 It is Wednesday, the day we do live casts every evening now, unless it is morning time for you. And how is everybody? I hope everybody's doing well. It is the end of Thomas' week. Everybody's been hard at work. I know everybody is a great week. And just so, in case some people don't know who we are, I have myself and Aowyn who are WikiTree team members. And then we have Christine, who was your team captain, Thomas. Yes. And we have Mindy over there, who was the WikiTree- Hey Mindy. Coordinator. And then we have Thomas, who was Thomas that was her week. I hope he is. And he's in the middle there. Catherine, she's muted herself. I know she can hear us, but Catherine, who we're starting this week, pretty much right now is kind of the start of her week. Great. So, and then for those of you who might not know what WikiTree is, I don't know. What is Aowyn? What is WikiTree? Oh, let me tell you all about it. So WikiTree is a community of genealogists who are working together on a single family tree. So unlike a lot of other genealogy sites where you build your tree over here and I build my tree over here. And we never talk to each other despite sharing numerous deep ancestors on WikiTree. When we get to a common ancestor, we get to work together to find information and share sources and photos and resolve problems. So in other words, we collaborate to grow an accurate single family tree that connects us all. And you get all of that for the very excellent price of free. That's my favorite price for everything. Free. And then the WikiTree challenge is our year long event where each week we take on a genealogy guest star. For example, we just did Thomas and the next this week we're doing Catherine and our goal is to make their tree more accurate and complete than it is anywhere else. And that's our goal. So this challenge is part of our year of accuracy. And our goal is to improve our overall accuracy on WikiTree and also to make friends. And we've made so many friends so far. It's been great. And that's the WikiTree challenge and WikiTree and it's been fabulous. Sarah. I just really wanted to quickly introduce Mindy. Oh, I didn't, I thought I did introduce Mindy. Hi Mindy. Mindy is our overall challenge coordinator. So she like basically is coordinator. I work really hard. She does. She does a good job. So. And now she can do more work right now. Yep. Okay. Let's go ahead and talk a little bit about the collaboration. And of course, this is one of the best things I think about WikiTree is that we get together people from all over the world and we work together. Now for the challenge itself, we have the spreadsheet where we go and we put the profile that we're working on so that somebody else isn't wasting their time working on the same one. You know, you get 40 people working on a set of somebody's branches and you don't wanna be tripping all over each other. And then we have the G2G post which you see on the right. That's where we put discoveries. If they found a brick wall, if they get the all important bounty points which I'll explain shortly and ask questions if they need help. And then the other way is Discord. And this gets really hopping sometimes. We all get in there. This is our real time chat. So we go in there and if somebody says, hey, can somebody else look? Do they have a subscription in these papers? I need to know if this person has an obituary or I need a second set of eyes on this document or just anything. Somebody doesn't wanna write a biography. Hey, I put a ton of sources on this profile. Can you write a biography? Christine says, no, that's not how it works. But actually it does. We all get a lot of help from each other. We learn from each other and we have all made a lot of friends already this year. I don't know if it's been, but yeah. Writing actual biographies, that's not my cup of tea. We're cleaning GEDCOM junk. We had that discussion this week too. So yeah, lots of ways to collaborate. Look, it's you. Tops. Yes, it is. It's Thomas. Good job, Sarah. Good job. Yeah. This would be, you haven't got any of our fabulous team here yet, Thomas. No, I haven't. These were our MVPs, most valuable players for the week. So we have Maddie Hardman, Rosalie Neve, Karen Lowe, Cheryl Hess, and Annette Pazuti. They were just rocking it. And Maddie Hardman, of course, got the highest amount of points. This week, she was just on fire. It's great. This is our statistic sheet. And the system does keep track of most of the points individually, but it kind of tells us where everybody is at. So we had 348 points this week, which means 14 created direct ancestors for you. And we created 204 nuclear family members. So that means siblings, children. Right. For the bounty points, those are worth 10 points apiece every time we break down a brick wall. So if you didn't have it on your tree and we find it, somebody gets points for that. And our fabulous people got 130 points total. That's a lot of brick walls broken down. Yeah, profiles edited, 659 unique profiles were edited. And then for the total edits, every time somebody added sources or made a change to your profile, 3,102 edits for this week. Just on your branches. I mean, can you imagine the power of that? Everybody working together like that, it's crazy. It's incredible to watch. Yeah, yeah. No, well, my research I know goes back in New York Dutch, 1641 in New York. So it's long route. So that, in a way, this doesn't surprise me. So that's great. We had, they did a good job on your staff. So I guess we'll start. This is, we started with, we kind of just are based ourselves with your great grandparents. We kind of did, worked on each great grandparents line. So it's kind of more or less how we started. Yeah. Just a overall. Okay. And Christine, your captain who mostly, probably knows your family maybe better than you. Probably, yes, yeah. I reckon now she does. I don't want her anymore. We did have a really great week this week. We broke down a lot of brick walls. This was fantastic. Great. The one brick wall that we did find was Almyra's mother's maiden name. That's the tough one, yes, yeah. No, not at all. She's a freer. Oh really, okay. Okay, she's a freer. Well, that doesn't surprise me. We don't like unique surnames in this tree. We just love to have. But yeah, John, what you need to understand, Christine, is the geographic of this area. No, I understand that it was a small community that I totally get how. In