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Oh hello, and welcome to an episode of Smologies where we have taken a full length episode like this one from a few years back and condensed it and decursed it so it is safe for all ages and sensitive years who are interested in learning. There are more Smologies episodes available to download at Alleyward dot com slash Smologies, the links and the show notes.
Let's go, Oh hey, it's your fourth cousin twice removed ali Ward back with a familial historical of ologies. So you were here because people made babies with each other and out of all of the gammats.
You became a collection of molecules, and you're suspended in a web of family. Even a cockroach technically has grandparents and cousins.
Isn't that weird?
Your cat might have an uncle, And if you have children, gaze at them. They may have children who have children, and then those children's might not even know your name. Okay, genealogy.
So genealogy comes.
From the root word gena, meaning to give birth to you, like genesis, and genealogy is not the study of genetics and how DNA works. That's just called genetics. So this week's alogist, I suppose, has been in this field for three decades, starting as a personal passion that just consumed him into making it a job. And I was introduced to him by someone who worked to publish his latest book, which is called sixteen nineteen twenty Africans, and I immediately
ordered the book. I was so happy he was down to pop into a sound move in Portland to chat with me about his passion tracing family histories and chasing down records, and also about mystery novels and capes. Questions you should ask your relatives US history and how we treat the past, the joy of cracking a case, DNA
tests technology, and how everywhere you look there's family. So pull up a chair and absorb the stories of two time author Total Peach, distant relative to Tom Hanks and perhaps your relative as well.
Genealogist Steven tanksology, psnology, knowlogies.
And now you are a genealogist. Yes, and you've been a genealogist for quite a while now.
Yeah, I started like in eighty nine. Yeah, but I was like, God, how old was I? I was, oh, about thirty years old. And that's I got the bug. I was over at my dad's house that day and summer July, and he was watching the baseball game and he handed me this letter that he got from a cousin in Kansas, and he says, read this. And of course I didn't know anything about my family's history. You know, I'm just a kid growing up for Snority. And so
he shows me this letter. I started reading at the obituary of a newspaper, and all these relatives and names are listed in this obituary, and so my dad's side of the family, and I just said, wow, I don't know who these people are. And that's what got it started. Right there, I said, I got to find out who these people are. I got to find out about the history of my family. And so that's how it got started. Eighty nine.
Yeah, and what was the first thing you did? Back in eighty nine? We had libraries and microfiche and.
Do some system no microfilm readers, yeah, the micropace. Totally, no Internet, no clicking of the mouse. You know, it was old school.
All the way. In old school ways involved making the two to three hour drive from Portland to Seattle's National Archives. And no, you can't just jump on the Information super Highway. A lot of those ledgers and records haven't even been digitized. So genealogy research, like family trees, still has its roots in the past.
Well, when I started getting interested in this field and wanting to learn more, I had to learn the rules of the game and how the professional genealogist did it. And so I learned about census records, tax records, land deeds and all that sort of thing, courthouse records and just on and on and on museums. So I said, well, let me start with the census records. That sounds pretty easy enough. You know, every ten years, they have a census, and of course they put a privacy restriction on the
first seventy years they know least to the public. So the most recent census that was available to me at that time was, I believe, the nineteen twenty census. Yeah, nineteen twenty. I found my grandparents' names. I said, okay, I'm on the right track, and I just started working my way back. But it started getting tricky as you get,
you know, further back in time. And that's what even got me more excited, because you know, I'm like a detective, you know, like the Perry Mason, you know, you know, just started looking under the rocks, and so went to nineteen ten, a nineteen hundred census, and this was really getting exciting. I finally was able to locate my great grandparents,
knew their names, and it just blew me away. Found them in Kansas and found out that they had moved to Kansas from Mississippi under a different set of living as you as you know where I'm coming from, you know, slavery, you know, kind of the slavery thing. So that was a big chakaru.
But Stephen's first book was twenty thirteen's a key tree a descendants quest for his slave ancestors on the Eskridge plantations. And he has such an amazing way of writing about the process of genealogy through his own narrative, and how one discovery can kind of ignite another the.
Further you go back in time. I was able to find them on the eighteen eighty census. The eighteen ninety census, I guess was burned in a fire in nineteen twenty one. So that's yeah, that's something that you have to live with. The eighteen ninety census has gone forever.
Stephen told me that through the eighteen seventy census he discovered that his grandparents lived in a little town called duck Hill, Mississippi, hailing from what is now Montgomery County, the same place that Oprah Winfrey's family is from.
Small world, a big.
Deal, given that Oprah Winfrey is like the closest thing this country has had to a queen.
