← The Genealogy Guys Podcast & Genealogy Connection
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Foreign.
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Welcome to episode 432 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 talk about the move of genealogy guides, Learn to Legacy Family Tree webinars. We bring you the latest news from MyHeritage and FamilySearch. We share listener email about research trips to Ireland, family history stories, podcasts, Rootsmagic 10 and A Brick wall about the Reed family of Cayuga County, New York. George discusses the availability of non population census schedules. And Drew lets everyone know where he is. Speaking in February and March, the Genealogy Guys podcast is sponsored by MyHeritage and RootsMagic. And now on with the show. Welcome to another episode of the Genealogy Guys Podcast. I'm Drew Smith and I'm joined as always by my co host, George G. Morgan. George, how you doing there today?
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Hi Drew. And happy New Year to everyone who's listening. Nice to have you with us.
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Absolutely. It is indeed. And so again, we should remind people, we'll remind you at the end, we are continuing to produce episodes. There will be many more episodes in 2025, so you will get to enjoy all of that.
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We're actually coming up, people on our 20th anniversary in September will have been doing this podcast for 20 years.
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We are the old men of podcasting. We know that and that's fine. And we wouldn't do this without your support. We certainly enjoy your support. As if you use Patreon, you can look for us there. We love our Patreon supporters, but George, we have other supporters too, don't we?
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Yeah, we do. And I'd like to give a, a very warm shout out to Ed Brown, who has done a supporter for us for, for quite a long time. Ed, thank you very much. You, you, you help us do what we do.
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Absolutely. Because you know podcasting to be done well isn't free. We have expenses, whether that's hardware or software, and, and hopefully to make the podcast better and better. So we're always working on that. We will continue to work on that this year. But speaking of big news for the year, I have a press release. Some of you already know about this, but it has to do with our Genealogy Guys Learn site which we have been running. Well, we ran for about what, five years, I think, George. So the news which we announced on January 1 was that the Genealogy Guys are moving their recorded content to Legacy Family Tree webinars and discontinuing their standalone education subscription site. In other words, Genealogy Guys Learn is no longer a standalone site. It is part it has its own page on familytreewebinars.com if you go to I'm going to mention this up front, George, and then I'll get to the content of the press release. But people can go to familytreewebinars.com genealogyguys to see what we've got there. And so what we are announcing is that AHA Seminars, Inc. Which is the producer of this podcast as well as the Genealogy Connection podcast and our blog, has announced we've announced that we're discontinuing the operation of the separate Genealogy Guys Learn standalone subscription site. And that was launched in 2019. As we said, it's been five years ago in October of 2019. And it was the sole site that at the time providing access to large numbers of webinars previously recorded by George and by me and.
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And written courses.
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And some written courses, yes. And though we feel that has been a very valuable site for the past five years, we felt it would better serve the genealogical community to partner with Legacy Family Tree Webinars and they the world's most successful genealogy education service, which is a part of the services offered by global genealogy company MyHeritage, who happens to be one of our sponsors here of the podcast. Legacy Family Tree Webinars will gradually release our content from Genealogy Guys Learn and new webinars will be published there, including the one I just did very recently that you'll find there on Collaborative Trees of the Discontinuation. AHA Seminar CEO George G. Morgan said with the new partnership with Legacy Family Tree Webinars, we look forward to reaching a wider audience with our educational genealogical presentations. We are confident that both new and experienced genealogists will enjoy finding our content on the same site that already features thousands of other webinars offered by hundreds of the best presenters in the genealogical community. So feel free if you have any questions about any of that, you can email us@genealogyguysmail.com and we look forward to this collaborative effort with Legacy Features Family Tree Webinars. It's something we've been working on for almost a year and it's come to fruition. And so thank you to a shout out to Jeff Rasmussen, who worked very hard to make it happen and from from there since he's the the host over there on on Legacy Family Tree Webinars. So thanks, Jeff. George, what you got for us?
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Well, as you mentioned, myheritage is a sponsor of the Genealogy Guys podcast. And we have a number of things from MyHeritage here. First of all, they released an announcement about 2024 in review at MyHeritage. And so just some of the, some of the highlights here by the numbers. First of all, let me remind you that MyHeritage has been around also for 20 years. And in the month of December, they added 317 million newspaper pages to their OldNews.com offering. They added 458 million new family tree profiles, 142,000 live memory videos created. And that's just for live memory being announced in December. Their wiki has grown to 1169 articles. They have 8.9 million kits in their DNA database. 3.8 million photos were uploaded. 13 billion historical records were added to MyHeritage. Think about that. 13 billion. And 97 million new theories of family relativity were added. And on the subject of, of legacy family tree webinars, they have A total of 2324 webinars webinars as of the end of December. So that's pretty special. We mentioned, I mentioned here that they had added 317 million newspaper pages. Well, they announced in December that they were adding the first four collections of names and stories extracted from historical newspapers on oldnews.com using some advanced AI technology. Now they are delighted to announce the fact that their project is now complete. All 15 collections that they had there have now been published, bringing the total number of names and stories records added to 11.6 billion. The collections span all 50 states as well as Canada, Australia and the UK and this increases myheritage total historical record count to a massive 32 billion records. That's billions. So these 15 collections at@oldnews.com have just a huge, huge number of items. So I urge you to, to go experiment and explore. I'll tell you, I've been doing. I subscribe to old news and I get record hints on that. And I've been finding just incredible, wonderful matches over the last couple of months. And it's just is adding such depth and context to my family history.
