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Episode 141 – A Visit With the Creator of Relative Finder / EG Classic Interview With Apolo Anton Ohno

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Fisher opens the show with David Allen Lambert, Chief Genealogist of the New England Historic Genealogical Society and AmericanAncestors.org. David is on the road in Albany, New York.  He talks about the devastating 1911 New York Archives fire that destroyed and damaged so many early New York records.  In “Family Histoire News” David and Fisher discuss the recent identification of a sailor lost at Pearl Harbor in 1941, and the return of his remains to his family.  David also has a unique story about the discovery of the funeral cost breakdown from the services for Mary Todd Lincoln in 1882!  In England, a theater where Shakespeare himself once performed has been unearthed.  And it created quite a stir among historians.  Why?  Catch the podcast!  David also has another Tech Tip and NEHGS guest-user free database.

Next (starts at 11:09) , Fisher visits with Dr. Tom Sederberg, a computer science professor at Brigham Young University.  Dr. Sederberg is the creator of Relative Finder, a unique software that can tie you to friends and celebrities.  Dr. Sederberg will share the history of its development and talk about some stories unique to its use.  It’s free. We’ll tell you where to get it!

Then (starts at 24:48), it’s an Extreme Genes classic interview with Olympic Speed Skating champion Apolo Anton Ohno, now a commentator for NBC.  Apolo is half-Japanese and has learned some fascinating things from that side of his family.  He explains how, as well as what he’s doing to break open his mother’s unknown background.  It’s one of the most talked about segments ever on Extreme Genes!

Then Tom Perry from TMCPlace.com returns to talk preservation.  Who would know there was so much to discuss concerning “thumb drives?!”  Tom shares some important pieces of information on these common storage devices.

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

 

Transcript of Episode 141

Segment 1 Episode 141 (00:30)
Fisher: And welcome to 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 excited! Later on in the show we’re going to talk to a guy connected with a program I’ve heard a lot about and haven’t had a lot of experience using. It’s called, “Relative Finder.” And basically, you can put in your tree with those of many other people and find out how you’re related. So if you’ve got an office or a church group or something like that. You can put in all the names and see where these trees come together and you can find out who within your group is related. So that should be a very interesting segment. Plus we’re going to share an Extreme Genes classic interview, my visit with Olympic champion Apolo Anton Ohno, talking about his background and his search to know more. But right now, let’s check in with my good friend the Chief Genealogist of the New England Historic Genealogical Society and AmericanAncestors.org,
David Allen Lambert. How are you David?
David: Live from New York! It’s your Chief Genealogist, here in Albany!
Fisher: [Laughs] Now, Albany is not New York, when you say “Live from New York!” That is going to throw people off. What are you doing there?
David: Well, NEHGS every other year does a research tour to the New York State Library and Archives. So this is the week they’re out here in sunny Albany, New York. And it’s been really good, people are finding lots of things. But I can tell you there are some things with the old records that they don’t exist anymore. Did you ever hear about the fire that happened out here?
Fisher: Yeah. 1911 and of course I’ve dealt with that a lot because I have a lot of New York ancestry. But that fire took out some very important records.
David: A lot of the colonial records are completely gone, and the early Dutch records for New York of course were singed. But it’s going to take many years of digitization and preservation to actually make them all accessible. But it’s a start. I came across a database that may be very useful for people that are doing New York research. It’s very hard to get records from the state, sometimes it takes up to a year to get a record.
Fisher: Yes.
David: But they have just recently released the New York state vital record death index from 1957 to 1966.
And on my Twitter feed, @DLGenealogist, you’ll find the link and I’m sure we’ll echo it for Extreme Genes. So that was exciting. But you know getting to “Family Histoire News” I’m going to go right on the other side of the U.S. out to Pearl Harbor where the remains of Albert Hayden a former Navy veteran who perished on Pearl Harbor, on December 7th ’41. He was aboard the USS Oklahoma, and he is now buried beside his mom, and how’d they do that? DNA.
Fisher: Of course.
David: It’s amazing.
Fisher: Isn’t that great. And you know all the remains from the Oklahoma were kind of all together, so they buried all these people in a grave of unknowns. And now they’re able to start going through and say, “Oh this is this person, this is that person.” And they’ve identified five of them so far and it’s only going to get better.
David: Well that’s great. I mean we’re approaching the 75th anniversary of Pearl Harbor and we still have a handful of the vets that were actually there. So it’s kind of fitting to see their shipmates finally going home with their parents. So that’s amazing. You know, getting into funerals let’s go ahead a little bit further back in time, in 1882 the late Mary Todd Lincoln passes away, Abraham Lincoln’s beloved wife. The recent acquisition and merger of the Butler Funeral Home with the Boardman-Smith Funeral Home which were both located in Springfield, Illinois has produced a list of the funeral expenses for the late Mary Todd Lincoln.
Fisher: How cool is that!
David: It’s amazing. Including the cost of the casket which cost $225 and $150 for drapes, and a horse drawn carriage for $15, well that’s a pretty good rate but we are talking about 1882 dollars.
Fisher: Right. [Laughs]
David: This is going to be out in a display apparently, talking about the history of the funeral associated with the late 16th president, Abraham Lincoln.
Fisher: How cool is that. That’s amazing.
David: It really is. And you know, I tell you discoveries always turn up, but I always love to dig deep especially with archaeological stories. So going across the pond to England, remains of the Curtain Theatre in Shoreditch, England have been recently found. And you think of William Shakespeare, you know it’s the 400th anniversary of his death, you’ve got the Globe Theatre which has been recreated on the other side of the Thames in London, and its round.
Fisher: Right.
David: Well, guess what? The Curtain Theatre was not round!
Fisher: [Laughs]
David: It was rectangular. So this has thrown historians through a bit of a loop. Well not a loop, a rectangle! [Laughs]
Fisher: A rectangle! [Laughs] That’s right. They’re going to have to redo some of their books.
David: I think so. I mean they’re finding all sorts of artifacts. They found bone combs to clean out little critters from your hair.
Fisher: [Laughs]
David: And they found a lead token to pay for a pint of ale. I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to be handling lead then drinking or eating anything.
Fisher: No kidding.
David: So that’s exciting stuff that’s happening. For my Tech Tip, and this really kind of comes down to spring cleaning, I found over three hundred old cancelled checks from my late mom and dad. They go from the 1970s to the 1990s or so and I was going to pitch them. Then I thought to myself, besides having their signatures, it has the counter signatures of all the people they wrote to, like checks for people who got married, flowers for funerals or vacations we went on, or things they purchased like maybe a bike for me. So it’s really important. It kind of gives you a diary. My parents didn’t keep one, so if I keep these checks in chronological order, some of them are insignificant but it does tell a story that in some cases I forgot about.
Fisher: Interesting.
David: It really is. Speaking of databases that you can make of your own family possessions, NEHGS is always making databases and this week is no exception. If you go to AmericanAncestors.org you can use the guest user database by signing up as a guest user for free, and we are having currently now working our Western Massachusetts 1790 project. The key thing on that is, if your ancestors lived in western Massachusetts in 1790, send us in the information, and we’ll include you in the database and help you put together a sketch on your ancestor. That’s it for me this week, I can’t say signing off from Beantown, so I’ll say signing out from Albany, see you next week in Beantown, or from Beantown.
Fisher: All right David, and take care of those kids, it sounds like there’s a lot of learning going on there.
David: There really is. There’s a lot of school groups going through so who knows… these are future historians and archaeologists, and genealogists abounding.
Fisher: All right, talk to you next week, buddy.
David: Take care, my friend. Buh-bye.
Fisher: And coming up next, we’re going to talk about a piece of software called “Relative Finder” that can help you find out if you’re related to lots of people. Tom Sederberg will have all the details on the way in three minutes on Extreme Genes, America’s Family History Show.

