It's National Family Fun Month which offers us all a good reason to deep dive into our Family History! Spending time with grandparents, aunts and uncles or cousins? Maybe ask them about some of those forgotten family stories and then follow up on them.
Today's episode of Big Blend Radio's WAY BACK WHEN History Show features genealogist and writer Aryn Youngless who specializes in piecing together ancestry mysteries and crafting keepsake family history books. She combines genealogy research with a passion for telling captivating stories. More at https://www.genealogybyaryn.com/
Big Daily Blend
Genealogist Insider with Aryn Youngless
Welcome to way back when big blend radio's history podcast. Today, we're going to be talking about family history. Yes, genealogy, we have genealogist Erin Youngless back on the show, and we're going to talk about what she does as a genealogist, how she helps people, and she's even getting into some teaching part of it, which is kind of cool. For all of us who really enjoy it and have the time to do the research, she can help guide you along. She's going to go to her website genealogybyeron.com, that's A-R-Y-N, and the link is in the episode note. So, how are you, Erin? I'm well. How are you, Lisa? Doing good. Doing good. I know we said this on a show earlier, our earlier family history panel discussion, which we're going to be doing a lot more of, because, oh my gosh, it's just about stories, isn't it? It's like good gossip. It is. It's kind of crazy how things happen, and who knew we were going to have someone who was related to Edgar Allan Poe on the show? What? Yeah. I know. I love that. I love when you find out things like that, and it's just so amazing. And on top of all, she's also a writer, so. Yeah. And that's your thing. You're a writer. Yeah. So, that's clearly cool. I mean, but I think she also had some royalty, but as far as I'm concerned, Edgar Allan Poe, you know, he wins. That's better. He wins. For me. For me, anyway. Let's go into it, because you are a writer. Tell us the beginning of you getting into genealogy, because I know you're always interested in a whole bunch of things all the time, and the arts, you know, you're always good in museums, and you know, we've been connecting on social media for years. But what was it that said, okay, I'm actually going to go and become a real genealogist, not, you know, at home amateur sleuth, because I can't say amateur sleuth, right? COVID. COVID. COVID. I hit. So like mine, my love of family history goes back to just my childhood, because I grew up in a multi-generational family, my grandmother, my maternal grandmother lived with us. So I heard all of the stories of her family growing up in, well, she was a depression baby. She was born in '21, so her elementary, former years, former years were around during the good depression. So I grew up with stories like that, and then as I got older, and ancestry became more available, ancestry.com. I started working on my husband's family tree as well, because his family's been here in the United States before it was the United States, where my family has been here since 1904, very different story types. And then COVID hit. And I went from, you know, going to writing events and talking about writing and to having no inspiration, because it was not the best time, and being a yoga teacher, and then I couldn't teach. It's like teaching online, and I hate it teaching online. Yeah. Not for yoga. It just didn't, I have friends who do it, and they're great at it, but it just did not connect with me. So one day I was talking to my husband, and I'm like, going back and forth, and I was finally like, maybe I'll just do genealogy, and he's like, go for it. So. No, cool. Good husband. Yes. Well played. Yes. But then so you went and you have to like graduate and go to the actual like school for this. Oh, you don't. You don't. I recommend you do. I am going through the process of certification now. Okay. But you don't. It's kind of the Wild West with genealogy. Mm. And it is interesting, yeah, because you get to know, well, you're always posting tips on social media about archives and where to find family history. That's interesting. Because I think, you know, I know that Salt Lake City, um, the LDS church, if I'm saying it right, is yeah, they pretty much hold like so many records. I don't know how that happened, but they pay like, I always thought, okay, they own everything. Like, but it's not true. No, it's not true. And family search is actually free for the most part. There are parts of it that you can't see if they haven't digitized it yet. And some things are under lock. So if you'll go on, you'll see a little camera with a lock next to it. But if you go to an affiliate library, like in Los Angeles, the downtown Los Angeles public library is an affiliate, so I could just take my laptop, go there and open up all those files. I can't open up at home. Oh, okay. Cool. But then that library is also cool because they have a giant genealogy department. So it's a two for yeah, it was interesting. We cover Natchadish Louisiana on the shows all the time. It's the oldest city in the state of Louisiana. We go there all that we love it. It's just a cool because it's so diverse, culturally diverse and it's beautiful. It's hot at this time of year, but it's beautiful and there's gators. Right. So that's important. Alligators always cool, but they actually have genealogy libraries and that's one of the coolest things. They just had a family reunion, and so it's this oldest city, but it's not like a city, not like LA or anything. It's like a town and they have NSU, they have a university there, but they were actually at one point, the Red River flowed through there. And so ships would come through paddle boats and all of that. Then the Red River got clogged by all these, by all the lumber