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Yep. Well, as we all know, companies are not immune to what happens when countries pass certain laws. And that's no exception here in the case of genealogy companies. MyHeritage, unfortunately, due to some laws in Russia, has had to come to the decision to suspend its services in Russia. Basically that's due to some local regulations. So MyHeritage is going to stop providing its services in Russia and to stop hosting personal data of Russian users. They have informed MyHeritage, informed it's all of its users, that all of the accounts and associated data of Russian clients would be permanently deleted by February 1st of 2025. So they are encouraging people who have such accounts to export their family tree data and or their DNA, if they have their DNA data on MyHeritage should they wish to keep it. And so this really has a, is the result of some laws in Russia that require that companies have to manage their data on servers in Russia. And of course, many companies around the world don't want to do that. International companies. So in other words, the only choice here is to actually just stop serving those in Russia. So that is new news that we have gotten the last some weeks or.
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So.
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And it's a sad loss of.
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It'S a s sad loss of resources. But again, we're dealing with politics above and beyond things we can control.
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That's right. You've already discussed old news. Right. So we need to move on to webinars. And again, as you're going to expect to hear from since our stuff's now on legacy family tree webinars, we're going to talk a little bit about their webinar Series for 2025. One of the cool things about I'm not ashamed to promote it because first of all, their new webinars are go out live. You can watch these new things. And they're not only free to watch and, and ask questions and do all that stuff when they're live, but they remain free for a week. And so you really have no excuse if even if you can't attend live, you can still follow. And there's just so many good things. So this is their 15th year of this series. There will be this year 173 classes and that includes two new MEM, two new brand new series. This is Artificial Intelligence for Genealogists is a is a members only series. And then we've already mentioned the Genealogy Guys Learn series as that goes out. So 132 speakers, 17 countries, 35 newcomers to the webinar. We've already mentioned me, but we've also they also are welcome.
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Yes.
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We're also welcoming Michael John Neal, who has written the Genealogy Tips of the Day, Bonnie Wade Musea, director of the General Society of Mayflower Descendants Silver Books Project, David Allen Lambert, the chief genealogist at American Ancestors, and Mark Thompson, the co host of the Family History AI show. So I mean, there's just so much and I mean, I can't just so you should check out. It's at family tree webinars.com you can see you can register for upcoming webinars. Make sure you get notified in the link when they are live. And again you can see things on the website that have been there less than a week. You can see the new stuff. Mine is still out there about collaborative trees, I think.
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Yeah.
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But yeah, for a few more days. So there's a lot, a lot, a lot of new speakers, some of whom I know many I do. Not that I've not had the opportunity to to hear but so I'm I'm congratulating all the new speakers there. And I'm going to go on to another favorite topic of mine because I love to announce what's going on with Family Search. And so yeah, they were not, they were not lazy last year they have added no from December for example, I'll give December data and we'll have a well at one of our next podcasts I'm sure we'll have January but due records from 49 countries. They added 49.8 million new records. That includes over 22 million additions to the US city and business directories collection. 19 million new records from the Philippines, which includes civil registrations, Catholic church records and church censuses. And significant additions beyond the US Records I've already mentioned from Chile, Ireland, Korea and Zimbabwe. So I don't need to go into all the details other than tell you you need to check it out. There is so much stuff and so I'll highlight a few just because I think I should. Here's an expanded collection of Iowa death records from 1904 to 1951. Over nearly 500,000 indexed records were added there. What else is New York? U.S. district and Circuit Court naturalization records. They've added 1.7 million new records there. And rec New York record of naturalized voters registered from 1872 to 1878. Over 500,000 records there. I had mentioned Ireland. Catholic parish registers from 1740 to 1900. Over 200,000 records there. And from Italy, from Rovigo, that's R O V I G O civil registration. They've added 204,000 records there. I could go on, but you know the drill. You go out to Family Search, you look to see what they've got. They've got a lot. Now let's talk about the future since here we are in a new year and Familysearch is not going to rest on their laurels. From 2024 they will continue in to 2025. So what are they going to do well? They are going to continue to add records from France, Germany, Honduras, Italy, Palau and the Philippines. They are also publishing billions of oral genealogies gathered from in person interviews with tribal leaders from 25 African countries. So. I know, and they're going to work with expanding that to other continents as well. So they are. Remember, they're going to use their technology to build searchable family tree databases from the oral genealogies, making them searchable online for the first time ever. You'll be able to search by tribe, by village, or by surname and gain access to the audio recordings and the lineages. So, amazing stuff. You're gonna. Let's face it, folks, you're gonna hear a lot about AI for a long time now. Just like when we went through DNA, there's a lot of stuff about AI, right, George?
