← The Genealogy Guys Podcast & Genealogy Connection
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Sam.
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Welcome to episode 430 of the.
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Genealogy Guys Podcast, the longest running genealogy podcast on the planet.
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I'm your host, Drew Smith, and together with co host George G. Morgan, we cover news, tips and solutions for the genealogist community.
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In this episode, we bring you the.
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Latest news from MyHeritage Ancestry, FindMyPast and.
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FamilySearch, and a much deserved award for.
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FamilySearch Chief Genealogical Officer David Rencher. We share listener email about marriage, annulments, World War I and World War II military records and guides to help with immigration research. I finish the episode by discussing the Wikitree symposium happening in the upcoming weekend.
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The Genealogy Guides 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. And so, George, how you doing today?
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I'm doing just fine. What about yourself, Drew?
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Pretty darn good.
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We still have a few little tech.
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Glitches because you'll learn why in a minute. Why? I unplugged a lot of things in my computer and haven't got them all correctly plugged back in. So the sound quality, I might apologize, it might be a little bit off. I don't know. For me, anyway. Not different for George. George? Yeah, speaking of those little things that involve me unplugging a bunch of stuff, go ahead and tell us what you have in mind here.
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Well, first of all, we would like to apologize for having been incommunicado for some time here. But as you probably know, if you had anything to do with news over the last month, you'll know that we who live in the Tampa, Florida area, that we were stricken by both Hurricane Helene and then Hurricane Milton. And the first was pretty brutal. The second one was even worse. Wind wise, we lost power for several days, but that also meant that we lost everything in the refrigerator. Drew had baked up a bunch of goodies beforehand, so. So we had biscuits and a variety of neat things. But the point that I'd like to make here is you've heard me say many, many times, context is everything, and it really is. How can you do genealogical research and research your ancestors and your families in the past if you don't look for all the information? And when I think about the hurricanes that we went through and the terrible damage that's been done up through the southeastern portion of the United States, I just, I'm appalled at what people have had to endure. We were only out of power for what Drew. Three.
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Three days. Almost just short of three days.
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And if you want to see somebody go through Internet withdrawal, I should have taken film footage, video footage of Drew, but he. He even had to drain the power out of his laptops, both his laptops, in order to keep his phone going so he could check the Internet and check the power outage maps and all of that.
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I also used it to recharge George's phone as well.
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That's. That's true.
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So.
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But keep in mind that our ancestors went through great hardships as well, when they had. When they had storms, they had floods, tornadoes, hurricanes, all kinds of things. Wildfire, personal home fires. They went through a tremendous hardship, and unlike us, they didn't have the warnings that we had. Think back to the hurricane that hit Galveston, and they did not know it was coming, and it just resulted in hundreds of deaths. But think in terms of your ancestors and their lives. And as you're doing research, you might want to look at timelines of particular places where they lived. And you might do a search for timeline plus whatever the name of the place is. And you can limit your search to specific years. You can set a beginning year and an ending year. And all you have to do is type the beginning year and two dots and then the ending year, and that'll narrow your search down. But you want to learn as much as you can about your ancestors, their lives, their occupations, and the hardships they suffered as a result of cataclysmic events such as we've seen here in the US and again today, as we're recording this podcast, I just saw a news story that in. In Spain, that 65 people have been killed from major flooding there. So it happens all over. So learn about your ancestors, put them in context, do your research, and maybe you will understand a little better why they made the decisions they did, why they moved where they did, and what they did in the way of decision making in their lives. What do you think, Drew?
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Well, yeah, but there's another lesson to be learned here, apart, you know, as we research our own families, as George has described. But the other lesson from these disasters is that is about preservation. And so many people, not just genealogists, but certainly genealogists, lost property, lost documents, lost photographs, lost so many things that they perhaps just had not gotten around to digitizing. And this is where these events, these hurricanes and other kinds of things that happen are reminders to us that we need to set aside time every month, at least every, you know, to digitize what we have the papers, because many of these are irreplaceable. So I would just say let's, you know, go and do that before the next hurricane season starts next year. We still have a month on the current one, but generally there.
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Yeah, George, and remember that when you are digitizing, certainly you can use Vivid Picks software to improve the images, the, the, the depth of, of color, the contrast, make, make them certainly more legible. And you can do that, that work all the time.