the mountains, yeah, in the mountains. So yeah, we have that, I have that in my tree as well back in generations. It doesn't take much. It was just kind of, it started to get comical every time that we would find somebody and they would be like the same. Yeah, day-o, day-o, freer, yeah, one of those names, yeah. So yeah, we found her last name and now she's moved up. And then that makes her third cousins with Aunt. Great, and I see she's from Never Sync, which is where I know, I know that's right where I grew up. So yeah, wow, that's great. And then they added a whole bunch of other ancestors for her as well after finding this name. Yeah, because it's a Huguenot name and it's long roots on the Huguenot, so. So we weren't able to do anything with William Wood. But that still remains a brick wall, but yeah. Okay, great, that's great. And then on Margaret's side, we found Georgiana's mother's name, which was Rusa. Okay, yeah, Rusa, yeah. Another common name in your tree. Yes, it is. Unfortunately, we weren't able to find, connect her dad to the big Rusa tree. So that still remains a brick wall. But her mother, her mother's line, we connected up and her mother's line goes back many generations now. Wow. And it just kind of exploded. That's great. Yeah, I see the last name, Quick. Quick is a Dutch name, P-O-I-C, yeah. Wow, that's great. We've got Janssen's and stuff. Yeah, yeah. So you can go through all of that. Yeah, no, I'm looking at it. Yeah, but no, this is great. This is great. Yeah, a lot of this was, you know, once they found out somebody's last name, then it was already on Weakie Tree, so it's just kind of like- Yeah, and that did actually make it a lot easier to start connecting because you didn't have to create more profiles. You just connected to a family that was already there. Exactly, yeah, that's great. Wow. Very cool. And then, oh yeah, Elizabeth. Charles Simpson's wife. We found her father's name. Oh, Simpson without a P, okay. Well, that's the way- Yeah, S-I-M-S-O-N, okay. That's the way it was written in the will. Good, good, okay. Whether or not that was accurate. Yeah, yeah, okay, great. More than one source, so. Yeah, okay. Perfect. Oh, we don't have her mother's name, but- Mm-hmm. Maybe you've got lots of siblings there for Elizabeth. Yeah, yeah. And DeVoe, DeVoe was actually, it's a fairly common name up there in Solitude County now, so, yeah. Oh, and I see that Catherine married a friar. Yes. And that shocks me, it just shocks me. That's so shocking. Yeah, yeah. And then there's another wood in there too. I just saw that too, yeah. Yeah, there's been a lot going on this week. I'm not completely caught up with everything. And the other thing to keep in mind too, not only is it a small isolated area, but some of those names were just so common, so it's like looking for Smith or Jones in the United States. Right. There's gonna be a lot of them, they aren't necessarily cousins. Exactly, yeah, that's right. And they wouldn't necessarily know that they were cousins either. I mean, once you get three or four generations away, they're like, who knows, right? Yeah, yeah. So, yeah. It's great. Seeing you around, Nina. Yeah. I think, and people were talking too, I can't remember, there was no church. I feel like somebody was saying... This is what happened with the Huguenots. The Huguenots assimilated into the local culture usually within two generations. They weren't like the Amish or the Anabaptists where they had their own identity. So basically, they gave up on their own church and joined the Dutch reform church, you know? So that doesn't surprise me really. So... Somebody said there was no actual church to go to until... Yeah, yeah, exactly. There wasn't. Right, there wasn't, and also the ministers, it was a circuit ministry. So they'd come by every six weeks and marry people or baptize people. Yeah. No, we had that in Ontario as well with the Wesleyan Methodists. So I had a lot of that in my family, so. Yeah. Yeah, that's great. Checking through the bush, trying not to get eaten by something. Yeah. So now it's gone. Let's get those up here. John Slattery here, this doesn't surprise me. So yeah, we found records on Martin, but not his parents. But they were able to break through on the Lehighs. Oh my gosh, you did find this. Wow, where was this from? The newspaper, do you know? I'm sure it will be in his profile. You will see this on yourself. Okay, thank you. Okay, no, I've been looking for this. I mean, basically what happened, Martin Slattery and his wife, Margaret Lehigh, I knew that he died first. And then by the 1900 census, all six of their kids are living with her brother. Yeah, so she died three years after him. And I think there was a correction to his death date as well. But yeah, it's all written out in his profile and you can read up on that actual legend. That's great, yeah. Died by rock. Yeah. Oh. Yeah. So on, then we found, I believe Julia was an unknown. So we found her last name, which is Leith and her parents, Dennis and Mary. Right, right. Yep, that makes sense. And lots of names on them as well. Just so you know, going back to Leith, I have this theory that it's actually a French name, Leith, and so I've been trying to prove that because it is so unusual to search for Lehigh. And I think that its origins are French and it was L apostrophe HIV or something like that. So, yeah. Great. Thomas, she was from Ireland, so. Right, yeah. Who called my name? It was me. I did, I guess. I just pulled up the profile, but it looks like that came from the Middletown Daily Argus. Okay, the Argus, yeah. Okay, it's no longer exists. Yeah, that's good to know. Okay. But they have its source there. You can find the page in the issue. Great, thank you. Wow. Yeah. Yeah. And then we move on to Richard Heneberg. So, we got a couple of brick walls here. So, this was actually, before I think we had finished our live cast within 30 minutes, Frank, had already discovered the correct parents. Okay. And created profiles for them. That's great. And then we found Magdalena's father's name as well. Right, right. Okay, cool. That's great. Okay. So, little steps, but. Yeah, yeah, no, this is good. This is good, yeah. And when people couldn't move up anymore, they started working on the siblings. So, there's probably piles and piles of stuff to leave in all the siblings profiles. Yeah, that's great. And then Francis. So, Anna Marie Herring. Right. We had