because it's a huge lumber area too. So now they have what's called cane river lake when you go downtown. It's really pretty, but it's like an oxbow, right? But people go there for genealogy all the time. They just had a family reunion of 500 people in their community. That's pretty darn amazing. And so I was like, wow, that's amazing. So I said to them, well, did they go to the library? Oh, yeah. They have like a folk center, which is a folk life center. So they have a lot of history for Creole history because they got Cajun Creole, they've got Native American indigenous people, Spanish, French, Italian, your side. It's in there because Louisiana was a hotbed of history and that area being the oldest. I mean, they were settled at 1714, I think it is, 1714 or 16. So before we became America and they had an area called No Man's Land when Louisiana purchase happened, there was no law and order because they didn't know who owned it anymore. So for three years, anybody did whatever they wanted, anybody and everybody did. I mean, there was rum running and all kinds of stuff going on, privateering, because, you know, they've got lakes and swamps. So now I have to read anything about it because that sounds cool. And the genealogy library, they got two that we went to. And one lady, Cammy Henry, who had a plantation, Melo's plantation, kept all the newspaper, like every newspaper for years, I mean, old, old history, clipped it out, especially the funny stuff, and so they come out with gloves on and you can't touch the book and you're just like, dude, this is the coolest thing. You want to just sit and I want to know more about Cammy Henry. You know? Yeah. So, and they had artists retreats like the folk artist Clementine Hunter was there and she lived on that plantation. They had like a, anyway, I could go on for years. They have a bicentennial farm from the Prudom's and now I'm like, did the race car driver Prudom come from there? I mean, who knows? So anyway, when you're there, I was like, how many people travel because of their ancestral home, how much the kind of isn't, how many people are not aware of the travelers coming in just for that? You know what I mean? Yes. I mean, family reunions, being back at home in an area, not just at people's, you know, so it has an economic impact, I think. It does. And ancestral travel is so popular right now, taking the trip and figuring out where your family came from and going there and being able to walk down the streets that they walked down. Or if you're lucky enough to see the houses that they lived in, it's a, it's a surreal moment having that experience and being able to connect with somebody who died long before you were born. And knowing that, you know, this was their home, my husband's family, their family home in Ireland, one of the branches is a pub. And yeah, so if we went there, he could go inside his family's home. And I mean, who has that? I have a pint. And have, I know, and it's just such an interesting. How many people can do that? Yeah, that's cool. Yeah. We apparently have a castle. Oh. And the Isle of Man, yeah, but now it's apartment buildings or flats, however you want to say it. Yeah. And so, and one of the travel writer, we just actually recorded a podcast where there, I said, you just went to the Isle of Man. There's a huge side of our family comes from there. Apparently we bred men's kids. That's where all the witches are. And so I'm like, she's like, why didn't you tell me? I'm like, your family vacation, I don't bug you like, can you go here? Can you go there? But apparently it's beautiful. But that's the thing. Going there, I know lady just came back from Poland, Latvia, and, oh my gosh, the history. And she went where her great grandfather was, and she could basically be in their tiny village. And then she went to Auschwitz and everything. She was talking about all these Jewish ghettos, and especially in Poland, like they're trying to bring the Jewish culture back in this area. And my Eastern European side was all concentrated in areas that was just ravaged by the Nazis and destroyed, and all of my, if you look at records of the areas my family lived in, it was all cohabitated. So you know, it was Catholics and and Jewish people living together. And the ones who didn't side with the Third Reich got swept into those ghettos. And I found, I found family names in those areas and it's, it's hard because you don't expect it. You know, yeah, well, I see things on movies and then you don't find, you know, like was my family in there, you know, I'm glad that they're trying to bring back that culture. Because a lot of the research I've done, there is this unity. There was a great big unity. I feel like that needs to be discussed with, with neighbors that remained neighbors and didn't buy in their village. Yes, and they wanted to remain a village and if they, you know, sometimes that meant that they had to endure the horrific things that their neighbors endured, but they did that together or they helped each other get out, which is also amazing. Yeah, this lady, and she'll come on a show with us too and talk, talk about her experience because she, we sat and watched her photos of the day she arrived home. We sat and went to put all the photos and she went to like a lot of the cemeteries. So her family members could be in some of these mass graves. I mean, it was sobering. The next day, driving out and going to our next destination, I could barely, it just kind of, it was so sobering, yes, you know, and it wasn't my family. But then to see her, that's a long, she was gone for two, three weeks doing this. That's a heavy and she's heavy into, you know, her family history, but to be able to wear grandfather was and then there was one ghetto area and she said like five to six to 10 families lived in one bedroom kind of apartments. And so