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Yeah. Well, so again, you know, George and I were very fortunate. We know people that even perhaps to this day don't have power, but certainly lost power for longer than just three days. We know of people who had home damage. Ours was. We didn't have any problem with our windows, our doors, our. Our walls, our roofs, except for two very minor things that we're going to have repaired this week, damage to some exterior things that are not a big deal. But again, there were many people that lost a lot, and we are glad to. That we were fortunate, but sorry to hear that there's so many people that have lost everything or lost a lot. So this is just a reminder that you never know what's coming up in the future and you should just do whatever's in your power to mitigate the results. And that's where I say, again, preservation is so critical, so keep that in mind. Now, to go to a cheerier topic, if you don't mind, George, I'm going to talk about our good buddy, David Rencher for those of you. Yes, David is the FamilySearch chief genealogical officer. And this month he, just a few days ago or so, he received the Italian Heraldic Genealogical Institute's Lifetime Achievement Award. They had the 36th International Congress of Genealogical and Heraldic Sciences, the ICGHS. They had their annual conference on September 27th in Boston, and that was the first time actually been held in the United States. And so how appropriate. But Rencher, David Rencher's lifelong work and influence was recognized. And so that is their highest distinction. It was presented to David by Dr. Pierre Felice. Deli. Deli Berti. I apologize to any Italian speakers if I misspoke, but at the end, he's the president of the Italian Heraldic Genealogical Institute. So came as a complete surprise to David and just again, what a guy that deserves something like this because of all he has done. So congratulations to our buddy, David Rencher on that.
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I'm very proud of David. I've known him for a bunch of years, served on the board of the Federation of Genealogical Societies with him, and I'M very proud to call him my friend.
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And George, you're on to some news out of my heritage.
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I believe my heritage is always up to something special and I've got a few short things here for you. First of all, myheritage has done a major revamp of its inbox and they've given it a fresh new look and so it now fully supported on mobile web mobile devices. You can read more in their blog at their website. Not only that, but they're also happy to share that in the month of September their team added 56 million historical records to myheritage. The newly added records include birth, death, burial and marriage records from the United States, Canada, France, Ireland, Poland and some of them include images at this point. So check on their blog as well. So you'll be pleased about that. In addition, I don't know if you are using myheritage and their theory of family relativity with your DNA matches. They have done a major update there. The the total number of theories has grown by 40% to 233,000. Excuse me, 233,400,000. 486 as of their announcement. And the number of DNA kits with at least one theory has grown by 16%. And the number of DNA matches that have a theory has grown to 167 million or 111,082, representing a 43% increase. So if you have not checked in to myheritage theory of family relativity recently, you'll be very surprised. And I'll bet you get a bunch of new matches.
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Well, yeah, and it's not so much you get new matches, but what you're getting. And I when this happened, I took advantage to when they do release new ones, I usually go in and look, I've got, oh, around 30 or so, maybe more than that now, some of which I have confirmed. What, you know, myheritage does is it stitches together or attempts to stitch together. This is why they don't do this but about once a year or so, because it's a lot of computer power that has to do this. It takes your tree, it takes your matches tree and it tries to find other trees that can link your tree to their tree by going through various intermediate trees. That's the main way they do it. Now here's the deal. Even though these are your DNA matches and even though myheritage is looking at these various trees to link them, keep in mind that it could be that this is not the correct linkage. Although myheritage often gives you multiple theories, meaning it says, well, it could be this way, or it could be that way, or it could be that way. So they usually don't give you just one, they give you multiple. But again, that doesn't mean these theories are correct. They're. Well, they're theories in the gem, not in the scientific sense of the word theory. Exactly. They are theories in the sense of just the way we often, in the lay language use the word theory. So what you want to do with them, if you've got your DNA on myheritage and you've got a tree on myheritage, as you want to see, you can look at which ones you have theories for and you can, you can go in, you can say, yes, this is confirmed, this is correct, or no, this is not right, or you can just leave it. You can, like, not make a decision. And sometimes you have to do that. You don't have enough information to know if the linkage is correct or not. You haven't done the research to show one way or the other. Now, I've confirmed a number of mine and I've disproved a number of mine because they go through some wrong pathways. My great grandmother, Jane, Jane Body, she. She was not the only woman named Jane Body. And so sometimes these theories try to link her to a different Jane Body in someone else's tree who's not the same age. Like there's 10 years difference and who had different parents. I know who Jane's parents