David: And of course the free database for NEHGS guest users till April 20th, is of a billion records that we have available for you. Search on AmericanAncestors.org just as a guest user.
Fisher: Hey, you extended the deadline on that. I love that. So till next Wednesday, April 20th.
David: Correct, and I just want to say a shoutout to all the listeners out there on this side of the pond, from the opposite side of the pond.
Fisher: [Laughs] They’re everywhere.
David: Exactly. So that’s all I’ve got for this week from London, and look forward to talking to you next week.
Fisher: All right, thanks David! And coming up next; We’re going to talk to Paul Woodbury from LegacyTree.com. He’s a DNA results analyst, and wait till you hear about the case he has put together concerning a woman adopted in 1916. Love DNA! It’s coming up next in three minutes on Extreme Genes, America’s Family History Show.

 

Segment 2 Episode 135 (11:10)
Host Scott Fisher with guest Paul Woodbury
Fisher: And welcome back to America’s Family History Show, Extreme Genes and ExtremeGenes.com
It is Fisher here, the Radio Roots Sleuth. We’re doing DNA day today with Paul Woodbury, he is a DNA genealogist, and Paul, you have to analyze an awful lot of tests don’t you?
Paul: I do, yeah. I probably do about 4 to 5 projects a week.
Fisher: And DNA results are so fascinating for what they do for families and typically it’s more about current living generations and once in a while you put some together that will go back and you’ll find a deceased birth parent from one side or the other.
But in your case, this was just an amazing case. I was excited to hear about it. You’ve actually identified the birth father and the birth mother of a woman who has since passed, who was adopted in 1916, using DNA.
Paul: Exactly. So after the decease of this adopted woman, her daughter Lauren wanted to explore her mother’s biological history. Her mother, Mary Stoddard, was adopted in 1916 in Alabama, and typically with adopted cases you can begin by looking for case files and documents that might reveal the parents.
But in this case the organization that handled Mary’s adoption was no longer existent and the records were destroyed. So really DNA was the only option that we had to really explore the biological parents of Mary Stoddard.
Fisher: And this time you not only did an autosomal, you were able to isolate the X chromosome. Now I don’t have a lot of knowledge of how this works, explain a little to us about X chromosomes and DNA tests, and by the way people, if you haven’t done one before, it’s a simply thing to do, you spit in a cup and you send it in. That’s all there is to it.
Paul: Very simple.
Fisher: You can analyze a lot of this and then if you need people like Paul at LegacyTree.com they can help you out.
Paul: So, the X chromosome is the female sex chromosome and it’s often confused with another type of DNA called ‘mitochondrial DNA.’
Fisher: Right.
Paul: A lot of people confuse those two types of DNA because they do have a unique inheritance pattern that focuses on the female line. Now, mitochondrial DNA is located in a completely separate part of the cells and with your mitochondrial it’s your kind of powerhouses of the cells, and it’s passed along the direct maternal line. So it comes from your mother’s, mother’s mother….
Fisher: Right.
Paul: The X chromosome meanwhile, is part of the nuclear DNA and it’s a sex chromosome. Males receive one X chromosome from their mother, and females receive one X chromosome from their mother and they also receive one from their father. So males, instead of receiving an X chromosome from their father, receive a Y-chromosome which is what makes them male.
Fisher: So how are you able to use this knowledge to actually isolate who a person might be if you’re trying to, say, identify a birth parent?
Paul: Okay. So the X chromosome, because it follows this pattern of, you know, males, will receive one X chromosome from their mother and females will receive one from their mother and one from their father. It means that we can limit the number of possible ancestors that shared X DNA may have come from.
So if you have an X DNA match, then that severely limits the possible candidates that could have contributed that common DNA. And that we’re interested in when we’re doing genealogy is we’re looking at that shared inheritance of genetic material.
So if you have shared inheritance of DNA on the X chromosome, then we can identify the possible candidates that may have contributed that DNA.
Fisher: So it acts as another elimination factor.
Paul: It does. And the X chromosome doesn’t require its own test, each of the DNA testing companies offers an autosomal of the DNA test and as part of that test they will test some markers on the X chromosome.
