← The Genealogy Guys Podcast & Genealogy Connection
The Genealogy Guys Podcast & Genealogy Connection
The Genealogy Guys Podcast #428
00:55:18
News You Can Use and Share! MyHeritage added 20 million historical records in June. MyHeritage and Family Tree DNA announced a new partnership to connect DNA tests to family trees. JewishGen announced a new partnership between its Romania Research...
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A
Foreign. Welcome to episode 428 of the Genealogy Guys Podcast, the longest running genealogy podcast on the planet. I'm your host, Drew Smith and together with co host George G. Morgan, we cover news, tips and solutions for the genealogist community. In this episode, we bring you the latest news from MyHeritage JewishGen and FamilySearch. George and I provide a review of Nathan Dylan Goodwin's latest mystery book and share listener email about the new RootsMagic 10 and its accompanying book, as well as the difficulties of researching men named James. James. We also discuss our recent trip to South Carolina for an annual state genealogy conference. The Genealogy Guys podcast is sponsored by MyHeritage Roots Magic and VividPix. And now on with the show. Welcome to another episode of the Genealogy Guys podcast. I am joined as always by my co host, George G. Morgan. George, how you doing today?
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B
I'm doing fine. Hello everyone. Welcome to the podcast. Today.
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A
Yeah, we got a lot. This is. We. We're going to be getting. Giving you the news as we always do. We're going to do a book review, a very special book review in many ways. We're going to be. We do have a little bit of listener email and we're going to talk about what we have been up to in the past month and some other things. So, yeah, whatever we get to. So, George. Well, that's what, that's what makes this an unpredictable episode. Sometimes they are, but we do plan them out. George, you're going to start with the first bit of news, so take it away.
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B
I am. And by the way, this is episode number 428. It is genealogy Guys Podcast. And don't forget that in addition to those, we have a bunch of recorded genealogy connection podcasts.
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A
Right. And I do plan some new ones. So we'll go forward from there.
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B
Yes, so.
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A
But nonetheless, go ahead.
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B
Yeah. Let me start out with MyHeritage News. They have added, in the month of June, they added 200 million historical records. And let me just give you a recap of those. First of all, an index of records extracted from newspapers published in Australia from oldnews.com with the image the. There are 28,227,580 of these. That's just amazing. What's being added. Next thing is an index of parish registers of baptisms from Nova Scotia, Canada between the years 1748 and 1930. And that amounts to over 423,000 records. An index of parish registers of marriage from nova Scotia between 1728 and 1980. 9. There are 162,000 records. An index of the 1901 census records from Oslo, Norway, with the images. This is tremendous. 224,000 new records there. Wow. And here is an index of prisoner records from Oslo, Norway between the years 1880 and 1923. With images. There are 17,000. But that's good. An index of records of alien immigration files in the United States. Immigration in the United States, documented from the year 1944 onwards. I'm going to be in that, looking for some people. And then also at Old News. An index of records extracted from newspapers published in the United States. From Old News. These are obituaries, 159,000 of those. And interestingly, an index of death and stillbirth records from Idaho between the years 1906 and 1972 with images. And that's 875,000 records. And then an index of marriage records from Maryland from the year 1911 onwards. There are 4,100,000 records there. That's tremendous. And here's something of interest if you're looking back at Massachusetts post Civil War. An index of census records from the state of Massachusetts from the year 1865. And then an index of burial records of individuals who were buried in hart Island, New York from 1872 onward. And that's. They've added a huge number of records for a total of 584,000 records. And then here's an index of birth records from Johnston County, North Carolina from the year 1914 onwards. And last but not least, an index of divorce records from the state of Washington from 1969 onwards. This is a tremendous batch of records that have been added and they never stop.
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A
Yeah, very true. My turn, right?
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B
Yep.
