← The Genealogy Guys Podcast & Genealogy Connection
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- [00:00]
George G. Morgan
Foreign.
- [00:09]
Drew Smith
Welcome to episode 435 of the Genealogy Guys Podcast, the longest running genealogy podcast on the planet. I'm your host Drew Smith and together with co host George G. Morgan, we cover news tips and solutions for the genealogist community. In this episode we bring you the Latest news from MyHeritage and vivid pics and family search. We share listener email about the 1926 Canadian Census for the Prairie Provinces, Essex County, New Jersey, newspapers, transcription errors made from original documents, newspapers.com communication decisions, Tennessee records, shrinking genealogical societies, determining parentage for children born out of wedlock, and finally, the meaning of a particular code in the 1860 U.S. federal Agricultural Census. And I talk about my past experience at the South Carolina Genealogical Society Summer Workshop in Columbia and my upcoming experience at the International association of Jewish genealogical societies in Fort Wayne, Indiana. 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 am joined as always by my co host, George G. Morgan. George, how are you today?
- [01:32]
George G. Morgan
Doing pretty good. Welcome everyone.
- [01:35]
Drew Smith
And you may have noticed we have not been doing episodes for a while, basically since Rootstech, and that's partially my fault and just that's because I took ill at RootsTech and unfortunately brought home Covid to George. And so we were ill for a couple weeks and then we were dealing with some other health related issues, but we're definitely closer to normal now. So we are looking forward. Well, for us, for us, for us, for us. And because, yeah, we want to, you know, this is, well, this is an exciting time for the podcast. So we're going to get out a couple more episodes certainly before I go out of town, which I'll be talking about at the end of this episode. But George, we're going to start with our news and I think you are up first.
- [02:25]
George G. Morgan
I are up first, yeah, Drew, as always, we have news from myheritage. And myheritage has been busy over the last several months, but certainly in the month of may they added 540 million historical records. And then in June they surpassed that substantially by adding another 1.25 billion historical records. And those include from France names and stories in newspapers. We now have a total of over 818 million records. We have Canada names and stories in newspapers, 70 million new records. And in France, tables of successions and absences from 1890 to 1970. And that collection has expanded to over 47 million records. And so that has been just a tremendous growth. And MyHeritage continues on with that. I do want to also highlight the fact that MyHeritage is happy to announce the release of a new historical record collection. On myheritage, I mentioned the names and stories in newspapers, but they added the collection included 731 million structured records extracted from French newspapers and they were created using advanced AI technology developed in house by to MyHeritage folks. And this is the first names and stories collection in a language other than English, following the 11.6 billion English language records previously published in 15 other collections. So that's really very, very exciting.
- [04:44]
Drew Smith
No, You've got something from vividpix.
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George G. Morgan
I do, I do. Our friends at vividpix, Rick Voight shared a few days ago, he shared a press release that said that the National Institute for dementia education, Vividpix and PocketRN announced on July 16 they are partnering to support dementia patients through PocketRN and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services called Guiding an Improved Dementia Experience Model, which is a no cost thing for qualifying Medicare beneficiaries. And so PocketRN provides no cost dementia care for Medicare members and their families and it offers virtual nursing support. And the guide program focuses on comprehensive coordinated dementia care. Now you're probably wondering, listeners, why vividpix is involved. Well, if you've been following us and you've been following vividpix over the years, you also know that vividpix and its program to deal with photographs and images, including things like document images that you can download from various websites, things that you have scanned and spend some time with that. But Rick has been involved in memory industries for four decades. Did you hear that? Four decades. He doesn't look that old. It must have started when he was 2. But it's an exciting time. So you could go to the vividpix website and learn more about this. I think it's very exciting and as always, I have to give a shout out of congratulations to vividpix for all the hard work they do to help our senior citizens.