Fisher: I see. Okay, so what was the case here then? You had a woman born in 1916, sent out for adoption, then theoretically the birth parents disappear into time. So what did you have to do?
Paul: Exactly. So what we had to do, first we looked at the client’s genetic matchings. So Lauren, the daughter of Mary the adoptee, decided to take a DNA test and using her DNA test results we identified her closest matches based off the amount of DNA that they shared in common with her.
Using these genetic matches and then also being able to identify which genetic cousins were also related to each other. We were able to identify common ancestors of these genetic matches that had to have been in the ancestry of Lauren’s mother Mary Stoddard.
Fisher: So we call this ‘triangulation’ right? Where you identify the common ancestors of two people who were related to you, the assumption then is that, that ancestor is also your ancestor.
Paul: Exactly, and particularly when you’re able to see how much DNA you share in common with each of those individuals and how they relate to each other. That can be really helpful in recreating the trees of the ancestors beyond the brick wall of adoption.
Fisher: Now the problem is typically though trying to figure out ‘All right, we’ve got these cousins, but which side do they come from, the father’s side or the mother’s side?’ how’d you deal with that?
Paul: So what we did is, with Lauren’s test results we found that she had her closest match shared 240 centimorgans with her and that is the amount of DNA that you’d expect to observe between second cousins.
Fisher: Okay.
Paul: So we knew that, because we’re looking for Lauren’s great grandparents and for Mary’s grandparents, at the level of second cousins the common ancestors between that match and Lauren, would have been the parents of one of the parents of Mary. So they would have been the grandparents from one of the sides. We don’t know if it was paternal or maternal.
Fisher: Right.
Paul: So Lauren’s closest genetic match was the great grandson of a man named Joseph Jones.
Fisher: Okay.
Paul: And he was the son of Levi Jones and Julia Rockwood, and Levi Jones and Julia Rockwood were the common ancestors between two of the client’s genetic matches. One was an estimated second cousin; one was an estimated third cousin. So based on that, we know that two of the grandparents of Mary were Joseph Jones and Laura Adams.
Fisher: Right.
Paul: We next looked at some of her other matches and we determined that they were not related to the Jones or the Adams family, and so it was from a separate part of the client’s biological family tree and using those matches we were also able to follow a similar process to determine that one of Mary’s parents was a daughter or a son of Marian Smith and Alice Rogers.
Fisher: Got it.
Paul: Now Joseph Jones and Laura Adams and their family lived in Northern Alabama, in a town where Mary was supposedly born, and Marian Smith and Alice Rogers and their family also lived in the same town.
So our next step was to identify which couple were the paternal grandparents of Mary and which were the maternal grandparents of Mary.
Fisher: Right and this is a huge step because even if you couldn’t identify which of the children of these grandparents were the parents of your people, at least you had a line to work with right?
Paul: Yeah. So even within the first few hours of research we were able to identify each of the grandparents of this adoptee.
Fisher: Okay. Now you have to narrow it down among the children of these and figure out was it the father’s side or the mother’s side with these couples right?
Paul: Yeah, exactly. So in this case Joe Jones and Laura Adams had five children, two boys, Charles and Joseph were the two boys and then there were three daughters.
Fisher: Okay.
Paul: And we knew that Martha could not have been the mother of Mary because she was the ancestor of the client’s closest match. So if she was the mother then Lauren and her closest match would have shared a lot more DNA in common.
Fisher: Got it.
Paul: So we could eliminate Martha as a candidate to be Mary’s mother. We also suspected that it wasn’t going to be Lula because she would have been only about 13 years old at the time of Mary’s conception.
Fisher: She’s out. [Laughs]
Paul: She’s out. [Laughs] So that left us with three candidates, namely Charles, Joseph and Jenny. So either Charles or Joseph was the father of Mary, or Jenny was the mother of Mary.
Fisher: Got it.
Paul: So the other couple had ten children.
Fisher: Oh boy. Well, let’s not go through every one of them and how it worked out. But how do you figure than, the father’s side, the mother’s side, and who they were?
