 Wednesday, we are here to wrap up our week for Connie and tell her all of the secrets that we have. I'm excited. Yeah, it's been a great week and I know Mindy has lost a share and then we'll be kicking off Scott. But first, before we get into all of those goodies, let me introduce you to everyone's who's here. So my name is Sarah. I'm a WikiTree team member. If you guys are, I wasn't here last week, I'm sorry, I missed all of you guys. Next to me we have Mindy, who is the overall project coordinator for the challenge also is the captain for Connie's week. And then next to we have Laura, who is the captain for Scott's week. And then we have Connie, who we're wrapping up this week and we have Scott. And that's who all we have. It's going to be great tonight. And for those of you who are just tuning in, maybe you saw the link on Twitter or Facebook or saw our Connie or Scott mention something to you and you have no idea what WikiTree is. I'm going to tell you very quickly what WikiTree is and also what the WikiTree challenges. So the WikiTree challenge, the WikiTree is a community of genealogists who are working together on a single family tree. In other words, we collaborate to grow an accurate global tree that connects us all together. And most remarkably, it's free. The WikiTree challenge is our year long event and part of our year of accuracy where each week a team of WikiTree years takes on a genealogy guest stars tree and collaborates to make it more accurate and complete than it is anywhere else. Our goal is to improve our accuracy on WikiTree and add more family connections and make more friends. So that's WikiTree and the WikiTree challenge. And if anytime during the chat, anytime during the live cast, you have any questions, please pop them into the chat. We will address them when we can. And we'll go ahead and start off with the wrapping everything up. So oh, Mindy, I had muted you because there was some. There we go. Let's tell everybody about the point system. Now we're definitely not in it just for the points. We are a volunteer community and we love to get out there and take on a great challenge. But points are a good motivator and it helps us see how we're doing. So we have our MVP, most valuable player, which we'll show you in a few minutes. They get points by either breaking down a break wall, which is 10 points, or adding a nuclear relative. So a sibling, a child, those are one point each. And they add up actually pretty fast and to keep this all going, we have several ways of collaborating. Now on the left there you see a screenshot of our spreadsheet. When you wind up with 30, 40, sometimes 50 of us working at the same time, you know, we don't want to be tripping over each other. So we have that so we can say, hey, I'm working on this profile and nobody else comes in and does all of our work. On the right, that's the post that we have in our G2G, which is our genealogist to genealogist forum. We go in there and we post bounty points that we've gotten or an interesting fact that we found, sometimes just a question for the people that aren't real comfortable with the Discord or the live chat. And Connie, you'll get a link to all of these things so that, you know, at least like the post and whatnot, so you can see what people have said. Now this is our biggest way and with this many people, we couldn't do it without Discord. This is our live chat and it just saves us. You know, with this being a global site, we always have somebody on. So, you know, if you want to say, hey, I need somebody else to look at this record, is this right? Or, you know, I added a bunch of sources, but I'm not good at writing narrative at all. Somebody else will go, oh, that's great. I love writing biographies, you know, and they'll jump in. And sometimes we just get there and sure each other on. And that's just as important. So we use Discord a lot. Yeah, it's always lots of lots of chatter. So we have our MVP and stats for Connie's week. And this would be our MVP. Oh, he was just a lifesaver. Connie, you're going to love the work he did. Oh, Selma was awesome. This was his first time actually participating in the challenge. He came in just to take care of some of those Denmark profiles, did some really wonderful work. And then on the right, you see that's our top five. So off the score sheet, which you'll see in a minute, our top five were Old Selma, Maggie Ann, Robin Baker, who's also new to the challenge, Donna Bowman and Maddie Hardman. And thank you to each of you. Yes, hard working to get the points they got. Yeah, and all was he was this was his first week working on the challenge, right? Yes, it was awesome. So here are the link to all the for all of the stats. And we had just an incredible week. Let me tell you, every time I thought, oh, wow, our week got really great. Connie got better. So this is our system for better in a good way, though. This is our system for kind of telling us how we're doing as we go along. Now, the total points all together. These are the people that that actively contributed. But let me tell you, there are a number of people behind the scenes that are doing those things, like I said, writing those biographies, looking up obituaries for people, you know, doing all those things that and they don't show up on the sheet, but we couldn't do what we do without them. So at any rate, we have nine hundred and twenty one points. And this is what the breakdown is. You had one hundred and thirty five direct ancestors added to