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Yeah. One of the, one of the things that, that we tell people all the time when we do seminars and here on the podcast is, is make sure if you have not used FamilySearch, make sure you get there and use it. And then the other thing is, remember, if you listen to this podcast, you know that just about every month we, we have an announcement of new records that they have added. Plus they have groups out in the field who are actively capturing digital records that have never been seen before. So it's worth your time and energy to go back and look at FamilySearch on a regular basis.
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Absolutely. Now, you may know that FamilySearch has already been, for the last year or so, been using AI as a wonderful tool to extract information from handwritten records, especially those in English and in Spanish. And so they are going to, of course, expand this, but this means that they don't have to depend on, because there's just so much they don't have to depend on having volunteers. They can do a first pass with artificial intelligence. And people have already made amazing discoveries of records and like full text search. So that's an ongoing thing. For more record collections, if you go to the family search labs, you can look for that and you'll find the labs you will find where you can do full text searching of things like probate records and things like that. People have made amazing discoveries where they just find an ancestor's name mentioned in a probate record because that name was not indexed in the record, the record books, but they were perhaps an heir or someone else that got mentioned. So they're working on it and they're going to continue with, working with science societies and libraries to digitize books so that you can get to them for free on the, in the digital library, particularly if they are out of copyright, of course, and they may be more limited if they're not out of copyright. But these are genealogy books, family histories, local histories, maps, yearbooks. They currently have over 600,000 of these digitized. They are going to create in relationship to the FamilySearch family tree. They're going to make that even more collaborative and create private groups of for living family members who have a FamilySearch account to share family history information, photos, stories, sources and memories. And so that will allow them to limit that to just people who should have access to information about the living, but it will be preserved because sometimes people do work on these things and if they've, they're no longer alive. The question is, is where's what happens to that information? And so this will, will help. And so there's just lots of new thing I'm, I'm just going to skip around because there's just so many good things. But the main thing you need to do is go to Family Search and play around. I'm going to mention Roots Tech some point here a little later, I think, but I'll come back to that. So yeah, rootstep is coming up. George, are you next or. Yeah, well, we're going to stop. We will stop here. We will take a commercial break for our sponsors and that's myheritage and Roots Magic. And when we come back, we have listener email from the last couple of months that we're getting to now and we will continue to get to. If you don't hear your email right away, trust us, we don't generally throw these away. You'll probably hear it in a later episode. But anyway, for now, listen to our sponsors and stay with us. The best way to do successful genealogical research is to have a research plan. But part of that plan may be to acquire new skills in using methodologies, records, or locations that you're currently unfamiliar with. If that's the case, it makes sense to acquire education. And one great way to do that is to subscribe to Legacy Family Tree webinars, which hosts over 2,300 recorded webinars presented by over 450 speakers. With over 9,000 pages of related handout material, you're bound to find topics that you can put to use in your research, no matter where it takes you. To learn more, go to familytreewebinars.com how can you be more organized with the genealogical research you've already done? One of the best ways is to have reliable genealogy software that you can use on your own desktop or laptop computer, whether you're a Windows user or a Mac OS user. And the software I've counted on for more than 20 years is RootsMagic. RootsMagic 10 adds such features as letting you keep track of your DNA matches, documenting your family's health issues, and saving the searches you've done. Personally, I like the fact that I can easily create a free website with my family on it that I can share with relatives so they can see the progress I've made so far. And if you aren't already a RootsMagic user, why not download and install the free version RootsMagic Essentials? You can see what you've been missing by going to rootsmagic.com drew one of.
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The things that we've talked about on a previous podcast were Donna Moody's wonderful trips to Ireland, her research trips. And she would do do those trips, what, every once a year or twice a year?
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Oh actually she was doing some twice near the end when she did them again after the, after the lockdown she was doing that.
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But she, but she's retired now.
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She has retired. I got to go in the last one to Dublin. I didn't do the Belfast one, I did the Dublin one in. And yeah, so people have been asking about this. So I've got and, and we had an early.
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We've, we've had a number of emails about from people who wanted to know is there an equivalent or has someone else taken over from Donna on her own tour schedule? Yep.
