 Welcome to the wiki tree challenge. Hello, I'm Mindy Silva and welcome to the wiki tree challenge highlights live cast. Today I have Melanie McComb and David Lambert with me from the New England Historic Genealogical Society and I also have Karen Lowe who was the captain for the challenge week. Welcome guys. Thank you. Thank you. And for those of you that don't know a lot about wiki tree, I'm going to talk a little bit about it first. For those people our mission is to grow one accurate shared tree that connects us all and is accessible to everyone free forever. It's all about collaboration. There's one profile per person. If you and I share an ancestor, we work on it together. There is no you have your tree and I have my tree. And did I mention it's all free? We just passed 34 million profiles. A big milestone for us with more than 11 million of those having DNA connections attached to them. And what really makes wiki tree work is its community. A cornerstone of the community is our honor code. Anyone can view profiles on wiki tree, but to edit more than close family member profiles you have to sign the honor code. It emphasizes sourcing, giving credit, courtesy, understanding, accessibility, accuracy, and respecting privacy. Privacy is another aspect of wiki tree that makes it special. Even though we're growing a one world tree and we all collaborate, only close family members can collaborate on modern family profiles. As you go back in time, the privacy controls open up. Collaboration on deep ancestors is between cousins who are serious about genealogic research, careful about sources, and willing to see their research validated or invalidated with DNA. So if you aren't a member yet, come and join us. It just takes a minute to register as a guest and you can lead a guest account at any time. Now this was our seventh wiki tree challenge of the year. And boy, we just had a blast with this. We partnered with the New England Historic Genealogical Society. And it was a lot of fun. We had a lot of support for this and wiki trees were just really overall excited. So we had seven names that they gave us. We had seven days to find everyone we could within seven degrees. And seven degrees means seven steps in any direction. On wiki tree, we call that a person CC seven. So that's their connection count within seven degrees. Now our starting people were Charles Ewer who gained 4122 relatives. Um, Lemuel Shattuck who gained 6,325 relatives. Governor John Albion Andrew who gained 3,551 relatives. Mary Martha Corrine, she went by Koki. Boggs Roberts who gained 579 relatives. Kenneth Alford who gained 307 relatives and that was a big one because we were wondering how many we were going to add to those lines. We knew they'd be difficult. Lucy Hall Greenlaw who gained 5,352 relatives. And Julia Winter-Pulsom who gained 3,894 relatives. Now of course some of these were new profiles and some of these we just were you know able to connect over and over again to existing branches. So Melanie or David you want to tell us a little bit about how you chose the seven starting people and a little bit about your organization? You want to tell them about the ladies? Sure. So with the ladies we have Lucy Greenlaw and Julia Folsom. They are the first couple members of NHS when women were admitted to the organization. There actually is a little bit of debate on who was first because Lucy was recognized as the first in kind of being elected and being the priority person within the group in terms of on the roles but Julia had argued that she was first because her husband paid the dues first. So it kind of gets to what comes first the money or the paper trail in terms of like you know what's what's going to be it. So there's you know thought that'd be a fun thing to kind of highlight some of our some of our ladies that led the way for a lot of female genealogists and we actually even have the papers of Lucy Greenlaw here because she was the editor of the genealogical advertiser. So she has all this correspondence and she even worked on a genealogy as well. In terms of the other ladies we also had Koki Roberts who is our NHS honoree and so we have lots of people that are in the history field and other parts of the mainstream where we bring them in and we honor them for their contributions. So Koki Roberts I know has been very involved with different projects in history I think also with the National Archives so you know she thought she would be a nice one to highlight and she had a I think she had a lot of interesting you know ancestors in her tree before researching. And of course one of the things with an organization NEHCS started back in 1845 and so we chose our first president and vice president and Charles Eur was our first president. Our first vice president was Lemuel Shaddick. So we thought that they would be interesting because the technology today that's available was not available in the middle of the 19th century when NEHCS started. So to look at something on their tree seemed fascinating I thought we'd see and maybe find out we're related to them somehow too it's kind of fun. The other one we chose was John Albion Andrew who was the governor of Massachusetts during the time of the Civil War and was our president after the Civil War. He lived shortly after that didn't he lived died in his 50s sadly. And the last one was a gentleman who was an African American veteran from World War Two. Do you want to add a little bit more about him? Sure so Kenneth Alford is someone I actually came across a few years ago. We used to do a social media series where we had like an NEHCS like library item of the month and so I wanted to look at something that was a little bit more recent 20th century. So our senior archivist Judy Lucy had recommended why don't you look at Kenneth Alford's papers. And it was kind of the perfect example because he has all these great battle records military records even some history at his mom's family. And it was just a nice way to show like a family papers in a more contemporary aspect. And you know he was a very interesting guy in that he was the first African American man from Massachusetts to be in the Marines during World War Two. So we wanted to honor him as part of that service as well. And his papers actually are used as a very good educational tool ever since we really came across him a few years ago. And we use them a lot with school groups and scouts to show them like here. Here's how you can explore like an archive papers and how to make it more accessible to them. And then they use those to basically build out their story and see what they can find out. And just a little bit of a quick story about NEHCS. We've been around since 1845 so 178 years and we're located in Boston at 101 Newbury