Segment 2 Episode 141 (11:10)
Host Scott Fisher with guest Dr. Tom Sederberg
Fisher: Hey, welcome back to Extreme Genes, America’s Family History Show and ExtremeGenes.com. It is Fisher here, your Radio Roots Sleuth, and with over thirty years of tracing my dead, I’ve often found it interesting to discover that sometimes people you know, maybe somebody who lives right next door or somebody you work with, is related to you. And it’s often a big surprise, but it’s not that big a surprise to people like Tom Sederberg, my next guest. He is a professor of computer science at Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah. Tom, welcome to Extreme Genes.
Tom: Thank you Scott.
Fisher: I’m excited to have you on because sometime back you were the creator of a program called “Relative Finder.” And this program does exactly what we’re talking about, helps people discover how they might be related to somebody else. This goes way back, Tom. I mean, we’re talking pre-twenty first century!
Tom: Right. Yeah. Yeah. The first version of Relative Finder was written about 1997. And I’m an avid genealogist, and I was interested in helping my neighbors get interested in family history and genealogy. And back then this was pre-FamilySearch, pre-anything online. But there was a database called “Ancestral File.” And anybody could go to a family history library and download their genealogy from Ancestral File, assuming that they had the data in there due to the kindness of some relative who had entered it. And many of my neighbors had that and so I went to the family history library over the course of many months, and downloaded my neighbor’s family history and you know, going back 10- 12 generations. And then I helped them load it on their personal computer. Just to, you know, be of assistance. Because usually I’ve discovered if somebody just starts to play around with it, they really get hooked on it.
Fisher: That’s really true.
Tom: So anyway, one night I was sitting at my computer, I said “Gosh, I’ve got about a hundred of my neighbors’ data on my hard drive here. I wonder if anyone’s related.” And so, being a computer scientist I wrote a little computer program that would read into everybody’s family tree, and just compare to see if anybody had any common ancestors. And lo and behold, I was just flabbergasted! It turned out that on average, every one of those hundred neighbors of mine was related to about two thirds of the other people!
Fisher: [Laughs]
Tom: And I’m talking, some of them were second and third cousins. My wife turned out to have three third cousins within a block of us. And we’d live there by then for about a dozen years. She had no idea that she was so closely related to these neighbors.
Fisher: Wow! That had to be quite a revelation. You know, they talk about George Herbert Walker Bush, as being the first president to be related to perhaps more than half the population of America, because he has early southern roots out of Virginia and early New England roots as well.
Tom: Wow.
Fisher: And that kind of gets into the bulk of the early settlers in the United States, and they were figuring he is related to about a 150 million Americans!
Tom: Wow.
Fisher: Yeah. And so when you break it down to the neighborhoods, I don’t think most of us think that we might have somebody whose related to us just living on the same street. But I would guess that if you go back to the sixth or seventh cousin level, most of us do!
Tom: Yeah. And you know it’s an interesting mathematical thing. I subsequently did this – I teach here at BYU and I ran this for all of the professors in my college about seven or eight years ago, 180 people, we discovered thirty eight instances of second cousins and 160 instances of third cousins, just amongst these 180 professors. It was quite fascinating.
Fisher: Wow! That’s incredible. This is kind of a mind blower to most people I guess, although I think more and more people are becoming aware of the fact that the math says “We really are one big family.”
Tom: Yeah. We ran a probability analysis and discovered that for two random people with European ancestry, there’s a fifty-fifty chance that they share a common ancestor within twelve generations.
Fisher: That would make sense. That’s going back to about the time of the Mayflower, right?
Tom: Yeah, roughly.
Fisher: Somewhere in that neighborhood. In fact, I just finally found a common ancestor with my wife and myself. So we’re cousins. Not that there’s anything wrong with that!
Tom: No! No!
Fisher: [Laughs]
Tom: Just as long as it’s not first cousins!
Fisher: That’s right. That’s right. But this goes back about to the late fifteen hundreds to finally find one. I was really kind of surprised it took this long. So, that was 1997 and then you did the thing with the professors about eight years ago, what has happened with it since? And how can people get a hold of this? And how do they use it?
Tom: Yeah. Well, since then a lot has happened in the family history technology to begin with. FamilySearch is online now, you’ve got Ancestry online. There are lots of companies. The appealing thing for us about FamilySearch is that all of their names are linked together with fairly good accuracy into one big tree, which is critical for us in order to determine how people are related.
Fisher: Right.
Tom: And so, anybody that has a FamilySearch account, and generally it’s important for them to go back at least eight or nine generations in FamilySearch before they start tying into too many other people. They can just go to RelativeFinder.org is our website, and it will have them log in to their FamilySearch account and that’s how we credential the users of Relative Finder and it will download their… I think we’re grabbing like fifteen generations, if they have that many. And we download that much and then we just run a report and compare them against, uh… We’ve got about three thousand famous people, including presidents of the United States, and artists, and movie stars and lots of different groups. And it will show how they’re related to these people.
Fisher: And some of that will be good and some of it maybe not so much.
Tom: Exactly.
Fisher: [Laughs]
Tom: We get complaints about people “I didn’t want to be related to this politician!”
Fisher: [Laughs]
Tom: One of the ones we get coming on a lot is, we’ve got President Obama in the database and a lot of people turn up being related to him and they say “Oh it must be a mistake.” They don’t realize of course that his mother was European, and so that’s how most of those relationships with him show up.
Fisher: Right, because the father’s side goes back to Africa immediately.
Tom: Yeah, and I don’t think there’s too much of his ancestry in FamilySearch.
Fisher: Right. The mother was early American.
Tom: Yeah, I believe so.
Fisher: I’m actually related to President Obama myself. Who else have you found on there that people respond to quite a bit?
Tom: Well, of course the Mayflower people and I just got an email the other day somebody said they do East Coast history tours and its fun for them to have people do Relative Finder.
Because then they point it out in particular if somebody is going to visit Monticello, they can say “Oh yeah, I’m related to Thomas Jefferson” Or Gettysburg and so forth. So it just makes it a lot more of an historical tie in realizing that their own ancestors played a role in some of these historical sites.
Fisher: And some of the places they were actually going. Yeah that’s absolutely true. You know, there’s so much that goes into preparation if you’re going to do a research trip somewhere right?
Tom: Yes.
Fisher: You want to find out about the area, where are the archives? What am I looking for? What can I order in before I even leave so I don’t have to spend a lot of time there doing things that I could do from home? This is a whole other aspect of it that I would have never thought of. Finding out what your relationship might be to the sites of famous individuals that you might be dropping in on.
Tom: Yeah. We have kind of a skeleton crew of students working on Relative Finder, and we’re just computer scientists you know, we’re not historians. So it’s hard for us to broaden the user base of how many famous people we have in our database. But we are now soon to roll out a feature where anybody could, you know, who might have an historical interest in a certain group of people, who’ll be able to add their own groups of famous people to Relative Finder, and that way we’ll kind of crowd source the management of it.
Fisher: Interesting.
Tom: And make it more usable for people, more interesting.
Fisher: So you’re developing it still to this day, and it’s been 19 years. Did you ever imagine?
Tom: No it’s been very, very exciting, and we’ve been fortunate a lot of very talented computer science students have worked on it.
Fisher: So tell me about some of the most incredible stories you’ve heard back from some of the folks who have used Relative Finder.
Tom: Yeah. Well I think my favorite quotes altogether, I mean of course we ask “Why are we going through all this work?” Because it does take time and money, and effort to maintain Relative Finder, and it all goes back to our passion for family history. And our favorite feedback is just, uh, people that spend three minutes joining Relative Finder and all of a sudden they’re hooked on genealogy. I think my all time favorite quote is somebody who said, “Relative Finder is the gateway drug to family history.”
Fisher: [Laughs] Did that go over well with you?
Tom: Well, you know I don’t know if I like the metaphor so much, but the sentiment! [Laughs]
Fisher: [Laughs] Well that makes sense. You know I was thinking about it too that if you’re interested in, for instance, finding out if you can join the Mayflower Society, this might be a really easy way to at least see if there is some kind of path for you to find.
Tom: Yeah.
Fisher: That’s fascinating. When you think about, you just did this to start with, with your neighbors and your friends and it’s turned into this. It’s got to be very satisfying Tom.
Tom: Yeah. No it’s been very exciting. We’ve really just gone live with the FamilySearch version about a little over a year ago. And we’re already passed a half a million users and this grows about 20 thousand users a week just by word of mouth. So it’s really drawing a lot of attention.
Fisher: He’s Tom Sederberg, Professor of Computer Sciences at Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah. The creator of “Relative Finder” You can sign up through your FamilySearch account. Dr. Sederberg, great to have you on the show, thanks so much! And good luck with all the things you’re doing to make this thing grow.
Tom: Thank you very much Scott, nice talking to you.
Fisher: And coming up next, it is a classic interview, my visit with Apolo Anton Ohno, the Olympic Champion about his background, and what he’s doing to discover more, coming up in five minutes on Extreme Genes, America’s Family History Show!