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And it was Judy, I believe, who did ask about this in a previous one. So let me give some answers. We got back at the end of December here they came in and Donna is herself. Donna Moody responded and said hi guys, hope you had a great holiday. Regarding a previous note on Ireland research tours, the nygnb, that's the New York Genealogical and Biographical Society, is offering a heritage tour to the Republic of Ireland in August. So I'm assuming August of 2025. Looking at the agenda, it is not a research trip, but a general tour with not a lot of time for research. I would recommend this for individuals interested in Ireland, but without a lot of information about their Irish ancestors and where they lived. I say this because Monday's schedule of behind the scenes tours of the National Archives, the National Library, the Trinity Library and more doesn't leave any time for research, but might give participants an idea what's available for a future research trip. So she provides a link again that's@newyorkfamilyhistory.org and so they are doing an information I think we missed the information session in regards Anyway, the information session is I believe we missed that date but you can look at it and find out more about it at New York family history.org in their list of events. All right. That was Donna who responded. Now we also heard from Cindy and Cindy says hi, I heard on your last episode someone asked you about a genealogy tour in Belfast in June of 2024. I want went on a genealogy tour with American ancestors then you know nehgs and and usually using the name American Ancestors. We spent the week at the Public Records Office of Northern Ireland Prony and then on Saturday we went to the library which had a lot of newspapers digitized and the actual papers. Several research consultations were a part of the fee. PRONY is interesting because it doesn't have the typical records because many records were lost in 1922 after the partition of Northern and Southern Ireland. Prony accepts almost anything. I recommend going to the PRONY website, do as much research as possible before going to Ireland. My immigrant great grandfather John Morrow Derby was listed by name on the website. The family lawyer or law office had donated their papers to Brony. The lawyers handling the selling of property, et cetera. The family home that all the American Derbies visit when they go to Ireland switch to the Weiss family of one of the Derbies. I learned that the transfer was not as amicable as as we thought as the Derby sued his wife to get it back. The papers had disposition or depositions from neighbors describing the character of not only him but his father.
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A lot of the context I love.
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Yes, a lot of the information I found was about cousins, but interesting nonetheless. One of the documents I looked at was from the 1700s. You're expected to have clean hands and are able to hold the documents. It was incredible holding such an old document and feeling the texture and weight of the paper. One could also photograph anything for free. My husband joined me after the genealogy tour and I showed him Ireland. I took him to the family house and a couple of graveyards. I was there 10 years ago and was the first one to add memories. I'm sorry, add memorials to find a grave for the Eglish old cemetery. And I know I'm going to mispronounce this, but it's something like Magarafelt. Something close to that, I think. We stayed at the Laura Laurel Villa, which is an inn in Magarefeld. The owner loves genealogy. The inn was built by my great great grandfather's brother for their sister and her husband who was a doctor and used the main floor and as his surgery. I have been researching my family's history on and off for 50 years. For over 50 years. I started as a teenager. I found your podcast on audible.com about three years ago and I've really enjoyed it. I also have Smiths in Union, South Carolina, close to Drew's. Well, unfortunately my Smiths really are from South Carolina. They came down. My father came down from New Jersey. But another story, I took Drew's class about preparing for a research trip at RootsTech this year. Cindy, thank you for that and your experience at Proning. That is good for people to know and so we are thrilled about that. And one more response from Josh Josh says hello gentlemen. First, I want to say I absolutely love your podcast. It is super informative and I learn a lot that helps me in my genealogy research. I just listened to your most recent podcast. I have a couple of responses. Judy had asked about research trips to Ireland. Ancestry.com has a feature through their Pro Genealogist where you can pay for a trip to many countries around the world. You would be accompanied through the trip with a professional genealogist. Here is what it Pre trip research with an expert genealogist summary report of your research project that highlights key findings, copies of documents and images found during research, specially designed itinerary focused on your goals on tour help from local experts, private guides and a professional genealogist. I'm not sure if this is what she's looking for meaning Judy, but it might be the closest to Donna Moody's trips. So Josh, thanks for that. We're gonna Josh also gave an answer to another question that came up here and that has to do with stories. So let me get into that one. Ryan had asked about genealogy podcasts that share people's stories. Krista Cowan, the barefoot genealogist, has a podcast titled the Stories that Live in US where she interviews people about their genealogy journey. I'm behind on that POD or the podcast itself myself, but so far it's people who also work at Ancestry or were on one of Ancestry genealogical programs. But I find it entertaining and informative on how to address some hurdles in my own research. And Josh ends with I wanted to share these in hopes that it helps them find what they're looking for. I wish you all the best. I'm glad you were all safe. Best wishes, Josh. Thank you Josh.
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Great.
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And then one more relating to someone looking for a podcast discussing family histories and Again, where Ryan asked this person, anonymous fan. I'll say Anonymous fan. I'm not sure if this is what he is asking about, but Krista Cowan Stories that Live in Us has different stories of family discoveries and I found her to be a great fill in while I'm waiting for your next release. I hope this helps. I also started with your original release and eventually decided I better listen to your current releases first so that I don't miss out on current events and news. Thank you for all that you do. Thank you anonymous fan. We appreciate it very, very much. George, you're gonna talk about Roots Magic for a second here.
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Yeah. We have an email here from Christine and she says, she says, greetings from snowy Ohio. Are there any snow, Any states where there is no snow?
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Not even Florida this coming day or two.
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That's right.
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Not where we are, but north of us.