your branches. And then for those nuclear relatives, three hundred and sixty six more profiles. So one more was added since I opened this. And they're still working. And the bounty points, we actually hit high in the challenge. We made forty four hundred and twenty bounty points. Yay, which means that's forty two of what we mark as a brick wall. Now, that may not have been a brick wall you couldn't get through, but it's somebody that you did not have on your tree that we added or we found on wiki tree and we connected. Oh, boy, like I said, it was just it was an exciting week. It was really exciting. And then the next two things just kind of lets you see those people in the background and I'm talking about now for profiles edited. We had one thousand and two unique profiles edited. Yeah. And you know, when I say that people are adding the nuclear relatives like the children, the siblings, they don't stop there. You know, we get a will and we had a lot of them this weekend, the last challenge week, you know, and we're adding in the grandkids and the kids, kids and, you know, so there's actually more profiles than what the points show, but we only get points for the nuclear relatives. But those are the total profiles edited. And then just during this one week time, there were four thousand three hundred and four edits. So every time somebody went in, added a source, fixed a date, did something. That's how many edits were done in one week's time. I mean, it just blows your mind. You guys are incredible. The power of wiki tree and collaborative. Yeah. Yeah, I just read so I was up to date. This is so cool. So, you know how many we did and now we can show you exactly what we found. It's really exciting. Yeah, I hope you didn't like book any clients for tomorrow or plan on being anywhere. Well, I'm most of the weekend that I'm going to be studying this awesome, because you've got a lot to look at. Now, these were your percentages. And that was your starting percentages. And once again, while for the people that don't know, we start with the great grandparents, you know, and then a lot of that, you already did have filled out nicely in your branches between wiki tree and ancestry. So this is just showing the percentage for each generation going down to 10 generations. How much you had on each one. And then I'm going to bring that up because I can't see that very good on her screen. You know, and of course, of course, your total identified ancestors up until sixth generation, even that one was really good, 91 percent. And just like the rest of us and especially anybody that does their own tree, a genealogist or otherwise, you never have time to work on it. You wind up working on everybody else's. So you still had some really good numbers there. 56 percent at seventh generation. But then for everybody, it drops drastically. So now we're down to like 6 percent at generation 10, you know, and that's where you're going to see some changes. All right. And the boxes represent what? Oh, the new the new ancestors that we added to wiki tree. So the brick walls. OK, fantastic. Right. And for the for the Davis line, we wound up doing a lot especially, and I know that you had just made that miraculous connection with DNA, but you hadn't had the time yet to go out there and work on the, you know, the actual people and see what you had. So we actually spent wound up spending a lot of time on the newbie and the Nixons, and it's really great because people wind up in little clusters, you know, and we wind up working with each other and getting things done. Both of those lines extended back into the 17th century. And with Quaker families, so a lot of Quaker records, which is wonderful for other people. I know you've seen them, but for people that haven't, there aren't a lot of vital records in that area at that time. So the Quaker records are just a godsend between them and the wills. They have a lot of info information. But they Quaker families stretch back for quite a ways. And it was interesting to see on yours, especially that they really did try and stay with the same meeting house, which was their church for generation after generation. Now, Zachariah Nixon was said to be the progenitor of the Nixon line in the Carolinas, and he is said to have gone from England to Virginia and he wound up in Pasqua Tank precinct about 1663. So that's how far back we took that line. And it's just been a lot of fun. And it says, and actually to get, you know, any personalized, we want to bring these people back to life for you. On somebody that far back is a little bit hard, but we were lucky and we found a quote from a friend that said after he passed, our friend and brother, Zachariah Nixon, departed this life the third day of the 12th month, 1691 in the evening. As the sun went down and then continued his testimony for God's truth to the end and now is it rest with a faithful or a soul satisfaction? Well, yeah, I just thought that was really touching, you know, that that you have that little bit to know of him. And then somewhat last minute now, we don't just do profiles. We like to, if we can, we like to find topics that we can do our space pages on, which means it's basically a blank slate and we can put what we want on it. And this was really just mostly yesterday that it was done. And I don't you, well, you wouldn't have seen this one. I don't I have not seen this. This is wild. Oh, isn't it? And I figure, you know, it's far back enough in the tree. You can go. OK, I'll read