- [07:15]
Drew Smith
Absolutely. And I had the opportunity to see Rick at the South Carolina Genealogical Society Summer Workshop, which I'll be talking about at the end of this episode. But it was great to see him and see of course he's based out of Charleston, so it's a bit of an easier travel for him than than some locations. So. So it was good to see Rick there. The last news we have is from. I always like to do my to end the News is from FamilySearch, starting with a release from about a little over a month ago. But it's still worth reporting on that. They the Family Search International in cooperation in in partnership with the Michigan State University, which has an online collection called Enslaved Peoples of the Historical Slave Trade, which is@enslaved.org.org and this is to give you the summary line. It is 2 million black Americans born prior to emancipation that are who are in the 1900 census. So this collection is designed to use 1900 United States federal census data to enhance the ability to discover formerly enslaved individuals, individuals and their families. And you can Access this at Enslaved.org or@FamilySearch.org and what they determined when they were putting this together was that it could identify about 2 million named people in the census who were likely enslaved before emancipation. And sometimes these censuses that were taken after 1863 are sometimes the first records that include these individuals by name. So first, FamilySearch worked with Brigham Young University's Record Linking Lab to identify the individuals in the census with the together with the images. And then you can search this@familysearch.org, but you can read a lot more about this. I want to just quote from Walter Hawthorne, who is a professor of history at Michigan State University and head of the Enslaved.org project. He says FamilySearch is the premier genealogical website in the world. It has an immense amount of searchable data about individuals who appear in a great range of primary sources, from censuses to baptismal records to birth records and more. And Slave.org is excited and honored that FamilySearch is publishing a complete data set through our project. This is a rare collaboration between a center that caters mostly to an academic audience and a nonprofit organization that caters to the general public. So clearly we can go on about that. But all you need to do, folks, is go to enslaved.org to learn more details and see how if you have ancestors or you're interested in people who were enslaved, then you probably want to go to enslaved.org and see what there might be. So great news from Michigan State University.
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George G. Morgan
George yeah, I would just like to add a comment here. Enslaved.org has over time has benefited from generous funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities. But effective on April 2nd of this year, their existing grants were terminated because of the President's February 19, 2005 or excuse me, 2025 executive order and mandating that the National Endowment for the Humanities eliminate all non statutory required activities and functions. And so when you go to visit the website@enslaved.org Please take a look at the item on the menu bar at the top. Support our mission and Learn more about how you might be able to help support their important work of documenting the lives of named enslaved individuals of African descent. This is an exciting collection, and it's something that should be continued and really, really needs to be supported by all of us in the genealogical community.
- [11:50]
Drew Smith
Absolutely. So to end our news segment, it's always to talk about new historical records on FamilySearch. This is the July 2025 update. And so although this material was probably added in the month of June, but we're reporting on it in July. 30 million new records from eight countries. We have 16 million Italian birth, marriage, and death records, which are civil registrations from 1804 to 1943, 5 million Brazil cemetery records from 1799 to 2024, and nearly 1 million records from the American Medical association of deceased physicians, 1864-1968. Other countries that have significant record additions in June are Belgium, Colombia, Ecuador, France, and Ukraine. So, of course, there's always a lot there, more than 20 billion historical records. George, you were going to comment?
- [12:58]
George G. Morgan
Yeah, I've had some physicians in my family tree going up in the Wilson and Alexander and Morgan lines, and I've used that collection. It's very, very interesting. And so when I saw that announcement, I went back and looked again, and it is exciting.
- [13:26]
Drew Smith
So that caps our news segment, and we are going to hear from our sponsors. So stay with us for that. And when we come back, we'll get to some listener email that we've received over the last couple months. So 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 RootsMatch accuser, why not download and install the free version RootsMagic Essentials? You can see what you've been missing by going to rootsmagic.com welcome back. You're listening to the Genealogy Guys podcast. And George, I think you have something about Saskatchewan.
