The Genealogy Guys Podcast #429

Summary

The Genealogy Guys Podcast #429
Release Date: September 9, 2024
Hosts: Drew Smith & George G. Morgan

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Episode Overview

This episode dives into the newest developments in the genealogy community, with a focus on major updates and acquisitions from MyHeritage. George and Drew advise a listener on a tricky early-1800s Pennsylvania ancestor question and recap Drew’s recent participation in the WikiTree “Wiki Games” and his enrollment in a genealogy writing course. The show rounds out with a practical discussion of emigration from Europe to the US and the evolving complexities of naturalization, offering tips and context for modern genealogy research.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Genealogy News: MyHeritage Acquisitions & Record Releases

• [01:17] MyHeritage Acquires French Canadian Site MES AIEUX
  • MyHeritage has acquired the major French Canadian service "mes-aieux.com," founded in 2004, popular in Quebec with over 1 million users and 15 million historical Canadian records.
  • Quote – Drew Smith [02:25]:
    “If you have French Canadian ancestors, you should be celebrating at this point.”
• [03:17] MyHeritage Adds 84 Million New Records (Aug 2024)
  • 16 new collections from the US, UK, Ireland, Israel, Spain. Includes wills, parish records, births, marriages, deaths, military records, and images.
    • England & Wales Wills and Probate Administrations, 1996–2023 (7.3M)
    • Irish Births, 1864–1958 (9.4M)
    • Maryland Births, 1875–1922 (2.25M)
    • Texas County Marriage Licenses, 1845 onward (4M new, 7.8M total)
    • Plus significant records from Alabama, Idaho, Florida, Spain, and UK
• [09:33] Major Newspaper Obituary Update
  • MyHeritage “Old News” newspaper collection now has 261 million extracted US obituaries.
  • These are AI-extracted and now powering new hint notifications for users.
  • Quote – George G. Morgan [10:45]:
    “These just add more and more life context.”

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2. Listener Email: Early 19th Century Pennsylvania Brick Wall

• [11:07] Julie’s Question: Seeking the father of Jesse Patterson, born 1810, Pennsylvania, mother is Mary Patterson (maiden name), no father listed, mother marries after Jesse’s birth.
• Drew’s Advice [12:21]:
  • 1810 birth pre-dates state vital record coverage; recommend starting with the FamilySearch Research Wiki for Pennsylvania.
  • Suggests reviewing local church records, understanding Mary’s religion for church outreach, and checking for local genealogical/historical societies’ holdings.
  • Facebook groups for Pennsylvania genealogy and DNA testing among known descendants as next steps.
  • Quote – Drew Smith [13:20]:
    “I'll be honest, this is not going to be easy, particularly given the nature of if the child has his mother's surname and there’s no known father at this point.”
• George’s Additions [17:09]:
  • Use Facebook groups including “Pennsylvania Genealogical Research Group” and “The Genealogy Squad” for crowdsourcing local expertise.
  • Understand the limits of record availability; consider wider family and community context in all research steps.

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3. WikiTree Wiki Games Recap

• [21:59] Drew Participates in WikiTree’s "Wiki Games"
  • Annual collaborative competition modeled on the Olympics with genealogy-themed events: Sourcing Slalom, Date Diving, Cross Country Connecting, and Long Distance Locating.
  • International teams named after trees; Drew’s team "Charming Chestnuts" placed bronze once and silver thrice.
  • Events involved cleaning up sources, adding vital dates, connecting profiles, and standardizing locations.
  • Quote – Drew Smith [25:34]:
    “The idea here is genealogy should be fun.”
  • WikiTree’s collaborative and quality-focused spirit highlighted, including quality control and cross-checking tools.
  • Personal highlight: discovering distant cousins and expanding Drew’s Smith family branches.

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4. Genealogical Mystery Writing Course

• [35:24] Drew Enrolls in Nathan Dylan Goodwin’s Pilot Writing Course
  • Course aims to teach the craft of genealogy-based fiction/mystery writing.
  • Nathan, acclaimed author of Morton Farrier and Venator DNA series, is teaching his first class with 25 students; Drew reports the experience is rewarding and insightful so far.

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5. Immigration & Naturalization: Historical Trends and Research Tips

• [37:56] George & Drew Explain US Immigration Laws and Records
  • Recommended Book: They Became Americans by Loretto Dennis Szucs (1998), a perennial guide to naturalization laws and record types.
    • Quote – George G. Morgan [39:06]:
      “The best book I've ever read on the subject of immigration and naturalization laws is by Loretto Dennis Szucs.”
  • Federal laws required passenger lists from 1820 onward; prior to 1820, records were state-based.
  • Various US ports received immigrants in waves (not just New York; also Baltimore, Philadelphia, Charleston, Galveston, New Orleans, San Francisco, etc.).
  • Naturalization:
    • “First papers” (Declaration of Intention) and “Second papers” (Petition for Naturalization) differ in form/content and were kept at many court levels. Some records are on Ancestry/FamilySearch, sometimes fragmented or indexed only.
    • Women’s citizenship status complicated and changed repeatedly over time—underlines need for historical/legal context.
  • Researching European Departure Records:
    • Hamburg/Bremen lists now fully digitized and indexed—valuable for finding European emigrants.
    • Quote – Drew Smith [53:55]:
      “Not only did I find Mendel in the Hamburg records, I found Hirsch and my great grandfather Lewis…Even found my great great grandmother Frumut and the daughters.”
  • Strategy for Understanding Migration Context:
    • Check the history and events at the time of migration (e.g., Irish famine, German conscription avoidance, religious persecution).
    • Study departure and entry ports to trace migrant routes and community settlement patterns.
    • Quote – George G. Morgan [52:11]:
      “I pay attention to really why these people migrated…from those standpoints, I'm building context.”