Street. Currently we're closed because we're undergoing a multi-million dollar renovation and actually adding on to the building putting in a great discovery center. And of course our website AmericanAncestors.org has over a billion searchable records. We have hundreds of thousands of constituent members of the organization and sometimes it's multi-generational. And with genealogy we have a chance to go around the country and meet our members and lecture and do publications. So we're a very multifaceted organization and we serve more than just the old title of New England. We've expanded our brand to be American ancestors to try to be all things for all people. So regardless if your ancestor came over in 1620 or you're Native American that came over thousands of years ago or if your ancestors just came over last week American ancestors will help you if I discover your story. Yeah not something that you know I heard repeatedly from the members is that they've gotten so much out of your organization they're like yeah you know they're like oh I had to jump at the chance to you know pay them back just a little bit even. Yeah we really love that. Members really felt an attachment and wanted to give back so we really appreciate all of our members and maybe future members so that you wanted to help us. I think for the whole staff that we would appreciate all that you've done and the excitement and being part of this. So thank you in advance. Yes and as another current member of American ancestors thanks so much. From me it was really fun to see how many of our wiki-triers are already members and how many of the NEHDS members wanted to come and see what wiki-tree was all about and join us in the challenge. Great. Yeah that's exactly what our outreach you know this year is doing as we want to we want to promote some of these other groups we want to get more members out to you guys and you know it also increases awareness for wiki-tree. So Karen do you want to go ahead and talk a little bit about who worked on the challenge this week? Right our MVP of course was Margaret Meredith and we've seen Homer be a top bounty hunter and an MVP of the challenge more than once so that was fun to see Homer back in the lead again. Chris O'Connell was our wiki trier who was also a top bounty hunter. I'm thinking that he and Cheryl and and M. Cole may have just all had you know similar numbers of points this week and of course there's there's me your team captain for the week. It's really fun to you know many of us pay no attention to the scoreboard and others of us it's motivating to say oh if I just add five more people I can pass by Melanie or Mindy or whoever it is that is right at our level of contributions. It just feeds into our addictiveness on wiki-tree anyways you know it's always that oh if I just can add five more before I go to bed and you can't stop. No and you need an incentive sometimes you're right so. No and we don't even stop you know when the challenge ends I'm just looking at how Kenneth Alfred has another 20 people in his relations since Thursday and and Kofi Roberts I'm sure everyone has has some more and you can see how very many people participated I'm seeing names that I recognize as long-time members members from Europe and other places that is so valuable when we get into places and languages that are out of our expertise it's so great to have someone to call upon to give us a hand and I see Emma McBeath and and I know Kate Schmidt and others from the US Black Heritage project were happy to join us and bring their expertise for an area of genealogy that can be very difficult for folks working with Black Heritage here in the US so we were so happy to have their help as well. Yeah and a lot of new ones to the challenge so that was fun we had more than 117 people that participated. More than 100 people signed up but over 117 actively participated and made points during the week. That's great. And I know some others did valuable work that just wasn't spotting people within seven degrees or breaking down a brick wall or having the most interesting story so those folks who don't show up on the board are valuable to us as well. Absolutely and thank you all and I'm sure that it's going to help increase everybody's cc7 too as well hopefully with some of those early roots. Yes our we love to look at how many people are within seven degrees whether it's a parent-child relationship or a spouse relationship or sibling to see how many closer relations we can we can add to our tree. It's fascinating because John Andrew would have known Lemuel Shaddock by association. Shaddock died about a decade before so I bet you they never made that connection. Yeah I bet not. It's fun though to see you know how they all the connections are made once we start doing all these branches and of course I mean we had record breaking numbers David for this week record breaking for the challenge for the year and some of the numbers actually topped the prior year for this week's challenge but because the branches were so huge you know it was really easy to get all of these people connected somehow and you know we connected them in more ways than one so you can see John Andrew. John Andrew had a lot of connections and he had a ton of interesting people too you know but then you also see like Lemuel was connected to Koki Roberts and that is it suddenly we're looking for yeah by 18 generations that one is not degrees so that means they're actually related. Yeah distant cousins and all of those are generations instead of degrees now we did have I think we had a couple that were yeah Lemuel also had four connections that were within 20 degrees so that means related by marriage. So basically all of our other starting most all of our starting profiles. Yeah. So our outliers right would be private Alfred and then who else left you know was was more distantly related to these folks. Well I think you know those are the main ones that were really close so like Charles had a lot of connections John definitely had a lot of connections Lemuel had a lot of connections. I think some of the ladies their stuff was like way more distantly out there than what the guys were so you know Lucy was connected to John within 15 generations and she was actually his fifth cousin three times removed so you know but I think that was like the closest connection we found for Lucy she was she was kind of out there but yeah it's fun to bring up and I tell you what I always do this like when I'm checking what everybody's telling me and I'll go okay so John connected to Lucy and so I bring John up and it goes oh he's your fifth cousin wants removed Mindy and then I need to whoever I'm really comparing him to. I have a lot of cousins on this list too so it was fun. Yeah and