When I got to that point, I was just in heabit, you know. But the problem is, you know, you going beyond eighteen seventy is is the trick for you know, as far as African American genealogy, because as we all know, you know Abraham Lincoln, he ended slavery. We know that in eighteen sixty five or ageing sixty three. Some say because the Antancipation Proclamation, and like I had mentioned here earlier, I found my parents or my great grandparents on the
eighteen seventy census. That was the first time ali that African Americans were listed on a federal census for the first time as far as everyone, because it was five years after the end of the Civil War, and so now everyone was just you know, a regular citizen, you know, the way it was supposed to be. But if you want to go further back eighteen sixty, well then you're going back into the old system of things when the South was at its peak and the cotton was king
and all that. So ageen sixty that's when you really get into the struggle of trying to identify who your parents are and your ancestors. I should say. Now, for some people, they have what they call free people of color. I learned about that as I became a genealogist. There were some people who had the designation they were a free person of color, meaning they were emancipated or they were set free. A long time ago, maybe eighteen hundreds, and their family just were free all the way up
right through the Civil War. Everything. They were just cruising. They were free, and so they never had that problem of being found on the census record because their family had always been free.
Free people of color by the bye or heard you as free people of color, and just the distinction is a very painful reminder that they were the exception and not the rule.
So the further you go back in time, it just gets harder and harder to locate your family if your ancestry or your inheritance was slavery. But it can be done. It can be done.
You've had a long history of going into you musty bookshelves and microfesion all the way up to internet into DNA tests and you know, genealogy. The field expands, it seems like, you know, every year with technology. And yes, how has the advent of you know, consumer DNA tests changed what you do and how you research.
It's very interesting. It's a very interesting question. When I first took the test and got the results back and all these I had, like about I think it was like two thousand connections of people that were related to me and They did it from the highest ratio down to the lowest racial and so I could look at my top twenty, you know, and say, wow, these are really close to me.
So Stephen has taken two DNA tests and his father before he passed away, also took one, and their raw data led them to the s Gridge family name he was already familiar with, which validated the technology for him. He was like, Oh this works.
That did validate that that this this DNA stuff is for real because I did know their names and they did show up and they're on my mother's side, but not on my father's side showed up.
How does that work?
And I might have to look this up? But how does that work with like the mitochondrial eve and th coming down from the X chromosomes? Like do we tend to find out more about our our maternal sides when we take DNA tests? Then we do? Paternal mitochondrial eve side note has become the pop cultural name of the
most recent known maternal ancestor that we all share. Because mitochondrial DNA is only passed on through maternal lineage, scientists do not love this biblical name, as it's misleading from a narrative standpoint, Let's say, but this mitochondrial eve is what's called an mrca most recent common ancestor, and she
can vary depending on genetic discoveries. So if a more recent common ancestor lineage is discovered, for example, it's a different mitochondrial eve, but yes, all related, all of us wild.
For a female that wants to do genealogy and using the DNA tool, in order for them to learn more about their father's side, they need to try to see if they have a brother they can take the test, or their father or an uncle, you know, anyone on the paternal side.
This side note is called a Y chromosome test, and it's helpful to figure out, say, if two families with the same surname are indeed genetic relatives. So ladies, surprise your dad or brother with a DNA test. It's a gift that just keeps giving you information. And then of
course there's the mitochondrial DNA test you can do. Everyone has their mom's mitochondrial DNA and this is helpful because historically women's history can be erased or at least very illegibly smudged by the taking of surnames and I actually I told our listeners that I was going to be talking to you today and they sent in questions, Can I ask you some questions for so absolutely? Okay, great, like literally hundreds of questions. I know, everyone's so excited. Okay,
But before we dive into your genealogical queries. As you know, each episode we donate to a relevant charity, and one that Steven advocates for is black Past dot org. And Black Past is dedicated to providing a global audience with reliable and accurate information on the history of African America and people of African ancestry around the world, and they aim to promote greater understanding through this knowledge and to
generate constructive change in our society. They have over six thousand pages of genealogical resources and history available and again are at Blackpast dot org. So that donation was made possible by some sponsors of the show, which you may hear about. Now, okay, let's hop into your questions. What's the best place to start to actually look into family history?
What are some questions that we should be asking ourselves and our family and professionals like librarians in order to look into our history.
Great question. So the first thing to do when you want to get started on your genealogy is start assembling your family tree and ask questions from your family if they're still living, if your father who's still living, or your mother's still living, or grandparents, whoever's closest to you that's still alive, even your siblings. Sometimes your siblings have more of a recollection than you do. I know sometimes my brother be coming up with stuff I don't even remember.
He'd be telling me, yeah, and that's all.
Wow, I didn't know that.