- [15:26]
George G. Morgan
Oh, I do. In particular, we have an email here from Joanne. And in our last episode from MyHeritage, she had perked up right away on the mention of the 1926 Census of Manitoba, Alberta and Saskatchewan in Canada. She says, I didn't know there was such a census. My parents were both born in Saskatchewan in 1926, and sure enough, there they were in their very first censuses taken on the 1st of June, 1926. My mother was 3/12 or 3 months old and there was confusion around my dad, who had just been born on 21st May. Two months had been entered, then crossed out and what looks like 12 or 13 written over was also useful in telling me when my American born maternal grandmother had become a naturalized Canadian citizen. Oh, that's great. That's a great clue. And she had taught school in Saskatchewan prior to her marriage and it now appears she was Canadian before she began teaching school. Great information, so delightful to see. Thanks for all you do and hope you are both now fully recovered from the RootsTech quote unquote gift.
- [17:02]
Drew Smith
Yes, yes, that part is done. Thank you. Oh boy. That's the first time George and I had ever had Covid. So a little bit of a surprise. Yeah, but hopefully never again. Okay, let's move from Saskatchewan to New Jersey, specifically Essex. That's a move from Essex County, New Jersey, from Judy, who says, hi guys. Judy from New Jersey here. Hope this email finds you well. Just a quick note. Drew, tell your brother she's talking about my brother Jeff, if he doesn't already know that. Many of the Essex County, New Jersey newspapers are at the Newark Public Library. My biggest find is the Newark News, which can be searched online. I'm still checking on East Orange newspapers. I'm thinking I may have to check microfilm at the East Orange Public Library. Be well, Judy. Thank you. Judy and I have been looking a lot at newspapers in New Jersey, particularly in places where my direct ancestors were. Now, of course, Essex county is where Newark is and where the oranges are. So again, that's exactly where my father grew up and where I and my brother Jeff were born in Essex County. And I've been using a number of the databases, newspaper databases, and looking at issues of the Newark, some of the Newark newspapers, because I've been getting ready for a presentation which I'll talk about at the end of this episode. So. But thanks, Judy. That's some good information. Oh, and I have something else on speaking of newspapers. Newspapers.com this is from Laura in Springfield, Virginia. Laura says, hi, Drew and George. I want to share some issues I've been having with Newspapers.com and their response to my questions in case you think other listeners might be interested. And I should say Laura sent this on May 28, so it may have all been resolved, but it raises some interesting points. So Laura goes on to say, for nearly a week I'd been experiencing daily issues with newspapers.com search. A search will return hundreds of results and then a refresh of the page will return half that number or even no results. And or clicking on the show more results button doesn't actually return any additional results. Eventually, I sent an email to support about the issue, and here's the response I received. Hello, thank you for contacting newspapers.com we are aware of the issue with the search and currently working on a fix. Thank you for your patience. And that's from newspapers.comsupport okay, so Laura goes on to say, which great. They're working on fixing the problem. Except nowhere on this website is there an indication that there's a problem that they're working on and that search might not currently be reliable. There is a status page. It's on their blog, blog.newspapers.com status and it currently says everything is fine. This is what I find really problematic. I understand that complicated databases and websites are going to periodically have issues that they need to fix, but when researchers are relying on the accuracy of a site, it's important to know that it's not functioning properly. Anyway, I just want to share as a kind of psa. Thanks for the wonderful work you all do. I appreciate the podcast so much. Best Laura.
- [20:22]
George G. Morgan
Yes, George, it's great to know that. I just want to pause for a couple of minutes here, if you don't mind, and share with our listeners the fact that if they are not using newspapers, digitized newspapers online, they are missing the boat, as it were. With the introduction of artificial intelligence software and indexing, we've seen Huge numbers of all kinds of records being indexed. And so the quantities, the quality and the speed at which these things are being digitized by vjooqic is tremendous. Now, that certainly applies to, let's say the, the most recently released census records. But as I mentioned at the top of the program, myheritage has been, has certainly been using AI to, to work with the French newspapers. But I can tell you that in my own experience, I have spent a huge amount of time working on newspaper hints from, let's say, oldnews.com which is a product of myheritage. And I cannot tell you how much information above and beyond things like marriage announcements and obituaries, you can find. You can find all kinds of human interest stories that add context to and life events to your ancestors. And so I want to tell you, if you are not working with newspapers, you need to get on the stick.