for myself I don't think of myself as a New Englander you know I think of myself as myself of someone with Midwest and Southern Appalachian roots but it doesn't take long to realize that no I have pilgrims and Puritans in the family as well so that connects me to all of these folks and then you know once you start adding in the degrees where we consider the marital this the spouse connections as well when we just have to keep adding a few more people before we find that magic brother-in-law of Private Alfred and he gets just as close as the rest of us and then here you go David we have a lot of fun we do have a lot of fun with that connection fighter does he use the wall so this is your connection to Governor Albion it shows you the path used to reach him with him being your sixth cousin four times removed and coincidentally your 18 generations not degrees your 18 generations from Lucy Hall Greenlaw who is also your sixth cousin four times removed that's cool I feel that this is nepotism now the choices it wasn't in Texas I know I know I was waiting for somebody to go oh that's why they picked them as a former Civil War reenactor from Massachusetts knowing that our former governor was my distant cousin and it gives me a little bit more shine to my brass on my button so thank you and then we couldn't leave Melanie's out so of course she was 17 degrees from Lemuel Shaddock and 19 degrees from Governor John Albion Andrew so connected by marriage but still really cool to be able to see those connections very cool that's pretty good for someone doesn't have New England ancestors really so yeah and here we looked at the connections to the fourth governor of Massachusetts and the closest ones were Lemuel Shaddock at 10 generations their third cousins twice removed Lucy Hall Greenlaw at 17 generations their fifth cousins five times removed Charles Eur is connected in eight degrees so related by marriage and Governor John Albion Andrew is at 11 degrees so related by marriage excellent now here is our first starting person that you gave us Charles Eur he was born about 1790 in Boston Massachusetts his parents were Silas Eur and Nancy Armstrong he started work in the book business first in Portsmouth but soon returned to Boston and by 1828 worked there for the publisher Timothy Bedlington early in 1845 he participated in the founding of the New England Historical Genealogic Society and was elected as its first president having long lobbied for its creation so we have to get a lot give a lot of thanks to Charles Eur because I don't know what we do without you guys three degrees from him we found Isaiah Thomas LLD now he was born in 1749 in Boston he was a printer a patriot an editor an author and a philanthropist who was known for publishing the Massachusetts spy he founded the antiquarian society of Worcester and authored the history of printing so it was just fun to find another cousin that you know was into publishing and had some of the same interests although Isaiah is three degrees from Charles via his wife that they're also 17th cousins by blood and you know it just blows my mind that wiki tree will look that far out and go oh you're like 26 cousins five times removed you know I I know the computers can do it but the thing that the techs have actually sat down and told it to look for those connections is crazy yeah that's got to use some server time and and of course when we get this far back we're like come and take a look and prove us wrong you know we want the tree to be accurate and yeah so so I always look at scans when we start to get into the medieval period and and so should you you know so come and straighten us out if we've gone astray yeah yeah now we have Jariah Bass here and during the American Revolutionary War uh Edward Seville who later became his brother-in-law and a cousin Nathaniel Bill were privateers working on behalf of the Patriot cause on the ship Essex the ship was captured in 1781 in the English Channel they were jailed in England along with several other men from Braintree for a number of months and ultimately were released from British custody due to intervention of John Adams and you know just really interesting to see that it's uh they were all related like that and still able to stay in the service together next we have Lemuel Shattuck in 1835 he authored a history of the town and concord in 1841 he compiled the vital statistics of Boston he was a Boston City alderman in July of 1849 appointed a councilman and later the president of the northeast female medical college so throughout his life he was really commended to contributing to his community and also documenting the lives of his fellow countrymen and one of our researchers which you know just looking into him and found it really interesting that at least two of his daughters died of consumption one in 1851 and 1851 and you know wondered if their illnesses may have precipitated his pioneering work in creating the public health system which had a particular focus on consumption and other communicable diseases now here we have Mr. Ebenezer Ball he's an interesting man um he was a soldier during the Revolutionary War serving in Captain Jean Hosley's company Colonel William Prescott's regiment which marched on the alarm of April 19th 1775 and then we lived a long life dying at the age of 21 in Townsend, Massachusetts his poor wives just did not fare the same and so he first married Ms. Sarah Shattuck amidst the American Revolution he was 25 she was about 26 their daughter Sarah was born about a year later and then Sarah died two years after that in 1785 at the age of 30 and unfortunately we couldn't find what her cause of death is uh you know but in those times it could have been a number of things now Ebenezer next married Hannah Smith in 1786 and Ebenezer was 29 now Hannah was 26 Hannah died in 1787 just two days after the birth of their son Ebenezer and you know terribly tragic but I really see a pattern here and you know they name one after the first wife and she dies and then they name a child after him and that child dies or you know the wife dies um just a lot of tragedy around these children that they named after them so I think I would have been a little bit afraid of that but uh but it didn't stop them and in October of 1787 now twice a widower with two young children Ebenezer married Phoebe Weston he and Phoebe had eight children together they were named David Levi Josea Phoebe Samuel Hannah Roxanna and Barnum but Phoebe lived to a lovely age of 80 so I guess they broke the little curse that was on their family uh naming the children on them but I definitely would have been concerned for little Phoebe you know and also for big Phoebe after they had had such tragedy strike their lives now Ebenezer ball jr and