Paul: So we figured it out by transferring the client’s DNA test results to GEDmatch.com
Fisher: Yes.
Paul: It’s a third party site which allows analysis of the shared segment data, and through analysis of one of the client’s matches who shared a segment of DNA on the X chromosome, we were able to determine the identity of Mary’s parents.

So if Mary was the daughter of Lou Smith and Jenny Jones, then she could have inherited her X DNA from just three people, either she received it from Alice Rogers, Julia Rockwood, or Laura Adams. She couldn’t have inherited any of the DNA from Celesta Wood.
However, on the other side, if Mary was the daughter of Charles Jones and Betty Smith, then she could have inherited X DNA from Laura Adams, Celesta Wood or Alice Rogers.
Fisher: Right.
Paul: Since we know that she inherited X DNA from Celeste Wood based off of her X-DNA match, we know that she had to have been the daughter of Charles Jones and Betty Smith.
Fisher: Wow! [Laughs] Does this stuff keep you awake at night?
Paul: [Laughs] Sometimes!
Fisher: [Laughs]We should mention by the way that we’ve been using pseudo names to protect the identity of the people involved. But what an incredible journey, not only for the clients, but for you to go through this. It’s mind wracking isn’t it?
Paul: Yeah, so it was a really exciting project to work on.
Fisher: All right, great stuff! Paul Woodbury with LegacyTree.com. He’s a DNA analyst. Paul, I appreciate it and I hope you’ll come on again sometime.
Paul: All right, thank you.
Fisher: And coming up next… we’re in the middle of another season of “Who Do You Think You Are?”
Whose on the show, what are some of the behind the scenes stories. We’re going to try and pry some of those out of Jenn Utley, head genealogist for the show. Coming up in five minutes on Extreme Genes, America’s Family History Show.

 

Segment 3 Episode 135 (24:50)
Host Scott Fisher with guest Jenn Utley
Fisher: And welcome back to Extreme Genes, America’s Family History Show and ExtremeGenes.com
It is Fisher here, the Radio Roots Sleuth, and another season of “Who Do You Think You Are?” is going on right now on TLC.
And I have my good friend Jenn Utley from Ancestry.com on the line with me right now. She is one of the genealogists, well, you’re the head genealogist, not one of them, Jenn. You’re overseeing this entire operation. How’s the season going so far?
Jenn: Oh, it’s going really great so far. We’re pretty excited about it.
Fisher: Well, you’ve got a good list of people this season. Katey Sagal coming up this coming weekend, and of course, she’s in ‘Married with Children’ and has made her name doing that. And I bet you’ve got some incredible stuff to share with us about that episode.
Jenn: Right. So, Katey has always been known for her larger than life characters, like Peg Bundy and what she does on the Sons of Anarchy show, but it’s really interesting to see the contrast of what she’s like in real life, because she’s really a grounded down to earth kind of person. So, that makes a really interesting thing to see her and how she responds on “Who Do You Think You Are?” So, her episode that is coming up, it’s the very first episode that ever got me a little bit teary eyed before the first commercial break.
Fisher: Are you saying you’re a hard and crusty person? Come on now!
Jenn: No, I tend to get teary eyed on these things.
Fisher: [Laughs]
Jenn: But it’s never been that early in the program. It’s really interesting, because her mother died when Katey was really young, and so, there’s not a lot she knows about her mother and her mother’s family, so she really wanted to look into that. So, the very beginning of the episode was really just an investigation just one generation back, talking about her mother and that’s where I got a little teary eyed.
Fisher: And how far back did you manage to take it and where to?
Jenn: So, she’s going to start out in New York, talking about her mother, but eventually, she’s going to find herself in the middle of a tragic story in Pennsylvania, long before the Revolutionary War.
Fisher: Nice! Okay, Molly Ringwald is on the week after that, and everybody knows her, of course, started with ‘Facts of Life’ and went on to become a big star in movies, and probably the biggest name you have this season I would say.
Jenn: Ah, I think so, and I think that because it’s Molly Ringwald and she’s such an iconic figure, I think everyone wanted to fight to get to work on her geneaology.
Fisher: [Laughs] And did you win?