you had five to six rooms in this thing and they took one whole room. So everybody's cramped, but they took one room and made it a library. No. Now that isn't that amazing, like those stories, often do you see that kind of stuff, right? But so libraries and education was still at the forefront. That's got to be good for the kids. I mean, you think about Anne Frank, look how literate she was. Yes. She was literate and young and smart and you know, but there were more and Frank's out there that we probably don't know about. Absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah. Well, this is a hard side of history, but that's the thing. And then you'll find crazy stuff like, you know, at Garland Poe. So well, the thing with the hard side of history is people you want to shield away, like you want to turn away from it and that could be situations like this or it can be an ancestor you find out who was just not a nice human being. But I encourage people to keep going because beyond those hard moments can be amazing moments and incredible people that you're related to, and it's worth, it's worth the effort to get over that hump. Yeah. I mean, my best friend, she has royalty. I mean, I'm not kidding. She had plantations and Barbados and all kinds of stuff, like real royalty British. I mean, it's a big deal, Glenn, you know, Glenn Barrows, you're on the show with him. Yeah. He started looking, he's like, he sends her an email. He says, next time you see Lisa and Nancy, and when you meet me, I'm going to have to bow and Nancy and Lisa are going to have to curtsy it. I'm like, what the hell, Glenn? Don't tell her that. Don't tell her that because she's got that. But then her family has slavery in it, you know, they weren't, they had slaves back then. And so he says, you know, please don't get upset, though it's not nice, but you can't don't, don't, you know what I mean, don't, it's a very hard thing to have that in your family. You know, I mean, you've seen some of our family histories of the greatest, but you can't don't beat yourself up on it because you don't know what was going on at the time, either. Oh, I agree. You know, you just, and then there's things you can celebrate, right? You find out really cool things about really cool people that you may share the same traits. Do you see that with your work where people go, Oh my gosh, you know, now I know where my love of this comes from. Absolutely. Absolutely. I've seen even on a genetic level, I met one of my DNA cousins and her and my dad have the same color eyes. Wow. And it's just crazy because, you know, I didn't anticipate that, but like as soon as she turned up, I looked at me and I was like, whoa, that's insane. My dad has the exact same shade eyes you and it's unique because it's great with a little bit of green. Oh, cool. So it's just a unique eye color that's not very common. So seeing that in somebody that I've never met before was very interesting. I've also, through talking to people and just types of research, seen anxiety be passed down through generations and ADHD. Really? So how long back, how far back, I was wondering about that, how many things were out there that we don't know about, or is it a common new modern problem? I don't think it's a common new modern problem. I think that we put a name on it because I don't think, I know when I was a kid that didn't know if my behavior was seen as disruptive in class, where I was bored. And I just, you know, as you said, I always want to go, go, go and no, no, no. And then when I had a son and they were like, oh, he has ADHD and I was like, maybe I should get checked. But then talking to other relatives and hearing other stories and similar behavior, similar, I can't say a hundred percent, but it's just kind of coincidental that we all acted the same way. Right. And because we have more medical knowledge now than what we did back then. Yes. So a lot of, do a lot of people do their ancestry for medical reasons and the DNA and everything and then kind of go in that way and then go down a rabbit hole? Do you find that? I find that a lot of people do the ancestry DNA and because they just want to know where they came from, and then they don't go back online, which go back online, please go back online and talk to people because they go on and it's a mixed. When you do that, the issue is that you have to take into account, you have to take into account how many people have been tested or whoever you're testing with. So if you're family members and decided to have been tested, they're not going to show up in the database. You have to take into account that humans have always been transient. So when I did my family, part of my Italian heritage comes up as Greek, but look how close Greece is to Italy. I mean, everybody was moving around. There were trade routes there. So it makes a lot of sense that that would show up in my history, but people go, I didn't know it was from Greece and it's like, well, you're not. That's when you start the wallpaper trail and you see this long paper trail that says, no, you're from Italy. Okay. So you have to do both to get it right. So that, okay, let's actually start there. I know Nancy and I have all these wild stories passed down and we don't know what's true because everyone argues about it. Some of it we have actually seen in publications so we know some of it's true. And actually in museums, our own history out there, being in the museum of the cult is quite nice. That was fun to have a family exhibit in there. I think it's pretty cool. But yeah, I know we are about to do that. That was our thing that this year we're going to do our DNA. And so where do you go from there? I mean, how does someone get started? Do you start with DNA? I mean, some people start doing the family dabbling around just Google searches. But where, for someone just getting