Lemuel Lemuel Shaddock are three degrees apart being fourth cousins once removed and you know again we just found out a lot in here we found a lot of connections which is unusual for the challenge this year uh you know sometimes we try super hard to make connections between the starting people and we just don't find them but we had a lot of connections this time right with all these connections in uh colonial massachusetts you know there's only so many people there to pick to marry very true now here was another tragic what you know and unfortunately sometimes that is what you see if they're not wealthy or political you know something tragic has to happen or they don't make the news but we do have people that scour through the papers just trying to find stuff and you know on this flip side where the last gentleman lived to such a long age we have Richard Morgan Lodsworth Richie and he died of carbon monoxide poisoning from a faulty heater on his yacht he's 17 generations from Lemuel Shaddock being his sixth cousin three times and Richard was only 28 years old wow now we have Susanna Susanna Shaddock Morris Faye bringing her quite a name she was married first to Richard Norcross second to Joseph Morris and third to John Faye and in the Faye genealogy John Faye of Marlboro and his descendants which was written back in 1898 it states that with the descendants of the Brigham Shaddock and Faye families blood has mingled through every generation for the past 250 years that's a long time to be mixing up some family blood that's a really long time you know when you see though I mean all kinds of different cultures where people stay within family lines or they stay within religious groups or they stay within class structures and so you do wind up with a lot of those inner marriages um but still 250s a long time yeah that was clearly the biologists have been telling us that it's not as dangerous as we might have thought now Susanna seven generations from Lemuel Shaddock being his third great-grand aunt she's also eight degrees from Governor Andrew nine degrees from Charles Ewer and 10 degrees from Lucy Greenlaw next we had the governor John Albion Andrew he was born in 1818 in wind of Massachusetts he was the governor of massachusetts from 1860 to 1866 and he formed the famous 54th massachusetts volunteer infantry which was the first regiment in united states made up entirely of a listed you know enlisted men of color and even once those were established you know there weren't a whole lot of them but they're definitely um they started to to build those up John was said to be a remarkable speech writer and speaker his paternal grandfather John Andrew was a silversmith during the american revolution the same as Paul Revere so that was just kind of an interesting little tidbit of news then we have Adeline Ripley on his lines and this one was um kind of fun it was Adeline Nyland Ripley Angie Nyland Ripley and Daniel Simpson Ripley were all born in 1829 their parents were a shale Ripley and Mary Clark Ripley well when the triplets were born the doctor Daniel Lang Simpson and he strongly urged the parents to name them after himself his wife and his sister so the wife was Angeline Nyland the sister was Adeline Nyland and of course he was Daniel Simpson and so they did they named all three of their children um they didn't even get to pick the middle names they used the other person's birth name as the middle name for their children and yeah we can talk about thanking your doctor maybe there was no cost involved in the doorbreak yeah that's what I wondered you're just gonna try to figure it out right I hope they got a discount well my husband has some people like that in his branches you know maybe where they took one of the names and put it as a middle name but I mean I that's a little bit excessive the first name in there but the idea of triplets being born though even at that time was probably very unusual and especially in survival yeah yeah and the doctor was probably patting himself on the back for how healthy the triplets were when that's probably more thanks to the mother absolutely yeah and Adeline Ripley and her siblings are seven degrees from Governor John Andrews so find a look at those connections now next we had twins so we had some multiple births just scattered all throughout the branches out there these twins were unique because they were born two days apart and I'll tell you what the researcher had to stop and look at that more than twice she kept thinking maybe somebody had a date wrong on something and no the twins were born two days apart so you have Clement Gleason and Clifford Gleason were born on the 13th and the 15th of August in 1875 both twins and the mother survived they're a blood relation through the Gleason line to Lemuel Shaddock and seven degrees from John Andrew Clements army enlistment shows that he joined the hospital corps and then he later died of typhoid fever in 1898 can you imagine that poor woman though two days apart I mean oh wow yeah I'd say um you need to fix that that's not gonna happen now here we have one that was a little bit unique as well we have Joseph Augustus Gibson and he's listed as a painter in the 1850 and 1860 censuses the historical society of early American decoration actually has a collection of the stencils that he used to decorate homes around the New Ipswich New Hampshire area and so you know I guess he was famous for his stencils that he put on people's houses Joseph is six degrees or 12 generations from John Albion Andrew being his fifth cousin and according to the Steadman family's research center Joseph was living at Gibson Village in the house just south of the mill pond so I guess you have to know the area because I don't know where the mill pond is but but he was and his children constituted a very musical family some of his daughters forming a concert troupe known as the Gibson sisters so very creative artistic family next we have Mary Martha Kareen Koki Boggs Roberts and she received her nickname of Koki as her brother Thomas could not pronounce her name when he was a child by 1992 she served as a senior news analyst and commentator for the National Public Radio and she was their congressional correspondent for more than a decade for her work she won the prestigious Edward R. Morrow event the Everett McKinley Dirksen award and an Emmy in 1991 for her work on a profile for Ross Perot so yeah not an overachiever at all definitely somebody to look up to right no yeah and I'll just throw it there with the rest of my awards I don't want to meet her a few years ago and uh very very grateful lady very sad we've lost her yeah I arrived at work uh well informed about the events of the day you know many mornings thanks to Koki Roberts yeah there were