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Notable Quotes & Moments

• “If you have French Canadian ancestors, you should be celebrating at this point.” – Drew Smith [02:25]
• “These just add more and more life context.” – George G. Morgan [10:45], on MyHeritage obituary additions
• “This is not going to be easy, particularly given the nature of if the child has his mother's surname and there’s no known father at this point.” – Drew Smith [13:20]
• "The idea here is genealogy should be fun." – Drew Smith [25:34], on WikiTree Wiki Games
• “The best book I've ever read on the subject of immigration and naturalization laws is by Loretto Dennis Szucs.” – George G. Morgan [39:06]
• “I pay attention to really why these people migrated…and from those standpoints, I'm building context.” – George G. Morgan [52:11]

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Timestamps of Key Segments

• 00:00 – 03:10 – Podcast open, MyHeritage French Canadian acquisition
• 03:17 – 10:50 – New MyHeritage record collections & obituary expansion
• 11:07 – 18:43 – Listener email: researching an 1810 Pennsylvania birth
• 21:59 – 33:21 – Drew’s WikiTree “Wiki Games” experience
• 35:24 – 37:56 – Drew’s genealogical mystery writing class
• 37:56 – 56:31 – Emigration and naturalization: laws, records, and practical tips
• 56:31 – End – Encouragement to send email/questions to the hosts

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Closing Notes

• The hosts invite listener emails on any genealogical topic, emphasizing openness to share experiences, especially regarding immigration and naturalization.
• Contact: [e-mail]

Overall Tone:
Friendly, supportive, and enthusiastic, with occasional humor and deep practical expertise. The hosts blend serious research advice with encouragement and camaraderie, ensuring genealogy stays a collaborative and enjoyable pursuit.

Transcript

[A]

Foreign welcome to episode 429 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. We share listener email about an 1810 birth in Pennsylvania and the difficulty of identifying a father. Drew shares his recent experience participating in the Wikitree Wiki Games and his enrollment in Nathan Dylan Goodwin's writing course. Drew and George finish by discussing some basic issues related to emigration from Europe to the United states and to U.S. naturalization. The Genealogy Guys podcast is sponsored by MyHeritage Roots Magic and Vivid Picks. 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 are you doing today?

[B]

I'm doing great. Welcome everyone. It's nice to have you listening to us.

[A]

It is. And so we are going to be talking a little. It's a little shorter episode in some ways. We've got some little bit of news, a little one email that we're going to talk about and we're going to talk about what we've been up to and so forth. So let's get started with the news and we're going to talk about some very hot news at the time this is being recorded. This was just released a little over an hour ago or so. And this is from MyHeritage. The they have acquired a popular family history service specializing in French Canadian genealogy. It's ma and for those who need the spelling, which I would understand unless you are regular users of French Canadian and French websites, that's mes and then aieux.com ma com. This is this website. MAU has been around since 2004. It is very popular in Quebec. It has over a million users and you can build an online family tree there. And it has 15 million historical records from Canada. Obviously most would be from Quebec. So this is now part of MyHeritage and that means that you'll be able to access the that material. So this is the off the hot off the press news from MyHeritage. And again, if you have French Canadian ancestors, you should be celebrating at this point. So all right, we're going to move actually from the news. Well, no we're not because we still have some record collections we're going to talk about. Is that me or you, George?

[B]

That's me.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

And then you.

[A]

And then me. Okay, George, you're first. Give us what's new.

[B]

We have an announcement from myheritage about their August 2024 record editions. And they've published 84 million records from 16 collections. And the newly added records are from the United States, the United Kingdom, Ireland, Israel and Spain. And they include births, deaths, obituaries, marriage license, parish bans and marriages, wills and probate administrations, and military records. And some of the collections also include images. And so let me give you some details here. First, England and Wales wills and Probate Administrations, 1996-2023. You'll hear people talk about the administration records as being admons admon's, but there are 7,326,000 records in that collection. Next is England in Kent, the Archdeaconry of Rochester. Parish bands and marriages from 1559 to 1939. And that's an index, and that's 860,000 records. Next is Irish births, 1864 to 1958. And that's an index of civil birth records from all 32 counties of Ireland between those years 1864 and 1921 and continuing for the Republic of Ireland all the way to 1958. There are 9,455,000 records there. That's just amazing. Let's see. The next thing is an index of morning notices, obituaries and shiva notices for Israel. 70,975 records have just been added for a total of 111,907 records. So that's a stunning collection. An index of various records found in Israel and related to Israel from the Israeli Israel Genealogy Research Program, Igra. And there are 5. 5,000,380,000 records there. This is, this is amazing stuff. Turn the page, George.