Segment 3 Episode 141 (24:50)
Host Scott Fisher with guest Apolo Anton Ohno
Fisher: And we are back, Extreme Genes, America’s Family History Show and ExtremeGenes.com. It is Fisher here with my very special guest, Olympic multiple Gold, Silver Medalist, Apolo Ohno in the studio with me today. And thanks for dropping by Apolo! It’s good to see you.
Apolo: Of course. Of course. I love your guys’ show and what you guys do. This is awesome!
Fisher: Well, thank you so much. And I was thinking about this, you’re known around the world, but nobody can quite ever figure out what your background is. And obviously you’ve got an interest in family history. I want to hear a little about what you’ve done and what you know.
Apolo: Sure. I’ll break it down like this. I grew up in a single parent household. My father was Japanese. He migrated to the United States when he was eighteen years old. Was married to my mom, and then they got a divorce when I was very young. My father took custody of me, so he raised me my entire life. So obviously I’m very close to my father. I don’t keep in contact with my mom, so I never developed a relationship with my mother in the sense of got to know her and her background.
Fisher: Right.
Apolo: And my mom was actually adopted.
Fisher: Oh boy!
Apolo: Yeah. So she doesn’t know her background ethnicity, because she doesn’t know her parents. I mean, you can kind of tell based on the way they look, but because I don’t keep in contact with my mom, I don’t know. So when people ask me all the time, “What’s your background ethnicity?” I say, “Well, I’m half Japanese.” And they say, “What’s the other half?” And I’m like, “I don’t really know.” So not too long ago, I did the 23andMe genealogy test.
Fisher: Right.
Apolo: Just to figure out kind of, at least generally speaking, what my history was. And then before that I think there was this show called, “Who Do You Think You Are?”
Fisher: Right. No, it’s still around.
Apolo: It’s still going?
Fisher: Oh yeah.
Apolo: So a friend of mine was producing the show. I had always told him, “I really want to know what my background is.” At least on my one side like maybe on the Japanese side, like what does it look like, the tree?
Fisher: Sure.
Apolo: Because of the half Japanese heritage, what they did you know? And the Japanese keep this very strict catalogue historical documentation of where the family and clans, I guess are from, right back to the Samurai.
Fisher: Right. Yes.
Apolo: And they started to dig deeper and deeper and deeper, and they tried to, they had to get like approval from my grandmother. At the time, my grandfather was alive and my father, and they were trying to just do all this research and using all these different translators. And they kept hitting a wall, because they got to a point where the Japanese just didn’t want to release the information. There was so much compliance and approval that my grandma was just like, “I don’t want to do this anymore!”
Fisher: [Laughs]
Apolo: So, I had the test results back from where I am and it shows that the other portion of my heritage and ancestry is primarily its northeastern European.
Fisher: Okay.
Apolo: Kind of like there’s some Irish there. There’s a little bit of like, British, maybe some Scottish. 1.6% is North African, which I was like, “Wow, that’s a bit interesting.”
Fisher: Isn’t that interesting when you get those trace elements in there and those.
Apolo: Yes, trace elements. People always say like, “What’s one thing that people don’t know about you, Apolo?” You know, and I’m like, “I don’t really know.” I’m pretty open on my public, you know like who I am. And then I started thinking the other day, “I do a lot of reading about some pretty obscure off topic things, and one of them is like ‘The origin of human species.’” I’m always interested in like, what was the first bones being excavated? What about this tribe? Where do we come from? You know, the other day I was reading about, you know, they found out this, they found this skull and some teeth in China. And they found that this kind of predates what they normally thought of any human beings being inside China. They found like, “We know what their last kind of meals were based on the…” I was like, “How do you?” That is so crazy!!
Fisher: [Laughs]
Apolo: Was this guy eating like some Dim sum?
Fisher: Yeah.
Apolo: It was incredible!
Fisher: It’s fantastic!
Apolo: It’s awesome! So really awesome!
Fisher: So did you get some stories out of Japan, about your parents, your grandparents, your greats?
Apolo: I did.
Fisher: What do you know?
Apolo: On my grandmother’s side, they found out that I actually have real Samurai blood.
Fisher: No kidding!
Apolo: Real, I forgot those, Yasunaga Clan. It was something in Japan, real Samurai blood. And you know I haven’t done a lot of research into it.
Fisher: When did you find that out, at what point? I mean you were probably…
Apolo: Not soon enough, because I would have used that to my advantage.
Fisher: I was going to say.
Apolo: Out there I was skating on razor sharp blades and like feeling “I’m fierce.” You know?
Fisher: Yeah, that had to affect you. So it wasn’t until after you’d retired?
Apolo: Well, I’ll tell you, it was something interesting, because my father didn’t really play sports. My grandfather didn’t really play sports. My grandmother didn’t really play sports. And so I have this like unique athletic ability that was sort of an anomaly in my family, but there has to be some genetic heritage that has passed down through generations. We found that there’s a relative in my family who was an exceptional runner, but never in a competition setting. But he would go visit his wife, and back then, you know, this is years and years and years ago, he would run to go see her. It was like sixteen miles one way or something.
Fisher: Wow! [Laughs]
Apolo: So he was like this incredible endurance athlete.
Fisher: Well you must have drawn something from him.
Apolo: Yeah. And then you know, perhaps from the Samurai bloodline, maybe there’s some fighter mentality there that is, you know. At least I like to think so.
Fisher: Absolutely.
Apolo: You know.
Fisher: So you found out about the Samurais. How far back are we talking here?
Apolo: I don’t know the exact date period, but it’s pretty far back. I think we’re going into like, you know, the 1400s, 1300s time. So this is pretty far back.
Fisher: And did you get some of your tree back that far?
Apolo: A little bit. It’s bits and pieces and some of it’s broken, because they were not able to really connect properly given the approval inside Japan.
Fisher: Right. Right.
Apolo: It’s going to take, what it’s going to take is, it’s going to take for me to fly to Japan with my grandmother.
Fisher: [Laughs]
Apolo: And then like basically just say, “All right, Obachan, I need you to kind of agree to this, this, this, this, and this.”
Fisher: So you need certain approvals from within the family?
Apolo: Every single step needs approval.
Fisher: No kidding!
Apolo: Yeah, it’s very cumbersome.
Fisher: Wow!
Apolo: And so she was just like, “Why does he have to know? It doesn’t really matter!”
Fisher: [Laughs] We’re talking to Olympic hero and idol, Apolo Ohno, about his family history background and some of his research. And you were saying you did the 23andMe DNA test. And since your mother’s side was adopted, did you find any cousins, first of all? Did you find any connection with some folks who might be cousins to help you open up that adopted side?
Apolo: Not yet. Not yet. But there’s been like some, I think they give you like some suggestions, right? In terms of like who might possibly be related.
Fisher: Right.
Apolo: I always wondered why my goatee and my sideburns were red.
Fisher: [Laughs]
Apolo: Because Japanese all have black hair.
Fisher: Yeah, that wouldn’t be from there.
Apolo: And I’m like, this is, I’m either Irish or like, Native American.
Fisher: Scottish, yeah.
Apolo: Scottish, definitely something in the North Eastern, European region.
Fisher: Sure.
Apolo: And it makes sense now.
Fisher: Well, a lot of people will do that. They’ll suddenly find a first or second cousin pops up or even a third.
Apolo: Right.
Fisher: And then they can start coming down into what you know about your mother and start putting this thing together, reconstructing the tree coming forward. And that’s how that can get done.
Apolo: Yeah.
Fisher: But you’re going to have to be paying attention to your results in order to get that to happen.
Apolo: Basically what is does is, it takes work, right? So you have to kind of sit down and you have to be committed and really kind of see what you can
Fisher: Well, and like you say, you’ve got that natural curiosity.
Apolo: Yeah.
Fisher: About history and the human factor. I mean, this is something you can do on the plane.
Apolo: Yeah.
Fisher: On your handheld device.
Apolo: That’s what I do. I do it on the plane.
Fisher: Yeah, all over the place. So what are you doing now?
Apolo: So you know, I retired in 2010 from my pursuit of the Olympic Games.
Fisher: You miss it?
Apolo: Every day. I miss the Olympic space every single day, but I get a taste of it every couple of years when I go to the Olympic Games. You know, I’m an NBC correspondent for the Olympics. I will be in the Rio 2016 Olympic Games as a commentator. I’ll be in the 2018 Games as a commentator. I’ll be in the 2020 Games as a commentator, ’22 and ’24 and beyond. So that’s what I do in relation to sports. Then I have my own serial entrepreneurial activities that I kind of focus on.
Fisher: Sure.
Apolo: I do some, you know, hosting and some acting based in Los Angeles. But those three are the main things that I really spend my time. And obviously the Special Olympics, and other different types of organizations that I’ve become partners with and try to lend my time to.
Fisher: Love the Special Olympics!
Apolo: Yeah, phenomenal.
Fisher: I remember the first time I was ever asked to host some even there. And I went there, frankly, with kind of a bad attitude.
Apolo: Yeah.
Fisher: It was like a Saturday and it’s like, “Agh, I’ve got to go host this other thing.”
Apolo: Yeah.
Fisher: And I got down there. And it was the most fulfilling, heartwarming thing. And I drove home with just such a glow. And I was thinking back about how I’d felt coming down and how I felt. And I couldn’t do enough of that stuff for many years to come. And it was just a joy to do it. And I can see you feel the same way about it.
Apolo: Yeah. You know, its…
Fisher: It’s a revelation!
Apolo: You think it’s a giving experience, but you get so much in return. And that’s what I try to tell people, “Look, just try it. Just see what I’m talking about. I can’t explain it to you.”
Fisher: And the love!
Apolo: The love is so genuine!
Fisher: Yes!
Apolo: Yeah. I mean, the Special Olympic athletes are so incredibly special and they’re just unique. And I love being part of an organization blessed to be able to represent them and always kind of take part. It’s been a big part of my life, you know. I’m excited about it.
Fisher: Apolo Ohno, thank you so much for your time. And good luck in your pursuit.
Apolo: Thank you. Thank you so much!
Fisher: Because I know this is going to be something that’s going to keep pulling you back, especially when you’ve got all those Samurais back there calling at you, you know.
Apolo: “Learn more about us!”
Fisher: Well, don’t athletes ultimately use things, like anything they can use as a motivation, right? Some kind of slight, like the Koreans did with you, right?
Apolo: Yeah, I was their motivation! [Laughs]
Fisher: Yes, you were! [Laughs]
Apolo: Oh man! Yeah!
Fisher: He’s Olympic Legend, Apolo Ohno, on Extreme Genes, America’s Family History Show.