were. And when I see this other Jane with different parents born in 10 years different than my Jane, I know that's not the path to get to this other person. So there are ones. And by the way, what do you do with that? You. The reason it actually does often screw up is if the other person put their Jane in, but didn't indicate who their parents are. So the myheritage doesn't know it's the wrong Jane. It just thinks, well, it could be the right Jane. It's just age is wrong. So what do you do? You contact the person who's got the wrong Jane and suggest they put in the parents, the right. Their parents, that Jane's parents. Because then myheritage will probably go, oh, those are two different women named Jane, but they're not the same year and they have different parents. I won't use that as the theory. So I've. I've had communication with people who. I've added that in. I've talked to them about it. So. So people can Be very nice about it, if you're very polite and just say, well, I'm getting this problem. Can you help me with it? That's the way to approach it. But yeah, the theories are interesting. And I mean, again, often I have, when I get to the DNA match, I've got maybe one of their great grandparents or grandparents in my files. I just don't have it down to that person. So this is helpful to me because then it's actually giving me the entire path down to my DNA match because I generally assume that people know who their parents and their grandparents are and usually their great grandparents, usually. So that's fine. I can just take their word for that. If it was older than that, I'd probably want to see documentation. Okay, speaking of DNA, this is from Ancestry. This is also from this month. We, we heard that, and we know that Ancestry updated their ethnicity estimates. So what does that mean? It means that they re they had additional data that they got from wherever now. And by the way, dn, Ancestry doesn't just get its data from people who have tested with it. They also get their data from scientific populations that have been taken all over the world or that Ancestry has sent out to test people in different parts of the world. So they use this data, plus little tweaks to their, to their methods to figure out what ethnicity estimates to give to people. Again, the keywords estimate, it may or may not be correct. Be aware of that. So they have now 3,000 places and populations around the world. World. And so just to give you an idea what they're also calling, they're even, not even calling them ethnicity estimates. Exactly. They're calling them ancestral regions. Just to say this is where your ancestors appear to be from. Yes. Are they still estimates? Yes, they are places where your ancestors probably lived a thousand years ago. Because, you know, we, we know that if, well, in certain parts of the world, such as Australia and the United States and Canada, New Zealand, that many of us have ancestors from Europe, you know that, that we don't have an. We know our ancestors have not been in Australia and New Zealand and North America for a thousand years. I mean, so unless you're 100% Native American or unless you're 100% First Peoples or people descended from aboriginal populations, your ancestors probably came from somewhere else. And that's what these estimates are for. So what it now also shows is what they call ancestral journeys. They used to call these communities. And this is a little more recent. You will get like those of us in the United States might get A cluster that says these are people that are from the South, Southern U.S. they're from South Carolina, Alabama, places, you know, whatever, because that's where our more recent ancestors moved in that time frame. And there's sub regions. And now that means they can give you more specific, what they would call granularity, to try to say this is where your ancestors are probably from. Now, some of that is based on the matches. Your matches. Trees. It looks at your trees. It looks at their trees and their dot, you know, their evidence of where their ancestors lived as recently as a few hundred years ago. And I will tell you, although I think mine were already this way before this last update when it comes to Ireland. Oh, my gosh, these little sub regions for my Irish ancestors. Now, I knew that my Irish ancestors were a county cabin up in the Ulster part of the Republic of Ireland, and they were from, they're from County Leash down further southwest of Dublin. It tells me, it gives me a region, a draws a circle. And near the center of that circle of both of those circles are the little towns that my ancestors came from. So I'm matching people I should be matching because they have ancestors from the zombies, exact same places I do. So that's really cool. So you might check that. And of course, there are ethnic groups as well. So there's a lot of additional things that weren't there, but that you might want to check. Now, one more thing that I want to be clear about. Is it perfect? No, it's an. It's an estimate. Could you get percentages of an ethnicity, estimates that places you don't have ancestors from like 1%, 2%, 3%? Yes. What you should do when you get those tiny ones is click on them and it gives you a range. And if that range includes zero at the low end, it may mean that you really don't have any of that. That's a possibility. So don't get all excited if you're suddenly 1% Norwegian and you say, oh, those are my Viking ancestors, maybe not. You just can't assume that. But if they're bigger percentages, you probably want to look into it. Okay, so. And there will be mistakes made. So again, these are estimates. These are things you can investigate and look at. George?
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Well, I thought was interesting when I looked at mine, suddenly I had two new regions that had never shown up before. One, one is Germanic Europe and the other is the Netherlands. Had no idea there was anything there.