- [22:16]
Drew Smith
Okay, well, let me go back and address Laura's point. And I'm going to come at it from two directions, as it were. And one is, Laura, you're right. It is important, I think, for companies that provide us with services, websites that do, to let us know when they're experiencing issues. It would be really nice if they updated their blogs for status. If they know they're working on a problem that they're aware of, it can be helpful. However, I will play the other side of this because I worked in IT and certainly worked with libraries, such as large research libraries, to provide info. And sometimes we would have discussions, should we notify people of this problem or not? Sometimes we chose not to because we thought we were going to get it fixed pretty quickly and didn't want to kind of worry people unnecessarily if we thought it was all going to get resolved. So there was almost not a point. Secondly, however, we also thought, well, if this is going to take a while, and we didn't always know, sometimes when you're working on a database problem, you don't know how long it's going to take. So you have to decide, is it worth notifying people of a problem or not? Because here's the downside, here's the downside. If you do say there's a problem, you're working on it. Sometimes people unfortunately see everything they're doing wrong or everything they're doing as being caused by that problem. In other words, it's. They're not using the site quite right and as a result, they're going to blame it on the site because they see this message, oh, not everything is working perfectly. We're working on the problem. So it is a tough situation to be in if you are providing a site and you're trying to decide should we say something or not?
- [24:12]
George G. Morgan
George well, I think that's, that's part of the business world in general is you don't want to necessarily point out your, your weaknesses or your flaws or your problems because you don't want to shake the, the consumer's confidence at using your products or services.
- [24:31]
Drew Smith
Right.
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George G. Morgan
And so there's, there's always discussions about whether you make things public or not. And I think there is a responsibility of, of companies to make knowledge known and not necessarily to issue a grand announcement, but maybe, you know, maybe just a quick comment and saying we're working, we're working on, on enhancing or correcting or, or building on such and such a product. Right.
- [25:13]
Drew Smith
So anyway, I, I, I understand, Laura, your viewpoint's well taken, but at the same time I also understand that Newspapers.com might not have put something up for those reasons. But I guess that was back in May. I'd like maybe you can let us know. Did it all get resolved? Is everything working to your satisfaction? Because in the long term, that's what we all want. We want our websites to work the way we need them to work, which is as good as possible. So, so with that, I think, George, I accidentally took some things out of order, but you're going to talk about Tennessee.
- [25:50]
George G. Morgan
Well, I have an email here from Jana and she also is addressing something we discussed in the last episode and she said I'm a first time responder and I have avidly listened to and learned from your podcast for several years. I'm so glad you're both recovered and are back to work. In response to Donna's comments about Tennessee records, here are a couple of thoughts. I have learned a lot while working on my East Tennessee genealogy For the last several years, almost all of my ancestors since the American Revolution came through or remained in this area. I've often found that if I can find a, can't find a child, a sibling or parent in local records, they either moved farther south to Georgia, then maybe on to Texas, or west to Arkansas and Missouri. Of course, there are those unfortunate burned courthouses to deal with. And she said best of luck to Donna and thank you so much for your excellent podcast. And Janet, you're absolutely right and I've been, I've recently finished a biography of one of the people in my ancestry from the Revolutionary War period. And I, I've learned where they came from went from Scotland to Ireland and then they immigrated to Pennsylvania, to Maryland, to Pennsylvania again back to Maryland and then south to the Carolinas. And it's fascinating to read about the migration patterns for particular groups of people. So remember that if you identify that kind of pattern with some of your own ancestors, start considering migrations as another way to attack those missing individuals.