this one. But it actually was really fascinating. This guy was an upstanding citizen, Warner Davis in his town. Everybody thought, you know, really well of him. And his wife thought he had heard a noise outside and gone out and maybe surprised a thief at the smokehouse. And she heard some bumping and grunting, whatever. And by the time she could get up the nerve to go out there, he was he was dead outside. She couldn't revive him. And they never did find the thief in the town, of course, talked about it repeatedly and looked for this horrible person that stole their beloved, you know, Warner Davis. Anna, yeah, needed a biography. She found a murder mystery. And so what what wound up happening is almost 50 years later, this gentleman was on his deathbed. This other guy was and he confesses that him and his buddies had this counterfeit ring. And what had happened is the cow had gotten out. And that's what she heard out. There was him bumping around, chasing the cow, trying to get it to go back in. And for some reason, the cow was spooked and took off. Well, he chased it down and stumbled upon them and their counterfeiting ring. And that's right. And that's why he was killed by this other guy. So I mean, she did an incredible amount of research. You're going to get the link to this page. There's a lot of you as you can see articles and whatnot. Just really interesting. Oh, this is great. Oh, my gosh. And Lucy's in the chat. Thank you, Lucy, for this. Thank you, Lucy, so much. Wow. So and just to keep in mind, these the free space pages, they create that any that didn't even count towards any of the edits that were on that score page because they're not linked to a profile. So this was additional. Wow. Very cool. Thank you so much. And then we have Hardy and on the Winslow line, the father of Hardy Griffin Winslow was the only really big discovery there. He turned out to be a William Winslow instead of a Jesse. And I think that partially because that was proven so late in the week, you know, everybody was kind of afraid to touch it and be the one that had to say whether he was definitely a William or not. So that was definitely determined that that's what his name was. But we didn't go as far back on that line. Now, I know that you had talked about Rebecca Henley's lines going back to England. Yes, we think. Right. I thought I was pretty sure. And some of these lines. That part of that line is duplicated, but they were still working on the Hanley's, as a matter of fact, just until a little bit ago, right before the live cast and a team member was working on Isaac Richardson, which is on that line, born 1681 in England. She was working through a will to prove his children. Well, it's because we have more on the the wife side, Sarah. Yeah, we didn't get as much on his because people were kind of afraid to kind of afraid to mess with the whole this one, the whole William Jesse thing. Right. Now, of course, here's where, you know, it gets into some of the fun stuff for Connie. Definitely here was was where all had to work. And that was actually a farm house that, you know, we think of like, I have a lot of ancestors that are farmers, but they were just farmers. These were small holders that actually managed a farm like a business or, you know, a level above the common people. They were in charge of that. And some of these were passed down from father to son. Just like, you know, you'd hear back in the days with the kings and the queens and everybody had their their houses of whatever named and all did some really great research on this. And I loved finding just the different occupations and stuff we had. Well, let's talk a little bit about Mads first. He was your third great-grandfather. He was baptized at home. He stood about five foot three inches. Really? Yeah. He managed the farm in Lindell's. And so later sometimes was called by the name of Land. He had served as a soldier in 1828 at Cronin's Regiment, which was the Crown's Regiment. And it was just interesting that, you know, I think we were he was finding more on that side than we were finding on the United States side because of the Quakers. So he was finding people that had military service. Now, there was one little hiccup for us. And thank goodness, once again, for our our Denmark expert, because I would have done the same thing, but they had the records. And, you know, when there were two men of the same name, Tom Smith and Tom Smith, instead of saying Junior and Senior or the elder, they would say where they're from and give it like a farm name, a location name. And so that explains it. Yeah. So the Aval Bowl that was up there as a last name. That's that's up there now as like another last name, only because people kind of used it in that context. But it really wasn't his name. It was the location. So. Oh, really? So, yes. So we had to make that adjustment. And, you know, he's put he's put the information from all the different records that he's found on some of them. He found, you know, census records, some he found stories. He really found a lot on looking at those. So it was a lot of fun. And you did wind up with four new ancestors behind Mads Hansen. Now, if we had had more Denmark experts or if all had more than a week, you would have had a lot more than that. But he really tried focusing on getting the brick wall people down for you so that you were at least going back one more generation on each one of those lines. And he just did really a fabulous job on that. Thank you so much. That