her parents as France Herring and Anna Manch, I think was how it was spelled. Yeah. And after some research there, we discovered that with the correct spelling of the surnames on both of her parents, that we actually already had profiles in WikiTree for them. Right. And we're able to connect them and then extend their lines. Right, great. Okay. So, everything in that orange box there are new answers for you. That's great, that's great. Thank you, yeah. Everything that's been in orange boxes have been new answers. Great. Yeah, I like that. Yeah. So, I did a couple of, like, how are all your grandparents related? Right. Elmer and Loretta are fifth cousins. Yeah. Through the Rusa line. Yeah. And then we already saw this one. Yeah, and then Anna and Cornelia, there was somebody else there, but we didn't, I didn't put it in, but there was, it was just neat to see. I love those connections. Yeah, yeah. There's a lot of endogamy going on in these communities. I mean, there were mountainous, there were remote, and yeah, so cool. And then we did have some free space pages that our volunteers created. Great. Christine, do you wanna kinda talk about what a free space page is first? Sure, so a free space page, it's like a profile, but it's a profile for a thing or a place or some sort of common object that we wanna talk about and link other people into. Okay. So there's a free space page for William and Elizabeth. Everybody started researching. There was evidence that there was two William Woods married to Elizabeth Sees. So this is how the research went and maps and all sorts of sources to verify which William and which pair went to you. Yeah. Okay, cool. And then this one is on the Saltworks. So the McKinty's worked in the Saltworks. So there's some maps and documentation on the Saltworks. And anybody that we find, we can connect them to this free space page and then we're not copying that information into everybody's profile. Yeah, that's great. I'm trying to see if we can add, I guess. And then I guess there's a couple of ones, so. And then there was one more. Yeah, this is a will of Sebastian Gonzalez. Okay. Which was apparently seven or eight pages long. Wow. In perfect penmanship, it is absolutely incredible. Yeah. And it was completely transcribed and then every person that was named in the will was linked. Well. Or most of them anyway. So he went through, he named. Wow. I think there was 36 separate people that were named in the will. Yeah. Basically it was like, here's a family tree. Right, right. It just went on and on. Yeah. Yeah, Gonzalez, it's funny. Everyone thinks it's Gonzalez as in a Mexican name, but the original root is Consolus, C-O-N-S-A-L-U-S, that is Dutch. Yeah. And then if I can interrupt you real quick, Christine, there were a couple of interesting things. These weren't anything to do with the brick walls, but like when the will was being done. Now we had one of our team members that just did hours of research on the spelling of the Putnam, Putnam name. Oh, Putnam. Yes. Oh, I know. And for hours. Yes. And it turns out that her great-grandfather witnessed a will for him. Oh, okay, cool. Yeah. So then another of our team members was working on one of the Leehives and found out that Margaret Leehive only lived a couple of blocks down from her ancestor. Oh my gosh. I mean, what are the chances? Yeah, I know. I know. Pretty cool. I know. That is, yeah. That's great. No, I really appreciate this. This is a lot of work and I can't wait to get my fingers in and poke around. So, yeah. Was there anything else that you wanted to add, Christine, to what we... I think that was it. I think we... Yeah. I mean, there's lots of other little things. There were McKinsey's who served in the Civil War. There was just all sorts of... I'm still... What I'm trying to do is... Oh. Yeah, go ahead. Who was it? There was one of the McKinsey's who was a notable artist. Yes, that was Jervis. Jervis? Yeah, Jervis. He was in the Hudson River School. Yeah. Yeah. Now, that whole line, though, that whole line, though, there are two groups in McKinsey's and I cannot find a connection between that group and my group. So... So, actually, on your McKinsey's... Yeah. Yeah. There is another line. That comes down from, I want to say, Charles. Yeah. Charles got an extra child. Okay. So now he has Patrick Edward, James Smith, and Charles. James Smith is Jervis' father. Oh, okay. Now that makes sense. Okay. Yeah, see, the thing is, I always struggle because I knew there had to be a connection there between this... Absolutely. But the thing is, it wasn't very obvious, but, no, that's great. Perfect. So... Yep. Yeah. So what do you think, Thomas, would you give us an A? Oh, I would definitely give you an A. No, it's great. It really is. And it's, you know, the thing is, this is why we do this. So we get a different set of eyes on it. I get out of that rut because it's so easy to build what I call crutches, you know? And little things that, you know, oh, yeah, I'll deal with that later. Or, now that evidence isn't resolved, but I'll deal with it later, you know? But it takes a set of different set of eyes to really make some progress. So... Right, and we have a, Thomas, we have an offer. Well, we have a couple of guys that are really experienced on the German records right now. They've been an amazing amount of help. One of them, Frank, has asked, if you need any additional help researching the Hennabergs, he can check with the archives and leaps egg. Maybe help you with that, so. Yeah, that's one of my dreams is to make a trip there, research trip. So, yeah. That'd be fun. One thing, I don't know if you discovered, but my Hennabergs are German Catholics. And this is what happened, and it had so much trouble searching. When they're confirmed at age 13, German boys will start to use their confirmation name, not their first name. So here I am, I'm searching for, you know, his name, and nope, that's not what he was using. So he was using his confirmation name. So, yeah, yeah. Yeah, that's great. No, I love this, yeah. So, perfect. I just have one quick question too, for Christine, I think. Who actually transcribed to the will? Who was that? I wanna say, I can't recall off the top of my head. Lucy created the free space. I know Lucy and Nancy. Okay. And Kay, all worked very hard on so many things. Yeah, yeah. So somebody found the will, and then, I think it was Lucy. Okay. Yeah, so Lucy decided to