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A
And mine sort of relates to. Well, it does relate to myheritage, but it also relates to family tree DNA. Now, one thing you may notice that two of the major companies that do DNA testing, Ancestry and myheritage, also have very elaborate ways, very good ways, full featured ways to create family trees of whatever size you know you need or want. Which means that if you have a DNA test, you have a way to link your DNA test to your family tree. And it makes it really nice for people that match you to figure out who you are and how and how you might be connected to them. The other companies, like for example, Family Tree DNA have never had a good way to do that. That's a, you know, their expertise is fully into DNA testing and therefore they really didn't get all the way into the whole tree building thing. Even Though they had a way to do it. So they have decided to partner with MyHeritage. Now, they've just to be clear to a certain degree, family Tree DNA and MyHeritage have already partnered, because when you take a DNA test with MyHeritage, it goes to Houston, Texas, where family tree DNA is, and their labs process it. Now, their databases. I want to be very clear about this, too. The family tree DNA matching database is completely separate from the MyHeritage DNA matching database. So those are not overlapping either, even though the same lab processes the samples. Okay, I just want that to be clear. But this is a new partnership between family Tree DNA and MyHeritage, so that this collaboration lets people who are already on family tree DNA and may even have a tree, but they can transfer their trees to myheritage and keep building them. So what's basically going to happen here, and this is really important, if you do have a tree on family tree DNA, you need to take notice of this, because on September 9th of 2024, family tree DNA will officially sunset their family tree builder. So, in other words, you can't do anything more. Your tree will be frozen as of September 9th. You won't be able to basically deal with it. It'll be read only. You can have it there, but it'll be read only, and you can't do anything else. So the point is, at least for the time being, you really want to transfer your tree. If you don't have one on MyHeritage already, transfer it to MyHeritage, and that way you can keep working on it and building on it and so forth. So then you can link your family tree DNA test to yourself, if you're the one who tested to yourself on your tree on myheritage. And so probably you want to do that pretty soon. You may still be able to do that after September 9th, but the sooner the better because they may not, you know, make that available forever. So do that. And that's going to. That's of course voluntary, but again, it's encouraged to do that. So I just wanted to share all that with you. So that's some good news for family tree DNA users. They now have an even greater place to put their trees and then link them together, which is cool, because you really can't do genealogy, George, just by DNA testing. You have to do traditional research with family trees. And so you need both.
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B
And that's something that some of the newer researchers, newer genealogists have made a bad assumption about. They think they can do all their research using DNA testing. And that is emphatically not the case. No, that's as much of a fallacy as that everything is on the Internet.
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A
It's kind of like that. It's kind of like that. Yeah. And I mean, you know, it's true that DNA testing can. Can help you a great deal, but it's kind of like just another record type. It's just another way to show that you're related to somebody. But if you test with any DNA testing company, the testing company cannot just really tell you how exactly you're related. It can provide ideas which we know from things like the theory of family relativity that myheritage does. And we know the through lines that ancestry does, but it can't prove it. And you need to still do the hard work of genealogy, which is hard work, George. But it's fun. It's lots of fun. But, you know. All right, well, what else is fun, George? What you got from JewishGen?
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B
I have an announcement from JewishGen, and they have sent out a notice to their community saying, we're pleased to announce a historic partnership between Jewish Gens Romania Research Division and the Jewish Federation of Romania Fedron, the governing body for Jewish life in Romania. Pursuant to this agreement, we've been granted broad access to Romanian cemeteries for purposes of photographing and documenting Jewish graves. We've also been granted access to local community burial registers and other types of documents that survive with the local communities. This is a first of a kind agreement that will allow them to. To expand the documentation of Jewish life in Romania. And that will include the historically Romanian regions of Moldavia and Valachia, Mutania, which I probably just butchered, including the counts of Bucharest, Jasi Galati, Bacao, Braila, Boxani, and many others through southern and eastern Romania. So that's a tremendous new announcement.