is so cool. And then Francesca Jensen of Colding Denmark. Once again, on this Mads and Jensen line, you were really interested in. We found for this part, six new brick wall ancestors, including Jen Sorensen, Jensen. He was a small holder like we had talked about at first. And then later he became a butcher. Now, his first wife died during childbirth. He's out with the second wife. The man died at the age of eighty four. I mean, that's a pretty good long life. But yeah, the wives were just not making it so much. And then another one on that line, Sorenn Rasmussen. And you'll have to forgive me if I pronounce these wrong. I'm just going to do the best I can do on it. Sorenn Rasmussen was born about 1761 in Denmark. Now, he was only two years old when his father's probate was filed. So he was just a little guy. He wound up being a wooden spoon maker, which fascinated me because a lot of times you see woodworker, but not something so specific there, you know, where it says a spoon maker. And he left behind a wife and two children, plus the wife had an illegitimate child. He was only about fifty two when he died. So and then you also had a norgan errands and that was he was a woodworker. So just some really fascinating, fun people. Very cool. Thank you. Now, Oliver Booth, we don't have it marked on there. You'll get you'll get the chart, which you'll see soon. He was we got seven new direct ancestors on this line, which was five brick walls where we had brick walls marked. And you had been looking at the possibility of the relation to John Wilkes Booth only because people had mentioned it. And you said it had to be way out there if it was there. And it was way out there. But yes, we did find it. So you did. Yes. So John I searched high and low. And, you know, part of the fun, not only having this beautiful white space to write on for these biographies and having the collaboration that we have are the really cool tools that our techies work hard at, you know, making and refining for us. So, you know, we have the relationship finder and you can find your connection or relationship to somebody. John Wilkes Booth and Constance Knox are 12th cousins four times removed. So, right, you said back there. It was back there. I told my daughter one time I said, this can't be. I said, of course, if it is, why can't we be related to, you know, Abraham Lincoln? We have to be related to John Wilkes Booth. I know, right. I want to be related to George Washington. And your your common ancestor was Edmund Trafford, who was born about 1442. He was your 15th great-grandfather. And John's 11th great-grandfather. So it went way up there and back. I guess we could find any connection anyway. What if you get enough of them connected? But it was it was fun looking. It was fun looking for it. We can't wait to see that. Yeah. OK. So next we have Melissa Booth's line. And we were looking at Elizabeth Jane Morris. Now, she was your sixth great-grandmother. She was the wife of William Morris, who served in the Virginia line during the American Revolution. We did find a couple of them. These lines were this one was a little bit of a tough one to crack. And, you know, a few people tried taking on the William McFarley Smith and with the William Smith being so common, they just weren't certain enough and they didn't want to put something up there if they weren't certain it was right. Now, the bigger news with him was his wife, who was listed as a Harriet, but he actually married an Almeda and they found the sources to support that and get ready for this. There are now more than 50 new to you ancestors on that line, Connie. Wow. I quit counting at 50. I was 26. Wait, I used all my toes up. They were it was too much. They stretch back to pre-1600 and the DNA matches if can you bring up, Sarah, the actual profile for Elizabeth Morris? Thank you. Now, this is another nice thing. See all those beautiful little DNA symbols on the right? Those are all people that have some amount of possible DNA match to you that say they're related to that person. So each time I don't have people that have that long of a list, I go out there and there's like, oh, my cousin Jim's right there and my cousin Kim's on there, too. All of those people are ones and their kits are right there. So if you want to compare them on some of them are ancestry, some are jet match, you know, different places. I know you know what to do with the DNA. So that's going to give you more tools to play with. Oh, my gosh, it's going to take me a year to get through all this. I told you you're going to at least want to be bookmarking stuff. Or I don't know, I can see now Connie's going to have post-its everywhere. Like, don't forget to look at this one. That's what I would do. And just so everybody know this little icon here that has little thing will show you the connection between you and that person or the person. I'm sorry, the person whose profile it is in that person. So if you wanted to see the trail. Right. And we use that a lot for our DNA confirmation statements here on on wiki tree. So yeah, so this little holy cow. Yeah, kind of mind blowing. OK, and then we're going to go into George Simmons and his part. Now on the Maternal's line is Anne Elizabeth Dunbar, her father or somebody down her father's line was supposed to be a revolutionary soldier. I know that we didn't get those lines back far enough to do this. But we did get a match when we started the week. Oh, John's parents turned out to be John Simmons and Sarah