So just sit down with a pen and paper and just start making a list on the paternal side, your father's side, and the maternal side your mother's side, and then just start going from there. List your parents first, and then list their parents. Put down where they were born obviously if you have that information where they died, If you can find the county name of where they were born or die, that even helps to find out what year they were married. Like your grandparents, find out
how did they meet each other. That's always been such a fascinating question to me is how did the grandparents meet each other or the great grandparents, how did they meet each other? And go to the family closet, you know, or wherever, whoever's the one that's holding the records in the family, you know, whatever blanks you have, fill in the blanks by interviewing your relatives. And when you interview, you know, someone that's really old, what does that mean?
Really old? Sometimes I feel I'm really old. But when you interview a parent or a grandparent, I even asked him, is it okay if I can record it, and that way you're not missing anything.
Yeah, that's great. And you also, like learn so much about your family. Who doesn't want to learn more about people's histories that are right around them. I think that's such a good bonding project too, you know. Yeah, So treat yourself to a nice new notebook, threw a pot of tea, and then sit down and interrogate a loved one gently.
Rachel C.
Wrote in she had a great question and said, I've heard that out of a group of three people, two black and one white, it is just as likely for a black and white person to be more related as it is for the two black individuals to be more closely related. If that is really the case, then what the heck is race anyway? And why does it persist in modern times.
It's so true. That is so true. I mean, race is just just a classification. We're all related. It's interesting the book that I just recent came out with sixteen nineteen twenty Africans. One of the points I mentioned in the book is that when those Africans came to Virginia in the year sixteen nineteen, they didn't come as slaves as we know it as slaves that come to our minds. They were indentured servants, and so they didn't have the
disigation of being slaves. So what that meant was indentured servants, just like those that were coming from England. They worked for a certain period of time. They were indentured to their employer, and so those Africans were indentured. Once they served their time, they were given their freedom, just like all the other indentured servants. Virginia wasn't until seventeen oh five is when the slavery laws, you know, the really hardened slavery laws came into being, was in the year
seventeen oh five. So what I also found out was that a lot of the African families that were free in the early part of our colonial history, they were intermarrying, the Irish, with the Native Americans, with the Germans. They were intermarrying, they were becoming a family. Many of the
American families that are in this country today. Whatever surname you want to use, Johnson, Smith, whatever, If your family's been in this country for you know, going back to colonial times or even the American Revolution times, chances are you are a mixed family. Chances are you're a mixed family, you know, in some way, shape or form, in one way or another in Native America or it's just a fact,
but that is not taught in our schools. It's not taught in our history books that there were at least two or three generations of free people before slavery laws even were passed. There was a lot of African families that were able to buy land. You can do that as a slave. You can buy land. They could sit
on juries, they could barter in trade. So your listener brings up a very good question there that chances are, if you have three people, and if you're white and the other one's black, you're probably just as much related as the two persons that are of the same race.
What is your favorite thing about genealogy? What just like fills you with butterflies or just makes you love it.
Wow. The thing that makes me always love genealogy is being able to go on the hunt, go on the search to try to find to find someone's brick wall, someone who you know. And what I mean by brick wall for any of your listeners is you just comeing to a point where you can't go any further in your research. You just you come to a brick wall. You just you've exhausted all your avenues and you just
don't know where to go. You just don't know who this person is, where, who their parents were, or whatever the question is. And I just love to take that brick wall and try to see if I can go through it. I just love that, you know, just taking on that challenge. And then once you're finding you're like, oh, yes, you know, it's just one. I love it.
Do you wear a cape? Do you have a big type and a cake?
I got a cape on right now, a big mustache right with the old pipe. Yeah, no nonologies.
So find the most wonderful smart people and ask them questions, and before you know it, you might be staying on a plane and discover the person next to you is your fifth step cousin in law four times removed, and you might know them the rest of your life. So to get copies of Stephen Hanks books, you can go to the links in the show notes or ink water Press. You can also find links to the sponsor URLs and blackpast dot org in the show notes. We are at
ologies on Twitter and Instagram. I'm at ali word with one L on both, so follow along. Let's be friends and in the interest of keeping things small around here, the full credits are listed in the show notes. More Sosmologies episodes are available at aliword dot com, slash smologies and before I go, I usually give you a tiny piece of advice, and this week it's that if you have something to do that you don't want to forget, what I like to do sometimes is pick up a
little pebble and put it in my pocket. That way, all day, I'll all the pebble and I'll think I gotta do that thing. At the end of the day, when you take off your pants, if there's a pebble in your pocket, you know had to do that thing. So sometimes a pebble in the pocket will help jog your memory. I hope that helps. Okay, until next time, smallogites, byebye jet.
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