several of the the people in the research group that were just super excited they got to work on her family lines really excited and really honored now she her branches had some really well traveled relatives and here we have Norbert Clay Clayborn and he managed a sugar plant in South America so he married in Argentine and had four children in Argentina after his wife died he brought his children back to Louisiana and the United States where they all were successful with their lives he had lived in Tahiti Cuba Mexico and Colombia as well as his 40 years in Argentina Norbert is four generations from Koki being her grand uncle another relative in the sugar industry and that's not necessarily common industry either so it was fun to find two was Emery Moore now he was living in Violeta, Canva, Guay Cuba in 1952 with his wife where he managed a sugar company he died suddenly and his sister who was back in the United States of course requested the FBI to investigate his death now they investigated and found it to be of natural causes and his body was returned to be entered in New Orleans he's five degrees from Koki Roberts but that would be hard on the family you know to have somebody pass like that and I mean they're an entirely different country you don't know how they've been doing you don't really know what happened how honest they are with their reporting practices sure yes and not ready to lose your brother when he's only 58 years old yeah this lady was really cool too and she is Lewis Robertson but Cunningham Barrett Meyer who was born in 1877 in Augusta Georgia and she has what I always said about my dad he just had a big heart you know he just wanted to share it with everyone so she had she had many marriages but an incredible woman she actually became the owner and publisher of a significant newspaper the Birmingham H Herald when her husband died in 1922 but she continued to successfully run it her son Edward Ware Barrett graduated from Princeton in 1932 and he had a remarkable life as a journalist and the Dean of Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism and more now Lewis remarried to Edward Barrett who was also a journalist and the owner of the Birmingham H Herald her third husband Robert Meyer was an entrepreneur who built and owned many hotels and you know just between his obituary and his fine grave profile they found you know they said he was quite the businessman as well as a philanthropist and Lewis is six degrees from Koki Roberts and our system did not like the spelling of this name and this is how her name was spelled so oh Lewis was the son of and I'd go no daughter daughter and somebody'd make an edit and go oh Lewis is the son no Lewis is not the son um Lewis was just an incredible lady that you know had great control over her life and did a lot with it now fifth was Kenneth Alford and you know he came from modest beginnings and the 1920 census he was five years old and enumerated as the son of William Alford his father was working as a janitor at a book finding facility Kenneth enlisted in the United States Marine Corps on august 16th 1943 he trained at Camp Montford Point in North Carolina making him one of the Montford Point Marines the first black marines who served during World War two and who had all trained at the segregated camp Montford Point by the time he was discharged in january 1946 he had been promoted to sergeant you know so just like you know all the people that you guys gave us uh were breaking through something and you know being starters uh putting societies together or being the first woman in an organization he was too he was out there being a marine and showing you know that he could be an officer just like the next guy now here was somebody in his branches and you know unfortunately you just did see this sometimes but Thomas Alford went to the Prevents Bureau in December of 1865 in Robeson County North Carolina asking them to order Zachariah Cade Fullmore to allow his family to leave so when we looked at the records you know we found that um Fullmore had enslaved the Alford family but when the Civil War had come to an end and he was supposed to free them he did not want to and so yeah and you know and so Thomas had to go to the Freedmen's Bureau and say look you need to tell him to let my family go and you know from what we can tell the communications with him and the Fullmores were not um overly pleasant but and they wound up in living next to him by the time 1870 census came around his family was with him and they were living on the farm next to Fullmore so I don't know what happened there if that was convenience or if that was you know things got better I don't know but it was interesting to note that instead of taking Fullmore's surname once they were freed which a lot of the enslaved people did they actually took the name of the town that they lived in so for the Alphards their name came from the town Alphardsville in Marijuana yeah that's really cool discovery well especially since we didn't really know anything about uh Kenneth's father's family there was almost nothing in his papers that we have with him we're all focused really on just him his wife and his mother's line there was almost nothing on the father we didn't even have a destiny even for him so that's great that you know take this back I see this is going to have to be printed out put it in a folder in the archives and the rest of his papers yep right so yeah because that's the origin of the name there I mean that's you know the big red and like I said you know with enslaved people we always of course have difficulties once you get back to that era where they didn't have last names and you know they didn't have birth records and the normal things that we would have to track our relatives you may not have for them so for the teams to come up with more than 300 people to attach to his lines Kenneth Alford's lines was just incredible and you know and I do thank the United States Black Heritage Project on Lincoln Tree for participating and making sure that those lines were successfully researched really a lot of fun to watch yeah thank you wonderful thank you now here is the connection Thomas is three generations from Kenneth Alford being his great grandfather so this was in a direct line yeah excellent now we have Lucy Greenlaw she was our sixth person that you provided to us Lucy aged 23 child of Allen and Sarah Hall married William Prescott Greenlaw in 1892 in Cambridge Massachusetts she was a member of the Daughters of the American Revolution and belonged to the chapter 1029 MA in Massachusetts chapter her husband was a librarian and treasurer of the New England Historic Society Lucy died in Massachusetts at the age of 92 must have had some incredible stories to tell and this