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A
Okay. We always like to end the news with what's going on with FamilySearch, because it's just always an amazing collection of records that they. That they have. And this is actually from the week ending in May 25th. But I mean, we'll. We'll catch up on the stuff as soon as we can. The news, newer stuff, and they're always busy with all kinds of stuff. So this is. But new records, we're talking actually just give you a total. I do want to do that. 19 million records that FamilySearch has added in that week. But where are they? Okay, here we go. We have from Belgium, from East Flanders, the civil registration records 1541-1914 they have. They've expanded their collection, adding 333,000 records. Also in West Flanders, Civil registration and church records from 1582 to 1932, they've expanded that collection with 146,000 more records. Moving to the other side of the globe here in Colombia, Migration Records, 1985-2011, that's an expanded collection with additional basically 700,000 records. So it's huge, Very huge. Keep in mind that also we're putting all that artificial intelligence to work. So there are new indexes. El Salvador has some Computer Aided reese indexes of 114,000 records that were added. There's some smaller ones from other countries like Guatemala and Peru and from Venezuela. So basically a lot of these Latin American ones. Since the artificial intelligence is now getting well enough to read some cursive language in Spanish. That's Spanish language stuff. That's really cool. Other large collections, Scotland. We'll go back to Scotland. Civil registration. We're talking 1855-1875, as well as 1881 and 1891. 1.6 million more records added to that collection. And the biggest addition where all that 19 million come from, George, was that there is a US living persons database. And this is again an expanded collection, but it's probably one of the largest ones that FamilySearch has. It's collected from sources all over the place, and it is about the living. And so from 1970 to this year, and there are now 16 million more records in that. So if you're looking for those descendants of your siblings, cousins and grandparents and great grandparents and whatnot, you have a much better chance of finding them. So. But yeah. So good research news for various parts of the world. And with that, George, we're going to stop. We'll take our first commercial break. When we come back, we have a book review to do. Yay, book reviews. We hadn't done one in a while. We're going to keep doing more of those, I promise. But stay with us. Good genealogical research involves collaboration, especially with individuals who may have unique expertise, such as with the interpretation of DNA data. MyHeritage now makes it possible for you to take your DNA results and collaborate with other researchers without having to violate good security practices. For example, it's rarely a good idea to share your account password with others. If your collaborator is already a MyHeritage user, you can go to manage DNA kits, click the three dots next to the kit and and choose Share DNA results with a collaborator to learn more about what you can do with collaboration. And what you are permitting your collaborator to do, visit MyHeritage.com the word 10 is a special word in the English language. It can refer to something that has the highest rating. And so it's very appropriate that RootsMagic has just released version 10. It adds such features as helping you to document your DNA matches, trace your family's health history, do searches through your data using defined rules, managing groups that you've created, copying facts between individuals and sharing facts with multiple people, and so much more. And you can try out RootsMagic for free using RootsMagic Essentials. Learn more at RootsMagic.com welcome back. Our good friend Nathan Dillon Goodwin, who is renowned for his genealogical crime mysteries. He's got the series, two series actually, but a Morton Farrier who's the, the guy, the character based out of England and as a forensic genealogist as or he's doing forensic genealogy in this one for sure. And this, this one, I mean, we're going to tell you a little bit about it without giving away anything because you don't want to give away things with mysteries, right, George? No, but he travels to a fairly well known conference which you may have heard of called RootsTech. And so he goes to giving it all away. I know he goes to Salt Lake City because he's a speaker on a panel. And, and by the way, the other speakers on the panel, except for another fictional one, which you will learn all about one of the other, all the other speakers are people you've heard of and including people like Diane Southard and so forth and others. And guess what? The moderator, the moderator of the panel is me.
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B
Never heard of him.
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I know I've become a fictional character. I like my fictional version better sometimes than the real one. But I mean, he's very impressive. But.
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B
So you both talk a lot.
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A
Well, we do. We do. So. So I did. But at least, yeah, everything he says, everything the fictional Drew Smith says was pre approved by the real Drew Smith. So that's all right. So you can enjoy that if you haven't already read that part of it before. It's fun. George, what do you, I mean, anything you want to say about this particular story without again giving away all the, the tough stuff, we should probably tell the name of it.
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B
Yeah, the name of the book would be really helpful to read.
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A
Okay. The Deserter's so now listen folks, what.
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B
Do you think of when you think of a deserter? Is it military? Is it family? Is it what?
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Huh? But well, I can tell you what's on the back cover where it tells you. Yeah, I mean, the deserter is actually Morton's wife's great grandfather from Sussex, and after World War I, he deserts the family and so that's enough. Yeah, that's it. Well, that's all that's on the back cover. We're not going to give away the.
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Story, but Morton Ferrier, the. The main character of these, this series of books, does the investigative research to learn more and to piece together the whole story. And as always, Nathan's stories are a great read. Lots of suspense, lots of surprises, and I think you will enjoy this book like you have probably all of Nathan's others.
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That's right. That's right. So, I mean, what can I say? It's going to be the best genealogy crime mystery that has me in it. But I don't know if that'll ever happen again. But that's all right. It was very. It was fun being involved with just that bit of it, just to give my permission to be in it. But all the words are that of Nathan, so. Yeah. So that is our review, if there's anything else. I do have one more thing I want to say, George, before we take our next commercial break, that relates to Nathan. Nathan has realized that there are many of you out there in the great world of genealogy who might like to become a genealogy crime mystery writer, just like Nathan. So he's going to do a series of courses, like six or seven weeks. I'd have to go back and look at the exact number to teach you how to do it. And he's actually just starting up, beginning of September a, the first of these courses. It's kind of a. It's a pilot and it's cheaper because it's a pilot. It's cheaper than the regular course. So you can look out there and see if, you know, do a search for Nathan, Nathan Dillon Goodwin, and see if he's got more information about that in case you can get in on that. And if he can't, but you can do later, you can do one of the regular courses, but I'm going to be involved, so I decide to sign up for it. So we'll see how it goes. But, yeah, there's probably a lot of budding writers out there, George.