- [28:06]
Drew Smith
Okay. The next email is from about two weeks ago. Ken sent us this message. For the past years I've been doing research for the suns of the American Revolution and for local studies. I have also been doing corrections on census reports and military documents from the Revolutionary War. And later, I have found many times where the transcribing of records, especially those prior to the 1850s, has had errors. Many of these come from automated procedures and not from transcriptions made by individuals. Just a thought about warning those looking at this type of record and the need to expand searches to include the possibility of names or places being misread and the need to look at original files if what is being found is not what was expected. Ken, your point's a good point because we always tell people, just don't depend on only on indexes. And certainly if originals are still available, don't depend only on indexes. And the same thing for transcriptions, don't if the originals are available, go back and look. Because yes, people systems make mistakes. You know, when we're getting into AI, more and more they will make AI will make mistakes. But even volunteer transcribers and indexers make mistakes. So we have the benefit sometimes as we're looking at the original records and then at the indexes or transcriptions, we we know what the original name was and the original place was. They are part of our families. And so we see how someone totally unfamiliar with that place or family didn't understand what that word or name was. So it's part of our job as researchers and historical researchers to see if we can fix that. Update transcriptions and indexes. Some websites. Let us do that and do your best. So thank you, Kim, for the point. We do encourage all of our listeners who have the opportunity to do so is to when you find errors in anything in transcribing, I'm thinking censuses particularly, but they're not the only thing is go in and make corrections and explain why, you know, your correction is a correction to what was done. Because again, yes, people make mistakes and systems do too. GEORGE I think you have something about societies and North Carolina.
- [30:38]
George G. Morgan
Well, it's societies in general. Drew yeah. And Paula has written us an email and she said in regards to societies dying, I've been having a monthly meeting. It is noted in on Conference Keeper. If you're not familiar with that, that's an online facility that is used to announce society meetings, conferences and lots of things. But she says it's noted on Conference Keeper that meets the last Wednesday of the month. Started this in January for my own societies. I'm on the board of the Stanley County, North Carolina Genealogical Society and it is dying a slow death. I wanted to have a discussion with others, get ideas and support other people and societies. I have a growing list of ideas of online and in person and then learning about the background of societies and the discussions we're having. When you only have 33 members this year, you are limited with the in person meetings and trying to come up with topics when you're doing them in house versus having guests for you can't necessarily afford them. Paula, this is a long standing problem and certainly people have joined societies over the decades and they have stayed with societies. They've volunteered their time or they've they've just joined to learn more about that area or about the society or or other topics. The Federation of Genealogical Societies for many years serve the genealogical community to try to invest societies with ideas and methodologies to enhance their ability to be societies and to draw new members and to support their members. When the Federation became part of the National Genealogical Society a few years ago, NGS assumed the role of incorporating society education and management methodologies in in their programs. So I would certainly suggest that you go to the NGS website, do some investigation, make contact with them and ask them how they how they can provide you with information and support and maybe forums to discuss the kinds of problems that you're having. But you've got a real problem in these societies. As people join, people leave, people grow older. So we need to do whatever we can to support our societies. Thanks for your email and to the
- [34:08]
Drew Smith