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I know it's been a while since I last wrote you, but I have a question for you. Do you think rootsmagic10 is worth the upgrade? I've been getting kind of irritated with rootsmagic9 and I really don't want to totally switch programs. I'm asking you both because in all these years, you've both been the voice of reasoning that I listen to when I'm working on genealogy puzzles. And I know that you both know your stuff. Well, Christine, thank you for that compliment. We. We try. Now, Drew and I have been using different programs over the decades and everything from DOS programs to, to Windows to, to Macintosh to just. And we've, we've used desktop programs, we've used apps, we've used supplemental programs. I'm telling you, I've put them, I've put the programs through their paces. And the one that I came, came to and I keep coming back to is Roots Magic. And with the iteration of each new version of, of Roots Magic, it gets easier, it gets more intuitive. Now that said, some people when they start out on Roots Magic, they say, oh, there's just so much that it does and so much to learn. Well, that's true. However, they do have a nice online help. And at YouTube they have, and at their own website they have videos on all the aspects of adding people, changing relationships, adding events, working with source citations and, and just a whole plethora of different things. I was happy. I told Drew a couple of days ago, a week or so ago, I found something that I've always wanted in a genealogy program, and that's a calendar. And so here I am doing all this work in old news and here's a digitized clipping of an obituary. And I'm looking at it and it says, Mr. So and so died on Friday evening from after a long illness. And then it says, and the funeral and burial service will be on Wednesday. And so I'm looking at my database and I'm thinking, okay, where do I, where do I actually come up with the real dates in lieu of other things such as death certificates and so forth. And by gosh, I found Roots Magic has a built in perpetual calendar that you can use for exactly that. And that's an essential tool that I missed and I discovered after years of using the product. I will tell you that I am, I have just begun working on a book, and we'll talk more about that over time. But I'm finding that rootsmagic gives me just about everything that I need in order to manage the information, generate reports and pull information together into coherent chapters and stories and vignettes. So I think that RootsMagic 10 is a valuable product and the price is right. Drew, what's your thought?
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Oh, absolutely. I mean, like you said, I've been using it so long and I did try a number of alternatives, and the best part is, and again, just to be clear, because people are going to say, oh, yeah, well, they're one of your sponsors. No, George and I were both using the product before they became a sponsor. We really were, and so we just stuck with them because we do love the product. I love it because I, when I go to a conference like RootsTech, there's Bruce. I can talk to him and ask him questions and go to his presentations. So he, you know, there's nothing better than having the programmer himself there to show how to use something, particularly if it's a newer feature or a new version of the software. So that's been great. But as George said, you want to go out there and look for the videos that tell you how to do things and, and that's, that makes it very valuable, particularly when you know that the video is done by the guy that wrote the code or one of the guys that wrote the code. So that's, that's really good.
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And that's another thing that I say about RootsMagic, by the way, from the standpoint of, of development, is that the programmers really have to understand genealogy in order to write an effective working program. And I'll tell you, Bruce knows genealogy up one side and down the other. And so as a result, he has applied the logic that good, solid genealogical researchers should use as he Develops the. The program and the data that is recorded, so. Right.
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Yeah. Not all the programs out there were written by genealogists.
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Oh, no. Oh, no.
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They were so. Well, anyway, has my.
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Has my full endorsement.
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Yeah, we're. Because we do get email from our listeners sometimes when they're a little elaborate, but we don't want to cut them down because they're interesting and because our. Our listeners may want to see if they can help.
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Yeah.
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And so we're kind of. Kind of trickle those out. We've received several in the last month or so. So here's one from actually the end of November, and it's from Keenith, if I'm saying that right. K E N I T H. I apologize if I'm mispronouncing, but I believe it's Kenneth and. And I had to. The subject line is clever. Keeneth. Subject line is lost in the reeds. Yeah. Not weeds. Reads R E E D S. So let me share it and I'm going to share the whole thing. But those of you who like to kind of work on other people's problems, this is your opportunity to listen and make notes. So let me get into this.
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Make some notes. You might. You might have the information, help solve the problem.