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B
Don't get any ideas.
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A
You mean like for victims?
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B
Yes.
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Oh, I see. Yeah. Well, it's all. It's all good fun in fiction, you know, it's just.
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B
It's all relative.
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A
It's all relative in fiction, yes. All right, we'll stop we'll take our second and last commercial break. When we come back, we will get to listener email and again, what George and I have been up to in the last month. So stay with us. If you were the genealogist in the family, you may be the one who now has all of the accumulated photos of your relatives and ancestors. But those photos and the stories behind them can fade over time if they are not preserved. Don't let your memories fade. Vividpix provides a wide range of products and services for you, the individual genealogist, as well as for libraries and other organizations trying to preserve the past. You might decide to start with a course designed by professional photo managers that will teach you how to organize your family photo collections. To learn more about this course, go to vivid-pix.com education and click the Learn More button under Printed Photo Organizing Made Easy. Why not make 2024 the year you learn to deal with the family photos you have? Welcome back. You're listening to the Genealogy Guys podcast. And George, how about Listener email? I think you go first and then I have one.
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B
I do. And I have an email from Sam in the UK and he said a big thank you for episode 427 and specifically the RootsMagic 10 update date. I was listening this evening, Sunday, July 7th, while out walking my dog and heard the Roots Magic update news. I took the plunge and signed up for Roots Magic 9 after listening to your podcast last year or so and thanks to your timely reminder, I have now upgraded to Roots Magic 10 and was just in time to take advantage of the big discount. I also managed to order the Roots Magic 10 book on Amazon UK which should be with me later this week. It costs as much as the upgrade, so I'm doubly thankful to have bagged the upgrade discount. Thanks for another fabulous episode and I look forward to the next one. Thank you Sam. We appreciate hearing from you there.
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A
Let me since we brought up the book, the RootsMagic 10 book, I want to this is a warning. I mean I love the book by the way, I ordered a copy. But be careful. If you're going to Amazon now, you can go to the RootsMagic website and they'll have a direct link to order the book. But sadly, and this is the thing, there are always scammers who try to take advantage and if you go to Amazon and you know, you let me go find that because I just want to give you the warning if Amazon has not removed it. But there are scammers who create false entries in Amazon for the Same book. And they've actually done that in the last couple of weeks. And they don't actually, most of them don't say the author is Bruce Busby, who is the man behind RootsMagic and who wrote the book. They actually come up with fake names that happen most of start with B and B. So you can tell if it's not Bruce Busby, that's the author, you got the wrong book. And there was another one out there that was only 96 pages. And though the book is well over, it's a couple of hundred pages. So be careful. Best thing to do if you're going to buy the book is go to the RootsMagic website, look for the link for the book and follow that link and that will take you to the correct book that you want. Don't just go searching for RootsMagic 10 on Amazon. It's sad. They have been reported. I don't know if they've been removed yet, but they were there the other day and you can report fakes when you find them on Amazon. But yep, there are people.
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B
And thankfully we have people in the genealogy squad who alerted the rest of our, what, 75,000 plus person community that this scam was taking place.
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A
Yeah, yeah, we have. We're coming up on 70,000. That's. We're almost there. We will have that within a few weeks of 70,000. Yeah. So that's very exciting. Okay, listener email. And I'm going to say who this is from completely because she was an announced winner of our, you know, of Unsung Heroes awards some years ago. Yeah. This is Stacy Cole of Brunswick, Georgia. And Stacy writes us to say Drew and George. Hi. I don't know if you remember me. I had the honor of receiving your Uncle Unsung Heroes award a while back. I have a website called they Had Names African Americans and Early Records of Liberty County, Georgia. And I do research.
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B
Stacy, we remember you very well and I, I follow you on Facebook and elsewhere because you do fabulous work. Yes.