started at all, what would you recommend doing? Because I know you guide people with that process, right? Because a lot of us don't have time to sit at the computer and do that and all of them. Honestly, the number one place to start is at home and with you. Okay. So the first thing you know the most about is yourself. You know, well, most of us know who our parents are. We know at least who a parent is or a grandparent. So you can start writing it down. You don't need fancy software or online subscriptions. They're nice. They're helpful, but you don't need them. And so starting with yourself, looking through all those vital records you have at home. I mean, we take the, we take for granted that they're there. And I don't think a lot of times people sit down and actually look at their birth certificate, but there's all sorts of information on it. They're your parents' names. They're where you were born. There is some older ones. There's the time you were born. I don't think they do it that so much nowadays, but when back in the 70s they did. And then asking your parents, interviewing your relatives, you know, you were saying even Nancy, you talk a lot about your family history and that is a great place to start because when you have those stories, it gives you a place to start researching. Like in my family, I had a great aunt named Pauline, but her birth name was Paul Mullah. And no one could remember what month and day she was born. They knew it was 1917, but no one knew what month and day. Well, Paul Mullah means palm in Italian because she was born on Palm Sunday. Oh. So all you have to do is take a calendar, go back to 1917 and there's her birthday. It's one possible. Wow. Yeah. So that's, you know, it's fascinating because like I know my grandmother will always say, yeah, we've got Lewis and Clark stock in us. I'm like, what do you mean? She's like, we're related. And I'm like, what do you mean? She's like, no, we are. And then when I sent you something and I was like looking just did a quick search online. So lo and behold, there's a Clark. And I'm like, what do you mean? There's a Clark really, you know, and then like in, and it goes with our personality, but who knows? Or maybe there's a Clark and I know our sense of humor is like, Oh, we got the Lewis and Clark. But you never know, right? But you don't know, but I know our family's history in, in humor is that that's just, you don't know what's a story or what's not. You know what I mean? It's a really interesting thing, I think doing the DNA can help. So you do that, is it the 23 and me? Who should we go to, do you think, or? Ancestry has the largest database. Okay. They have upwards of 22 million. I may actually be higher than that. I haven't looked at one. Yes. So when COVID hit, a lot of people went out and got their DNA tested, which is fantastic because the more people who are testing, the more, yeah, you learn. So you'll get. Right. So if you went on and you tested two years ago, every six months, they update. So you'll see subtle changes and you'll see that's how I've learned everything about my paternal grandmother's mother's side of the family has all been by using DNA and just connecting people in a lot of guesswork and a lot of shuffling paper around. But with ancestry, ancestry, you can download your raw DNA from there and you can upload it to other places. So if you start with ancestry and you're like, I'm not getting results, you can download that DNA for free. You can upload it to places like JEDmatch, MyHeritage, family tree DNA. My heritage and family tree DNA sell their own kits, but you don't need to buy it because you can just upload your is there. Okay. Okay. So you just go. So once you get it done, it's done. Yes. Okay. So when you do the DNA, like, you know, Nancy first thing is like, are there injections involved? I'm not doing she's a baby and I don't blame her, but what happens with that? It's just to swab in your mouth. Right. You spit in a tube. Oh, you spit. She might enjoy that. Yeah, you spit in a tube and then there is solution and you shake it all up and you drop it in the mail and it takes, I want to say it takes three to six months. Oh, okay. It takes a little while I think because, well, because there's so many people who've been doing it. Okay. That it depends. I don't want to say that it's shorter than that because the times do vary. It could take two months, but it may take upwards of six just because of influx of people taking the test. Oh, that's good to know. That's really good to know. Also for holidays, I know we pass Mother's Day and Father's Day, but Labor Day, they go on sale. Oh, that's a good tip for people. Hey, my birthday is over that timeframe. Hmm. See, we said it was because our birthday said, and we both have big birthdays this year. We don't want to talk about that number, but, you know, we thought we'd better find out who we are as we get over the hills. So when people do that, so when your clients typically, are they people have done it and then start getting involved in researching and need to kind of understand what they're looking at? Because some of it doesn't, I don't understand, like I'm looking at stuff and I don't know what the heck's going on. It looks like math to me at that time. Yeah. Or just going online and seeing family things and all that. I don't know what's going on. I have no clue what I'm looking at unless it's like, you know, some of the how it all works, how the lines, and I don't get it. Oh, I'm not. Pedigree. Okay. Oh, the pedigree. Oh, we get to be pedigree dogs. So you're funny that it's a pedigree started as a term for genealogy in over time. It became known as, as we see, as you said, deaths with dogs, but the original meaning of the word had to do with like royalty. Yeah. What's your pedigree? Yeah. And now it's come down to puppies, but also your