just transcribe seven pages of friendship. So this is the way that I transcribe now, is I take advantage of Microsoft Word, has dictate. So I hop on my microphone and I just read the letter into my computer. Oh, nice. So I don't have to type it, and then I do cleanup. Now, Google Docs has the same thing. They call it voice typing. And it's gotten to be pretty good, about 85, 90%. So no longer, you know, I'm not gonna break one of my lead press on nails through your transcription. No, I'm gonna dictate it into the microphone, so yeah. Yeah, that's great. That's a really good idea, actually. Yeah. I feel that. Yeah. It's also, you know, it gives me time to actually just read aloud that letter from my great grandparents, or, you know, it's a whole connection. But I think we need to leverage this type of, you know, technology to help us with our transcriptions, yeah. And it's cool to be able to read it out loud. What's that? We have to teach everybody how to read cursive. Yeah, read cursive, yeah, yeah. It's a nice skill, unfortunately. Yeah. No, I don't say officer, I'm not drunk, I'm just speaking in cursive. Yeah. Yeah. Well, yeah. And we had the newspaper article of Richard. Yes, yes. He was killed, he was killed in Jacksonville, Florida. He was working for a bakery. What happened is in Jacksonville, Florida, they had set up a World War II camp. They were getting ready for enlistments in that. And so they needed a bakery down there. And this is what, you know, he's a New Yorker. Why did he die driving a truck in Jacksonville? I guess there was a news article about he swerved to avoid a motorcycle. And that was it, so, yeah. Yep, that's part of it. And then there's a more extensive one, yeah. Yep. Interesting. So there's a couple here. Yeah, exactly, yep, yep. Cool, not cool, but cool. Yeah, I know, no, I know. Yeah, that's wild. That's kind of like right, I'm in Tallahassee, so. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, do you have any other comments or questions, Thomas? No. About your Christine? If not, well, I guess we'll kind of work. So let me ask this, Sarah, when the volunteers work on this, do they pick up skills too? Do they get exposed to different record sets that they normally wouldn't do? So yeah, good, definitely. Especially with using Discord, it gives everybody kind of a live to kind of talk to each other and learn new things. So is Discord like Slack? Is that what it is? What is Discord? I would more call it Instant Messaging, sister. I see, okay, okay, all right. But we have separate channels. Yeah, like Slack, that's how Slack is, yeah. Everybody has one channel, and then we can all talk about you. Right, but for example, another way of collaborating, and I've done this a lot, I'm learning a lot about the Prussian records and looking those up. I've learned a lot about where to look and how to find those, but then I can shout and Discord and go, hey, Frank, can anybody tell me what the date is on this? I can't tell what it is. If we hadn't been called for it, we'd just shoot me the link. Yeah, it sounds very similar to Slack. One of the downsides of Slack is it's not very visually oriented, but the nice thing with Slack is when you bring a new team member in, they get all the archives of all the conversations. They're brought up to speed immediately, and that's why I like Slack, yeah, yeah. Yeah, Discord was originally for gamers, so to say. Yeah, but now it's being used for a bunch of different things. Yeah, yeah, that makes sense. It's been good, it's been good, especially for the challenge, and it also gives people who probably wouldn't have chatted before a chance to talk. Right, right, perfect. Yeah, that's great, that's great. Yeah, no, I'm really impressed. I can't wait to spend some time probably on the weekend on Saturday and poke around it, and... Awesome. Yeah, yeah, thank you so much. Well, thank you, Tom, for letting us... What's that? You got the email with your DNA confirmations. Yes, I did, I did, I did. Yes, thank you, thank you. Yeah, so, nope, I'm doing fine. I'm getting ready for my 44th webinar tomorrow, so. Nice. So far this year, so far this year, so, yeah. Thomas is just a little busy. A little bit, yeah. He keeps me out of trouble, he keeps me out of trouble, yeah. Yeah, so, great, well, thank you so much. Thank you. I really appreciate it. Yeah, yeah. So now we will, if Catherine is listening, Catherine, are you there? We will... She's not here. I am here. Yeah. Welcome to my live-in to Catherine. Thank you, Catherine, for having us, letting us look at your tree and improving and being part of the wiki tree challenge. Oh my gosh, thank you. I mean, my gosh, I was so honored when you guys contacted me. So I hesitate to turn my camera on because as I mentioned earlier, the connection is so bad here and it seems like I have a really hard time hearing things if the camera's turned on. So are you guys okay if I leave it off? That's perfectly fine. I like you added a little logo of yourself though, too, so that... Yeah, that's fine. That's pretty cool. So... And there was also something weird that was going on. When you guys were talking to Thomas, I could hear, there's like two or three of you that I could hear talking, but I couldn't hear Thomas at all. So if somebody asks me something and I don't answer, maybe they're one of the people that I can't hear for some bizarre reason. Okay. Well, we'll keep that in mind. So we're going to have Aowyn kind of introduce you. Who is Catherine? Who is this person that we have here in our live cast today? I'm excited. Catherine is great. Just I want to highlight a few of the things about her. If you want to go to the next slide, Sarah, there's little kind of ghosts you guys can see, but she's a dynamic lecturer. She lectures all over the country at local and regional and national conferences. She teaches genealogy classes for everything from beginner to advanced. She's a professional genealogist with her own private clients that she does work for. And then this I think is a super cool thing about her. She's like the social media queen. So she's compiled almost 17,000 genealogy related Facebook links, 179 instructional genealogy YouTube channels and 60 genealogy related podcasts. So if you go to her website, she has links for them there and you can find them and they're awesome. I love that. And then also I may be wrong about this and Catherine, you can correct me if I