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A
Okay. Yes. So Stacy does research on the enslaved and enslavers of Liberty County. Now, let me continue what Stacy sent to us. I was struck by a listener letter from your most recent podcast episode talking about James James of Georgia. Your listener expressed his difficulties with distinguishing the two men of that name. I have a very similar experience with a James James of Georgia that I thought might be worth passing along. I don't think he's related to your listeners James James, but one never knows. Of course, my James James was a nightmare to research as Both his father and son were also named James James. Two of them were referred to as Senior and Junior in Liberty county records. And when one died, Junior began to be referred to as Senior. As Stacy says, picture me tearing my hair out. Yes, I came across this family because I was helping a descendant research his James family, who were formerly enslaved in Liberty county. They had purchased 300 acres of land after the Civil War from their last enslaver, whose surname was New, not James. In fact, no white James's had lived in Liberty county for decades at that time. In researching, I discovered this James James family, who had come to Georgia from New Jersey and who returned there in the 1830s, at which time they sold all the people they were holding in slavery to none other than the black James family's last enslaver. So the mystery of why they were using that surname was solved. I ended up writing a blog post for my website and then an article for the Georgia Genealogical Society Quarterly about trying to research this family. Both talk about the strategies I used. And by the way, Stacy writes the Georgia Genealogical Society Quarterly is always looking for articles. Please let your listeners know they are welcome to submit if they're working on Georgia ancestors. And she provides a link for that. So we'll try to get that into the show notes as well as the link for her blog post, if we can do that. It was such an interesting challenge, but more than that, it was a privilege to be able to reunite these descendants with lost family history. Thank you all for all that you both do. I admire your work so much and I love listening to the podcast. Well, thank you, Stacy. And as always, just why we picked you for unsung heroes. We admire your work and so we're thrilled. And again, yes, this has got to be. One of the most difficult things we deal with in genealogy is two different people with the same name and distinguishing them. That's one reason we use fan club methodology is to see if they have different fan clubs. Most times they do because they interact with different groups of people, so that can be helpful. But, yeah, there's some good strategies and I'm glad you wrote about it for the Georgia Quarterly, so thank you. Thank you very much for that, George. We're going to talk about what we did this past month other than eat some good dinners with friends and family and. Yes, yes.
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B
So as we mentioned on our last podcast, we were. We were taking a trip up to South Carolina. We were gone for what, nine days?
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A
No, no, it was more like a week. Okay, we were eight days, maybe. Yep.
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B
But. But the main purpose, the primary purpose was to. For Drew to speak at the South Carolina Genealogical Society workshop held at the state archives in Columbia.
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A
Yep.
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B
And it was really a good conference. We met some. Some great people. We learned. Learned a lot. We. We. We made some new friends. I joined the old Pendleton Society of the South Carolina Society.
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A
Yeah.
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B
And. And I got some research done.
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A
Absolutely. Well, what I was going to say is one of the things for people. Now, some people from Ohio would understand this, but most of the local societies in South Carolina, which mostly are either county societies or certain historic region societies, are chapters of the state society. They have that connection. And so they each had a table there in, like, for vendor tables where they were selling books and maps and. And whatever else. A lot of books and. And so forth. Plus a few other vendors that were, you know, authors of books, like Brent Holcomb, who's done a lot of books for South Carolina. Yeah. If you've done South Carolina research, you should know the name Brent Holcomb and know some of his books. But they. Yeah, they had great tables to sell. I went to the Lawrence table because, of course, my. My maternal grandmother was from Lawrence, and so. And a lot of my relatives on her family are buried there. And they had the cemetery books, which I had seen before but didn't own. And they've now up to volume four. Now, volume four tends to have the more recent burials, and they probably won't be as much of interest to me as the historical stuff. But that was all right, because here's what they did. I just want to say this was a great sale. They were selling volume one, which I had seen before, as I said, for like, 25 bucks. And guess what? If you bought volume one, they threw in volumes two and three for free.
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B
But, you know, Drew didn't pay for it.
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A
Well, I didn't have the cash.
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B
He did not pay for it.
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A
They were not the money. They didn't have the credit cards. And I didn't have enough cash with me. So there's this other guy named George G. Morgan who had enough cash, and I said, george, buy me the book. And so. Which books? Plural? Since all three came along. So that was nice. So thank you, George. And. But that's what I'm just saying. There's a lot of these cool books. If you go to state conferences, the Ohio people do the same thing, and many of the others do, too, but. And there are a few chapters, I think, in South Carolina that are not members of the state. And they did not have A table there, but it just works out that way. But it was a great conference. Yeah, they had an auditorium where the, where the keynote speaker was there and some of the other speakers spoke. And I got to speak in as a featured speaker, not the keynote there a couple times. Yeah. And then they also had breakout rooms in the afternoon. So if you didn't like the topic in the auditorium, you could go to one of the three breakout rooms. There were smaller rooms, so a little more specific topics that maybe wouldn't have appealed to as many people.