next to the last item I think we have for today is from Mary. I think she's in Massachusetts. She sent this just a couple weeks ago. Hi, I'm a first time listener and I'm really enjoying your podcast and looking forward to going back over past episodes. Clearly you are both very knowledgeable about this subject. I've been interested in genealogy since I was a young child and have been actively researching my family history for many years. The question I have for you is do you have any advice on determining parentage for an illegitimate ancestor? In my case it is my great grandmother who was born illegitimate in Poland. This was in the Austrian Hungarian partition in 1884. Actually, her brother, born in 1881 and sister in 1887 were also fatherless. Quite unusual for a conservative Catholic family in that time and place. I have hired a professional genealogist in Poland who has been fabulous. Unfortunately, it seems there are just no paper records to indicate who my great, great grandfather may be. He did say in these situations it was mainly the maids having the children of their employers. I've uploaded my DNA to Ancestry in the hopes that may help. Oh, I assume Mary, you mean you took an ancestry DNA test because you can't upload from another site, but I'm assuming that's what you meant. And I've spoken with older family members for any oral history which has given me a prime suspect. Count Ferdinand Hompesch. That's H O M P E S C H. And who is the landowner where my family was from. Was claimed to be a relative of ours, but no corroborating evidence. Do you have any advice on what else I can be doing to solve my genealogy mystery? Or do you have any episodes addressing illegitimate births that you can point me in the direction of? Thank you for any help. As this issue has been driving me crazy for years, I feel that I must know, and that's Mary. Mary, we all do. We all must know about our ancestors. And yeah, that it does get more complicated when we have these cases of not civilly recorded births and so forth. So let's talk about that. And you already done what I would have said you need to do. You need to test with Ancestry you didn't mention in the email. So this I'll. We'll talk about this if there are any other descendants, first of all, of your great grandmother who may also test. Because it can be helpful if you get other people to test who are descendants. They may match people that you don't match. Just as it works out whether it's your siblings that can. You can get to test whether you have any aunts and uncles and so forth. So that's what I would do next if you, you know, have. Haven't exhausted that option. Also make sure your tests are uploaded, downloaded from Ancestry and then maybe uploaded to other Sites such as MyHeritage or Family Tree DNA are the two that I would recommend off the top. You may also want to consider yourself testing with 23andMe because that's another batch of people who may never have tested with Ancestry and as a result you may find some matches there so that's the first thing. And the other thing, I don't know how recently you've played with ancestry, but ancestry has been adding some new features and this is a good time to mention those that they've added clusters where you go in and it actually takes your batches, whatever matches you have that are in a certain range of Centimorgans. So they have to be somewhat close, not, you know, but not too close. And it puts them into groups. And so that may signal that you. There's a group of people you're matching with that maybe you're not sure how they're related to you because they don't seem to appear in the document. So I'm gonna, as I said, follow, follow the DNA, you know, check out some of the websites, Facebook. We certainly have a number of really good groups to talk about your DNA, such as genetic genealogy tips and techniques. That's just one, but that's a good one. The other thing you mentioned that your great grandmother had a brother and a sister. And I don't know if you weren't sure if I guess if that was the same father or not, but I would certainly see about finding if you can identify any descendants of that brother and of that sister to see have they tested. And again, those might help too. If they all have the same father, that'd be the first thing to do. So, yeah, without records, if you've already hired a professional and they just say that's about all we can do here with records. I think DNA is going to be your only solution, assuming that it can be solved that way also. And just another thing I don't know that you mentioned this is to just, have you done a traditional genealogical research on this possible employer to see if they have any living descendants that are documented? Because you would want to see if you can get those folks to test so that you can see if you match them or not. So that would be the next thing I would recommend you do is work up something on this particular landowner, find out all the descendants, find out all the living descendants and get in contact with them and say, hey, I'm trying to, you know, I'm researching this problem. Would you be willing you. You may have to pay for their test, it depends. But since you must know, that might be the only way to go. So, Mary, let me know. I hope you make some progress on that. I hope the clustering feature on ancestry helps you a little bit. That could be good too. So good luck to you on that. And George, we have one final News item or at least I'm sorry, email question. And this is from Lisa.
- [40:06]
George G. Morgan
And we've both been looking at this one.