one was interesting George Norris Woodward so he's out on Lucy's branches and he was a doctor and a surgeon born in New Hampshire and that raised in New York but in 1858 he decided to go out to the Rocky Mountains for the Colorado Gold Rush so he was gonna go get him some gold and he got out there and decided that treating patients was much more lucrative than a panning for gold because of course there were no doctors set up you know there were just all these uh gold hungry people people with gold fever out there and he wound up serving as a surgeon for the Union side of the Civil War before settling in Boone County Illinois and the little snippets on there are part of the letter that he wrote to his brother you'll have to read the entire thing on the profile but interesting to say you know when he gets to it he tells his brother he says I do not think I shall do much at gold digging my time is worth more in taking care of the lame and lazy at ten dollars per visit I should be extremely glad to hear from you all how did my doctor visit write about me like that to his brother I know and I went oh goodness yeah I hope people weren't like reading his letter to everyone oh yeah my brother's out there taking care of all the lame people so it's all good lame and lazy yeah and I feel so bad for the one woman in that area too yeah she must have a big stick yeah it was talking of course about all the cabins and the 200 men that were in that gold camp and there was one lady I just can't even imagine I just absolutely can't imagine I mean she was brave but you know why did she go with nobody else went I don't know now Lucy Greenlaw and George Woodard are eight generations apart not degree so they're a direct relation in being her second cousin twice removed but it is interesting he talks about the migration trail that they took you know and how they went through Arkansas and they went up 125 miles north and then we cut across it this way and you know except for the comment about the lame and lazy it was kind of an interesting letter to read now this person Rachel McBain Petrie she's an example of how our research just takes us around the globe and you know we love that I mean our members for wiki tree are global of course anyways and our discord chat the live chat that we use it goes around the clock in multiple channels you know but it's just fun that you can sit at home now and you know something you couldn't do when we all started out huh you couldn't just sit at home and do all this research you had to go drive somewhere and look at microfilm and dig out dig through the card files and yeah but you know now we have the pleasure of being able to do this so Miss Rachel and her husband William Petrie he was a Scottish granite or a stone cutter they resided in Russia for a few years so some of their children were actually born there in Russia now after Rachel's death in 1881 their daughter Daisy Petrie Hersey at the age of one was adopted by her older sister Jesse and her husband Samuel Greenlaw so that was just an interesting connection you know and it was great that she had a sibling that was that much older than the kids step in and and take her to lose your mother at age one it's just terrible Rachel Petrie and Lucy Greenlaw are just four degrees apart and then last but not least was Julia Winter Folsom she married Albert A Folsom in 1861 in Boston Massachusetts she was one of the first female members of the New England Historic Genealogical Society which of course was founded like you said in 1845 well and we found this lady out on her branches Sarah Sally Atwood Dobson created a store in 1823 when she confronted the Worthington Congregational Church in Connecticut with a list of six written reasons why she disagreed with what the church was teaching two male members attempted to endeavor to enlighten her mind and convince her of her error but I guess they failed so she joined the Methodist Church where she was disciplined for wearing a bonnet with a ribbon oh boy it sounds like she should have gone to Rhode Island somewhere else now I want to look and see if she descends from Ann Hutchinson who is also known for the church yeah and this is the 19th century this is later you think it would be a little bit more you know a little more accepting I guess yeah yeah definitely a feisty woman though and I'll tell you what I have a few of those in my family so I'd be curious you went into a Methodist Church now with a bonnet and ribbon how would you be how would they react oh I think you're gonna wear a bonnet and a ribbon oh my mother-in-law is actually a Methodist I'm curious so there's the what what the reasoning why with that yeah you have to ask her to wear it when you're on there I would be acceptable about covering the hair I'm not and like not covering would be more I think it's the ribbon it's the excessiveness of flaunting right that you should be humbled before God or something right yeah today I think you know the other Methodist ladies would just have bigger ribbons yeah it's true now Miss Sally Atwood Domson and Julia Folsom are 14 degrees apart so it does switch by marriage a couple of times on that connection okay and we see that every time the color changes in that chain right next we have George Cawkeane he was also out on on her lines and he first married to Milla St. Gregory the marriage was declared null and void due to the fact that the couple gave the wrong birth dates and so both were under the age of 21 and the marriage only lasted three days oh because they were mine so wait they gave their own birthdays were they like off by a couple days or were they actually under now they lied because they didn't want to bring consent consent for them they probably figured if they could get through the getting it done part nobody would you know say anything right did they ever get back together when they were of age I don't know if they did he remarried to somebody else later so I mean he may have stayed with her for a while but apparently he's the right age that second time around yeah Sally Dobson and Julia Folsom are 14 degrees apart it's not 14 no and then of course whether we support wars or not our veterans gave their all to support and protect our country and because of this we always like to acknowledge at least a few of them and you know it's just so hard to pick you guys had there were just so many interesting people in every branch of these you know starting people of these trees it was just so hard to look through it and go okay we're only going to do this and so I usually only pick one conflict but we have three because and even at that I had to narrow it down in the American Revolution we had Jariah Bass who had revolutionary service in 1776 he later died in military service in the