Segment 4 Episode 141 (37:10)
Host Scott Fisher with guest Tom Perry
Fisher: It’s Preservation Time at Extreme Genes, America’s Family History Show and ExtremeGenes.com. Fisher here, the Radio Roots Sleuth, with Tom Perry from TMCPlace.com, our Preservation Authority. Hi Tom, how are you?
Tom: Super!
Fisher: All right, what have you got for us today?
Tom: Okay, we’ve got some updates, we talked a lot about storage devices, people are still asking us questions about storage and we have an update. We’ve always talked about thumb drive technology, people call them different things but basically they’re something about the size of your thumb.
Fisher: Right.
Tom: Now they have them in shapes of credit cards, they have them in shapes of cars, and they have them in shapes of about anything that you want.
Fisher: [Laughs] Yeah, I had a cruise ship one once.
Tom: Did you?
Fisher: Yeah, it was great!
Tom: And you know there are a lot of different ones out there on the market. Some of them come pre-packed with information, you plug it in you know, it goes to their website or has information of about whatever when they’re handing them out at trade shows. The one thing you have to be really careful with, is you have to make sure you get some really good quality ones because there’s a lot of junky ones coming out of China, that you know, I wouldn’t take if they gave them to me for free. But this new technology that makes them better. Always check the warranty, like the ones that we sell in our store and we put like MP3s and MP4s on. In fact, some of them are like 18GB and 32GB, we can actually put entire DVDs on them.
Fisher: Isn’t that amazing?
Tom: Oh it’s incredible. And the ones that we have, have a one year warranty on them, so if anything ever happens in your first year which is usually when they’re going to go bad, they’re covered. And these new ones that I really like, they’re like the rubber wrist bands that you wear for like you know, “Be strong” or different things like that.
Fisher: Sure, for racing yes.
Tom: Yeah, all different kinds of little rubber bands. There’s one out there now that’s like that. It’s just when you plug it together it makes a wrist band. So they’re so convenient, they’re smart, you can put them on your key ring because they’ll snap together but like I say, they’re about the size of your wrist. And the technology on these ones is just getting so much better. However, we still want to give you the cover that you need to make sure if you’re using thumb drives, use it as a transfer system to go from something to something else. In fact, even if you have the best one ever created that’s never going to give you a problem, what if you lose it?
Fisher: Oh yeah, there’s no question. The thing is, it’s interesting, I’ve had one for years, the same one and it works great. And I use it for transferring material when I’m in a research center or a library and I can bring it home and it’s no problem. But it’s still all there. It’s never failed me. But I have seen so many of these cheap ones, you wonder why would anybody ever rely on a thumb drive as their permanent storage solution?
Tom: Oh exactly! Look at the big people like Facebook and people like that. They don’t store all their stuff on thumb drives, they store it on you know, BluRay disks and such. So what’s so convenient about these things is that they are so portable. Like we say, you always want to have stuff backed up on a disk, preferably a Taiyo Yuden disk or even an M Disk which are the ones that are a thousand year disks. You want to make sure it’s in the cloud and two clouds if you can afford it. Make sure both clouds are unrelated. Like for instance, Google drive and Apple or Dropbox or one of these kinds of things. If you use somebody like ours, we have our own, but ours is actually built on Google. So if you use LightJar which we have you know you don’t want to have LightJar and Google as your two, because basically it’s the same thing. We just built an infrastructure on top of it. So you want to make sure they’re not related. And you always want to put stuff on a hard drive, and the prices of hard drives are coming down, and down and down. I mean, you know I saw at Best Buy they had, I think it was a one terabyte hard drive for like fifty dollars the other day.
Fisher: No kidding, really?
Tom: It’s just amazing. And I remember when a 500 gigabyte was a hundred and fifty dollars.
Fisher: [Laughs]
Tom: So the prices are coming down. And they’re small and they’re portable. And that’s a good way to store stuff. It’s an excellent way to ship stuff. If you want to ship stuff to us to have somebody work on it or ship it to somebody else, a family member. Those drives are so inexpensive, it’s a great way to store stuff.
Fisher: I never thought I’d hear you suggest maybe we could ship something to you on a thumb drive!
Tom: Exactly! Exactly! But you know, like I say things are changing. It’s you know, the way of the future. The nice thing about thumb drives like I say, they’re so small. But always back it up. Don’t send anything to us or anybody if you don’t have it backed up. You know if you think, “Oh I don’t need a copy of this, I’m going to send it to Aunt Martha.” No, you want to make sure you have a copy of it. We’ll go into a little bit more detail on some different hard drives and other storage devices after the break.
Fisher: All right, coming up in three minutes on Extreme Genes, America’s Family History Show.

Segment 5 Episode 141 (44:20)
Host Scott Fisher with guest Tom Perry
Fisher: And we are back! Final segment of Extreme Genes, America’s Family History Show and ExtremeGenes.com. It’s Preservation Time. We’re talking to Tom Perry from TMCPlace.com. And we’ve been talking thumb drives, because let’s face it Tom, historically they’re pretty trashy storage items.
Tom: Exactly.
Fisher: And now finally some people are getting around to making some real good ones, and you didn’t mention in the previous segment, how much are these new ones going to set us back?
Tom: You know, this is what’s really surprising, is that they’re so inexpensive. In our store we carry 16GB, 32GB which are awesome ones and they’re under ten bucks.
Fisher: Wow! That’s great!
Tom: Oh yeah.
Fisher: And they’ll last?
Tom: Oh yeah. In fact, like I say we have a one year warranty on them, if anything goes wrong, I don’t care what it is, send it back to us and we’ll send you a new one.
Fisher: But how long do you actually expect it to last?
Tom: You know, just like you said in the earlier segment. I’ve got one that’s hanging on my keychain that I have had for at least ten years. And every time I think “Oh this is going to be the day it goes away, this is going to be the day it goes away.” I back it up and everything and it’s still streaming along, I’ve never had a problem with it. And one thing you want to be careful with, we talked about different shapes, there’s one that’s like a credit card. The reason I would kind of say steer away from that one is because look at the credit cards in your wallet, they’re probably kind of half mooned by now.
Fisher: Right. Yes. [Laughs]
Tom: And so what’s that going to do to the circuitry?
Fisher: Yeah.
Tom: You know, a magnetic stripe isn’t as volatile as circuitry in a USB drive, so you want to be careful. And you talked about small ones. We had somebody bring in one the other day it’s about the size of your thumbnail. Not your thumb, but your thumbnail!
Fisher: Your thumbnail? Wow!
Tom: Exactly. She hands it to me and I’m sitting there waiting for her. She says, “What do you need?” I go, “Well here’s the cap, where’s the USB?” she says “That’s it!”
Fisher: [Laughs]
Tom: There’s this little teeny cap on it, it’s a quarter of an inch. And you pop that off. I thought, “I wouldn’t have those if they were free!” How easy is that to lose or one your little kids could swallow it and there’s goes all your stuff!
Fisher: [Laughs]
Tom: Stay away from those things! Think, “What am I going to use this for?” If it’s a onetime thing, you’re going to load something, send it off and you don’t care about it, that’s fine. But if you’re going to keep it, have something at least the size of your thumb. And make sure you don’t ever leave it in your pocket. We’ve had people send them through the washing machine and sometimes we’ve been able to recover them, sometimes we haven’t. That’s why I really, really like these new neoprene wrist kinds, they’re east to keep track of. If you’re out in the rain, it’s not going to ruin them. They’re just a great way to go. And they’re under ten dollars, so it’s absolutely amazing with them.
Fisher: Now, they’ll last longer if you don’t use them a lot, right? So if you wanted to store them, say you wanted to store some MP4s or MP3s and you load them up there and just put them on a shelf somewhere, those should last for quite a while, right, that way because you’re not using them?
Tom: Oh yeah. Oh absolutely! Yeah, that’s true. The biggest thing about using them is not just the using them, it’s as you know they slide in tight and you pull it off, so they don’t fall off. And so it’s just the pushing in and pushing out, pushing in and pushing out that’s a problem. And one thing I really want to emphasize a lot is, always make sure when you put them in your computer, don’t ever pull it out without shutting down your computer or making sure you’ve released it.
Fisher: Right.
Tom: And whether you’re a PC or Mac, it’s come on and told you, “Okay, it’s safe to remove it now”. If you’re not sure, if you think, “Hmm I don’t know if this is released wrong.” shut down your computer and take it off, because that’s usually when they get messed up. Because you might be all done adding stuff to it, but maybe your computer’s still accessing it, because it’s looking for information or whatever and you pull it out right in the middle of one of those times, that’s where you’re going to totally corrupt all the stuff that’s on it. So most important thing is, careful putting it in, careful removing it. But these new ones are great. The neoprenes are great, because they’re a lot more water resistant than the other kind. And they probably have a better chance of going through your washer if that does happen.
Fisher: Ohh, don’t even talk like that!
Tom: It’s scary.
Fisher: Thanks for coming on, Tom. See you next week.
Tom: See you then.
Fisher: Hey that wraps it up for this week. Thanks once again to Dr. Tom Sederberg from Brigham Young University. He’s a computer sciences professor who created a little program called “Relative Finder” years and years ago. And they’re still improving it to this day. It’s a way for you to find out who you’re related to who’s famous or who you’re related to who lives just down the street! It’s a great interview. If you missed it, catch the podcast on iTunes, iHeart Radio’s Talk Channel and ExtremeGenes.com. Hey, next week we’ll talk to a man who, as a young Cub Scout got to visit the last living Civil War soldier. Wow, what was that about?! Find out next week on the show! Thank for listening. Talk to you again next week. And remember, as far as everyone knows, we’re a nice, normal family!