[A]

Just give us one more if you got time. I mean, we don't have to go through. There's a lot of things we just don't have time to cover here.

[B]

But yeah, we got, okay, Idaho marriages, 547,000 records for Idaho from 1947 onwards. Maryland marriages, or excuse me, Maryland births, 1875 to 1922. They're, they're two and a quarter million new records. Maryland deaths, an index of death records of individuals from Maryland from the year 1875 onward. That's 10 million records. Texas county marriage licenses, and that's an index of marriage records from various counties in Texas from the year 1845, which was statehood onwards. So that, so that's a little over 4 million new records added to a total collection of 7,802,000 records. Texas county births. An index of the birth records from various counties in Texas from 1874 onwards.

[A]

And.

[B]

An index of telephone directory records from Spain from 1999 and between 2001 and 2015. United Kingdom deaths, 1980 through 2023. And that's an index of death records from England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland within the United Kingdom, that they've added 1.7 million new records for a total of 13,381,000. Wow. The United Kingdom Police Gazette, army deserters from 1828 to 1918. That's half a million records. Alabama county marriage licenses. Ooh, I'll get into this. An index of marriage records from Baldwin and Mobile counties, Alabama, from the year 1813 onward. And that's 643,000 records added for a total of 736,000. And then Florida county deaths from 1825 on. Excuse me. From 1925 onwards, they've added 712,000 new records for a total of 771,000. These are just some amazing new records being added to MyHeritage. They just, they don't stop bringing them up.

[A]

One oak. And one more thing from MyHeritage before we go to our listener email. You remember that earlier this year they released Old News, which is their newspaper collection of older newspapers. And they have announced, they've just added, get ready for this 1,261 million obituary records from the United States. So they have basically extracted those. George? Yes.

[B]

And one of the things that MyHeritage is doing, if you're a member of myheritage, is, you know, you get emails sent to you with hints to. To investigate. And as of this morning, I received yet another batch of newspaper hints, and those are being derived strictly from the old News. And I found some, some really amazing things. Obituaries, marriages, shopping, shopping trips between. Between ladies and. And visits from one place to another.

[A]

Right.

[B]

So these, these just add more and more life context.

[A]

Yeah, they use AI. What they do is they extract it from the newspapers for me. Obituaries. So that's how they're figuring out all the names and so forth. And so, so that's just. But 261 million obituaries. So that's huge. All right, so that's going to end our. Listen, I'm sorry, our news. But we're going to go on now to our listener email. And this is from Julie, and Julie wrote us about a month ago, but we're finally getting to this one. She says, I'm new to the podcast thing and I'm in 2007 days right now. So she's going back through the older episodes. She says she loves all the information we give. She has several books of ours. My question is how can I solve a mystery of who is the father of a fifth great grandfather. He has his mother's maiden name and she married after he was born. And I've not found another marriage. This was in Pennsylvania, 1810. Jesse Patterson was born. His mother's Mary Patterson. He came to Michigan and married, had seven children. Is buried here. I'm just wondering if the Pennsylvania archives would have information about births from then or marriage records. Well, let's start talking a little bit about this. So births I mean this, you know, this is so early. He's born in 1810 in Pennsylvania. And you if you go to the FamilySearch research wiki that's always my first stop to see what there might be the family if you go to familysearch.org and you go to search and there's research wikis like the last choice you get down there at the bottom. You can then narrow it down to a geography and a type of record or you can type in Pennsylvania and vital and that will get you to the Pennsylvania vital records the births, marriages and deaths. So what FamilySearch is telling you is that really. Yeah, that's way before statewide coverage of births. There are two collections that you could look at which includes births and christening. Some back to is early. It says 1520. I'm not sure how you would have births in Pennsylvania that far back. That's before there was anybody in the United States or I mean colonial America. Not sure how that happens but. And the Other one is 1709-1950. What you can do is you can click on those links. If you go to that article in the family search research Wiki on Pennsylvania vital records, go down to the birth section. You can click those links. They are links. Those particular links are links to sites collections on FamilySearch itself. Sometimes you'll find links to other subscription sites or elsewhere. But just be aware of that. That's a start. But I'll be honest, this is not going to be easy, particularly given the nature of if the child has his mother's surname and is there's no know known father at this point. Possibly you know. And this would be useful to know also what was her religion. Just to kind of get some sense of what church might have a record. I'm not I'm saying might. These are not as likely but could be. There are certainly churches that keep track of births even when the mother doesn't.

[B]

That email imply that she's found the marriage record?