- [38:38]
B
Absolutely. So. All right, let's get into this. Looking for help finding Calvin Reed, R E D and his wife Rhoda, Nay, who knows what her maiden name was, with the oldest known mention of them being from an obituary for their daughter, Eliza Ruth Reed Caffee. C A F F E. Thursday, March 15, 1906, the Anamosa Eureka. Page 5 obituary. Eliza Ruth Reed, daughter of Calvin and Rhoda Reed, was born on January 7, 1842 in Cayuga. You love this spelling. C A Y E R G A county, New York. We'll get to that later, but it is probably Cayuga. Yeah, is what it should be. At an early age, she moved with her parents to Ann Arbor, Michigan. When about 16, she moved with her widowed mother and three sisters to Iowa City, Iowa in 1838, having made the trip by team. In January 1841, she was married at Iowa City to John Caffey. To this Union were born six children, all of whom are living, except one daughter who died in 1874 at Fairview, Iowa. Deceased has lived in and near Fairview over 50 years. Her preference was a quiet home life. She was of an industrious mind and there are few of the earlier settlers who do not remember her kindness as well as willingness and more than ordinary skill. And knowledge in taking care of the sick. She has been a member of the Methodist Church for 45 years, doing while her health permitted all she could to promote the cause of truth. She was a believer in the Golden Rule and did what she could for her friends and neighbors. She was one of the earliest settlers, having walked many a time from Fairview to Anamosa, where her brother Calvin Reed lived. She lived through all the trials and privations of the pioneers, Iowa being a territory. When she came at her death March 2, 1906, she was 82 years, one month and 23 days old. If she had lived until the 17th of this month, she would have been lived a widow 13 years, living most of the time alone at the old house in Fairview, the spot she loved above all others. Card of thanks we are pleased to take this opportunity to express our thanks to our many friends who so kindly assisted us in the sickness and sympathized with us in the loss of our mother, Mrs. E.R. caffey and this is, I guess, Mrs. V.V. esterly, A.B. caffey and J.C. caffey. Observations I think this is. Yeah, Observations that are made here by Kenneth 1842 Date of birth is incorrect with her headstones inscribed with January 7, 1824. However, on her wedding, 21 January 1841, she is listed as 19 years old, which would make her year of birth in 1822. This year matches with when she's described at about the age of 16, having moved to Iowa City, Iowa in 1838 with her widowed mother and three sisters. Observation number two here. Her date of death is listed as March 2, 1906. However, her headstone is inscribed with March 3, 1896. In a separate newspaper article published Thursday, March 8, 1906, described her passing Mrs. Ruth Caffey's suffering came to an end about 2am Friday morning. This corroborates her correct date of death is March 2, 1906. Third and final observation here. Cayuga county is New York is likely supposed to be Cayuga County, New York and according to mapofus.org it was established in 1799. Cayuga county is situated in the Finger Lakes region and was created out of previous Onondaga County. So Kenneth ends by saying any advice for sources or sharing of knowledge about the surnames, place names, time period to help break through this brick wall is greatly appreciated. So yeah, that's interesting and that's I'm wondering. There's several things you said at an early age she moved to with her Parents to Ann Arbor, Michigan, but she was born 1842. So of course, I'm curious, where were they in 1850? Were they still in Cayuga County, New York, or are they already gotten to Ann Arbor, Michigan? I mean, where did. Could you find them in the 1850 census since they would all be enumerated. And I'm just thinking, was there anything else there you. Yeah, so I mean, I'm. And also you mentioned her, the, the one's brother, Calvin. So was Calvin. I guess that's Calvin Jr. Because that's the brother, you said, of Liza Ruth. So is that Calvin Jr. And then can. Is he. Was he around in 1850? Where was he? So that's a question. I, I'm not. And this is where we depend on our listeners because I'm not an expert in New York State genealogy and not the Finger Lakes District for sure. So I would suggest that if we have listeners who are familiar with Cayuga county, maybe know of Reed families that might have lived there in the 1840s, early 1840s, and can shed some light, I would certainly suggest looking for Cayuga county history books, books about Cayuga county that might talk about settlers from that time period. 1840 might be a little late for that because again, these parts of New York were probably settled much, much earlier. But again, I don't know if you've searched through Cayuga county books, so that would be of interest. George, you have some thoughts on this?
- [44:49]
A
Yeah, I did in one of our recent podcasts and I can't quite hear on the fly find, find the number of the episode, but we had one of our listeners wrote in to talk about the county historians in the state of New York.
- [45:06]
B
Oh yeah.
- [45:07]
A
And so I would point you back to, to that podcast and learn what you can about those representatives. Also check with the main library in, in the current county and the previous county and see if they have what we refer to as vertical files. In other words, it's the file cabinets that have file folders and stray papers put in them. Not all of these things are, are cataloged in the online catalog, but if you talk to someone in the genealogy and local history department of the main public library in that county, you'll probably be able to find someone who can go take a look to see if there are unindexed papers, perhaps on the family names you're researching.
- [46:02]
B
Absolutely. I would also suggest, I don't know if you have gone to FamilySearch to look at the digital library, because again, they've digitized a large number of both genealogy family history books as well as local histories. I might put in the name Calvin Reed, and then I'd put in Cayuga because they're probably Calvin Reads all over the United States at some point. But if you look for both Calvin Reed and Cayuga to see is there any mention of him, that would be somewhere I'd look for more information about him. Very interesting stuff. So, yeah, that's something that might be a source. And again, we depend upon our listeners because we probably have some that have some expertise in those that part of the United States. In Cayuga county, we would particularly and they may have heard of or know of a Reed family or Reed families that may have been there in the period around early 1840s and earlier. So I suggest, yeah, we'll see what we what we hear back, KENNETH and if I I apologize again if that's not the proper pronunciation. Drop me a note. So I'll fix it next time, I promise. So, George, I think we need to talk about. Yes, talking. Yes, George has taken leave of his censuses here, so go ahead.