am, but don't you also make super really beautiful like intricate cards that you send out to people? Oh, thank you for saying that. I do, before I started doing genealogy full time as an occupation, I was doing artwork. I was a full time artist. And so one of the things that I continued to do during genealogy as a career was to make greeting cards. It was a more portable, easier kind of way to still be in the art field without, you know, being surrounded by canvases and all of that. So, but thank you for calling them beautiful. You're so kind. I've seen them posted on Facebook and they're amazing. Oh, thank you. Everybody go look at Catherine's greeting cards after this. And I was trying to scroll and it was scrolling the slideshow and that was, but it's okay. I have no idea what you guys are seeing. Like all I can see truly, it's like this big black screen that says let the sources decide the corner. And there's nothing like these guys or anything. That's probably true. It's a picture of you with bullet points of who you are. Is there anything you wanna add about yourself, Catherine, that we didn't cover? Um, gosh, I, well, it's so interesting that a lot of people associate me with social media because at the end of last year, beginning of this year, I deleted all of my social media accounts. I just felt like I was spending so much time on social media and I wasn't really spending time doing the things that make me feel really good, you know, like artwork and genealogy and talking with friends. And so it's just hilarious that, you know, my website is social media genealogy and I've deleted all my accounts. Yeah, I guess that's probably, that's probably why I couldn't find you on Twitter. Yeah, that's why I used to be. Well, you left an amazing resource for people to pull from, that's for sure. Yeah, you know, I'm so thankful to Cindy Ingle because when Cindy Ingle found out that I wasn't going to be on social media anymore, she very graciously volunteered to keep the list going on her list, Cindy's list. And so I was thrilled about that. That's awesome. Awesome. And I don't know if you saw Catherine while saying that loud, but Kay said, by the end of the week, after working on her family, we'll all feel like we know her. I don't know if you saw that since you're speaking. It's so fun that you guys are doing this. I just love it. It's been a blast. So we, probably everybody's already seen it a whole bunch of times because I keep scrolling to it, but within this slide we're showing is all of your, basically a fan chart of your, all the way up to your great grandparents, since that's kind of how we're going about our research, we're kind of tackling each line. So we have the Ling, I don't know if I probably will butcher every single one. Hibling, Frosch, Walsh. Yeah. It's very, very heavily German on my dad's side. So thank German for all those names. York, Molden, Beale, Havens, and Sample. Yeah. So Modlin is my mom's maiden name and that family is pretty well researched. One of the things that I tried to do before tonight was I tried to get all of my files and add them to the things that I have on Ancestry because there's more that I have from that we've been researching just for decades and decades. So my mom's Modlin family is really well documented. The brick wall on her side is the EO family, the EHL. That's good to know. Yes. Yeah. That is one of our questions we will ask you, but I guess I will kind of just, sorry, I won't jump in. Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, so, so sorry, everyone has a, I have one more thing that Lewis Kessler pointed out about Catherine that we need to share it, that she's also the person behind the Virtual Genealogy Association and that she was the first president of it. So. Yeah, hi, Lewis. Oh, that's so funny to hear Lewis. Well, to see Lewis. Yeah, he's hanging out. He's hanging out with us. He's one of our, he's a future guest star. He was one of the speakers for Virtual Genealogical Association and did a phenomenal job. Nice. Okay, sorry, sorry, go ahead. Oh, it's okay. So, I guess a very important question to ask, what got you interested in genealogy? I think it was, I can trace it back to being a Girl Scout. Now I say Girl Scout, but I think it might have been whatever you're called before you're old enough to be a Girl Scout. So maybe Brownie or if there's something. Yeah. Brownie and Girl Scout. And I just remember being super, super competitive and I just wanted more of those patches or badges or whatever they're called than anybody else had. I didn't really care about learning what we had to learn to get them. I just wanted them on my little sash so I could strut around with more than anybody else. So I asked my parents to get me the Girl Scout book that had the patches in it. So I could flip through and find out what did I want to work on on my own instead of waiting for the monthly Brownie meetings or whatever that is. And there was a patch that was called My Heritage. Totally unrelated to the company, My Heritage. And it was a super easy patch to get. All I had to do was fill out a three generation pedigree chart and interview my grandmother, well, interview somebody. And I chose to interview my grandmother. And she's gone now, but what I distinctly remember about that, well, a couple of things, that was so I'm in my early fifties and that that would have been when I was eight or nine. So I had to wait until Sunday evening at 7 p.m. before I could call, cause it was long distance. And for all of you young people out there, you have no idea what I'm talking about. And when I talked to my grandma, I, one of the questions I asked her was, what was her grandmother's name? And she didn't know her grandmother's maiden name. And that just seemed so weird to me because I intimately knew mine, both of my grandmother's maiden names. And I think that's what got me started. And I was a nerdy little kid spending time at the library and archives and just got the bug. Didn't really pick it up again until after college. So college I spent, you know, thinking I was going to be a composer, a classical composer. So I didn't really do anything then. So who was your favorite ancestor? Probably, so I was, I've mentioned earlier the Modlin family. My mom's maiden name is Modlin. And her second great-grandfather, so my third great-grandfather was John Modlin. And he was born in England, Hertfordshire, part of England, came