[A]

She has found a marriage that was after he was born. That doesn't mean she married the biological father. I mean, it's certainly possible. I mean, I'm not, you know, so that's somebody to look into. Now, let's go a couple of different ways here. First of all, this is a question because you're in Pennsylvania in 1810 and you didn't even mention where in your question. That's okay, I don't mind that. But you know, there are sites, certainly the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, the Genealogical Society of Pennsylvania, that you could go to their websites and see what they might have, that you also might be able to send them questions. So you can look to see if they have that ability and ask that. The other thing, in addition to the Genealogical Society and the Historical Society is I would look on Facebook if you're, you know, George and I are heavy Facebook users and there are a lot of Facebook groups and there are some dedicated to Pennsylvania research. So you could go there and post your question. The people there, and there could be thousands or tens of thousands of members would be the most knowledgeable about doing research in Pennsylvania in different time frames. So be aware of that. And what else, what else are I going to say? They will also direct you whether, I think George has mentioned to me before we got started, the Pennsylvania State Archives. So you can go to their website. Yeah, so you've got some Pennsylvania sites to go look at, both on Facebook and on the web. And then finally, possibly this is pretty far back, as you've already admitted, this could be helped by DNA. You'd have to narrow it down to descendants of him to make sure you're dealing with the right person. So you'd have to find people that are descended from Jesse. Maybe you want to find them and find out they've taken DNA tests you would need to take or find the oldest member, oldest generation who's descended from Jesse that you know to take a DNA test, there's a small chance that you might match others who are descended from Jesse, but you might find some that are descended from. Well, if all of you who are descended from Jesse have also other matches, that implies that they are either matches descendant from Mary, Jesse's mother, or Jesse's father. So that's a way to possibly. But this is tough because this is pretty far back, so you know your probabilities are low. George, what else would you might recommend to someone Dealing with this kind of.

[B]

Scenario, I think you've, I think you've certainly covered that there might as, as you mentioned on Facebook, you might very well look, look for Pennsylvania Genealogical Research Group on, on the subject of Pennsylvania and post a message there. And also in the Genealogy Squad.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And those are our two helpful groups of thousands of genealogists with whom you may be able to match and collaborate.

[A]

Yep, absolutely. So I would also Look. Well, again, 1810 is certainly early. I don't know what you know about Mary's parents, if anything. I don't know if you said you had info on Mary Patterson's family. Again, depending on if you know where we're talking about, you know, how you got her name. And again, I would that could help you narrow down where in Pennsylvania and help you narrow down for other families that were living in the same area. So that's when you start doing your any DNA matches. You're going to be looking for those surnames, possibly. So anyway. All right. Anything else, George, before we take our commercial break?

[B]

I don't think so. I think you've been very thorough with that. Thank you, Drew.

[A]

Oh, you're welcome. And we're going to stop take our commercial break. When we come back, we're going to talk about what we've been up to over the past month. Month. And coming up, things that are coming up in the near future. 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 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 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, and 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-pics.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 with the family photos you have? Welcome back. You're listening to the Genealogy Guys podcast. George, let's talk about. Well, there were two weekends George didn't see much of me and so I, I apologize to George for that. So his birthday was in one of those days, so we. Yeah, but that's okay. But that's okay. He received a cool birthday gift, didn't he? So. So, you know. But yeah, I was busy because of Wiki Games. Now, some of you may have heard of Wikitree, which is a collaborative genealogy family tree. It's got millions and millions and millions of records in it, profiles of people. And you really, when you collaborate on Wikitree, there's obviously, they are very good about collaborating with each other, working together, citing sources, you know, doing everything the right way. They are a high quality group of people, the Wikitrees. And so, but they do fun stuff. The idea here is genealogy should be fun. So what they do is they, they have a lot of group activities and they set aside a date to do these and times to do these. And you. They. So they. This is the second year they've done the Wiki Games. Now the Wiki Games is set up kind of like an Olympic game. So they would do it, you know, and that's what they did. They. Anyone who wanted to participate could be a member of a team. They had, I think they had 12 teams and there were about 14 people in each team. And the teams were named for types of trees. So, you know, like aspens and pines and, and, and maples and so forth. And there was an illiterate.

[B]

And coat trees.

[A]

Coat trees. Like no piece of furniture. No, no real biological trees. Species with an adjective. Like the charming chestnuts. I think I was in the charming chestnuts. So yeah, and there was a team captain.

[B]

Talk about those old checks.

[A]

Yeah, the old chestnuts. So it was fun. I mean you had a team to be, you know, because there were people all over the world, there were people playing not just from the United States, where I am, but there were people playing in Australia and in England and so, and other places. But to make it so, there were four events. So think of Olympics where you have different events. You have four events and of course, because you have teams that you want it, you can score, your contribution can help your team and you can also get individual recognition if you're really good. So the events. Oh yeah, I guess I better remind myself. The four events. So the four events related to different aspects of dealing with, with how you create profiles and so forth. The first one was called the Sourcing Slalom. So the idea being that you were looking for, I know, looking for profiles that didn't have sources. They have a way, they are very tech savvy people. They have a way to keep track of all their millions and millions of profiles and they're able to identify which ones are not sourced. So don't have sources, they just have names sometimes that's all they have. Maybe relationships between the person and parents and children and spouses, siblings, but no sources. If there's no sources. So Sourcing Slalom, we had a time period, by the way, the participation for each individual was a 10 hour period. You could do as much or a little as 10 hours as you wanted to and as you could. And by the way, George, they had heats, meaning they, because 10 hours is great, but what if you're in Australia or England or I mean, so the different, There were different 10 hour periods for the people in the different parts of the world. So they would mostly be awake during those 10 hours.