- [47:35]
A
Okay. For the first time ever on the air, I'm going to tell people I'm beginning to work on a family history book. This is not necessarily the kind of family history that you would you would like to be generated onto your family, but it tells the truth. But anyway, it involves direct ancestors of mine. And so and some of them were from Mecklenburg County, North Carolina. Now Mecklenburg county, if you don't know where it is today, it is where Charlotte, North Carolina, is, and it was the site of a federal mint at one point. All kinds of history going back as I'm working on this book, I'm looking for information about a family who lived in that county from the 1850s, at least the 1850s, all the way into into the 1920s. And they were in in one particular area. And I knew the name of the area and all of that, but what I wanted to find was an agricultural schedule, a census agricultural schedule, and those were there were supplemental census schedules. Just to give you a little background, there were supplemental schedules for the 1850, 60, 70 and 80 US federal censuses. There also was an 1885 federal census taken to replace the 1880 in some states. But you can read more about that someplace else. When we're looking at the supplemental schedules, we're talking about not only the population schedules themselves, but but we're talking about the slave schedules in 1850 and 1860, the mortality schedules which recorded the names and details of every person, white and black, who died in the 12 months prior to Census Day in 1850 and 1860, going back a year before that. So 1849 and 1859. There also were were things called manufacturing schedules that, that kept up with, with what was being made and that was reported to the federal level. There was another one which I'm particularly fond of, and that's an agricultural schedule and that's available for. That was taken in all of those years, 1850, 60, 70 and 80. And it included details about the acreage, what was grown on it, whether there were trees, whether there were crops, what kind of livestock there was, what kind of grains were planted, what kind of commodities were, were produced and dealt with, including things like eggs, butter, honey, sorghum, and a variety of other things. This is a picture, I tell you, it is a picture providing context of life on that particular piece of property for that family at that point in time. And it's a wonderful resource. And I'm looking for it because I wanted to see what the value of the properties were and all the holdings, the commodities, the livestock and all of that. So I'm looking for that for Mecklenburg County, North Carolina, the 1880 U.S. federal Census and the agricultural schedules. So I go looking because I have heard some of the commercial services say over the years we have digitized all of the federal census. Well, that's not quite true because they haven't. Those supplemental schedules in some cases remained in the county. Sometimes they went back to the federal government. At one point, the federal government offered all of the supplemental schedules back to the states themselves. And you have to go back and research census by census at the NARA website to learn more about, about when those were offered back. But what I was trying to do is locate it, locate one page on an agricultural schedule from 1880 from Mecklenburg County, North Carolina, for an ancestral family. And what I found is that is that ancestry has two counties in North Carolina digitized as part of their collection. When I go to the family search wiki and ask about agricultural schedules, it points me toward ancestry and links me to the same page. I don't find the agricultural schedules anywhere at findmypast, though they do have the population schedules. And myheritage has, has some, but not all. It's my understanding that, that copies of these census records could be in the hands of the state archive. They could be in the hands of a, of a state library. They could be someplace else altogether. They might be at county level. They might even be in a library, which is Why I come back to Mecklenburg County, North Carolina. Their public library system is one of the best in the country. And Mecklenburg county is very proud of its heritage going back to its founding in 1730s. But they have the Carolina Spangler Room in the library, which currently is under, under some renovation. But it is one of the finest collections of family history data you could imagine for families all over, all over that area. So the vertical files are great. There are lots of their photographs that have, that have been preserved and digitized. You'll find some of those up on the website. I found one of my great great grandfather's second wives photos there. So you never know what you're going to find. What I am trying to convey here is that the agricultural schedules do not exist in a digitized format. Agricultural schedules from 1890 or farm schedules from 1890 forward have been destroyed. What you will find, in addition to the manufacturer schedules, the slave schedules, the mortality schedule and the agricultural schedules in 1880, there is a marvelous document called Census of the Defective, Dependent and Delinquent Class Classes. And what that will show you is every institution, every asylum, people who are living alone, who are indigent, who are poor. These are the, quote unquote, the lower castes of society. Those, those documents are amazing insights into the area where your ancestors lived. Unfortunately though, as I said, as I started doing this research on this book and looking for one simple page in an agricultural schedule, I learned that the state of North Carolina's national archive or state Archive does not have most of these supplemental schedules. The county schedules may be there, they may be back in the county. If we go to, if we go to Ohio, to the Ohio Genealogical Society, they have the federal copy of one of the censuses. But the point is that these, these are census records that can build you context, can tell you what the people were raising, how they lived, what their properties were, maybe even how the livestock, how many people they employed. Maybe as farm hand, you never can tell. But what you have here in the agricultural schedule is for your farming ancestor. You have a, a photograph in time of all of their property. Yes. Go looking for deeds and, and other land conveyance documents. But look at that agricultural schedule. It won't tell you just about the land. It tells you what's being done on that land. So the point of this whole diatribe is, is I would like for the commercial companies like Ancestry and Myheritage and Family Search and maybe even if they're interested in, in all the U.S. records, census records, maybe even find my past. I'd like to urge them to go find these records, see what still exists, where it exists, and lay hands on copies. And I can tell you they're not at NARA. The 1880 US agricultural censuses were not at NARA. They weren't at the North Carolina State Archive. They were in the Spangler Carolina Room at the Mecklen Charlotte Mecklenburg Public Library. And you better bet they've got great people there, Drew.