pedigree line. Yeah. You don't need DNA to do genealogy. If you want to, you're welcome to that is, it's just not mandatory. I like it because I just I love all that stuff, but I want to know more and more and more. So you can do both. You can just do the paper trail. It's whatever you want. So the pedigree, usually a pedigree means you're going from parent to child, a child parent. So it's okay. So instead of going and having a giant tree where you have mom and dad, aunts and uncles, cousins, and because it can be, it can be large, depending on who your family is. I've seen trees where a husband and wife each have 15 siblings. So it's just like, you can't even see it on the tree because it just keeps going and going. So when you go back, it will be, you know, from parent or from child to parent, making your way. Okay. Yeah, it's just recently when I did that, when I saw the car thing and I'm like, okay, I don't know what's going on. The way they listed it didn't, you know, wasn't, I wasn't familiar with that kind of thing. And then for me, I've always kind of just researched the stories and found people, you know, but you found stuff about it. You found dirt. About. On our family. I'm like, dang. Dang. I did. Okay. I found interesting. You know what I learned today in 1947, Southern California, established the Southern California Humane Society. Wow. That's a good timing, isn't it? Yeah. In 1947. Wow. Do you want me to share the story? No. Okay. No. Well, no, you can. I mean, that was a pass, but I want to do it on a show where we all share each other's kind of stories, but and we'll circle back to that one. Yeah. To be continued. To be continued. Yes, we have humane society drama in our family. And here we are pet sitting across the country. We'll see. But we are animal people. You are animal people. I mean, that's well, our witches come from being burned at the stake for being, for talking to animals. Yeah. So that was considered witchcraft back in the day. Was your family in that we see your witches are in Europe? Wales. And the lady I just talked to today, she's, I mean, not Wales. Sorry. The Isle of Man. Yeah. And she said there was a whole thing. They, they mentioned witches and then they kind of like brushed over it. And I'm like, wait a minute. That's my family man. Okay. We'll go there. No, no, the Humane Society. So actually that is important. I mean, so apparently my grandfather had a pet store and wasn't around. And that's what happened. We can say that right. But the timing is weird. It's real, but it's kind of weird in, in, so this was before Nancy was born. Yes. It appears his actions are what led to the, that yeah, little newspaper clipping. Yeah. See, that's how I've gone through. That's how I found stuff is that kind of thing. I love finding stuffs in newspapers because pre social media. That's where all of the, you know, people here are the gossip pages and they automatically think of celebrities. But reality was that that was everybody's. If your parents went to visit your sister in the next town, chances are it said in the newspaper, Mr. and Mrs. Smith are here to see Anna and so you could follow their movements and see who was in town and who was visiting who and I love all of that. That's so. Newspapers are cool because it's cool gossip scandals. What was going on in the town? Even the writing because the writers, I interviewed an author recently, Clay Schwab, about his family, Manny Schwab and the Dickens company. And basically this was Jack Daniels, the Jack Daniels of Tennessee in the Nashville Gilded Age of Nashville, Tennessee. And his family, they were moonlighting, like really taking shine and they were doing all kinds of things. And then the company was set up through laundering money with a guy who literally, and it's a law, the man, Manny Schwab and the Dickel company, I don't know if it's, yeah, it's Dickel, Dickel, because I said Dickens when I interviewed him, he said he went, his, it's his great grandfather, this guy was like the entrepreneur of Nashville, but no one knows about him. He was in everything. He was, you know, but so he went into all the newspapers and he said the hardest part writing the book was he was just so interested in the newspapers because he said the writing is so much better back then. They were writers, they, you know, they kind of gave you a texture and a feel of what the town was like or what was going on versus just, you know, just the facts, ma'am. That's, you have pre internet, you could see it in movies, newspapers, magazines, because nowadays we take the internet for granted and we go, well, we don't have to tell them what that looked like or sounds like because they can just look it up. So we'll just tell you the facts. Yeah. Yeah, that's kind of, yeah, he said it was so much better, it's so much more entertaining. But one of a family, a friend of mine, I researched his family and I found out one of his relatives, like great, great grandfather, was in a civil war in the union. And he was part of the 182nd OBI and in his town, the newspaper editor went with them. So he was reporting back and somebody took it all and made it into a book. So there's publications about this and I can't find anything about them in the Library of Congress. They're called, written, emailed, talked to everybody I can, well, we have nothing about the 182nd and I think that's the way it's 182nd or 185th. But there's this book for 99 cents. So I can, there's these great stories about them showing up at basic training and they're playing tricks on each other and some guy put dots on his face and pretend he had small pox and ha, ha, ha, and it's so interesting to have that viewpoint instead of the normal civil war stories we hear, I mean, there are funny stories in there and it was just written by the editor and it was in the paper. So then he was