[B]

So you're talking about shift.

[A]

They're like shifts. They are. And but to keep it in the sports arena, they were heats. Heat one, heat two, heat three. So like heat one might be Australia and New Zealand and people living in those time periods. Heat too, as the daylight goes around the globe, might be people living in Ireland and Britain and other parts of Europe. And Heat 3, which I was in, was in for United States and Canada and other parts of the Western hemisphere. So that meant that for me, I, I and you only got counted in the time period of the heat you were in. So I was in heat three. So I could only work from eight in the morning till six in the evening till eight to six. I could take breaks and do whatever anytime I wanted. To sourcing Slalom was the first weekend Saturday. The second was date diving. So that was to add dates to things. Like if you had the person died but you didn't have a date for it, then you could. So that was date diving. So cross country connecting. That's fun. That was actually, that's when you actually went in and added new profiles. So these weren't cleaning up old profiles. This was where you added a new profile. Profile that had to be, first of all, had to be non living. That was connected to someone already in the Wikitree. So maybe one of their parents or their siblings or their spouse or their children or what they had to be related. Okay, I'll come back. And then finally, long distance locating Wikitree does have those tools, as you've probably seen similar things on Ancestry and FamilySearch where they have geography done in a nice standard way. So when you start to put in a place, you type it in and it starts to give you that and you end up with a place. And so what we were able to do during each of these ten hour periods, in each of these four events, two weekends, Saturday, Sunday, Saturday, Sunday. And then at the end of the time period, it was like the Olympic ceremonies. And so first you got to find out what teams did the best. And in the first event, my team came in third, we got the bronze. And in the other three events my team came in second. We got the silver in each of those. So overall my team did pretty well. We weren't the best, but we were pretty darn good.

[B]

So why were you sloughing off there?

[A]

Where the first one. Or do you mean.

[B]

How come you didn't get gold?

[A]

Well, you'd be amazed at how many things some people did on these teams in terms of how many profiles they created. Hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of profiles. I don't know how they did it or dates and I mean dates and places and so forth. Sources. Yeah, I mean over a period of these two weekends, the sheer number of new records that were either new profiles added or sources added, corrected, cleaned up was amazing. But you're right, George. I don't know. I felt that I was sloughing off, but at least my team did pretty well. Well, you can't tell because you don't. It's not like you can. It's not like a real Olympics where you can kind of see as it's going on, how you're doing compared to other people. You have to wait till the very end and then it's like, oh, so now I know for next year I guess what to expect maybe if they, I assume they'll do it next August again. So it was a lot of fun. But yeah, it was hard work and I mean a mentally exhausting. So I didn't do 10 hours of work. I had to take breaks and obviously take breaks to eat and to just take naps. So yeah, but it was fun and they make it fun. And if you haven't played with Wikitree, maybe because you think that the quality is not very good. Oh, it's amazing. Good. And they really do clean up stuff. So yeah, take a look at Wikitree and you'll find some cases, you'll find people in your, your own tree that have been added by someone else. Although that's a little unusual. It turned out I went through the Smiths. Yeah, my Smiths to, to add them. So I started well, I mean because they people I've worked on my own tree. I had me, my parents, my grandparents, my great grandparents unbacked as far as I could get certainly with the Smiths. But I didn't have all their children like all of my Smith immigrants children, grandchildren, great grandchildren on down. So when it came to adding new profiles I had a lot of stuff I could add. I went through all of my Smith immigrant descendants that I could add and that was great. That was fun to do. I got to the very last one before I was going to end it all, take a break, be done with it. The last guy was Markham Gerard Smith and by gosh, he was already in Wikitree. Someone else had added him because of his wife. In other words, they were probably related to his wife and they had added her and they added her spouse, which was my father's, I'm sorry, my grandfather's first cousin, Markham Gerard Smith. So that was funny. So that I said okay, that's my signal, I am done. So it was fun. I want to thank all the people. First of all, I want to thank Wikitree for doing this. I want to thank all the hard working volunteers that had to put this together. This was a lot of work. There's a lot of data that goes into this collecting. How many? Everybody did. So someone's got some software and a spreadsheet to track all this stuff, which is amazing. And it's just. Yeah. And people made discoveries. George. I, I heard that there were people that learned things about their families as they went through this or they, you know, and by the go ahead.

[B]

My, my experience always is every time I look at, at a person in my database or. Or online and start studying them a little more. I find additional record types that add context.

[A]

Yes.

[B]

That fill in gaps about maybe places of birth that I. That no one else had before. So that's. That's always exciting to me because I'm not about just name states and places. I'm about context of what made these people tick.