- [58:11]
B
Yeah. So we're gonna, you know, I do. For those of you out there listening who said I've never met Drew in person, you've got a couple of opportunities coming up. And let me share what those are. So here we are. When we're recording this in middle to late January, you've got the opportunity to see me in Texas. You actually get to see me. I'm going to be speaking for the Genealogical Society of Kendall county, which is just north of San Antonio. This is Saturday, February 15th of 2025. It's the 2025 Hill Country Family History Seminar. It runs from nine in the morning till four in the afternoon. I'm going to be giving four talks. Two before lunch, two after, and the two before, just in case you want to know, are front page news. Talking about archived newspapers, not in the census. Try again. Organizing your genealogy research process and your ancestors fan club. So those are ones that I will be presenting in person in at the 21st annual Hill Country Family History Seminar in Kendall County. And you still have time to register and get the early registration discount, which ends on February 9th. Of course, we're talking in person. If you're a member of the Genealogical Society of Kendall county, it's $55. If you are not a member, it's $60. And there will be a late registration fee, so you could register at the door for a little bit more than that. And there's a lunch that they get from Schlotsky's, which will be $15. And I've already made my decision what I'm getting. And also if you want to be there and join the society, that you can get a discount on that too. So you want to go probably to their website to learn about that. And if you do plan to register for it, that's gskctx.org that's the genealogical Society of Kendall county in Texas. And so if you again, you get to see me up close and personal. The other place you can see me is going to be at Rootstech. So that's coming along in early March. And I'm going to be giving three talks. So these are not going to be recorded and they are not going to be broadcast. So to see these three talks you would have to be at RootsTech one on the March 6th. I I'm giving one on where is the book with my family in it, which I think it's about 8 in the morning one Friday, March 7, which is organizing your genealogy files. And that one is around I think 4:30 and I'm talking local time in in Salt Lake City. And finally important topic huh. Saturday is March 8th. I'm going to be speaking again that not in the census talk. So if you didn't get to see me do it in Texas, you can see me do it in Salt Lake City March 8th. That would be I think around 9:30 in the morning in Salt Lake City. So weather and of course the nice thing about particularly rootstech, if you're going to rootstek, planning to be there and there's still time for you to register for the in person and be there is that there will be lots of opportunities to see me not just during my talks and whatnot, but I will be around hanging out in the exhibit hall or or attending other sessions because I like to learn and there will be some other events like that. So if you're thinking about roots tech, don't forget that's coming up quickly. But it's in yeah. Early March and so be aware of that. So I just wanted to make sure people got to see where I'm going to be. I don't do a lot of traveling much anymore and many societies don't. They save a bit of money normally by doing all their stuff virtually. But those but Kendall County, Texas, I'm in person there. RootsTech, I'm in person there and I won't be traveling after that anywhere other than immediately around Tampa till Ohio Genealogical Society and that's much later in the several months later in the year. So that's what's keeping us busy. And George, we're of course going to have many more episodes of the the podcast and and we've been talking just.
- [63:04]
A
So you all know, we've been talking about the format of the podcast and and we like what we've been doing. We also like the Genealogy Connection podcast and.
- [63:17]
B
Yeah.
- [63:17]
A
And Drew, as you know, is he's, he's got a great voice for interviewing and he does a great job with interviews. So I'm urging him. We've got some names of people that we're we're contacting and we want to spend more time with those as well as our Traditional podcast.
- [63:37]
B
Yeah. I mean, if you haven't listened to us lately, keep in mind that in December I got to interview Brian Reinhart with Civil War Records.
- [63:47]
A
Yes.
- [63:48]
B
And Jarrett Ross, the Genie of Vlogger, who does stuff on Jewish research and DNA research. So I got to see Jarrett at RootsTech last year. So yeah, there'll be more of these folks. I'm trying both to bring back a few people that you've heard before, but maybe what they've been up to is writing a new book or something. And I'm going to try to bring in some people you have not heard before. So that's going to be fun. So I'm looking forward to a lot more episodes of Genealogy Connection. And so so with that, I'm looking.
- [64:24]
A
Forward to more episodes of Podcast. And I have to tell you the the news stories astound us. Every day we get more and more things going on. If you're looking for law enforcement closing cold cases using genealogical DNA resources, I urge you take a run over to Tik Tok. There are lots and lots of of film stories about that. But I, I love the, the emails that you send us with your problems and with your challenges because it makes Drew and me sit down and we'll do, we'll do a certain amount of research so we can better understand what you're talking about in your email. And certainly when we read it and put it out here, we urge you all to, to send us an email@genealogyguysgmail.com Send us an email if, if you have information that might help the person who wrote their email in, let us know. If you had some insights, let us know. And if you are a cousin to the person, let us know. We can put you all in touch with one another, but we, we love hearing from you. So make sure that you send us those emails.
- [65:46]
B
Absolutely. And with that, thanks for listening and we look forward to hoping you will listen to our future episodes. Until then, thanks. Take care of yourself. Bye Bye.