war of 1812 young Edward Saville his son and a nephew of Jariah Bass died in the battle of 1812 so they lost several people in that war we have George James Yeats who's four degrees from Lucy Greenlaw he served as a captain with Massachusetts during the American Revolution Captain Yeats is also a DAR patriot ancestor Silas Ewer was a revolutionary war soldier and commissioned to be the commander of the ship Camberwell a laser flag pole was a lieutenant in the American Revolutionary War now for the Civil War I have to hear John B Ireland who's seven degrees from Lucy Hall served in the New York eighth heavy artillery during the Civil War he was severely wounded during the second battle of deep bottom in deep bottom Virginia George Alfred Cunningham who graduated West Point in 1857 and was assigned to the first cavalry as a second lieutenant he resigned from the U.S. Army in 1861 and February which ended his service for the union and then in April he entered as a colonel the Confederate service oh wait he entered as a first lieutenant though of artillery and he was promoted for conspicuous services in the battle to captain major and then colonel of artillery now from the great world war or world war one we have the following we have first lieutenant George Peyton Cole who was killed by machine gun fire in the battle of argon forest in France and we have general Michael Davison's father lieutenant colonel Paul root Davison was a captain with a 15th United States cavalry having enlisted in 1912 he served with the ordinance department during world war two so a lot of a lot of men out there that committed to their country now on wiki tree we're all cousins by blood or marriage there are 29,296,146 cousins connected on wiki tree alive or not and then our time started out in you know the united states and of course new england heavily in massachusetts but by the end of the week we had research in the following locations and so our team of researchers visited Argentina Canada more specifically Nova Scotia um Cape Verde islands Cuba England Honduras Ireland Norway Russia Scotland Spain massachusetts as a colony of course massachusetts spay and in the united states um pretty much all of them i think they listed out and so it was really you know really cool to see the records coming in and conversations going back and forth about all of those different you know places and a great thing about wiki tree though too you know and within the challenge because we wind up with such a broad spectrum of experience and you know skills that we get people that have experience all over the world that come in and help out those of us that don't know an area you know and help us learn how to find records so if anyone out there has questions about the presentation or wiki tree you can find us on facebook twitter or wiki tree dot com don't forget to like the video and subscribe to our channel i'm going to run the credits for a minute and you know i'd like to take a minute to thank all the incredible wiki treeers that helped with the research for the week once again we had more than 117 people working on this challenge they found just an amazing amount of discoveries and a really fun group to work with and Karen you know thank you too for making this such a successful week and then a big thank you to Melanie and David for working with us and and partnering up and letting us dive into these branches yes and thanks so much to you Mindy and the wiki tree team for all their behind the scenes uh work that makes these challenges possible and allows us all to have so much fun researching together bravo yeah you all did wonderful and we absolutely and we really appreciate all the time you spent into each of those profiles and it sounds like that you said like different people were uh gravitating towards a specific person so i like that there was some variety that everyone felt if they could maybe connect with one of them in some way yes even though uh you know you would think on the surface uh all of these folks were coming from the same place and and our uh um members outside the us would be uninterested you know we had record levels of participation and and then you know it didn't take us long to get out of new england and off to certainly to the south i know we added uh several categories for uh african-american folks who had uh participated in the great migration you know in the mid 20th century and so we have new categories for people migrating out of north and south carolina up to massachusetts and and so there's you know there's so much research to be done and i'm sure we've already had a number of uh you know graduate papers uh that are drawing on the research from the tree great yeah and i want to show this to you real quick you know caron had mentioned how there's some people still working and you know you guys know us from prior challenges um some people just can't quite give it up at the end of the week and we're still working on it this gentleman is one of them and he actually represented the only brick wall that we did not um get to give points out for before the week was up but you know it was for a reason and we actually had the parents for him so they're not added on wiki tree yet it's richard quadri and he's on the charles you were lines um if you looked out on other sites on you know the internet everybody had him as a brick wall and at this point now we have his father williams will we have his stepmother agnes's will we have his uncle's will um we're still transcribing all of these will so that we can get the information put you know on the profiles and and fill them out appropriately but it was just one of those things that was really exciting you know and it just happened over and over with different little spots of the branches where people just went oh i can't believe it i found you know and yeah it's just so much fun to look through them and see all of the wonderful things that they you know that they found on them and the notes that people left for future researchers absolutely and it's a good reminder that why you don't you shouldn't be above with your genealogy that something might come along a little bit later and you just never know so i'll say never you know it's a never ending story go back generations and go forward generations and you were kind of just in the middle so yeah some are sooner or later you're gonna find it somebody will never give up exactly and it also just shows just how like this is so few connections are needed just to connect us with different people in history and throughout time so just you know and roll out more closely related than we think we are yeah we haven't found our customers yet no we haven't found that oh yeah well at least get by five degrees you know right yeah yeah i