Jenn: Oh, I get to work on all the trees, so I don’t have to fight for anything.
Fisher: Oh, nice!
Jenn: [Laughs]
Fisher: Okay, well, what do we know about Molly Ringwald? She’ll be week after next, about the 24th.
Jenn: Yes. When we talk to Molly, there’s a family legend in her tree that her father is descended from Swedish nobility.
Fisher: Hmm.
Jenn: So, when we saw the Sweden line, we wanted to jump right into that one. And the other thing that’s so great about Sweden is, the Swedes are such good record keepers.
Fisher: Yes.
Jenn: So, we use those parish records in Sweden to put together the tree and learn about the comings and goings, and once again, the stories of tragedy and resilience and these dangerous mining occupations these people had.
So, it’s really fun, because taking someone on a journey to a place is just as important as the research, because it’s all about having the celebrities take a walk where their ancestors walked, and usually, the celebrities don’t know where they’re going in advance.
All they know is, whether or not they need to bring their passport with them. So, sometimes, they end up in a place where they haven’t properly packed and they have to run out and buy a coat or boots or something.
Fisher: Wait a minute! You don’t even fill them in on what kind of clothes they should wear!? Or is that too much of a hint?
Jenn: It’s just all, it’s more fun when it’s a surprise, and they’re more engaged in the journey when they don’t know where they’re going.
Fisher: You know, I am 3/8 Swedish myself and I think about what you said about the records, and I think you know, it’s a darn good thing the Swedes are good with their records, because of the fact, you know… Sven Svensson, Yon Yonson…
Jenn: True!
Fisher: All those names that are all the same. If they didn’t have good records, it would be a real mess, wouldn’t it?
Jenn: Oh, it sure would.
Fisher: All right, now Lea Michele from ‘Glee’ is on this season. That’s going to be a great name, especially for younger viewers. Tell us a little about that episode
Jenn: Well, yeah, especially because she’s so used to playing a character, right?
Fisher: Yes.
Jenn: From her Broadway background and then on Glee, I’m really interested. This is the only episode I haven’t seen yet. So, I’m really interested to see how she responds when the story isn’t about her as a character, but she is one of the characters in the story.
Fisher: Hmm.
Jenn: Her research is really amazing. We had to really call in some expert researchers on some highly specialized language to uncover the immigration story of her ancestors, which is fabulous. This is the one of all the six seasons that I have been the most excited to see, and so, it’s just killing me that I haven’t seen it yet.
Fisher: Now wait a minute! You’re talking about a very specialized language. Can you reveal what that is?
Jenn: I can’t. I can’t. You’re going to have to watch the show to see.
Fisher: Argh, you’re killing me!
Jenn: [Laughs]
Fisher: I’m thinking she had to have been from some northern Russian frontier or something.
Jenn: Yes. I learned so much just working on her tree.
Fisher: How far back did you manage to get it? You can tell us that much.
Jenn: Hers doesn’t go back super far. It’s more of an immigration story, somewhere only back, 100, 150 years, if you look at the tree as a whole.
Fisher: All right, and then the last one that I’m aware of is Chris Noth, right? From’Law & Order.’
Jenn: From ‘The Good Wife’.
Fisher: Yes, and that too, right?
Jenn: Yeah, and then he was ‘Mr. Big’ too, so I think he’s got a lot of fans out there. It was fun to see where his story was going to take him, because on The Good Wife, he’s a politician in Chicago. So, it’s really kind of fun when we get to start out his whole episode, we’re taking him to Chicago.
Fisher: Was he aware that he had a link there?
Jenn: You know, off the top of my head, I don’t recall. I think he knew that, but I don’t remember.
Fisher: Most of these people, they come in, really they don’t have much of a hint, do they? About their backgrounds or some of these stories.
Jenn: It’s really varied. Some people don’t know anything, for lots of reasons. A lot of them had parents who died when they were young and so there was no one to pass on the stories.
You’ll also be surprised how many come in and, like Bill Parkerson came in and he knew so much. Like he came in and he was like, “Here’re my Civil War ancestors, but see if you can help me out, because I’ve always wanted to know a Revolutionary War story.” So, it’s really a big spectrum about who knows what about their tree.