[A]

Yeah. One last thing, just of interest. As I was cleaning, not working on the Smiths, because I knew how the Smiths were related to me, but as I was working on these other. Cleaning up the sources, cleaning up the dates, cleaning up the locations at the top, because these were profiles that were already in Wikitree at the top. For some of these, it would say this is your 11th cousin or this is your 10th cousin or something or so many times removed. So anytime I pulled up a profile of someone who is distantly related to me, it told me that they were. And there were a number of those that came up. I was like, wow, okay. So in a way, I was working on relatives. They were very distant relatives. Very distant.

[B]

Right.

[A]

But that was fun. I was actually working on relatives. So, anyway, something to look forward to. I. You do not. If you, if first of all, check out WikiTree, if you haven't already. I'm sure many, many, many of our listeners already have used it. Many have WikiTree accounts and have contributed to it. So do that for. But if you haven't, do that, go look at WikiTree and go, you know, out there to play with it. Number two, there is a. An honor code that you're expected to read through and agree to, which is, I think, a very good thing. So it keeps everybody ethical. It keeps everybody doing genealogy the right way and doing it, you know, as one should. And three, they don't just do this Wiki games thing like that. This. This happens once a year, I guess. But they have other events going on all year long that relate to these things, like sourcing, like locations, like connecting people. So you can join these on a regular basis. You don't have to wait till the next Wiki games, probably next August or something. So. So a lot of fun, but you learn a lot. George, Speaking of learning, we have talked about Nathan Dylan Goodwin on this show over the years a lot, and there's a reason for that. The man, he's a great writer and we really enjoy his books. If you have not, I. I find it hard to believe anybody listening has not. But if you've never. Not if you've not heard of him not read his books, the Morton Farrier and the Venator DNA folks out in Utah that he writes a genealogical mysteries, usually murder mysteries. Not necessarily, but often. And so, yeah, I mean, you. And he's not the only genealogical mystery writer out there, George and I have read others, I'm sure. Oh, yes, yeah, there's other authors, but maybe Nathan's done more than most. He's probably written more books on the topic than most. So he's probably the best known genealogy mystery writer there is right now. And, and Nathan's based out of England and he decided, which I'm glad he did. It's like when you do something well and you're recognized for doing it well, maybe it's time to teach it to others who want to become like that, who want to become writers, you know. So I learned about that he was offering a course and I thought, okay, I want to take this course. And I got in on the pilot course, the very first course, which was cheaper than a little bit than waiting for the real thing, as it were. So, yeah, I'm a guinea pig. I'm in the pilot course. It just started. We've had one week meeting already and some homework and this is going to go on until October 15 is the last meeting. So I. This was a early. Well, a birthday present to myself to. Yeah, it worked out that way.

[B]

One of so many.

[A]

Well, there's maybe one of two, but yeah, big ones. But that's the cool thing. It's, it's, it is. I'm enjoying it. And there's 25 people or students. I don't know if that's going to keep. If he's going to keep that number going forward or if that's just, you know, maybe. Of course, again, this is the pilot course. Nathan will have to decide what works best based on this one. And we're still playing around with the technology. But again, if you've ever thought about, oh, I would like to learn how to write fiction, probably genealogy based fiction, although it wouldn't have to be, but it's often more interesting if it is. I mean, for those of us who are genealogists. Yeah, what can I say? So that's fun and I'm having fun. I'm enjoying reading what my other, my fellow students are working on. We had to talk about our outlines and as this goes in future episodes and certainly after it's done, I'll share what my experience was like. But so far so good, lots of fun and we're doing well. George, so what do you know about immigration and naturalization?

[B]

I know quite a lot, Drew. I've spent a great deal of time over the years studying immigration laws as regards immigration from other countries into the United States. Yeah. And ships passenger lists. And I've also studied the complexities of naturalization laws which have changed over time. But, and I will tell you, I will tell our listeners here the same thing I told you. The best walk for that I've ever read on the subject of the immigration, the naturalization laws is a book by Loretto Dennis Zou S Z U C S and the book is called they Became Americans. But there are, there are a lot of complexities and, and, and different laws applied at different times. And you're right, George.

[A]

This is. And Lou's book, it's been out now for a while. I think it's at least 20 years, I think. But the point is it's still a good book to learn the processes.

[B]

Oh, yeah.

[A]

You know, it's. Things have not changed in 20 years as to the process to speak of what has changed is whether these records are online or not. Because when some of these books were written, these early books, this was before some, almost before ancestry existed, or there was not much online. And keep in mind that many of the immigration records and the naturalization records certainly started out as being on microfilm, if they like, through the National Archives of the nara, the one in the United States. They start out there. But again, what's happened in the last 20 years is that many of these records have been digitized. Now, here's where it gets complicated. Oh, George, you were going to say.

[B]

One thing that, that does make it complicated is that the early, the early records that exist. Think in terms of there being two types of naturalization record. First papers is a term that refers to declaration of intention. And the second papers are the petition for naturalization after a residency requirement. And, and maybe other requirements were, were required. But the thing that makes it a little complicated is that the records were kept in different places. NARA consolidated, as many as they could lay hands on. But you will see as you look at the earlier records up through the early 1900s, you will see that the forms differed and the amount of information included in the content varies from form to form and place to place.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

So you have, you have, you have to develop a kind of a sixth sense to, to read the forms, to piece it together, know where to look for, for other complementary sources of information.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

But as, as I said, Lou Zook's book, they Became Americans. I see it was published July 1, 1998, is. Is the. The best book I know that describes the process, the forms and the different laws in place at the various times. And so having read that, that gave me a huge insight into. Into what I was looking at on the actual declarations of intention and the petitions for naturalization.