Click Here to Listen to this Episode!

 

Episode 133 – LegacyTree.com Researcher Kate Eakman on Finding Ancestry Through Social Security Applications (SS-5) / Larry Gelwix Talks About Our Extreme Genes Fall Cruise on Royal Carribbean!

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Fisher and David Allen Lambert, Chief Genealogist of the New England Historic Genealogical Society and AmericanAncestors.org, open the show with Family Histoire News… good and bad. They start with bad… The National Records Office in a major UK city has been hit by ransomware. People wishing to research their ancestors while visiting there will not be able to do so for at least a while. Listen to learn which one. The Daily Mail of the UK says many of us still sense the presence of deceased loved ones. David shares one story from the article, as well as one from his own family concerning this very thing. David then talks about the “Fat Man’s Club of America.” A hundred years ago, it was HUGE! (Pun intended.) Was your ancestor a member? David will tell you all about it. He then shares his Tech Tip… how to find millions of ancient London court records from a university in Texas. David wraps up his visit with another guest user free database from NEHGS.

Next (starts at 11:39), Fisher visits with professional genealogist Kate Eakman from LegacyTree.com. Kate has the inside story on the “SS-5” form… a government Social Security document we’ve all had to fill out, as have our parents and grandparents and other relatives. It’s a record that was filled out by hand in previous decades that gives the date and place of birth, and the names of parents, including the maiden name of the mother. But there are rules governing whether or not you get to see those important ancestral names! Kate will fill you in what those rules are, and how she got around them in one case. It’s a lesson that can apply to other problems dealing with government records.

Larry Gelwix, the “Getaway Guru” from Columbus Travel Agency pops in to talk about the Extreme Genes cruise, set for September 13th out of Boston, cruising to Nova Scotia. Want to join us? Larry and Fisher will share the details and tell you how to sign up.

Preservation Authority Tom Perry from TMCPlace.com then joins the show to talk about what to do when you find undeveloped film from back in the day! How do you get it developed and is it even developable anymore? It’s a great topic. Tom continues the subject at the back end of the show, talking about undeveloped home movies. Tom will help you avoid making mistakes that could permanently destroy your film.

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

 

Transcript for Episode 133

 

Segment 1 Episode 133 (00:30)

Fisher: Hello, you! Welcome to America’s Family History Show, Extreme Genes 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. Great guest today! Kate Eakman is here, with LegacyTree.com. She’s going to be talking about a very special record that has been left by many of your more recent ancestors.

Did you know that they actually wrote down when they were born, where they were born, the name of the parents, including the maiden name the mother? Yes! And you can actually obtain that record through the government. She’ll tell you about it and some of the tricks and rules involved, coming up in about eight or nine minutes.

Then, later in the show, Larry Gelwix, the Getaway Guru from Columbus Travel is going to be here talking about our Extreme Genes cruise that’s scheduled for September 13th out of Boston, going up to Nova Scotia, and it’s going to be a great family history cruise… fall foliage too.

So, you’re going to want to hear all the details on that and plan to join us in September. I’m very excited to let you know, by the way, that our shows are now being transcribed. So, if you hear something on the air, or you hear something on the podcast, and if you want to find where that was in the show, you can just search the transcription that’s posted along with the podcast. So, it’s a great help as you follow along with us at home, on Extreme Genes. And right now, it’s time to check in with my good friend, the Chief Genealogist of the New England Historic Genealogical Society and AmericanAncestors.org, David Allen Lambert is here from Boston.

Hi David, How are you?

David: Greetings from Beantown, Fish. How are you doing? I’m just great.

Fisher: Awesome! We got a lot of good news and bad news in our family histoire news today.

David: We definitely do. Going across the pond to Edinburgh, Scotland the National Record Office at New Register House in Edinburgh has a computer virus which has shut down the whole system.

Fisher: Oh my goodness!

David: So, you could go into Edinburgh, pay a fee and actually look up your ancestors. Not the case right now.

Fisher: Wow! That is really sad. And you know, that’s happening in a lot of places. This ransomware, it actually happened at the radio station I’m headquartered at, about a month or so ago. So, it’s very prevalent.

David: You know, it’s nice to know that ScotlandsPeople.gov.uk, which is the main website that people access from home, isn’t affected, so people shouldn’t be worried about their accounts. So, I won’t toss that out of there, just the in-house access. So, if you’re planning a trip to Scotland anytime soon, call ahead. You know, there’s a really interesting story that was in England’s Daily Mail. The story goes, basically six in ten people who have lost a partner will continue to hear them or sense them in some way, and then, you know, I think that’s true in a lot of senses. You have a family member that’s gone and some people are still seeing them and hearing them, but it’s not really reported so much. In fact, one of the stories talks about a grandmother mentioning that their granddaughter, who was very, very small, ran into the kitchen and said, “Come in here! Come in here! Grandpa’s in the other room!” And he wasn’t there, at least to their eyes.

Fisher: Wow!

David: I mean, Fish, have you had this happen to you, you know, where there are lost loved ones?

Fisher: No. My wife is very sensitive to that stuff, but not me.

David: I can’t speak for it the same, but I do share them. My daughter was a little girl, probably about three or four. We were driving and my daughter was looking, you know, to the seat beside her, and she’s just, “I have a question for you, mom and dad. When are you having another baby?” And we looked at each other and said, ‘Well, we don’t know, hon. but sometime.’ And I said, ‘Why?’ And she was, “Oh, well, papa just said that he can’t come back unless you do.” My dad had died when my daughter was about three years old.

Fisher: Wow!

David: Yeah. So, I mean, so young, why would she be making it up? And this is the only time she ever mentioned it, ever. So, and it’s nice to know that somehow they can still reach out there to us. On a lighter note, well, actually a quite heavier note, have you ever heard of the Fat Men’s Club of America?

Fisher: I have not. Tell us about it.

David: Well, I’ll tell you. Weighing in with this wonderful story, back in 1903, there was a local tavern in Wells River, Vermont, where this club was launched. And essentially, you needed to be a gentleman boasting over 200 pounds, pay a fee of $1, and you learned a secret handshake and a password. They had amazing events. The New England Fat Men’s club had over 10,000 members. They would have an Olympic size breakfast, essentially, where men would cram a huge breakfast into their stomachs, stumble outside, and work up a sweat in a friendly Olympic-style competition showing strength by leapfrog contests, broad jumps and races. And then, come back and have a nine-course meal with oyster cocktail, cream of chicken soup, boiled snapper, fillet of beef with mushrooms, roast chicken, roast suckling pig, etc, etc.

So, I mean, any of the workout that they had, obviously was counteracted by their large meal afterwards.

Fisher: [Laughs]

David: But this was an organization that was very big at the early part of the 20th century, but by 1924, they only had 38 members show up, and none of them met the 200 pound mark. Now I’m not sure if that means they had decided to diet or maybe they cut back the meal portions, but what a funny group to actually find in your family tree. I’ve never seen one in an obituary, but I’m going to look for them now.

Fisher: No. I’ve never heard of it. And the thing is it makes you realize what a different world we live in today.

David: Exactly. I think they’d have to say the ‘Robust’ Men’s Club, The Healthy Men’s Club. Well, my tech tip goes back quite a ways. Actually, it goes back to medieval and early modern England. As you know, next week I’ll be reporting from Who Do You Think You Are in Birmingham, England. And I’ll be over in England for a couple of weeks, but this tech tip is a free database from the University of Houston, Texas. And I’ll provide the link so you can post it, which is, aalt.law.uh.edu. What they have done there, over 9 million frames of historic documents from the National Archives in London. They’re basically going through 12th century court records, all the way from the time of Richard I, Richard the Lion-hearted, all the way to Queen Victoria, and they’re putting them online for free.

Fisher: Wow!