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Right. And very possible. I mean, those are not. Those would not be surprising places for a lot of Us. And if I came across French, I would not be too surprised. I have some surnames that I have a suspicion racer name that is French, but it doesn't mean for sure that I have French ancestry, but it's a possibility. So, yeah, just, just be aware of that. Don't get overly excited about these 1% and 2%. Those may not turn out to be real, but anyway, that's just something. So that was good news out of Ancestry's DNA product. George, you got something for us from Find My Path?
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Yes, I do. And I find things that are announced at Find My Past that are usually that they are, are minor announcements and so we don't always include them, but we did this time because they have announced that they are helping you uncover Cornwall connections in England, and that's through Cornwall baptisms. Their collection has grown by 20, by almost 330,000 records in the last week, with new editions spanning from 1571 to 1976. Cornwall marriages have been updated with another 283,000 renewed records and burials. They round off this announcement with 348,550 burial records that have been added. So if you're looking for your Cornwall ancestors from the late 1500s to near present, that's the place to go.
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All right, well, we come down to FamilySearch, but the big news out of FamilySearch, of course, is RootsTech 2025. And I'm going to hopefully get this episode out quickly enough so you can still take advantage of the early bird registration because this expires at the end of tomorrow. So I'm going to try to get it out at the very least by the beginning of tomorrow so you have time to do an early bird registration. Now. That's if you are going to RootsTech in person, because I'm pretty, pretty sure for those of you who are just doing it online, it's completely free, but that's usually the way they do it. But if you're going, because let's face it, there's going to be sessions, particularly the keynotes and all those things. Yes, those will be broadcast, they'll be online, you can watch those. There'll also be a bunch of pre recorded sessions that will be available to you, but they're going to be some sessions that are going to be done at RootsTech that will not be recorded. I'm doing three of those. So I'm going to RootsTech in 2025. I'm doing three talks at, in Salt Lake City at the Salt palace. This is March 6th 7th and 8th. So if you're thinking about it, there's still time for you to save basically 30 bucks if you want to go and get the early bird registration. It's going from 99 to 129. But as I said, it's, it's going to be a great conference. I am already just totally looking forward to this. I've got my, I've got my hotel all registered. I will be doing my. I forget when I was scheduled to do my airfare because it's still a little early for that far in the future, but I'll be doing that. And I am so looking forward to seeing everybody. And I've heard news. It's going to be very well attended this, this coming year, like big time. So be aware.
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C
Is it, is it ever not well attended?
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Well, you know, for a while there was only with COVID it was only done virtually. And then when it started back, the numbers were not as huge as they were right before COVID But they are recovering. People are who missed it, who didn't. Like, you know, the virtual is okay if that's all you got. But when you have the option and you can go, and those of us who feel we can go physically go there because there's things you just can't do at a conference virtually. You can't have a great time just chatting with people in the hallways. You. Or before after the sessions or going to breakfast or lunch or dinner or an after dinner drink. There are things you cannot do virtually with conference attendees. And a lot of the best parts of a conference are running into people all the time. You know, everywhere, all the, the hotels, the restaurants. Oh, the library. Well, yeah, there's something you can't really do virtually.
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Really?
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Yeah. Family history. Family. Excuse me, I was family search library in Salt Lake City, many of us go even a day or two early. I'm planning to go out there Monday morning of that week, conference starts later in the week and maybe spend some time doing a little research. So that's the, that's the plan. So you can't do that, you know, I mean, not, not virtually. So anyhow, that's what I would recommend to you. And again, you still, if you're hearing this, no later than October 31st. Yeah, you've got time. You can register online. If you wait till November 1st, you're going to spend an extra 30 bucks to go. Now, I realize you may not have made up your mind yet, so you maybe you can't take advantage of the early bird. That's all right, we understand sometimes you hold on your your money until you know you know you don't need it for something else. So that's all right. And on that note, George, we're going to stop and take our commercial break. We'll just do a single commercial break to make our lives easy. And when we come back, we will have a little bit of listener email and we'll even talk about where you're going to find me online in the very near future. So stay with us.
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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.
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The kit and and choose Share DNA.
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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.
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A
The word 10 is a special word in the English language. It can refer to something that has.
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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, 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 the family photos you have?