- [40:08]
Drew Smith
We've both been looking at because George is knows a lot about the agricultural censuses. These were done in the United States during certain years so that the United States government could figure out what the heck people were producing on their farms. And so Lisa says. Greetings. I have an agricultural schedule question for you. In the 1860 census, item 44 relates to molasses production. The enumerator was told to note production for sorghum with an S and maple with an M. Source molasses. Okay. My relatives in Illinois along with others, noted cc, what would this mean? My best guess is corn cob. I don't. Do you know the answer? Thank you. Now, first of all, we are going to throw this out to our listeners because we aren't sure, but I think maybe some of our listeners who have agricultural ancestors might know. You're right. The instructions were if you produced a molasses, you were supposed to indicate. The enumerator was supposed to indicate with an S or an M whether it was from sorghum or from maple.
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George G. Morgan
And how much.
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Drew Smith
Well, yes, the amount, of course, is part of all this too, because that's what we're doing here. We're producing and trying to figure out what's the world United States production of everything. Okay, but the question is why would it say C? Well, there are three possibilities. You have to understand that molasses can come from sorghum or come from maple. But the third is cane, which was, I guess, sort of the default. Now, arguably the enumerator was supposed to leave it blank. I think if it wasn't from sorghum, but if it wasn't from maple. But they might have felt they didn't like to leave things blank or they wanted to make sure people realized no, they knew where it came from and it wasn't sorghum and it wasn't maple. It might have meant Cain and that the cc, but we don't know. I mean that's something we've been doing a little digging on. We don't know yet. So we think we probably among our listeners, our many, many listeners, that one of you might know what maybe you know, your ancestors produce molasses and you can find them in the agricultural census for that year and see does it say cc? And if it does, do you know what it means? I mean, that would be great. So it's a very interesting question and we are so glad you asked it. And we hope we will come back to you with an answer in a future episode. So we're not going to forget it. So, you know, we want to know where this molasses is coming from. So. All right. And on that note, George, I think we're going to move to just. Well, I've been kind of busy, you know, and you've been working on your family, obviously, the Alexanders. Yes, he's been reading all about his Alexanders and other people newspaper stories. Speaking of newspapers. Well, I'll come back to the newspapers. That's been fascinating too. So I did go to South Carolina to the genealogical, the state society's annual summer workshop, which I, George was with me last year.
- [43:16]
George G. Morgan
Yep.
- [43:17]
Drew Smith
But this year it was just me and I went up there and it's two day workshop and then I went over and visited family and friends in Newberry, South Carolina and went to the public library to look and do some genealogy. So of course I do that. Well, anyway, the point is I had a great time. Two amazing things happened in addition to my getting to speak. Oh, and by the way, Lisa Louise Cook was speaking. She has been, she's been out of speaking for a little while due to some health reasons. She is back. She looks great. She was speaking and it was so good to see Lisa. Secondly, I met a gentleman who's on the staff of the Spartanburg County Public Library for local history and as we just talked and he's, he's done some background research since then. He and I apparently are both descended from Nathan Boddy senior. So I think we're like fourth cousins a couple of times removed. I, I'll have to go back and look at it. But, but that was exciting to meet a relative because I, you know, I figured when you go to a, when your mother's, all your mother's family's from South Carolina and you go to a South Carolina Genealogical Society conference or workshop, you expect you're going to run into some. So that was really cool. What you don't expect is to have somebody come up to you and tell you. And her name is Barbara and she was in my high school graduating class. She did not go to the reunion last year where I went to the 50th high school reunion. So I had not seen Barbara in 51 years. Barbara looked wonderful. She was so it was so much fun to see her. I'm so glad she's working on her genealogy. If Barbara, you're listening to this again, enjoyed seeing you so much. And what can I say it was just an unusual experience, both of those things happening. You never know what might happen at a genealogy conference. And the other conference that's coming up very soon in just the next two weeks is I'm going to be. And if y' all are going to be there, please find me. I will be at the International association of Jewish Genealogical Society's annual conference. This one's in Fort Wayne, Indiana. Yes. You know where that is? That's the place where the Allen County Public Library and its genealogy center is located. So I'm going to be getting the opportunity. I have not been there in quite a few years, George. I don't even know the last time we were both there. And I'm going to do some research on my family, but I'm speaking and I'm doing a talk on newspapers. Okay. And it's one I've done before and, and on. On finding newspapers digitally or newspapers that might be on microfilm or even physically still existence on paper.