sending it home. So everybody in town knew who was doing what and everybody was okay. That's amazing. Huh? Yeah. That's amazing. Those kind of things. That's the fun stuff. Yeah, when it's all the chart, you know what? I've been a version to charts. I don't even do Excel sheets. So I'm very weird. So that's probably the thing. So this is starts getting technical. I'm like, okay, I'm going to call Aaron on that. What do you get people like me who don't want to do that part? Yeah. I think sometimes it can be confusing. I've seen trees on ancestry and on family search that don't make any sense whatsoever because people put people in the wrong spot. I found ones with grandparents who have their kids listed as their siblings and I think it can be confusing and that's why it's important to have citations and have facts and have pieces of paper that say this is who is related to this, you know, vital records, birth marriage and death are a great place to start newspapers, pastoralists. Did you know that the New York Times during the height of all the passengerships coming in through Ellis Island used to have articles in the paper about this ship is in town? It just entered the port. It came from blah, blah, blah. And you can look at that paper and say it was this temperature that day. This is the social cloud. This is what it felt like. Because it's all the newspaper that's so cool. The newspapers are cool. Yeah. You know, yeah. I found stuff from some of our family years ago, and I have it, I'm in Tucson, I should go pull out my storage and go and get it because I have files of it, you know, and it's fascinating. And then we even talked to psychics, one psychic actually, medium, who's and have you ever heard of people doing that in their genealogy? I can't say I've heard people doing that, but I've been tremendously intrigued by that. Sometimes I watch haunted shows and they'll be like, this place is haunted. And then I'm like, well, let's figure out the history of that place. Why would this be haunted? Who lived there? And, you know, sometimes I find stuff and sometimes I'm like, you're just making it up for TV. Yeah. Yeah. Right. No, no, we had a friend. So, honestly, she, there were two incidences with her doing readings for my mom and I, and Nancy's even more especially like, nah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, right. We also lived in a haunted cabin at that time in Julian and San Diego in the mountains. And you're not going to tell either one of us when there is a smoky face over your bed over you. And then she drew the face and showed it to the landlord. And it's exactly what his father looked like. And he was buried just 10, 10, 10 feet down the dirt path. So like, don't tell me it's not, I, I know that there's stuff, right? And anyway, so we were starting in our family history. So she really was more about guided meditation. So that you can kind of travel that way and, and going in that and what she thought. The history I was digging up and this was kind of at the beginning of the internet too. There's no way she had time to do what I was doing. And you know what I mean? And had all the names or anything. And she did come up with some stuff that aligned with what I was finding, but I hit a stumbling block at the 1400s. That was hard to get beyond that. So I don't know what is that. Yeah. Could you start using the paper trail? Mm hmm. And so that's how I did it. But I have to file, but I, when it gets into all the charts and stuff, that's when you call someone. So when, who, who is your typical client for you when you help them as a genealogist? I've had so many different varieties. I've had people who wanted me just to build out their family trees and came into me with two names and question marks. And I think they lived here and then too. I've had people come to me because they have a family name and they wanted to carry that family name down. And it's been five or six generations that everybody was named Mary and they wanted to have a wow. Mm hmm. And I think they made it back eight, eight generations. Wow. Yeah. Very cool. And they, I've had people come to me for help with getting dual citizenship, finding the documentation that they need to prove their lineage. Oh, okay. Mm hmm. For Ireland and for Italy. Oh wow. In Greece. Um, so it depends on why I've had people come to me because they just really love their grandma and wanted to know more about the family, but she never really talked about the family. Mm hmm. Is it hard for people that are adopted? Um, I've never really worked with anybody. I worked with one young woman. And she reached out to me online because she was trying to figure out who the paternity her father was, and I helped her, but that was just, that was just the one off. She wasn't even really my client and just, okay. Just helping. I just wanted to help her out because she was asking the people to help and they kept ignoring her. So I helped her. So I mean, DNA is great for that. If you have a line of your family that you don't know things about, no one wants to talk about DNA is fantastic for that. Uh, yeah, because sometimes there's little secrets in your family and people don't want to share them. There are so many secrets. Mm hmm. Yeah. And that, but I think that's interesting, you know, so I agree, but it's, uh, not everybody knows. The people who want to keep the secret secret don't find it. I want to know, like, it's weird because, um, like our family says, oh, you know, we've got that on the Ernie side that you researched up a little bit that, um, somebody married a Paiute squaw. That's what has been passed down terminology and all, right? And there's certain things I have a book of about Paiute history and there is a Paiute warrior and we look identical creepily, like identical, like, whoa, right? Um, yeah, and so, but then like three