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A
Welcome back. You're listening to the Genealogy Guys Podcast, and George and I are going to dip into the Listener email Before we get started with that, just a reminder that we want to hear from you to. We love hearing from you. So send us your questions, your feedback, your comments, your tips, your techniques, your whatever complaints to, to us@genealogy guysmail.com and with that, George, I'm going to start with mine. I'm, I'm first here. We got this email this month from Kelly, Kelly in Cleveland. Kelly says we hope the recovery efforts after Helene are progressing as well as can be expected and hope that our family in the Carolinas are safe. Thank you, Kelly. Yes, they had some power outages too, but even not as bad as ours. Would you be able to shed some light on how to find marriage annulment records? Records? I have three marriage certificates see attached that were signed by an officiating judge or minister, yet no corresponding divorce records. This leads me to think the marriages were annulled. And she goes on with a lot of details. The first in Noble County, Indiana, was 1937, but there's no family knowledge of the marriage. And then the next marriage, he only lists the first wife who died in 1932 as a previous marriage, and that was in 1943. So in 1943 is the next marriage, but that marriage in 1937 is not listed. The second mystery is Jackson County, Indiana, between the two individuals. And this supposedly happened 1941. Again, no family knowledge of this marriage either. And the third marriage is Denver County, Colorado, between in 1956. So Kelly wants our input on this. Okay, let's, let's talk about, first of all, where one might go for these annulments. What if there were legal annulments? I mean, there's two kinds of annulments really, because one is, is one is a civic, you know, the civil record, the marriage record, filed with the government.
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Right.
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Yeah, there's, that's one type. The other type, which may or may not be relevant here, usually is a religious annulment. Like, and we find these happen most often probably in the Catholic Church, although I imagine they exist in other churches. But when you hear about them, it's often done in things like the Catholic Church. And I'm sure we'll hear email from people that go on and give us examples that aren't. That's okay. My point is, is wherever these individuals did marry, the question might be. And, and, and here's where it gets a little complicated. The annulments, even though the marriage records may have happened in Noble County, Indiana, Jackson County, Indiana, Denver County, Colorado, that does not mean the annulments are on file. In those three places, they could, if they lived somewhere else, if they moved to somewhere else or were living somewhere else, it's possible that if these annulments were, whether again, done by civil institutions versus or religious institutions, those. You'd have to maybe look to see where they're living now. I think that would be now. It doesn't mean you don't look at where these marriages took place. There may be a record there and may have even been filed with the original records. Although what you're telling us is you have the marriage records and you did attach them. So it sounds like that you're not seeing anything on the records themselves. No notations, no anything like that. George, you were going to say.
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C
I was going to say on the civil records, typically the records that are maintained, let's say at the courthouse, are marriage records themselves and divorce records. The annulment records, whatever might exist, might be filed separately and kept separately. And there's no reason to suppose that they would be locked away. But it's possible that for privacy reasons, that the members of the couple may not have wanted it to be known that they went through an annulment. It's possible that the records may have been closed. So I would certainly suggest if you go to the courthouse or contact the courthouse, ask them about, specifically about annulment as opposed to divorce records.
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A
Right. Yeah, I was. That was what I was going to say next. I would contact the courthouses in Noble County, Indiana, Jackson County, Indiana, and Denver County, Colorado, and say, do you keep annulment records? Do you have them? Are they separate from divorce records? You know, do you have a whole separate file for them? Because frankly, there's a. There's different paperwork. They have different kind of different legal statuses. And, you know, because generally a divorce has to have things like you have to show cause. I mean, there's a lot more involved with it, dissolution of property, things of that nature. I mean, the annulment is sort of an implication. The marriage never really took place or doesn't count. So anyway, my point is I would look into that.
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C
And now, in either case, in an annulment or a divorce, a judge in the municipality where, where the action was filed would have had to have made a ruling on it. And, and as a result, there should be something there. Now, remember, in. In the courts, there are court minute books, and it's possible that the minute books themselves, as opposed to the files, the minute books, might contain information. So, and those are usually well indexed. So don't be afraid to ask for Many minute books that might possibly include notations by the presiding judge as to the introduction of of a call for an annulment and and anything that was heard in evidence and any ruling that was made. And again the the minute books may be the the more accessible records especially in the event that annulment records might have been sealed.
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Yeah. And another thing of interest here because George and I often talk about how it's so critical when you're dealing with things like marriage records and that were performed by some type of minister, priest, whomever is look to see who they are and where they live and see if you know if there's records kept by that particular individual. For example, the individual, the first one here, Carl Green in Noble County, Indiana that the marriage is performed by Reverend De Hively. And the question is, yes was what church was Reverend Hively with? You know, does if that was done then therefore in that church is there any evidence that then there's a record that they went back and they annulled it with Reverend Hively.