David: Yeah. NEHGS, as you know, always will offer a free guest user database. Just become a guest user at AmericanAncestors.org. And this week, we are offering early Vermont settlers with eleven new sketches added to the already comprehensive collection that we’re putting together for your Vermont ancestors in the 18th and early 19th century. Well, that’s all I have. Next time I’ll be talking, it’ll be across the pond, and talk to you soon, Fish.

Fisher: All right. Great to talk to you, David! Thanks for coming on and have a safe trip.

David: Thank you, sir.

Fisher: And coming up next, we’re going to talk to Kate Eakman with LegacyTree.com about a very special document your recent ancestors had to fill out, providing some very important information. That’s in three minutes on Extreme Genes, America’s Family History Show.

 

Segment 2 Episode 133 (11:10)

Host Scott Fisher with guest Kate Eakman

 

Fisher: We are back! Extreme Genes, America’s Family History Show and ExtremeGenes.com

 

It is Fisher here your Radio Roots Sleuth with my guest today Kate Eakman from Legacy Tree Genealogist

 

Kate it is great to have you on the show. You’re in Oregon, and I love the tip you have come across here, ‘Working with the government’ that’s always a challenge isn’t it?

Kate: It is. Sometimes the government has very specific rules. They tell you what they will and won’t do, but they don’t always follow their rules and sometimes you have to find interesting ways to work around them.

Fisher: Well at Legacy Tree Genealogists of course is a collection of great professionals such as yourself and this is a great tip, I’ve actually worked with the forms that we are going to talk about today, the SS5 and of course SS stands for Social Security, and this was the form that people have used to actually become part of the system, especially back in the day, right?

Kate: Correct. The SS5 is the form that everybody uses. Even you and I filled out one when we applied for a social security number.

Fisher: I have no recollection of that [laughs]

Kate: Well I don’t either [laughs] but I’m going to assume that I did.

Fisher: Yeah right [laughs]

Kate: The form SS5 is really useful to genealogists because the person who is applying for a social security number is the person who is filling out the form and providing the information. So unlike a death certificate where you have grieving family members trying to remember who this person’s parents were, this is a person in full health who is saying this is what my name is, this is my date of birth, this is where I was born, this is my father’s name, here is my mother’s name including her maiden name.

Fisher: Yeah it’s really good, isn’t it?!

Kate: It’s a wonderful tool.

Fisher: And one of the few like it that actually take place in the middle of life, typically we can see a birth certificate filled out by somebody else or a death certificate filled out by somebody else, and even the marriage certificates sometimes are filled out by other individuals with reports from the bride and the groom and perhaps other family members, but to actually be filled out by their own hand, asking this very important information, that’s really what makes it unique.

Kate: It really is. As you said, it’s the prime of a person’s life, not anymore now that babies have to have it done at the hospital for them, but we use the ones that we ask for from the government. You can look at the person’s handwriting, you can compare it to other documents, and as you said, it’s not somebody else reporting it, it’s that person, and usually where somebody might fudge something with a census record about how old they are, it seems as though when they completing their SS5 they were being very honest and so to find out what their birth date really was or who their parents really were.

Fisher: That is interesting you mentioned that about the age. I mean the ages just do vary so much, especially on census records and elsewhere, and people thinking they were born in one year but they maybe were born in another. My own grandmother, her tombstone says she was born in 1880 but she was actually born in 1881. I wonder if she actually knew herself what year she was born.

Kate: You are right! And the reason for that is that it’s only been in relatively recent times that our age has allowed us and not allowed us to do certain things.

Fisher: Right.

Kate: So your specific day of birth or year of birth wasn’t important, just knowing you’re about twenty five years was good enough. You didn’t have to prove your age to get a driver’s license or have a drink at a bar or get married.

Fisher: Yeah that’s a good point. I’ve actually only ordered one SS5 form in my entire life in thirty some odd years of researching and that turned out to be for a woman who turned out to be a half-sister of my grandfather, and I suspected that she might be but by the time I got to this, it was like okay she’s got to tell me herself.  I want to know.  And I remember checking the mailbox on a regular basis because they don’t email these things to you, they stick them in the mail and you have to run out and wait for the postman to bring it to you. They’re kind of pricey as I recall. This was only about eight or nine years ago, and I want to say it was like twenty five dollars or something like that. Do you know what they are now?

Kate: Yes, the base is $29 if you don’t know the person’s social security number, if you do know the social security number they give you a $2 discount and you get it for $27.

Fisher: Yeah somewhere in that area. So when it came it actually had her listing my great grandfather as her father, and this was quite a breakthrough for us because we had no idea that she existed. So it was a good find.

Kate: And that’s exactly why we want an SS5 for that reason. So many times for women especially, we don’t know anything about the woman because she’s listed as somebody’s wife the first time she comes into the family picture.

Fisher: Right.

Kate: And we don’t know who her parents were, and all through her life she’s always Aunt Susan, Uncle Fred’s wife, and that’s always how we know her. We never know who her parents were or what her maiden name was.

Fisher: Now some of these records, though, because of the timing of them, are redacted right?

Kate: That’s correct. The Social Security Administration has two very clear rules, one is they say they use what they call the one hundred and twenty year rule, which means you have to be able to prove that the person has died if they are less than one hundred and twenty years old. They don’t assume that a person who is a hundred years old is dead.

Fisher: Right okay.

Kate: And so that’s the first thing and often times you have to send a long obituary which they’ll now accept that, they don’t have to have a death certificate but you have to send something to prove this person really is dead and then they’ll send you the document.

Fisher: How about the Social Security Death Register?

Kate: That’s what’s really interesting is, you can send a copy of that but they don’t necessarily check their own death registry for that information.

Fisher: Okay [laughs] that’s our government at work.

Kate: It’s like I said, it’s always so hit or miss about what gets done and what gets followed through on.

Fisher: Right.

Kate: The other rule that they have, and these are all designed to protect people’s privacy, if you think about a family member that you may know who has passed recently within the past ten or fifteen years with identity theft on the rise, you can see where somebody who may have passed who is a relatively young person, their identity could be stolen and their name, address and social security number used by the bad guys.

Fisher: Sure.

Kate: So that’s what they’re trying to prohibit or prevent, which I can appreciate but it does make our job as genealogists very, very difficult sometimes.

Fisher: Well I love what you did though because you had this problem with this SS5 form, it came in and the names, the very names you were looking for were marked out!

Kate: That’s correct. One of our clients knew who his grandmother’s first name was but he wasn’t even certain of her maiden name, what her last name was. We knew who she married of course but we didn’t know anything else about Grandma beyond her first name really. So I requested her SS5 hoping to learn who her parents were, and after waiting four-six weeks whatever the time period was, I got a very nice copy of her SS5 with two big black boxes over the names of her mother and father, and a very nice letter from the Social Security Administration telling me that because of their privacy rules there was no evidence that her parents were not still living. I needed to prove they were dead in order to get an un-redacted copy of her SS5.

Fisher: But you don’t even know who they are so how do you prove it, right?

Kate: Exactly! And I was a little bit stymied for a few moments because I thought, just what you said, how can I prove these people are dead if I don’t even know who they are?

Fisher: [Laughs] “That’s what I’m trying to find out, hello!”

Kate: [Laughs] Exactly. But I started thinking a little bit, just trying to be really logical, what do I know? What are the facts? Well, I knew that grandma was born in 1916; common sense tells us that if she was born in 1916 that her parents probably were born in 1900 or even earlier.

Fisher: Right.

Kate: So my next question is; that’s pretty old. I mean we’re in 2016 now so those are people that would be a hundred and sixteen years old or older, and I wondered how many people live in the United States who are at least one hundred and sixteen years old?

Fisher: Good question.

Kate: So the answer to that is of course you do a Google search.

Fisher: Yeah [laughs]

Kate: And you ask Google how many people in the United States are over a hundred and sixteen years old, and I was directed to a Wikipedia article about ‘Super Centenarians’ people who were more than one hundred and ten years old.

Fisher: Yes.

Kate: But there was only one person in this country that would be a 116 years old.

Fisher: And he wasn’t an Italian right?

Kate: No this was actually an African-American lady.

Fisher: Okay, yes, in Brooklyn.

Kate: Born in Alabama.

Fisher: Yeah, the one, she lives in Brooklyn.

Kate: Yes, she lives in Brooklyn. And my client’s grandmother was of Italian decent and so chances were good that an African-American woman who was born in Alabama, was not her mother.

Fisher: [Laughs] Right.

Kate: So I printed all those articles off, wrote a very nice letter back to the Social Security Administration, because as my grandmother always taught me, you catch more flies with honey than vinegar.

Fisher: Yes.

Kate: So this is just somebody who’s trying to do their job and they’re trying to protect people’s identity so I’m not going to get cranky with them and I just explained that I could not find any evidence of anybody who would be old enough to be her parents still alive.

Fisher: Good call.

Kate: And that’s the reason I was asking for this record was to learn who her parents were on behalf of my client. Then I sent it off with fingers crossed and then waited for the mail as you said.

Fisher: And it came back and…?

Kate: And it came back with the black boxes removed and I discovered the names of Grandma’s parents.