Fisher: Yeah, absolutely. All right, a little more about Chris Noth.
Jenn: Well, we’re in Chicago and his ancestors are going to find themselves in a devastating disaster, and then we’re going to take him to both Spain and Ireland, where we’re going to have an ancestor who fought in one of the fiercest battles of all time.
Fisher: Oh, boy! Well, that sounds intense. For most of these folks, it’s quite an impactful thing. I think people who are performers and actors are very in tune with their emotions, and when they learn these things, it’s pretty personal, isn’t it?
Jenn: It is, and I think they’re also quick to see how the lives of their ancestors parallel the experiences they’re having today.
Fisher: Yeah, I think you’re absolutely on board with that. It’s on TLC, Sunday nights. What are the times? Because I’ve got to keep them straight from coast to coast.
Jenn: So, I’m not sure exactly when it will be on based on your cable provider, but it’s usually 10, 9 central time.
Fisher: Okay.
Jenn: It’s usually on right after the show ‘Long Lost Family’.
Fisher: So, typically, you’ll see it say, in the Mountain Time zones, which would also be 9 o’clock and then 7 o’clock though on the West Coast. It’s kind of weird how that works out, isn’t it?
Jenn: Yeah. Like for my own personal provider, it’s been on at 8 o’clock and 10 o’clock on Sunday nights.
Fisher: And you had Aisha Tyler this year, Scott Foley. If you’ve missed it, you can go back and catch those right, on TLC, TLC.com?
Jenn: I think they put the full episodes on for a limited time after the run.
Fisher: All right, that is great stuff. Jennifer. You just keep going with this thing. How much longer do you think you can do this?
Jenn: I don’t know. I feel pretty fortunate. I think I’ve got one of the greatest jobs in the universe.
Fisher: [Laughs] I think you do, too. I’m very jealous. Get me a signed picture of Lea Michele, will you?
Jenn: Oh, that’ll be fun! I’ll see what I can do.
Fisher: [Laughs] Okay. Jennifer Utley from Ancestry.com and another great season of “Who Do You Think You Are?” Thanks Jennifer!
Jenn: You’re welcome.
Fisher: Hey, it’s exciting to see how interest in family history keeps growing and because of that, I’ve got a couple of shoutouts to do today. One is to Mark Jones and Tom Parker, they’re the guys that run NewsTalk 1490 and FM 107-7, in Vicksburg, Mississippi. They’ve just added Extreme Genes to their Sunday night lineup at 6 o’clock. We are thrilled and honored to be on your station, guys, so thank you so much.
We also want to give a shoutout to Victoria Holschevnikov in Dobrush, Belarus. I got an email from her the other day. She’s been listening to Extreme Genes via podcast for the last two years and just wanted to say, ‘hello.’ And Victoria, back at you! Thanks for listening to Extreme Genes, and we hope it’s helping you in Belarus.
And coming up next, Tom Perry, our Preservation Authority, talks about microphones and audio and how best to use it, especially with the reunion season coming up. In three minutes on Extreme Genes, America’s Family History Show!

 

Segment 4 Episode 135 (37:10)
Host Scott Fisher with guest Tom Perry
Fisher: It is preservation time at Extreme Genes, America’s Family History Show and ExtremeGenes.com. Fisher here, the Radio Roots Sleuth with Tom Perry. He’s our Preservation Authority from TMCPlace.com. Hello, Tommy!
Tom: Helloo!
Fisher: And, last week were talking about transcribing old audio. Sometimes it’s very difficult to understand on its own, but if your spend some time playing it over and over again and trying to pick out the words and transcribing it, you can make it so it’s much easier for people to understand the tape when they hear it, because they can follow along with the words that you’ve copied.
Now, as a result of that conversation about audio, we’ve got a great email from Schenectady, New York, from Melanie Smith and she’s asking about microphones, Tom, and it’s been a while since we talked about them.