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B
And if you weren't interested in a particular topic at a particular time, you had the opportunity, as I did, to do research in the archive.
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A
Absolutely. You had to get an id, didn't you? Or something. Or picture.
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B
Yeah, I just had to register.
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A
Okay.
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B
And, and, and that was, that was quick and easy. But I, I spent a few times in there during sessions that I wasn't necessarily interested in. And the highlight of, of my work in there. And yes, I did look at microfilm and I did look at, at some original records, but the highlight was when I was, I went in at one point. Now I have ancestors from South Carolina. I have some Revolutionary War ancestors from, from what was the old 96 district. Now if you don't know anything about South Carolina, when it was colonized down on the coast, they called the, the administrative areas. They referred to them as parishes.
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A
Right.
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B
And then later on they designated them as districts. And those were effectively, they were election districts. And those districts also were used for, for courts again.
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A
Yeah, they were functionally like counties is what they were to a degree. Yeah.
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B
And then they became counties. And There are what, 47 counties. 6, 46, 46, 46, as opposed to 100 in North Carolina. And what is it in Georgia? 150.
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A
It's big. They have lots of little counties.
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B
Yes, but, but the highlight, highlight for me was one of the times that I went back into the archive research area. I walked up to the desk and by the way, all the staff that I dealt with were exceedingly helpful. They were knowledgeable, they were helpful and, and they assisted in the research. But the highlight for me was when I went in at one point and I said, I really want to see some old maps of, of South Carolina because I want to understand pre Revolution revolutionary period and in the 1800s. I wanted to understand what the administrative district looked like, which ones existed, what their boundaries were and so forth. I was fortunate enough that behind the desk there at the time was the deputy director of the archives. And that's Patrick McCauley. And I'm telling you, he was, he was amazing. He came out from behind the desk and, and led me over to one of the tables in the research area that had some, some archives, created materials that were bound. And one of them was a 70 some page history of South Carolina's geography and governmental areas. And so he took, he took me through that and we looked up several, several of the areas and then he pulled out a book, a huge book, Hall's maps. And if you're not familiar with those, they are, they are the essential research tools if you are looking for places in South Carolina. And so these were these dated from the 1700s, actually from the late 1600s up through the 17 and 1800s. And he walked me through county by county. And as I told him the story about my Swords ancestors From the old 96 district, he said, well, let's look at that in detail. And we did. Now, my Revolutionary War ancestor, John Swords received for his service in the military, then he received Bounty land on what's known as 26 Mile Creek. They used a lot of mile designations and names to denote how far this creek or this space, this road was from the Native American lands and settlements.
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A
Yeah, the Native American trail that came down from the mountains at the top, but was the starting point. And then you find places. George, I'll mention, since I lived up, went to Clemson University and worked up there for another 12 years after I graduated, there's a town near Clemson called Six Mile. And it's called Six Mile because, you know, it's six miles from that starting point. And then there are other creeks like 12 Mile Creek, 20 Mile Creek, 24 Mile Creek and so forth. So there are all these mild creeks that are named simply because of how far they are down from the trail.
- [39:12]
B
Yep. And my ancestor John Swords received two land grants, one on Six Mile Creek and one on 26 Mile Creek. So we, he, Mr. McAuley was able to point out specifically where those were. And, and because I had found the Bounty land grants in the past, he was able to point out the general vicinity where they were. So that was very special to me to, to have such a knowledgeable expert personally tutor me in that. And so when I got home, I got online and I ordered a map of, of old South Carolina dating from 1771. It's a reproduction. And so I just received that this week. And Drew has one of these massive map magnifiers. And so I'll be spending more and more time on that.
- [40:17]
A
Yep.
- [40:18]
B
But, but remember when you're doing your genealogical research. It's not sufficient for you to just collect names and dates and places. You have to look at those places, understand their relationship to others, understand what type of terrain it is, whether your ancestors lived in a town or city or in a rural environment. And you put that into context. And I've done a lot of research, as Drew will confirm. I've done a lot of research on my ancestors using agricultural censuses from 1850 through 1880 in Georgia and elsewhere, where I've been able not only to use the population schedules, but to use the agricultural schedules as well, and to understand better where my ancestors lived, what they were raising on the farm, the crops, the livestock, the honey, the hemp for rope. And I think it was for rope. And it was. I've. I've filled in more context. And that's what you want to do with your research. You don't want just names and places and dates. You want to know what these people's lives were really, really about.