[A]

One of the things, I mean, just a few facts that come out of. And I've just done a presentation again as we're recording this. I did this yesterday for the local chapter of the Jewish Genealogical Society. And I actually. So some of this material was something I presented to them yesterday as far as immigration, as far as ships, passenger lists. Keep in mind that when the United States, before the United States became the United States, where there really wasn't much of a need to maintain this stuff because everybody was British, I mean, well, almost everybody. And I'm fully aware that there's. We're dealing with lots of exceptions here of people that, you know, did not immigrate. They were already in North America and South America. And there were people, of course, brought as enslaved people, which is a whole nother matter. But let's talk about the people who came primarily from Europe at those time periods later from other parts of the world that prior to 1820, this was handled by the individual US states. So from the time of the creation of the United States till 1820, this was managed by the states individually. And then in 1820, the federal government in the United States decided to say every ship, you have to keep a copy of the, of the people on that ship. So this was kept in certainly from like 1820 to the 1890s. And then of course, we have eventually we have Ellis island in New York. There were other ships, ports, by the way. Of course, there were people coming in to Baltimore to Philadelphia to, you know, Galveston to Charleston to New Orleans, etc and San Francisco on the West Coast. Anyway, my point is, is that these records, if you were to go on to Ancestry, they're all in one database from 1820 till the 1950s. And George, you know what happened in the 1950s, people started coming on planes. So a lot of these records were no longer maintained this way. So, so as a result, you know, you've got this big collection of records from 1820 to the 1950s, like 1954, sometime along in there. And Ancestry has them all in one place. You can search the whole collection. Familysearch has basically the same records, but they're in three separate pieces. So be aware of that. That you would have to look at three different collections in FamilySearch, if you want to search each one individually. Now, can you search across FamilySearch? Yes, there are ways to search across just like you do with records, you know, all records on a website, all records at FamilySearch, all records at Ancestry. But it's a little more work to just focus on these records if you're doing it on FamilySearch because they're separate collections. Okay. But my point overall is that, yes, you've got all these records and they did change over time as to what was kept on them. You know, what details of information, as you get into the later US Records, they're actually indicating who they're coming to see in the United States, what relative. We had some interesting discussions at the Jewish Genealogical Society about the fact that sometimes people were not coming to a relative, they were coming to somebody that they were actually paying off to be listed there. It's very interesting. So I'll have to do a little more digging on that about the people that were being supposedly they were coming to see. That's kind of interesting. So we got in all that. And again, naturalization, George has said the first papers, the second papers, by the way, generally you're also going to find those records are at least I think it's true on FamilySearch. I'll have to remember a look on Ancestry. They're also in separate collections because naturalization occurred at the local level, at the state level or at the federal level, different courts. Here's where it got really interesting. Let's talk about my own family for just a minute here. So I, you know, I was really following along with immigration and naturalization for or my Jewish ancestors. My grandmother was born in the United States in Manhattan in the 1890s, but her father and her mother were born in Poland. They were Jewish and they were Ashkenazi Jewish. And by the way, we also talked about chain migration where different members of the family came over at different times. So I have the immigration records for my great, great grandfather Mendel Wineglass. I have when he came over first. I have the immigration ships passenger list for my great grandfather Louis Wineglass and his brother Harris or Hirsch when they came over about a year or so later. And then finally when the mother and the daughters came over. So, so there was three separate groups immigrating from Poland through Germany through the Hamburg lists. And by the way, that's the one interesting one too was you can look to that's one of the places you can look for emigration leaving Europe is the Hamburg and the Bremen list. Those have actually now been not only digitized, but indexed as well. So you can find those. So there's some others, but there's no way to cover everything. And even in my discussion here. But that's. But let's go to naturalization. As George said, these rules kept changing the rules of how long you had to be here. And the rules are certainly about women, you know, about gaining their citizenship, losing their citizenship because of their marriages. I mean, that is so complicated. It is really complicated. It goes back and forth. And a lot of my presentation was giving a timeline of when these rules changed. When Lewis and Harris decided to naturalize, they actually naturalized two days apart in New York City. However, they didn't naturalize in the same courts. They were naturalizing in two different court systems in New York City, which was interesting. So, again, you know, you're going to have to do a lot of legwork, but. And sometimes these records are kept again, individually at state levels or, you know, whatever levels. So you have to do some looking. Not everything is online. Hopefully a lot is, but not everything is online. And you may just find indexes at first. So you'll learn so much about your family when you. If, if they immigrated, emigrated from Europe, particularly prior to the 1950s, back to the 1800s, early 1800s. It's fascinating stuff. So I enjoyed, you know, looking at that. But, yep, like George said, there's the laws, there's the policies. There's just so much, if you don't follow history, you know, to make sense of it all and can some of it gets pretty political that you need to look into that. George, anything else about immigration, naturalization that you want to bring forward here?