Tom: Back in the old days when I was back in college, I would hear all the times when I was working on different TV productions, “Oh, don’t worry about the audio. We’ll fix it in post.” And it’s like, don’t worry about it. We’ll fix it in post? Well, that’s what the TV engineers say.
Fisher: Yeah.
Tom: So, I actually when to Full Sail University in Florida to learn more about audio, and found out it’s best to do it right in the first place than fixing the mix.
Fisher: Well, imagine a movie without the music behind it and how it would affect the mood and feel of the whole thing.
Tom: Oh, some of these B grade movies just drive me nuts when their audio’s bad. In fact, we actually did an experiment. We had a movie where we went in and tinkered with the sound track a little bit and had a focus group that we showed one movie to, had them review it. Showed the other movie too. The movies were exactly the same. The only thing that was different was the sound track. And the difference is rating it, one star, two stars, up to five stars. It was tremendous difference, and all we did was change a little bit of the background music and things like this, where the content never changed.
Fisher: Hah!
Tom: Almost everybody nowadays has an iPhone or some kind of a smartphone, and you can download some really good apps for a good recording, but one thing you’ve got to realize is, the microphone on your smartphones are made for you just talking right to them. It’s not really an Omni directional microphone. It’s not really that good.
So, it’s basically about your budget. We have people that call in and say, “Hey, you know, I want to do such and such, but I’ve got a limited budget.” Just remember, it’s better to do something now, then wait and maybe you’ll be gone tomorrow.
If you’re in a position where you’re doing a lot of this, you’re going to family reunions, you want to get some really good killer audio, there’s one microphone out there that’s really good, and I’ve mentioned these people before.
Go to VideoMaker.com, they have all kinds of good stuff. They have webinars that you can attend, but they have this one microphone that they review that’s really, really nice. If you want to go in and do an Amazon search, you just type in B, as in boy, 00TV90DX0, and it’s a great microphone.
It’s kind of pricey. It retails for about $600, but you can pick it up for under $400 on Amazon. And you think, ‘Wow! $400 is a lot of money’. Well, if you’re doing family reunions, you have a budget, and this isn’t something that’s a one time thing. You can set it up, different family members can check it out for when they’re doing their own family reunions on the other side.
It’s a good investment. It’s really, really nice. It’ll plug into an iPhone, it’ll plug into just about any kind of a recorder. If you have the old digital ones, even the ones that take the small cassettes, you can actually record all these things too. So, it’s a lot of money, but it’s a good investment if you’re really serious about doing family history and such. Like I say, do what you can do.
If all you have is your iPhone, go ahead and start doing your narration, because once you have it in your iPhone or in the cloud or you’ve burned it as an MP3, you can now go and take this and add it as an attachment in a PDF, or as we mentioned last week in Heritage Collectors, you can actually go and add these little audio parts to it, and then you’ve got this incredible, searchable document where you can find all these things.
So, it’s really important that, (if) you can’t understand grandpa; you want to make sure they can understand you when you’re doing your part.
Fisher: Boy! There’s so many assets now for putting together a multimedia display, essentially.
Tom: Oh, it is. That’s exactly what you’re doing. What we can do today, you couldn’t even conceive about it ten years ago. It’s just crazy!
Fisher: Right, and all the components are very important… the microphone, the video and the enhancement of the audio that you get.
Tom: Exactly. A lot of times, if you’re in a large city, you can go to a professional place and rent these microphones, you don’t even have to buy them.
Fisher: Boy! That’s great advice. All right, what are we talking about in the next segment?
Tom: I’m going to talk a little bit more about microphones, make sure you get the right kind of microphone for what your event is going to be.
Fisher: All right, coming up in three minutes on Extreme Genes, America’s Family History Show.

 

Segment 5 Episode 135 (44:20)
Host Scott Fisher with guest Tom Perry

Fisher: We are back for our final segment of Extreme Genes, America’s Family History Show. It is preservation time. We’re talking with Tom Perry from TMCPlace.com. I am Fisher, your Radio Roots Sleuth, and, I am speaking to you through a microphone.