- [41:46]
A
Yeah. Which means. Yeah.
- [41:47]
B
And my time with. With Patrick McCauley and explaining the geography and the political districts, for me, that has helped me a tremendous amount, put in context all this research I've been doing over the years.
- [42:06]
A
Yeah. We should mention that one of the. Again, techniques, particularly if you are dealing with a geography that you have not grown up in, one that you just discovered your ancestors were from, is one of the first things you want to do. You might acquire a good. Fairly recent, if possible, just because they're going to be a lot more things available. Is a good state history. And we happen to have, in fact, on our bookshelves here, a good state history for South Carolina that was done a few years ago, in the last couple of decades. So it's well researched. I think it was written by an author from the University of South Carolina. But it's a very good state history. And I want to go on to say, and also you want to acquire, if possible, more as many county histories as you can, because those will tell you more about the details of the people that were the pioneers that created that county, at least here in the United States, that were the first Europeans who came over and everything from, you know, why did they leave Europe in particular? What was their lives like, maybe even in Europe, you know, in terms of politics, religion, crops, any of that. And then to understand better why they were attracted to the places they came to in South Carolina, you've got. You've got the English who came in, and a lot of them, certainly in the Earliest days coming into Charleston and on the other coastal towns and cities coming up. And then eventually you have the Scots Irish coming down through the mountains areas. They were more familiar with geographies from Virginia to North Carolina to South Carolina. And then you have Germans who often came over for various reasons and were attracted to the land that was available and not too unlike what they were used to, at least in the upstate, the Piedmont of South Carolina. So you ended up with what's called the Dutch Fork, which is Dutch as in Deutsch. Yes. Not Dutch as in Netherlands. And so that's important. But I mean, those are the big picture things. You really have to have the setting. George, you were going to say.
- [44:31]
B
Yeah, I was going to say these county history books may include the names of your ancestors, but if not, it will give you more context of the people that. That were. That settled there and their contributions to the area. Don't overlook the religious groups.
- [44:52]
A
Right.
- [44:53]
B
For instance, Quakers who came in into Pennsylvania, they migrated their way south. They ended up, not ended up, but they settled an area at the west end of Guilford county, where Greensboro, North Carolina is. And so that area is it. It is very Quaker, a lot of history there and university. And then others left North Carolina and they migrated farther south. And some of those ended up in the area around Newberry where we were, where we were visiting.
- [45:37]
A
Speaking of Newberry, again, one of the things, in addition to acquiring a good state history and acquiring a good county history of your county or counties in whatever state you're researching, is the heritage books, the family heritage books. Those, admittedly, those are provided by, you know, families that live there now, and they are what they know about their, their family history, which might be accurate, may not be accurate, but again, it may point you to some of the ancestors that you might be related to. So Newberry happens to have one of those heritage books that was done a few decades ago. In fact, I think I wrote the entry for my mother's family. And so because we had the family, we had the photo and, and I had done some genealogy research so I could include all that. So that was. That's important. So there's so many things you had to prepare for it, and the maps are vital. You really won't understand the. If you're not from that area particularly, you will not understand how these people related, you know, how they work together, because you may not realize that one town that they're in is right across the county line from another town that they, they did business with and so forth.
- [46:50]
B
So those Maps are important too, because they show migration routes.
- [46:55]
A
Right.
- [46:56]
B
And for instance, if we look on the east coast, if we look at Interstate 95 running along north and south on the east coast, that was the King's Highway.
- [47:08]
A
Yeah.
- [47:09]
B
And I had ancestors who lived on the Eastern Shore of Maryland in the late 1600s and, and early to mid-1700s. And they came around from the Eastern Shore, they came around the, the north end of the Chesapeake Bay, they stopped and picked up a preacher, and then they headed straight south. And I tell people down what is now i95, and they ended up in North Carolina, in the Mecklenburg county area, which is where Charlotte, North Carolina is. And these were Scots, Irish Presbyterians, and they settled there and they created, they built lots of Presbyterian churches and they had ministers who rode the circuit and preached at the various churches around the county. Yeah, but, but those migration routes are important because as you start doing your research, if you look at the primary migration routes, if you lose an ancestor or a family for a generation, go down the migration route and look at the places in between, look at the counties that existed at the time. There may very well be land and property transactions, tax records and, and, and, and wills and probate and that sort of thing. And that may help you piece together the family history and the different people in the family.