Fisher: I bet your clients loved you for that!

Kate: I think they were pretty excited because for years they knew nothing beyond Grandma’s first name.

Fisher: Right.

Kate: They thought they knew what her last name was, but even that was not quite correct. So the SS5 told us her correct maiden name and the name of her mother and her father, which allowed us then to trace her family back to her parents in Italy. So we went from a woman born in 1916 back to her grandparents who were born in the 1850s in Italy.

Fisher: Unbelievable. That is great work. Now where do people order these things?

Kate: You can order the SS5 from the Social Security Administration. There are two ways of doing it; you can order it online, I would just do a search for an SS5.

Fisher: Perfect, and then you can also mail away for it?

Kate: Fill out a form and mail it and that’s a good idea if you have somebody who recently passed away and then that way you can send in copies of obituaries, death certificates, whatever you need to prove everything and you don’t have to waste the time sending things back and forth.

Fisher:  She’s Kate Eakman, from Legacy Tree Genealogists, with an incredible research tip for breaking through brick walls, the SS5.

 

Thanks so much Kate! Good stuff.

Kate: Thank you for having me.

Fisher: Find out more about Kate and the team at Legacy Tree at LegacyTree.com

And coming up next; we’re talking about our family history cruise out of Boston this fall with Larry Gelwix, the Getaway Guru on Extreme Genes, America’s Family History Show.

 

Segment 3 Episode 133 (24:50)

Host Scott Fisher with guest Larry Gelwix

 

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

I am Fisher, your Radio Roots Sleuth, and so looking forward to this September as we’re getting ready for our first ever Extreme Genes Cruise and it’s going to be leaving out of Boston, on Royal Caribbean and going up to Nova Scotia, and seeing some of the places the Loyalists settled after the Revolution.  And with me in the studio right now is my good friend Larry Gelwix, who is known to many around the country as the ‘Getaway Guru.’

Larry: Scott, nice to be here with you!

Fisher: I’m excited about this and your Columbus Travel is handling all the bookings for this incredible trip and it’s going to be so much fun! Have you been on this before?

Larry: Oh yes! This is one of my favorite cruise areas and as you mentioned Columbus Travel in Bountiful, Utah, just outside of Salt Lake City, is handling all of the arrangements.  You can see the details even a brochure, not only on your website but on ours, ColumbusVacations.com

Now Scott, you’ve put together an incredible package here for family history enthusiasts.

Fisher: I think so! We’ve got David Allen Lambert, of course who you heard earlier in the show, he’s the Chief Genealogist for the New England Historic Genealogical Society.

Larry: Like the Godfather of… no you are the Godfather of family history!

Fisher: [Laughs] No, no, no I am the Mayor of Familyhistoryville, he’s the Godfather!

Larry: You’re one of the wise-guys!

Fisher: [Laughs] So, David’s going to be on the ship with us and of course we’re going to do lectures about Boston, during the Revolution in the colonial days. We’re going to talk about the Loyalists who went up to Nova Scotia and settled some of the very places that we’re going to see, and of course we’re only going to be talking on days that we’re at sea.

If you want to get off at the ports, we want you to be able to do that, we want to do that! It’s going to be a lot of fun.

Larry: Well, the cruise itself departs from Boston steeped in history so many Americans can trace their Extreme Genes, their genealogy, and their family history back to the New England area.

Fisher: Yes.

Larry: Where so many immigrants came from Europe, and we have a visit to the New England Historic Genealogical Society, with David Allen Lambert as you mentioned.

Fisher: Right.

Larry: But the cruise itself will depart the afternoon of Tuesday September 13th sailing from Boston. Now catch this itinerary; we’ll visit Bar Harbor Maine,

Fisher: Yes.

Larry: Saint John, New Brunswick, Canada

Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada

Some relaxing days at sea, and then back to Boston, this is a 6 day, 5 night cruise. The cruise itself September 13th to the 18th but… and this is so incredible for your listeners Scott, is that you have an optional involvement before the cruise.

Fisher: That’s right. People can go before they get there or they could even stay after the cruise and walk the Freedom Trail, and if you get there a little bit early actually on the 13th we can arrange for a tour of the New England Historic Genealogical Society. It’s the oldest in America, in fact in North America and there are so many things there that David I’m sure would love to show you.

Larry: Right. So it’s my understanding that those who arrive early enough will be going with you and visiting with David Allen Lambert who will also be on the cruise to the New England Historic Genealogical Society.

Fisher: Right.

Larry: Now, your listeners are family history enthusiasts.

Fisher: That’s it.

Larry: What are they going to see, experience, learn and know at the New England Historic Genealogical Society?

Fisher: Well it’s an incredible library; it’s an incredible research facility first of all, and you won’t have a lot of time to spend there but you can get an idea of what’s available in terms of resources if you want to do a little research, you could spend an hour researching right there among their facilities.

Larry: Right. Now are they closed on Mondays?

Fisher: They’re closed on Mondays that’s right.

Larry: So our visit will be Tuesday morning.

Fisher: Yup, before the actual departure of the trip. So you’ll have to get there Monday, we’ll also do a walking tour of the Freedom Trail, if you get there early and we’ll have a place to actually meet up.

Larry: Isn’t it a wonderful experience?

Fisher: Oh it’s incredible! I’ve done it before. I actually have some ancestors who are buried along the Freedom Trail and you can see where Paul Revere is buried, you can actually visit his house from back in the time when he went about warning everybody that the British were coming.

Larry: Right. You know what’s also exciting? This is fall foliage time. Now it’s always difficult to outguess Mother Nature.

Fisher: Right.

Larry: Because as I see fall foliage sometimes we see it in early September, sometimes it doesn’t arrive till early October. But this particular cruise is nestled right in the middle. It’s a wonderful time to experience New England, the Eastern Seaboard of Canada, and Fall Foliage.

Fisher: When you go north it gets a little cooler.

Larry: Exactly! Now our first stop after leaving Boston, is Bar Harbor Maine, what’s interesting about Bar Harbor is you get up into Maine, what do you think, “Heavily wooded areas,’ which this is.

Fisher: Yup.

Larry: But Bar Harbor’s actually a community on an Island and the name of the Island makes no sense given the topography.

Fisher: Right.

Larry: It’s about ‘Desert Island’

Fisher: [laughs] Yeah.

Larry: I mean what’s up with that?

Fisher: I don’t know. But that’s what we’re going to find out about when we get there, right?

Larry: Well, all of these stops caught my attention as a foodie. I mean if you love seafood, just fine dining.

Fisher: Ah, oh yes.

Larry: Not only does the ship, but Royal Caribbean, does a great job in the dining room, but the food in each Port…. Now Bar Harbor’s steeped in history, you’ve got a Canadian National Park; it’s a wonderful place to visit in horse-drawn carriages, atv’s, and bicycles. All of these things make for an incredible visit. We then move on to Saint John’s, New Brunswick, now these were where a lot of the Loyalists went after the Revolutionary War in Eastern Canada.

Fisher: Yup.

Larry: Well one of the things that I like is the ‘City Market’ now have you been to Pike Place in Seattle?

Fisher: Oh yes, many times!

Larry: Well it reminds me a lot of Pike Place, or the Ferry Building in San Francisco, where I just was with a group. You know the market and the shops and all of these things. So you’ve got this the City Market in Saint John’s, New Brunswick, but one of the most exciting places is Reversing Falls.

Fisher: What’s that?

Larry: Well, you’ve got waterfalls, rapids and whirlpools that change the direction that they flow depending upon the tide.

Fisher: Oh wow! [Laugh]

Larry: So when the tide is out it flows one direction, when the tide is in it flows in another direction. Of course National Parks Ivvavik and Fundy National Parks, and then again think of food, think of lobster and clams and salmon and fresh seafood, and finally back to Halifax, Nova Scotia, you think you’re in a bit of England there.

I like the ‘Waterfront Boardwalk’ the ‘Maritime Museum,’ again parks and outdoors and the walking along the shoreline, and then of course food.

Fisher: I’m not surprised that’s at the top of your list.

Larry: Thank you very much, as I’m wiping the clam chowder from my lips right now.

Fisher: [Laughs]

Larry: The Extreme Genes, Canada and New England Cruise, the cruise itself September 13th to the 18th, it’s a 6 day cruise. Catch this great start at just $699 that includes the Extreme Genes Seminar fee. Now, we can guarantee availability Scott, if cabins are booked no later than Wednesday April the 6th.

Fisher: Wow.

Larry: Can you book after April the 6th? Yes. But our group space will be returned to the cruise line on April 6th and we then sell out of general inventory. So for the preferred cabins, the best locations, book your cabin now with a refundable deposit.

Fisher: Right.

Larry: No later than Wednesday April the 6th and join us on the Extreme Genes, Canada and New England Cruise.

Fisher: Well it’s going to be so much fun! Get on the phone because really the deadlines are right here now for guaranteed space.

Larry: Guaranteed space is April the 6th and that’s a refundable deposit so there’s nothing to lose. Hold your cabin now for the Extreme Genes Cruise!