over to the U.S. 1850s, sometime in the 1850s. And he was not required to serve in the Civil War because he wasn't a citizen. He was, you know, had still, he retained his English citizenship, but he volunteered. So a lot of people might be familiar with the exceptions that there were for service in the Civil War. If you were somebody who could afford to pay somebody to serve in your place, you could do that. And so there was actually somebody who paid my third great-grandfather to serve in the Civil War in his place. And he got very, very sick. I have this huge, huge pension file that his wife filed for that included a photo even, and it was a really, really sad photo. He's just skeletal. And he died from the diseases that he contracted during his time in the Civil War. But when I think about, you know, the journey, the decisions first, right? The decisions to come over to the U.S. And then the decision to go ahead and serve in the Civil War for a country that he wasn't even a citizen of. I just, I have so much admiration for that whole, his whole journey and such sadness for the way that he died. It was, I was gonna pull up his Profile and Weakie Tree, but I don't think it's on there yet. I guess we'll have to add it. Can I just, can I just throw in there that people were looking at your ancestry tree? And a sister of the wife of John Sample was born about 10 miles from one place that Thomas' ancestors lived. Oh, wow. So there you go. Wow. I love that. Isn't that like the fact that in archeology is when we make these weird connections? I love that. And then I think of the song, it's a small world. Yep. Exactly. So you kind of already just kind of told us an interesting story about one of your ancestors. Do you have any other interesting stories to share about what you found out about your family, besides the one about your molding ancestor in the Civil War? Yes. So, yeah. So even though my third great grandfather, John Muddlin, is my favorite ancestor, I would say that his son, Albert, is my least favorite relative. His son, Albert, is not a direct ancestor of mine. He would be collateral, but he was just a miserable, horrific excuse for a human. He was just horrible. Like when you go through all the newspapers for his time and place, he's always in the newspapers because he's filing lawsuits against people. The electric company came through when was cutting down trees near his property. So he came out with a gun and started shooting. He was married and divorced three times and he died in a really, really horrific manner. He, at the time of his death, he was completely deaf. He had lost all his hearing and he was confined to a wheelchair, yet he burned to death in his home. So he was unable to get out, of course, both because of the disability being in a wheelchair, and I'm sure that the deafness contributed to some of that also in case... I don't, from the limited records that I have, I don't think those were his only two disabilities. He had some pretty significant ones, but what's really interesting about his death is that there are some newspaper articles that make it sound like it wasn't completely accidental that the fire may have been set by somebody else. And when you read about his life, it's easy to understand how people really detested him. He was, like I said, he was just a miserable excuse for a human, not certainly worthy of murder, right? Having died in a house fire in such a horrific way, but he's probably one of the most interesting in terms of black sheep. Usually the ones that, we like to say the ones that were caused trouble, usually we find the most information on. Exactly, exactly. That's what we love. I'm going to tell you and I want to pull all those legal records. I just really want to get every court record I can find. Okay, so when did you discover WikiTree? So I think I was first alerted to it by Chris and I'm sure I'm going to butcher his name. When I read it, it looks like Ferry Yellow or Ferry Yellow or something. That's right, Ferry Yellow. Yeah, and I just adore him. I got to know him sort of through Virtual Genealogical Association because he was participating in some social media conversations like on Twitter having to do with VGA. And he wasn't a member, but we started talking and then we started joking about glitter. There's this huge thing on social media that people love to tease and tag me when I was on social media about anything having to do with glitter, because I love glitter to no end. I love crafting with it. I love wearing it. I love being surrounded by it. And so Chris had, was participating in a entertainment show that the Virtual Genealogical Association did right when the pandemic first was starting and people were, we were first starting this whole shutdown. We put on this entertainment show. Thomas was our host for the show. And Chris told the story. And so I got to know him that way. And he was the one really who was telling me about Wiki Treat. Now, I'm sad to say that I have not poked around it as much as I would like. And I think it's because when you approach something that you're completely unfamiliar with and you can get a little overwhelmed because you don't know about it, you don't really know how to navigate your way through it. So Eowyn was so incredibly helpful because I was watching one of these earlier episodes that you had done. I think it was with Cece Moore and somebody was talking about stickers. Maybe I think it was on Wiki Treat. And so I'm messaging Eowyn, what's a sticker? What does this refer to? So, so bless her to death for putting up with all my questions. Any time. Wiki Treat definitely has a learning curve. You know, for anybody who hasn't used something like it can definitely feel intimidated. But that's why we have like our volunteers like well, anyone's not a volunteer but like people like Eowyn and Mindy and all of us were all willing to help if needed. So that's what makes what builds Wiki Treat up. Well, it can be kind of difficult to navigate but then we have all of this support underneath it. So. Yeah, and then I think in one of the interviews somebody was talking about something called G2G I think it was called. And I would, so I'm messaging Eowyn. I'm like, what's G2G? She told me about this message board and then I clicked on it and I swear to you for like three hours I was just totally immersed in the reason all this stuff. I didn't even know it existed and I was