quarters of the family, oh, no, we're not definitely not. Nobody did that. And I'm like, oh, I wonder. I mean, I don't care either way. I mean, it's, it is what it is, right? But that apparently was a secret or something. We'll see. I don't know. I don't know. You get the DNA done. Yeah, I know. Right. And it won't be all just looked like some dude. You know, he was a warrior, he's all dressed up and I'm looking at his face cheekbones, everything. It's, it's really odd. You know, yeah, so, you know, maybe I am, I don't know, but it's, it's fascinating. And so I'm glad that you help people because I can see people really wanting the stories and wanting to know, but not having the time to do it or just need help along the way. So if someone, you know, go to your website and says, Hey, can you just guide me? Because I don't know what I'm looking at, because that's what I was saying. Like there's things I don't know what's going on. What am I looking at? Will you help people with that kind of thing, like consulting? I'm going to hopefully start consulting in the next month or so. So instead of doing all of the research on my own, it would be assisting people so they could bring their research to me and I can help them navigate to go next and maybe help them reorganize, organize, organization. Because you may think you're going to remember something, you're probably not. Write it down because there's just so much information. But I hope to be doing the more of a consulting on top of what I'm already doing to help people along the path so they can, it is exciting. Some people are really just drawn to doing the research themselves. Yeah, you, it's your family, you know, story. It's also a level of healing that some people find when they're doing their family history and having this connection with your past, where you came from, finding a community, even a paper or in the genealogy community, because people who aren't into genealogy, they are missing out, but they just don't want to hear you drawn on. I know this one again. So when you find other people in the genealogy community, they can, they're there to celebrate you. And they do. It's rabbit hole centric. It is. It's a great feeling when you can sit down and be like, I wasn't the cemetery the other day. That's what I found. Yeah, yeah. No, that's cool. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, I mean, we just went to cemetery where Abraham Lincoln's relative and Truman's relative were buried. Little cemetery in Kentucky. Oh, wow. Yeah. It, I mean, it was just, and then they had a tree growing from the acorn, seriously, from an acorn from oak tree from where Lincoln spoke. So they took this acorn and grew it in the cemetery. Oh, that's really cool. It is. And it's a really beautiful oak tree. So it's in, and these old, I love cemeteries. I can live in the cemeteries. I'm like, just going to them is where you, especially if you go on a guided tour, because these historians know the gossip of the town, you know, they know who did what? I mean, Nakadish, Louisiana was talking about that. And I've been on a cemetery tour recently there. And I've been in the cemetery a few times, but man, the story that came out. I mean, the mayor got shot because he got mad at somebody for faking the fountain of youth with as well. And the guy got mad and just shot him. I mean, and then there's like a civil war soldier. He was a young kid, faked his age so he could fight in the civil war. And so he has two gravestones, one with his real name and one with a fake name. Oh, that's funny. That's crazy. I've never heard of that. Yeah, because he changed his name to fake his age. Oh, wow. So yeah, I love cemeteries. We're actually going east in a couple of weeks to Salem, Massachusetts. And I'm very, very excited to go check out the cemeteries in Massachusetts. Yeah, don't eat the rye bread. Why not? Because you might be called the witch after you eat it. I'm sure I'll be called the witch before I eat it. So it's OK. I know. I know I'll pass on some of our witchdom to you. Well, this is cool. I'm so glad you're doing that and helping people and I'm excited because I know you'll be on more shows talking family history so we can get into the nitty gritty of gossip. It'll be good. Yeah. That'll be fun. A lot of fun. And I'll get our friend Fay to come on and talk about Poland and that history because that is insanely like some people are living in the barrio and don't even know what their building is and that represents, you know, yeah, I would love to hear what she saw and speak experience of it. She said a lot of it was deep. It's emotionally deep, you know, and then going to these little villages and knowing that her relatives were there, you know, and it just is like, wow, you know, because she's got a Russian Jewish background. Wow. Yeah. So, I mean, when she came back all these stories, I'm just like, oh my gosh, I need help on this. This is because they were crossing all the border lines, you know? And so, you know, trying to get out and they were fine. They didn't end up in Auschwitz. She said Auschwitz. She had to leave a few times. It's too much. I don't know. That history. Yeah. And then you've got to look at those that fought under Hitler, the Nazis, right? Like, how much, how many of those were people who really didn't want to be a Nazi? I think that story never gets told. I agree. It's kind of what's happening with Putin right now. You know, what's happening in Russia. Do they all, I mean, those soldiers saying no, you know what I mean? So there is that backlog. So it's kind of interesting. It's just like history is really repeating itself in a horrible way. I agree. And I think when you learn, if you go in history, you start to understand humans a little bit more too. Well, let's see. Other reason the family history is so interesting and unique