Tom: [Laughs]
Fisher: And we’re talking microphones right now, because so many people who’re into family history, of course, like to do interviews with their loved ones, and sometimes it’s not appropriate… sometimes they get nervous, by the way, about being on a camera, and not only that, when you record them with video, sometimes the audio isn’t as good. So, a microphone right up in their face is often much better for your purposes.
Tom: Oh, absolutely! But what is your final objective? What are you going to do? Is this going to be one on one interviews? Is this going to be grandma and grandpa talking, being interviewed by you? Are you going to sit around the Thanksgiving table? All those require different kinds of microphones. What’re going to do?
Fisher: And I think if you’re sitting in a room that has a lot of bounce and echo to it, a video isn’t going to come out as well as far as the audio side of that is concerned.
Tom: Exactly! And we have said this so many times, and please engrain this into your head, whenever you’re using a camcorder, somebody needs to have headphones on that are hooked to that camcorder, because you will not notice the refrigerator, you will not notice the air conditioner coming on and off, you will not notice the cat meowing outside, because your ears are trained to tune into and to focus on what you want, and it will drive you nuts.
And you can do simple things like we’ve talked about before, get cushions off your couch and put it around on the walls, hang up blankets; throw them over the top of the blinds. You can do all kinds of things of what we call, ‘soften up the room’, so you’re not getting those echoes.
You won’t even know they’re happening unless you have your headphones on and you’re listening what’s coming from the camcorder.
Fisher: You know, oddly, a closet is not a bad place to do an interview.
Tom: Oh, yeah. Anything like that where you can shut off. Just make sure your closet isn’t right next to your heater or your air conditioner.
Fisher: Right. [Laughs]
Tom: Because that will cause problems. Another good reason to use the headphones is, if you’re using an external mic and you don’t have it clicked in just right, you might have just defeated your audio, because how it works is, when you plug the little apparatus in there, it turn off the mic that’s built onto your camera. And so, if you push it in far enough to disable that audio, but it’s not far enough to get the new audio, then you have nothing.
Fisher: That’s right. Even if you have video, if the audio is bad, then it doesn’t matter. It’s going to be very frustrating to watch it.
Tom: Absolutely true! I would rather have really good audio all by itself and no video, than video with really bad audio. So, make sure you get the right kind of microphones.
If you are sitting at a dinner table, the best kind of microphone is what they call a PZM, ‘pressure zone microphone’, because it basically turns your table into a giant microphone. So, no matter where somebody is sitting around the table, it’s going to pick them up.
And remember, you don’t have to buy all these microphones. If you’re in a major town, there’s got to be pro audio places that you can rent these microphones from. Even if you live out in the boonies, contact the big city, and microphones are really inexpensive to ship. Overnight shipping on a microphone that weighs under a pound isn’t going to be that expensive.
Go to VideoMaker.com, you can get some good tips there. Go to MixMagazine.com, you can get some good tips there, but make sure if you’re just doing an interview, you have a good lavalier mic.
If you’re doing a big group of people around a nice, hardwood table, use a PZM. There’s another microphone really quickly you can look into, that’s also talked about on VideoMaker.com. It’s called a Sennheiser which makes killer microphones. I love Sennheisers.
Fisher: Yes, yes, great brand.
Tom: It’s called a VR mic and it’s so small, you can actually put it on a drone. If you want to film some stuff on your family reunion, it’s a great way to get audio of everybody talking about what’s going on.
Fisher: All right, interesting stuff, Tom. I don’t think I’ve ever thought about it attached to a drone. [Laughs]
Tom: Oh, absolutely! It’s the best way to get good audio and video of your huge family reunion in the park.
Fisher: Thanks for coming on, Tom. Talk to you next week.
Tom: We’ll be there.
Fisher: Hey, that’s it for this week! Thanks for joining us. Hopefully you learned something that will help you with your family history research.
Thanks to Paul Woodbury from LegacyTree.com for coming on and talking about his recent DNA discovery on behalf of a client.
Also to Jenn Utley, head genealogist for “Who Do You Think You Are?” talking about what’s happening this season on the show. If you missed any of it, catch the podcast.
Talk to you again next week. Thanks for joining us! And remember, as far as everyone is knows, we’re a nice, normal family!

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