like, I need to get offline and get back to work. Awesome. Yes, so it's great. So you're, you're fairly, you just recently fairly got into Wiki Treat or were familiar with it. Thanks to Chris who's in the chat. Yes. Good things. Thanks to Chris. Yes. So when Eowyn contacted me, she mentioned something about, did I have a profile at WikiTree and I thought that maybe I had created one at one point but I wasn't sure and then she said something about a JEDCOM and I mistakenly thought that if I uploaded my JEDCOM it would automatically be attached to my profile and I might be using wrong terminology for Wiki and then I was somehow, and then I realized no that didn't actually happen. I still had to build my tree and so then I thought, well, I think I did this wrong and so then I deleted the JEDCOM and then she reached out again. She's like, wait, where's the JEDCOM? Lots to learn. It really is. So you kind of mentioned your brick walls already but what are your current brick walls on your family tree? So my direct ancestor brick wall is my maternal third great grandfather. His name is Lawrence Theodore Eel and that's spelled EHL. And of course, like we know with all genealogy stuff, the surname gets spelled a bunch of different ways all over depending on the document and who's recording it but basically he was born in the late 1820s in Germany and then his first documented appearance in the US is in 1850, is it 18, yeah, in 1850 census when he shows up in Milford, Pike County, Pennsylvania. And I'm not 100% that that's him in the 1850 census for Milford, Pennsylvania but I would say that I'm like 80% confident that it's him and the reason I am is because he's listed as a lodger and two or three names after him in that same household, there's somebody with the last name Van Alken I can't remember the first name but Van Alken, V-A-N and then Alken is A-U-K-E-N. And we're always taught in genealogy to make sure that we're researching the fan club and anybody who's on a document that our ancestors listed on or that's a neighbor, if we're stuck at a brick wall research the fan club. So I found a newspaper article when Lawrence Theodore Eale moved into DeKalb County, Indiana. I found a newspaper article where he and his neighbors were, they were signing a petition or submitting a petition to get a ditch built in their area. And one of the names that was included in that petition is a Van Alken. So the name is uncommon enough to make me feel pretty certain that that 1850 census really is my Lawrence Theodore Eale. There's a couple other things that show up on Ancestry. You know, Ancestry tries to convince me that this 1849 passenger list coming into New York is my Lawrence Theodore Eale, but it's not. I'm again, 80% convinced that it's not him on that passenger list. The guy on that October 1849 passenger list is listed with the initials TGE, I think. And my Lawrence Theodore never shows up as anybody other than Lawrence Theodore. So I don't think that passenger list is him at all. There's also a naturalization form that Ancestry keeps trying to get me to click on to say that he naturalized, but he's listed in that naturalization as Lorenzo. And I'm almost positive again that that naturalization form is not for him. So what I don't have is I don't have the actual passenger list for him coming into the United States. I have not come across any naturalization paperwork for him. And I don't really know why did he go to Pennsylvania and then to Indiana and then to Michigan. You know, what was, I'm the sixth or seventh generation born in Michigan. All my ancestors were here. I think the very first one was the sample line. So what was going on with the Eales? I just can't figure it out. He's my brick wall. Now, one of the viewers did ask if your ancestors traveled the Erie Canal at all on the way to Michigan. I have not found any evidence of that. It's possible. I don't think it's plausible. There's a variety of reasons why I don't think that was the case. I think it's more likely that given the time and place that it was the early railroads and that it was horse and buggy before that. So it's possible, but there's not been anything I've come across that led me to believe that that's plausible. Okay, and after seeing what we found for Thomas, what do you hope to get out of your participation here in our challenge? I am just so fascinated with this whole crowd sourcing I think is the most amazing part of what's going on in today's genealogy. And I really do think that the crowd sourcing is gonna be what brings more young people in. I mean, I see that with Chris, right? Getting to know Chris, he's what I would consider a younger generation coming into this. So I'm so excited to see what people who are certainly more technologically savvy than I am, what kinds of things they're gonna be able to find. My training is all the old-fashioned way, right? It wasn't all of the stuff that we found online. So it's entirely possible that there are sources out there that people know about that I'm completely unfamiliar with. That's great, and I hope we come up with something good also. I'm pretty, you know, just seeing how our weekly tree years have gone at everybody else's tree. They have not let us down at all. Yes. You guys are amazing, but what a fabulous, I can't wait to get more involved with stuff like this once I retire. You can become a wiki tree addict like the rest of us. Yeah. I almost did. I'm serious when I was reading that G2G message board, I was like, I don't even know these people and I'm getting all caught up in this. That was how I learned how to do my wiki tree stuff. I'd sit there on that watch and then somebody'd say, oh yeah, you just fix it like this. And I'd send him a message real quick, a private message and I go, I just saw you explain that. So how did you fix that and what did it fix? What was wrong? People probably thought I was on, but I was reaching out to everybody. Oh my gosh. Yep. I mean, each of us, I think we learn something new every day anyway. For sure. There's always something to learn. So I'm gonna try to see if my camera will come on just so I can like have a moment of... Everybody seeing you? Seeing everybody. Let's see. Nope, it's film not working. I don't know what the heck's going on. You know what I'm gonna do? When we do this next week, I'm actually gonna go, I'm teaching for the Salt Week Institute of Genealogy right now, I'm teaching a class