because when you go to school and they start teaching about history, it's a lot of numbers and backs and it gets really boring because who is this guy, do you care? But when it's your family and you learn that it's your, you know, uncle or your grandmother or there was another family that I researched and the great grandmother had a husband before then why, well, her first husband died and the Spanish flew. So then she remarried with her two daughters and that was where the line came down to the person I was helping. But I mean, that that's a whole different idea. You hear about it stops are the influenza outbreak of 1918 is what the more appropriate way to say it. But I mean, learning about that and how it swept through the steel mills and from a hands on perspective or or the wars, you know, the different when you go on and you see the World War two draft card that everybody filled out, but then suddenly you see these forms about having trench foot because your family member ended up in triage in a hospital somewhere because they were, yeah, I mean, like that's, it becomes personal becomes very personal because very personal and it makes you want to learn more about it. Well, as a kid, I was engrossed in historical novels like I mean, I read War and Peace when I was like eight years old for something stupid, then I had to read it again, right? You know, but I was into all of that. And then in school, in high school, you think I'd, you know, no, I was so bored. They made it so boring. And it is like this, you know, Christopher, some of the sale did ship on whatever, you know, I just it like everything was just here's your, your paragraph of what happened World War two. Okay. You may get a full page on that. Yes. And it didn't make it into a story. And that's what history is. And then when we traveled the country in South Africa and we lived there and as a kid, and I was like 13, 14 at the time, we went to some of these battlefields and it was stuff that I was studying in school and I was truly a road scholar. And all of a sudden I was like, Oh my God, this is, this is like, why aren't they writing this? This is for real and came back and I graduated at the top of history was my top subject, the higher standard grade or higher grade, or whatever you want to call it. That was my main thing. I don't call it a major or whatever, everything was different, but history, it just went from there to there just by going to the places to find the real stories and then being horrified by seeing mass graves, yes, just with whitewashed pebbles on them, you know, and then seeing the places where people battled. Like it's insane. My family growing up, my dad was always into history, he's still into history. So when we go on family vacations, we went to Gettysburg and we went to Vicksburg and we went to DC and we saw the tomb of the unknown soldier and we've been to a lot of different places like that. It was funny because I said I'm going to Salem and I called my mom, I'm like, I remember going to Salem when I was a kid and she's like, you were three. That is how impactful that experience was that a three-year-old remembered this so many years later and I think then learning your family was part of that, it changes it. And it also expands history because there's so much history we're not taught when you're looking at the diversity of our country. There's so many stories and so many people who've done amazing, incredible things that we don't ever learn about because we keep hearing the same five stories we'll learn over again. And now some of those stories are being taken out of history books. That should be because we need to learn them so we don't have the peace. Good, bad and the ugly, right? Yes. We need to learn all of it and I think that's the only way for everyone to kind of reunite. What's this saying, if history doesn't make you uncomfortable, it's not history? Well, I don't know, the present moment is a little uncomfortable. But history but then, here's the thing, it was talking to someone, they were saying, we are actually doing better than what we all think. If you look back in history, women couldn't really walk down the street to get raped by a Roman soldier or something. You know what I mean? If you really think about it with all the way disease was, I mean, we have flushing toilets. You know, there's things that we've changed and some of it is really for the better. There's definitely a lot of horror stories, but there really are horror stories now too. Yes. But I think there's a lot of, a lot of betterments, you know? I agree. I think, and I'm going to circle back the newspapers for a minute, I think reading old newspapers is very interesting because you have perspective now, so we can see what was going on then and have enough perspective to say, oh, that wasn't really happening. That was just the newspapers because it helps sell the newspapers. And when you're living in it, it's hard to see, you don't have that distance to have the perspective to understand that there's probably a better or bigger story that needs to be investigated and it's not just the stories that are selling newspapers. Yeah, that's true too. Something to keep in mind. Yeah. Yeah, we like the textures and the flavorings, but there's more. There's always more. Yeah. And you know what? The true story is actually usually more interesting. They are. You know? Yeah, that's really true. But hey, we're fascinating, human beings, we're fascinating, and we do some weird stuff. Yeah. We do. Well, thank you, Erin. We can't wait for more. Have fun on your travel to Salem. Yes. Thank you. Fun. They make good candy out there right here. Well, I will have to get some incentive to you. Okay. Cool. Thanks. You take care. Thank you for joining us here on Big Blend Radio's Way Back When History Podcast. Keep up with us at bigblendradio.com.