- [48:43]
A
You know, we often talk about genealogy societies and whether we're talking national, state, local societies and the ones that are specific, let's say, for a particular ethnic group or something like that, certainly we encourage you to join your nearest local society, partially because that gives you a group of people that you can usually interact with at least once a month. Going to meetings, seeing presentations, an opportunity to ask questions of people and have them even look at some of your research. An opportunity to look at the, talk to the local genealogy librarian who's often may attend that meeting and who comes to the meeting to talk about the most recent things added to the library's collection for genealogy or for any events that they're sponsoring. But, you know, the reason you want to do that is so join that group, but also join the local genealogy society for where your ancestors were from. So in my case, you know, George and I live in Tampa, so we, we have occasionally gone to the meetings downtown of the Tampa group, as well as I go sometimes to the Jewish groups meetings, which, you know, again for Tampa Bay, but there's also, again, I'm a member of at least one local society up in South Carolina, where my ancestors were from, because those folks may have publications that mention your Ancestors, these days, they've actually moved away. Away a little bit from newsletters that they mail to you, to having them online. You may be able to pay a little extra to get it mailed if you want a paper copy. But the nice thing is they also have maybe digital copies that are online. And then. So that's good, too. So keep that in mind that there's probably at least two groups you want to join. Your local society where you live, and the local society where your ancestors are from, which may be multiple, of course, because those people can help you with your research. And we all need help with our research. We all need that kind of thing. So George and I had a great trip to South Carolina. We saw family. My brother, who lives up there, got to spend a lot of time with him. Got to spend time with friends, both new and old, and even one of my high school classmates who could not attend my reunion the other month, my 50th high school reunion. But she. She went out to dinner. She and her husband joined me and another high school classmate with George to have dinner. And that was wonderful. We had a great time. And so again, we're planning to go back. It may not be until January when things are a little bit more comfortable. A little bit. Well, it'd be a little. Well, yeah, that's okay. Yeah, it'll be colder, and we'll probably.
- [51:38]
B
Out a coat to take along.
- [51:41]
A
Well, and the other thing is, it's a lot of driving from where we live in Tampa to where Newberry is. It's about five. A little over 500 miles. So we probably are thinking about flying next time and renting a car when we get up there. But. But, yeah, that's. That is. That's such a great trip. And so thank you to anyone who might be listening. We might have a few folks from Newberry listening. And thank you for your hospitality, as always. And thank you to the folks behind the South Carolina Genealogical Society. Thank you for all you did for a successful conference. I look forward to the one you do next summer and probably July. And who knows? I might be speaking again if they liked me the first time. So we'll see, but who knows? And in the upcoming months, I mean, we've got a lot going on here, too. I will be doing some speaking starting, you know, in. Probably in September and on in. So I got other projects going on. So. Yeah. George, any final words before we end the episode?
- [52:47]
B
I think we've covered a great deal here today.
- [52:50]
A
We have. We have. Thank you. And we do need to remind you with this show is successful if you send us emails. So when you send us your questions, your, your comments, your follow ups to questions from previous episodes where maybe you have an answer for one of our listeners, we want to hear those, any suggestions, tips, techniques, you name it, we want to hear it. And it may appear on an episode. We don't always get to everything, but we get to as many as we can. And we look forward to this and, and, and hope to be with you for a long time into the future.
- [53:30]
B
So, and just think, Drew, in September, we're coming up on our 19th anniversary of the Genealogy Guys podcast.
- [53:39]
A
That's right. So start in 2005. I know, I know. It's like we were the old men of, of genealogy podcasting. We're just podcasting. Well, speak for yourself.
- [53:53]
B
I'm younger than springtime, you know.
- [53:55]
A
Yeah. And as I've told when George says that, I remind him that on the planet Earth, spring has been around probably since for four and a half billion years or so. So it's. Yeah, springtime's kind of old. All right, everybody, thanks for listening. We will be with you again as soon as we can. Take care, George.
- [54:13]
B
And send your emails into genealogyguysmail.com we'd love to hear from you.
- [54:20]
A
We would.
- [54:21]
B
Thanks for joining us this time.
- [54:22]
A
Take care. Bye. Bye.
- [54:44]
B
Sam Sa.