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George 1 way to to find out about the affiliation of of the the clergy person with a particular church is go back into newspapers at the time time and look for announcements of services in churches coming up for a weekend. And you may very well find that such and such a church is listed and that the the services will be held at 11am on Sunday with the Reverend so and so presiding. So that may be a quick way to find what affiliation that person had and don't overlook the fact that sometimes after those those clergy have retired or are deceased, sometimes their records go to the the next next highest organization, let's say a synod or, or whatever.
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Yeah. And the one of those again Reverend. The Reverend did the first one. The justice of the peace did the second one. And so yeah, you need to again decide which were done and so forth. I'm looking at the third one and so that one was also done by a Reverend and this was the one in actually in the county. It was not. This one is showing the certificate was even though he said it was for Denver County. I'm seeing that it's Clear Creek County. I've seen Clear Creek before. So you want to. Yeah. Reverend Francis Potemps. And so you want to make Catholic priest. So there's where you want to look for the church in Clear Creek and see if they have a record of an annulment. But yeah, that's not showing to me. He was now the groom was from Denver county and the bride was from Wayne county in Michigan. From Detroit. But again, the marriage was in Clear Creek and was not in Denver County. So I just looked at the documents you sent us, Kelly. So again, maybe you need to look in Clear Creek's records or contact Clear Creek or find out what Catholic church Reverend Francis was associated with to see if they have any. Any documentation for the annulment with that church. Yep. All right, good point. Okay. And George, I think you're next with. Okay, let's talk about military.
- [43:08]
C
I have an email from Christina and she says, hi, guys, I'm Christina and I'm fairly new to the podcast. I truly love what you guys do, but I have a question that I've been hunting down an answer to. I thought I'd toss it your way. Some time ago, I found my grandfather's World War II draft card in family searching database. The only issue is now where do we go from here? I know from hearsay that he was part of the D Day invasion. However, I'm having trouble finding deeper information about his military career, his regiment, where he was stationed, all that jazz. I would of course, love to one day visit where he landed and pick up on the pieces of the story. Maybe you guys could shed some light on the topic. And let me know if you think this type of research hunt would be interesting enough to bring onto the podcast. Let me know what you guys think. Christina. The beginning of the records for World War I and World War II are the draft registration cards that you find. And if you have found one for, for your person, your grandfather in World War II, grab onto that information. Make a note of everything that appears on the, on that card. And then there is a division of the National Archives that's in Kansas City, Missouri, and that is the National Personnel Records Center. Now, if you go to the www.nara.gov and go looking for National Personnel Records center, you'll find something, something listed there and information about how to apply for copies of records, military service records for the individuals now From World War II, I think you'll have a pretty good, pretty good chance. It wasn't until many years later that there was a fire at the record center and some records were destroyed. Others were just so badly damaged, but they have been retained. And now a request for the records of an individual whose records were damaged in that fire. There are people who will pull the surviving pieces of the records and they'll digitize them and provide them to you if there's anything that is available. So that's one way to do it. The National Personnel Records center is a great source for for military records going back to the American Revolution and up through World War II and some from the Korean War, Vietnam War records are not there. They're held by the Department of Defense. But what you can do is is request copies of the records and I will tell you that there is a substantial waiting period. During the COVID lockdown, the NPRC was closed down and whereas it might have taken 18 to 24 months to get records, that was delayed even further. But it's worth making the effort and going through the process to request them. You might also look for any search angels who are in that area, in the Kansas City area who would be willing to make a trip to the National Personnel Records center and gain access to the records and and obtain copies for you. That could be faster. One place you might find information about people who do that kind of work is at the association of Professional Genealogists, the apg. They have a website and the association of Professional Genealogists has a directory of all kinds of people who do research and consultations, and it will even include people who will go and fetch records for you. So that's what I would suggest for you.
- [48:14]
A
Sounds good. Now let's end our listener email section here with Gene and Gene from Huntington Station, New York, who has written us a number of times.
- [48:29]
C
Oh, Jean.