for Academy and I go over to the local historical society to teach my class virtually. So I'm gonna do that next week so that that way I can actually see everybody and have my camera and everything. That'll be great. And did we have any other questions in the chat for Catherine or about the challenge or I don't know, Catherine, you had any questions for us? You know what? I just realized how to see the comments because I had been looking at private chat for the longest time and then I got some questions. Yeah, people have been going. My cousin is in there. So my dad's brother had a son who had a daughter and that's my cousin and Kristen, she's here. Kristen, nice. Oh, yay. Yeah, Kristen Lang. That's my cousin. She's my first cousin once removed. Chris Ferriolo did ask if you have any tips for the Lester Clarence Havens line? I have a ton of information on that line so I don't know if when he's asking about tips, is there something specific? It's definitely the, you know, the people. So far he said like his mother's line. Hmm. For Chris's mother's line. Chris, are we related on the Lester Clarence Havens line? For Lester's mother's line, I think is what he's asking about. If you have any tips for Lester's mother's line. So I don't know specific, like what he means by tips, like is it, is he? Maybe he'll tell us. Maybe he'll tell us more information. Maybe he'll type something in a sec. Chris, I did ask to clarify, please Chris Ferriolo, so thank you. And then I will ask, do you have any family lore for that side? I know you have all the German and Prussian lines. Family lore for the Havens. I don't know if it's so much family lore as much as it's, there's so much tragedy on my mom's side of the family. You know, the Modlands, the Havens, the Eels, the Wildies, there's just so much tragedy. I was on a podcast with a friend who's also a genealogist and she was asking about, you know, why do I do genealogy? And I said that I think it's because of the strength that we all pull from our ancestor's stories, right? We look at the things that they've gone through and this idea that not one single one of us here tonight would be on this earth if it hadn't been for the continued perseverance and endurance and resilience of our ancestors. That just, it humbles me when I think of that. I just, so when I, you know, I think family lore, I think not so much family lore as much as the tragedies that they've just overcome. You know, if they were the first generation immigrant into the country, there's a ton of addictions that people struggled with, alcohol addiction, a lot of mental illness. The grandfather that was killed by rolling logs at work, George Sample? Yes, yeah, yeah. So there's an example. And then there's another great, like a third great grandfather on the brooch line, no, the York, York line. He killed himself by slashing his own throat. I mean, talk about reaching a level of desperation. You think about all the different ways that you would think of somebody taking their lives and how often do you hear that somebody lashed their own throat? I mean, my God. Pretty brutal. Yeah. So, and I think what Chris kind of clarified what he was asking, I guess if you had any more info on the Dutch side that far back in New York for the havens. I do not. No, that is one line that really has not been touched. I hired a genealogist to research that line. And it was one of those instances where the person I hired just sort of dropped off the face of the earth. Thank God I hadn't paid them any money, right? And I just sort of left it alone and really devoted a lot of time to the German line. So the Dutch line is really, you know, the van Renzeliers are in there. The Sharmer horns are in there, but very little of that is documented with actual documentary evidence. A lot of it is just charts that I inherited. And so I entered the names and dates and didn't really follow up on it. We have a lot of Dutch members so hopefully they'll jump in on those lines this week. Ooh. Another plus of wiki tree. We have a lot of international members and people that are experts in different countries and types of records. That's so cool. I think I was watching the one that you guys did with A.J. Jacobs and you guys had some people who specialized in Ukraine or Poland or somewhere in that part of the world. Oh my gosh, this is amazing. Wow. Wiki tree. You guys are amazing. It's an incredible community. So we're coming to an end. So unless there's any more questions from anyone about anything within reason. Can't point it out that we have a lot of folks with new Netherlands experience too. So that would be really helpful. Oh nice. And I don't know if you guys do anything with DNA, but both my mom and my dad were DNA tested and their stuff is on ancestry. Well, yeah, that would be great because we actually have somebody that's been, that's a DNA expert and she's been offering to do each of the guests DNA confirmation. So we can hook you guys up for that if you're... Yeah, somebody, another German genealogist that I hired was looking at my DNA and she said that there was a lot of Ashkenazi Jew and I'm like, what that fascinates me because that is not anything I've ever heard in my genealogy and I would be delighted if that were true, but I have not followed up on any of that. So we got lots to work on. I'm just so excited that you guys asked me, that was what an honor, honestly. We knew when Ewan reached out and said, yeah, we're asking this person and this person and this person and you. I'm like, oh my gosh, thank you for making my day. I was thrilled, you said yes. Yeah, I mean, we've had wonderful guest stars and we're so looking forward to doing your tree and having you on. So thank you. And thank you for all of our wonderful wiki tree years who have worked so hard on everybody's tree. Thank you for everybody who's watching our stream and don't forget if you didn't catch this whole stream you are able to watch it on YouTube or Facebook. Don't forget to like and follow and you can check us out at wikiTree.com. So, and I guess with that, we will head off for tonight. Don't forget Saturday, we'll, we have our 10 a.m. Eastern time live cast and then next Wednesday, we'll be back with Catherine to recap and then I believe next is, ooh, a blankie. Cat, cat. Actually, the deer myrtle. Deer myrtle. Oh, how fun. So you guys will be on together. How fun will that be? Yay, yay. So we'll see you guys later.