- [46:11]
George G. Morgan
But you've been. You've been working hard to update this presentation and.
- [46:17]
Drew Smith
Absolutely. Because first of all, there. A few things change over time. New companies come in, like old news come into it that were not in it before. Although the old news has been out there now about a little over a year, I think. But that. Yeah, well, it was announced at Rootstech, like a year so ago. A couple years. Yeah. But the cool thing is, so I started looking for my Jewish roots. I. I have that on my paternal grandmother's side. And I started looking for the surname because I had not really done any digging on that name lately. The name is Wine Glass. And I knew that my grandmother had converted to Catholicism to marry my Irish Catholic grandfather. And I even knew based on her Social Security application that she had taken the name. She was born Rachel. She took the name Elizabeth Concepta to. As her Catholic name. And I was shocked when I found a news story from two months before her marriage to my grandfather that she was one of the 300. It said children, but clearly there were some adults involved too. 300 children who had been confirmed by the bishop in Newark. And she. Her name was the next to the last name on the entire list. And there was Elizabeth Concepto, Wine Glass. And I was like, oh, my gosh. So I now know the date on which she was confirmed. I haven't found. I haven't contacted the church to find a baptism. A baptismal record yet. But let's just say I was startled that there. There she was. So you never know. And I even looked for. And Found another of my relatives, my great grandfather's sister died. I think she died. And I found a reference to her death in the newspaper that I have before. So I now had the date of her death, which I only I did not know. So newspapers, George says, yeah, do newspapers.
- [48:25]
George G. Morgan
You.
- [48:25]
Drew Smith
You're going to find people you can. Now, now, I understand that it's more difficult when you're dealing with names like Smith and Morgan. You're going to have to use other names, you're going to have to use locations, you're going to have to use a lot of stuff. But if you have rare names like wine Glass, you can kind of get away with, you know, just using Wine Glass up to a point. So, yeah, those were my exciting discoveries just in the last week when I was updating that talk for Fort Wayne. So that's exciting. But if you see me in Fort Wayne, please come up and say hi as a listener, because I always love to see our listeners and I do see them when I go to conferences. And so that's. That's fun. It's a lot of fun, George. Anything else we need to share in this episode other than just we thank you all for messages sent to us wishing us well. We are glad to be back with you. We intend to keep doing that, although there will be some announcements in the next couple months. We're going to talk about some changes we might deal with, but it doesn't that don't worry, there will still be a podcast that you're going to enjoy. Anything, George?
- [49:37]
George G. Morgan
I don't think so. We've covered a lot here today, but I want to thank everyone who's been so supportive and who continues to bear with us. We've gotten a number of emails over time saying that they missed our podcast or they were wishing us well. And we certainly appreciate those.
- [50:00]
Drew Smith
We do.
- [50:00]
George G. Morgan
And we want to continue hearing from you.
- [50:03]
Drew Smith
And you know how we hear from you. There's a couple of ways, but there's one really good way, and that is to send email to genealogyguysmail.com and we look at each of those and we share as many as we can work it out in future podcasts, you know, and respond directly sometimes, depending on what the question is. So, again, yes, please write us. We want to know your. We know you're out there and I know that you're listening. But by when you send us email with a question, a comment, an update, maybe you can figure out what CC means on an ag census from Molasses. Whatever you tell us. First of all that you're listening to us, and that's why we do the podcast, because we care about you as our listeners, and we want to share what we know and share our questions and. And issues and problems with you. So take care, everybody. George and I will be talking to you again soon. Have good research luck, and until then,
- [51:06]
George G. Morgan
bye bye, happy hunting. Bye bye.