[B]

Well, I think one of the things that I do when I'm looking at. At immigration and naturalization, I look at certainly the. The time of the immigration and where the people were coming from, and. And looking at the historical events taking place at. At that point in time, many Germans immigrated to the United States to avoid military service.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And we know many Irish immigrated to the United States because of the famines. I have ancestors who emigrated from England to Virginia and settled in the Fairfax area. And these were by the name of a surname of Ball, and. And they were fleeing Oliver Cromwell and they arrived. And, you know, I pay attention to really why these people migrated. And if I can figure out where they came from originally, I'll study maps to try to figure out where they lived, where they migrated from the port that they departed from, and try to understand the reasons for them emigrating into A North American port at a particular time and where they ultimately settled. And from, from those standpoints, I'm building context. I'm learning more about the individual people and the things that inspired them or spurred them to make these monstrous trips.

[A]

Yeah, absolutely. So as I said, maybe in future episodes of the podcast I'll maybe share a few more details out of my immigration and naturalization presentation. There are so many details to be shared and you know, and the things again you discover. But I'll tell you, I'll give you one little thing. That was a tip I had before I put together this presentation to be delivered yesterday. Going back some years, I knew about the Hamburg records, the and the Bremen records. The trouble was at the time, years ago, those were not indexed or some of the years were not indexed. And that included the years that my ancestor, my great great grandfather Mendel Wineglass had left and come to the United States. I had had trouble finding him. I still would have trouble finding him in ship's passenger lists. That's just because of the way people transcribe and index things. But here's where it gets interesting. Now that everything is basically transcribed and indexed for Hamburg, I went back and looked for all the wine glass immigrations. By the way, they have beautiful handwriting and ones I looked at. Now that may be not true of everybody, but I'll just say they were really nice for my wine glass ancestors.

[B]

I think they were filled out at the court itself. And the handwriting of our ancestors was displayed only maybe in their signature.

[A]

Oh yeah, if there was something they signed. Right. So here's the thing. So not only did I find Mendel in the Hamburg records, I found Hirsch and my great grandfather Lewis, known as Leiser in the Leisdr at that time in the Hamburg records. I even found my great great grandmother Frumut and the daughters in the Hamburg records. Now I already had their records, as I told you, on the ship's passenger list, except Mendel. But because I had the immigration records, I now knew the name of the ship he left on Hamburg and the date, exact date and so forth. This enabled me to find him, to go back to the ship's passenger list and find him there. He was m wine glass. So I mean that's why it's useful to find all these records, particularly now that they've been indexed. So I'll share that tip with you. If you haven't found your people and they, if you think they went through Hamburg or Bremen, think about that, that maybe you can find them on Hamburger Bremen. Listen during that time period. And then you can say, okay, now I can maybe I can use that to figure out exactly what ship they were in, what date they arrived in the United States and the port. And. Well, the port would normally at that time have been. Mostly been in New York City. But. Yes. No, I'm saying mostly and not only. Right. Oh, yeah, people came into other ports as well. For sure, George.

[B]

They came into Baltimore, they came into Wilmington.

[A]

They did.

[B]

They came into Charleston, they came into Savannah, they came into Houston.

[A]

Right.

[B]

And that's just on the eastern half of the country.

[A]

Right. Oh, no, I understand that, but sometime. But I'm talking about the ones, the typical Bremen ones and the Hamburg ones were often ones that eventually ended up coming into New York City, the most of them. So just be aware of that. So.

[B]

Well, that's. That's true because at. At one point in the 1850s, the census statistics tell us that there were more Germans in New York City than even in. Even in Hamburg or Berlin.

[A]

Yeah, German immigration was big. It got big. It peaked, I want to say the 1880s, 1890s. It was huge. It had been huge for years. So, yeah, we'll get into, as I said, some of the details at a later point, but I just wanted to share.

[B]

If you want to know more about what we know in terms of immigration, ships, passenger lists, naturalizations, and resources, be sure and send us email because we. We love hearing from you, George.

[A]

Where do people send their email?

[B]

Yeah, I was just gonna say. And you send that email to genealogyguysmail.com Yep.

[A]

We would love it. And I mean, we. I don't care what your genealogy topic is, we'd love to hear it. But if you specifically got some issues or questions or comments or discoveries you want to share on immigration naturalization, we'd love to hear those. That would be fun to talk about your experiences.

[B]

Help illuminate our experiences.

[A]

Absolutely. Well, we only have, you know, our own. We can pull from our own ancestors, but that doesn't mean, you know, we need to hear from everybody, so. All right. And on that note, George, I think we've come to the end. We thank everybody for listening. We. This podcast would not exist without our listeners. We are grateful to you all. And so please, please contact us, send us your emails, and we will be with you next time on the next episode of the Genealogy Guys Podcast. Until then, have fun with your genealogy. Take care, everybody.

[B]

Thanks for listening and happy hunting to you all.

[A]

Sam Sa.