- [48:32]
A
And she heard at the end of September, listen to the episode where we talked about immigration naturalization records. Jean says she was very interested in our discussion because she recently taught a program at her library about that very topic. And I just want to repeat for those who may not have heard that episode or whatever, I did a presentation. In fact, it was a new presentation for me. Even though I've worked with immigration and naturalization records for many years, I had not done a talk specifically about that. This was done for our local Jewish genealogical society in Tampa Bay. And because that was a very much interest to the members. And I thought, well, I'd be glad to put something together. And it's interesting because Gene goes on to say, I just wanted to mention that one of my favorite websites regarding immigration records is a guide to Interpreting Passenger List Annotations, which appears on the JewishGen website and was written by Marion L. Smith, who was a historian with the US Immigration and Naturalization Service. The article was written in 2002, but I find it quite fascinating because it points out things I never would have noticed otherwise. Keep up the good work. I always enjoy listening to your podcast. Thanks, Gene. And yes, there is so much out there that has been written on immigration, naturalization and the records. Several books, of course, great books on the subject. And I'm glad you shared that particular one. I'll have to pass it along to my friends at the local Jewish genealogical society, maybe also put it on the handout that I, I create that goes along with that particular presentation. There's so much, you know, they just can't cover everything. There's so much detail to those topics and, and, and you can sometimes only scratch the surface. So that's a nice resource, George.
- [50:32]
C
Well, how many times have. Have you looked at a census record or a ship's passenger list or some other document where somebody has added a handwritten annotation of some sort? And you thought, well, what does this mean? Why is this of interest? Or was that just for internal purposes, or what? And so when you find a site like this one that, that provides definitions of what those annotations might mean, that adds to the possibility of gleaning more information from those records.
- [51:11]
A
Yeah, yeah. So with that, I want to change the subject a little bit here to discussing an upcoming event. And of course, we like to share particularly free upcoming events, virtual events, because everybody can benefit from those. And this is the Wikitree Symposium. They've done this before. So the. This year's symposium is being held on from Friday, November 1, to Sunday, November 3. It's three days, and during each time period, there is a speaker giving talks on all kinds of things. You name it, they're giving talks on it. I'm giving a talk specifically on Sunday, November 3rd at 10:30 Eastern Time. I noticed that the header for this says edt, but I'm not mistaken. We will be on EDT that time.
- [52:13]
C
We might.
- [52:13]
A
Huh?
- [52:14]
C
We might.
- [52:15]
A
I don't. No, I. Not on.
- [52:18]
C
Maybe it's the following weekend.
- [52:21]
A
Okay. Well, that's a good question. Well, let's just say Eastern time. We won't quibble over whether it's daylight or standard, but you all need to check that, to be careful about that. I, I think we are European friends, our English friends, particularly British and Irish friends, they went off of it early. Not early, but earlier than, you know, we do in the United States. So I think we go over. It's Sunday morning in it, George. Or if you're. Are you looking that up?
- [52:51]
C
Yeah. And it says Daylight Savings time in the United States for 2024 runs from Sunday, March 10, 2024, to Sunday, November 3, 2024. Aha.
- [53:05]
A
Yes. Which means that there. I'll have to. I'll tell somebody at Wikitree they may want to update that to minimize confusion because we won't be on edt. We'll be back to EST Eastern Standard Time. Starting morning of. Yeah, Sunday the 3rd. It's going to be. Yeah. Once you get to 2 o', clock, you jump back or whatever. Okay.
- [53:26]
C
You fall back.
- [53:28]
A
You fall. I know. You fall back. You spring forward. You fall back. Yes. For those who need that, I'm going to be talking about copyright and plagiarism because.
- [53:38]
C
Oh, good.
- [53:39]
A
Yeah. It's an important topic for genealogists to know what they can use legally. You know, how do they figure it out, whether they can use it, how they can use it and how do they protect their own stuff that they write? You know, how do genealogists protect the things they write, their stories, particularly. So anyway, that's a free thing if you don't know how to get to it. Just. Yeah, just Google WikiTree Symposium 2024. You'll find all kinds of links that direct you towards it and you can find, find all that.
- [54:16]
C
So.
- [54:18]
A
That'S, that's coming up. I'm looking forward to giving my talk on Sunday morning. So on that note, I think we're done for this episode. And barring future hurricanes this season, we will be back with you as soon as we possibly can with new episodes. And we have a lot of exciting things coming up, so everyone take care. And again, digitize everything you can digitize and we will be with you soon. George, any final goodbyes here?
- [54:55]
C
I'd just like to tell everyone, stay safe, keep your research going, digitize whatever you can, and happy hunting all along the way.
- [55:08]
A
Bye. Bye.