Fisher: All right, it’s going to be a lot of fun. Thanks Larry for coming on!

Larry: It’s my pleasure.

Fisher: And, Tom Perry is coming up next, our Preservation Authority, he’ll be answering more of your questions from AskTom@TMCPlace.com when we return in three minutes on Extreme Genes, America’s Family History Show.

 

Segment 4 Episode 133 (37:10)

Host Scott Fisher with guest Tom Perry

Fisher: It is time to talk preservation with Tom Perry from TMCPlace.com, our Preservation Authority.

It is Fisher here, your Radio Roots Sleuth on America’s Family History Show, Extreme Genes and, welcome back, Tom, first of all.

Tom: Good to be back.

Fisher: Got a great email here from Melinda Lucas. She’s actually from my mother’s home town area, back in Oregon and she’s writing about all kinds of undeveloped films she’s found. And this is an unbelievable list of stuff, thirty-one of 110 millimeter film C41, seventeen of 110 millimeter film CN60, I mean, the list goes on and on, nineteen instant cameras that all seem to be thirty-five  millimeter film, and she points out, “Hey, wait a minute! Kodak doesn’t exist for this kind of development anymore. What can be done?” What do you say to Melinda, Tom?

Tom: [Laughs] Uh, well, you should have developed your film when you shot it.

Fisher: [Laughs]

Tom: But you know people do that, they get all excited, they go and shoot all kinds of things, family events and whatever and then they just take the film out and put it in a drawer, and now they’ve got it, but they never do anything with it. We even had people that had eight millimeter super-8 film that they’ve fortunately developed, but then they’ve never ever watched for thirty years.

Fisher: Right.

Tom: And then they bring it in and “I don’t even know what’s on here. All I know is that I found this in Grandma’s drawer or whatever.” And so, the sad thing is as she mentioned, Kodak is no more, as far as chemistry goes, so you’re out luck that way. However, there’re some different people I know that are chemists and they make their own chemicals.

Fisher: Oh, you’re kidding me.

Tom: No. I’ve got a couple of friends that actually make their own chemistry, because they still like to shoot on film. So, what you all need to do is, if you’re in the same situation like she mentioned that she went to Walgreens and they just kind of looked at her and pushed it back towards her off the counter.

Fisher: “Just step away from the desk please, lady!”

Tom: Exactly! Crossed her fingers and said, “No, we can’t do anything like that.” So, what you want to do email me at AskTom@TMCPlace.com

And give me the quantity you have, what type of film it is, like she had some 110s, she’s had some thirty-five millimeter and most importantly, look on the case and it will say something like what you just mentioned, C41 processing, C16 processing, and all these different kinds of processing, because then I’ll know if one of my friends has the chemistry where they can do a lot of these kinds and so the ones that they can do, I’ll have you go ahead and ship it to us, and remember what we teach you on all of our episodes, ‘you want to always double-box everything.’ You want to put it in a box.  Seal it just like it’s ready to go with a label on it, but no stamps or postage and put that one inside another box with at least two inches worth of styrofoam all the way around it, to keep the heat in summer, the cold in winter from possibly damaging your film.

In fact, we had somebody just call us one day to send us some SD cards. Those you don’t have to double-box. If you put them in a padded envelope, then put the padded envelope in a box, it will do the same thing, so that’s good too and so organize your film, let us know how many exposures it is, any information you can see. It’s better to have too much information, so you send us something we don’t need, then go, “Oh, we need to call you and say, ‘Okay, particularly what was this? Was this a 24? Was it a 36?” In fact, we’ve even had people run in that they had some old film – like I used to do, I used to load my own film – but unfortunately, it doesn’t say on the case what it is, because I knew mine was always, you know,  tri-x or plus x or whatever I was loading. So, you might even have some kinds like that, and so, we have to kind of experiment on your film to find out what it is and hopefully we can get it right for you, but that’s about the only thing you can do.

Fisher: Does this give you any hint as to when this might have been shot? Just by the names of these things?

Tom: Well, C41 fortunately which is what most of her film is, is a pretty standard type of film, so, I feel very confident we’re going to be able to do most of it. She has a couple of them that are little bit different, like the CN16 which is a little bit different.

So, what we’re going to have to do is find out what works. If you see yourself in the same situation as Melinda and you have some old film that hasn’t been developed, go ahead and send me what kind of film you have, what the processing is, and any information on the plastic cartridge or the little aluminum can to AskTom@TMCPlace.com

The eight and Super-8 come in at the same situation, so right after the break, I’ll tell you how we can preserve that as well.

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

 

Segment 5 Episode133 (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 with Tom Perry from TMCPlace.com, the Preservation Authority.

Fisher here, and we were just talking about Melinda in Oregon, dealing with all these undeveloped rolls of film from back in the day and now what do you do to try and get them fixed? And now Tom, we’re looking at movies is that right, old movie film?

Tom: Oh, right, we get a lot of that. In fact, let me tell you what to watch for. In the later years probably more in the late 60’s and the 70’s usually the Super 8 film came in these plastic cartridges, they were kind of squarish but they had rounded corners on them.

If you have any of those, you can usually flip them over and there’s a little window in them and on the window if you can see film, if it’s been exposed all the way to the end there’ll be little white letters that says “Exposed” so you know “Okay that one’s been exposed.” If you see nothing in the window it’s probably been exposed and gone all the way off the edge of the cassette which is still fine.  If it has film and it doesn’t say exposed. It’s either never been shot, or it’s been partially shot, so it’s kind of up to you whether you want to take the gamble and have us try to develop it for you and see if there’s something on it so that’s kind of your choice.

Now a lot of people that had it before that, they had the regular 8, they were little tiny round cans almost like a miniature tobacco can like they had back in the day. They’re approximately 1-inch across and usually silver, sometimes black. If there’s black tape around the can and there’s a little paper hanging out, it would usually say “Unexposed” which means it’s never ever been shot. If all you’ve seen is black tape around it or no tape around it at all, it’s probably been exposed.

If you measure the height of the tin, they say “Oh no this isn’t 8 millimeter.” Because this is 16 millimeters you know, or about three quarters of an inch. Well we did it in the old days when I was young. You’d put the film in the camera and it’s in these little round reels and so you put that in your camera and you load it and it’s actually the film that you’re seeing, there’s no lead or anything and then you shoot it. Once you’re done shooting it you take that cassette off, put it back on the other end of the reel and run it again. That’s why it’s 16 millimeters wide because you run it twice.

Fisher: Hmm,

Tom: Now one of the problems is that some people run it three times.

Fisher: Uh oh.

Tom: And then you get double exposure which is sad.

Fisher: Of course.

Tom: Because some of my dad’s films, some of my favorite pictures are double exposed and there’s not a heck of a lot you can do about it.

But those that come in the raw, it’s just raw film. So if you see a can like this and it doesn’t have any tape on it but you can shake it and rattle something, I would suggest you don’t open it because if you do, you could expose your film and make all the edges foggy. If you say “Well I don’t know if there’s film in there or something else in there. Go into a totally dark room, you know no windows no nothing, something in your basement. Just take it and feel it and if it feels like film then you know it’s film, it’s not some knickknacks in there, then close it up, tape it and then send that to us.

Now one thing with those kinds of films, we have to kind of experiment because we don’t know for sure what they are but usually if they’re old they will be called a ‘Double Wide’ the only way we can develop them is in black and white because we can’t manufacture the chemistry anymore to do true color like Kodak, we can do it in black and white or nothing.

Fisher: This is like the idea that we can put a man on the moon in 1969 but we couldn’t today.

Tom: Exactly!

Fisher: Right? This is strange.

Tom: Exactly. I know a lot of wedding videographers and even some TV commercial people and film people that still like to use the old fashioned film and there are some places… like there is this place in Denver, that actually sells the film.

Fisher: So, bottom line is, you can digitize this potentially.

Tom: Oh absolutely! If you’re going to go through the hassle of developing all this you might as well get prints at the same time. With all these things we’ve talked about, we have some friends that can make their own chemistry that can develop a lot of these different things, so if you have stills like Melinda had, we can develop it then we can make prints for you or we can scan the negatives and send them back to you on a photo disk or email them to you however you want them.

If you have the 8, the Super 8, the 16 that hasn’t been developed, I have some friends that can do the developing.

Fisher:  It’s kinda like ‘I got a buddy!’ ya know?!

Tom: [Laughs]

Fisher: [Laughs] Thanks so much Tom!

Tom: Glad to be here!

Fisher: Address your questions to AskTom@TMCPlace.com

Hey, that wraps up our show for this week! Thanks once again to Kate Eakman from LegacyTree.com, for sharing with us a little tip about the SS5. Sounds like something from World War II right?

But no, it’s an incredible document that can help you in your research. If you missed it, catch the podcast. Also, thanks to Larry Gelwix, the Getaway Guru that’s helping us book our Family History Cruise out of Boston this fall.

Take care; we’ll talk to you again next week and remember as far as everyone knows, we’re a nice normal family.

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