was looking at our locations we talked about a lot of them but um we wound up in in uh not just cuba which we mentioned but Cape Verde islands and Honduras and and Argentina you know i have to go puzzle out where what took us over there and then beyond you know England Scotland Ireland which you might expect for from Massachusetts we were also like you said in Norway and and in Spain and in so we got around the world yeah we definitely did we definitely did and i think it's a lot of diversity too well the sugar plants and everything else that's probably why we're hopping back to the Caribbean islands especially oh that's true right to the Caribbean and and even to South America so a few degrees when you think about how much between the colonists so Norway that's a little out there but you know those are those are interesting ones yeah how they kind of end up there yeah and i see 29 states added to the list and that's just the ones that people thought to add to the list so i bet if we went and looked we'd find yeah for the united states over half of them definitely um yeah it'd be interesting to know the story behind like how they actually wound up in Russia you know did they just decide sometime hey i want to go look at you know russia i know one of the um one of the ones i believe it was the doctor in that letter that had just said you know who knows where i'll wind up next i just want to see the world you know so that was kind of cool that's great fascinating discoveries as always thank you this is a lot of fun and i'm glad that this was something that everybody felt it was fun to participate into so right and that spirit of wanting to give back you know i know we saw a lot of that in our first year when we were working with uh genealogists you you know and we thought oh we think of how much uh you know amy johnson crow or judy russell or or you know david himself or or and melanie of course um you know uh liked being featured so much that she had to come and join us that's right i i'm still you know spellbound for you know what you guys found for me and that's like i always sell people i mean even more so i always support a wiki tree and set up well wonderful thing that's i said you know i said here i am the chief genealogist of an organization and you just cannot rest on the laurels of your own research you have to proud sorts you have to compare and share yeah really it made a difference in my research i couldn't without the wiki tree challenge that i was involved in i'd be thinking that james lee was stole my ancestor with the wrong yeah yeah and i love how i get surprised by other people's dna you know i knew that on paper i was like a 16th um a kevecker from from uh new france and and uh and then i go and look at my my mom's dad one day and there's like three french canadiens who are on his um mitochondrial line and they all share the same haplogroup uh so it just confirms that you know three people up there joined a wiki tree told us that they had taken a mitochondrial test and uh i don't know if i could have gotten my second cousins to take it but it certainly adds confirmation oh and in fact um i did get confirmation because a cousin um did 23 and me where they just give you a haplotype and that was a match so yeah absolutely and i know i've seen a few things obviously besides some corrections being made on my line the courtroom line um i'm starting to see possible cousins more and more starting to join now so i'm actually starting to see actual cousins that are newer to me like i think there's a new one possibly on my flin line maybe that'll break open that would be nice to see that you know so it's it was a chance that's what i love about it the more people are seeing this and i think these challenges are kind of showing people like the power of the collaboration how yeah how quiet challenges as well like um you know every month a number of projects just have a connection project of their own and say uh you know how many african americans can we add to the tree uh this month you know is one that goes on every month and i and i know a number of the other projects are the same you know or let's all go look at this cemetery in boston you know and get all the people on wiki tree yeah yeah definitely definitely our community makes a big difference uh you know it's not an an experience you're going to find elsewhere and very powerful yeah we had a member nicole who joined the day before the challenge was her first day on wiki tree and luckily she's a ux designer so she she's used to thinking about how software works but uh um you know she had a lot of just learning her pearls to cross but she's excited about just living in vermont and oh i want to find the people from this challenge who are from vermont so i could just drive to the place and like photos or or go to the um historical society do some in-person research research that's really cool and i like to give a plug out for the for this challenge because i think it was great so any organization out there please get in touch with you know mindy mindy and the team though because if you've ever been wondering about you know some of the founders or any important people in your organization it's a great way to just learn more and get your members involved and you know and just like i said just kind of tell about your organization in that regard too i think it's i think it's a win-win on everyone's side and you know i think it's it's so much fun doing these and you're always surprising just more and more with each of these challenges so yeah i know um north of ireland family history society picked up at least two new members from the wiki treeers working with them so i wouldn't be surprised if we see uh some new members for you as well when people get yeah go look at the website and see all of the great collections with overbooks and all the great uh online resources that you have you know absolutely everyone wants to get in touch with us feel free to reach out to us whether it's email discord you know we're happy to help so yeah absolutely well thank you again melanie and david it is always a pleasure to me to be able to work with you guys anyways you're like family now that you've done a tree challenge and now you've done it twice you can say record breaking in more ways than one right now so um you know i i look forward to seeing what everybody does when they finish these branches and certainly if you have any questions about anything you find out there you know how to reach me and you know just reach out if i don't know the answer i will find it so it's just been an incredible week thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you to both of you and to everybody that's been healthy on this challenge really appreciate it absolutely