Fibs. And those were new names to you. And this one added 25 new direct ancestors, 25 off of this one set of parents. And, you know, I mean, you know, you get those spots where you're like, oh, I'll go back and work on that one later. Or, you know, you look and it's not easily apparent. Sometimes all you have to get through is that one couple and the rest of it just takes off on that line. George's mother was another example of where finding the right records. In this case, it was a maiden name that we needed can break down a brick wall. His father, John, had married a Mary Fullwood, which led to 10 new ancestors behind her. I mean, I'm telling you, every time we'd find a really good find and somebody go, oh, wow, and now I found the parents and I found the grandpa. Wait, I'm still going, you know, and we think, oh, we're just going to shock caught it with all this stuff and then we'd start all over again and somebody find a whole new path on Sarah Fibs. Her ancestry and these were notes that somebody had made for us. Actually, somebody from our one of our England projects members was did a lot of really great work, but said that the Sarah Fibs ancestry is nearly all nail makers in and around the Kingswind Ford in black country, which, of course, is where they did all the mining and had all the foundries during that time. And that's why they called it that. They were actually pretty prosperous in the 18th century, but then times got harder for them. And, you know, there was less demand from the colonies and more competition and cheaper prices. And so, you know, some of the earliest ones, though, left wills and it was just really incredible for her to work through these wills. Now, some of them also use space pages like what you saw for the. Article on the murder to put a will on, because that way you can put the will on that and just link it to the profile. Oh, I see the cat now, Sarah. Just link it to the profile instead of having the whole thing on there. Now, I have to admit, I did abstract some of the ones I worked on, but some of them put full transcriptions for you. So one way or the other, you got a lot of wills. Wow, you guys are awesome. Hey, we keep your ears go. Yeah, yeah, amazing people. You guys have done more in one week than I could do in a lifetime, I think. And by the way, Connie, Ellen, Ellen Thompson, Jennings watching, and she had said, Connie, I know what you mean. And I didn't get 50 plus new ancestors for your previous. But we still love you, Ellen. I'm sorry. Now for Wilhelmina Koss, that line, actually, there that was some of the first brick walls that came down. And that was the Clovis and Koss families. They were a little bit tricky because there were so many of them in the area and there was a little bit of intermarrying. And those were some of the lines Emma could do that. She she was didn't have as much time as she wanted this week to do a lot of DNA confirmations. And then, of course, on the Denmark line, she didn't have the matches to work with. They just weren't there. But she did try and get some of them done. And then you did have on that line a John Koss born about 1840 was described in the census was a minister of gospel. So some very, very religious people. Now, this was the big shocking thing on this on this line. OK, Ellen, close your ears. Don't listen on this line. You got more than 60 new ancestors just on Wilhelmina's line, more than 60. And this stretched actually back to the 11th century. So when you get a chance to look at this, you're going to see we worked, you know, we tried to work back. And so all of those are proven. Now, you may see some connections in the middle there that were back when everybody was doing the old Jed comps and stuff. But then when you get back to the really old one, you're going to see the work our projects have done on these amazing, you know, 11th, 12th, 13th century ancestors. It's just incredible. You're going to have a lot. You're not going to get through this anytime soon. I was amazed. This was just I'm amazed. Blown away. I know the line. I didn't have not. I've been so focused on some other brick walls that I haven't even touched this line much at all. So I am so appreciative. And then this is one of the things that, you know, is supposed to happen with wiki tree, of course, the more we get people on here and we fill out their branches, all of a sudden, these people start connecting, you know, so we kept finding all these profiles that were floating out there and they were maybe connected to a small family, but not connected as they should be to the global tree. And as we've worked through each of you guys, especially where you guys might have a common, you know, background area, so we've had several that have the North Carolina, for example, as we get that filled out more and more, that increases the chances that you're going to have those more distant ancestors that you're all of a sudden going to connect to. And I tell you, it was exciting, though. I'm like more than 60. Oh, my gosh. One of them had more than 70, I believe, just coming off of one line. Yeah. Yeah, nice. Now, this was the military service, and this is where I was saying, and you may still have plenty of patriots. You know, a patriot wasn't just a soldier during the American Revolution. And the Quakers, as a matter of fact, a lot of them had to pay taxes because they wouldn't serve, which is still considered patriotic duty. That money went towards the military, but for the ones that actually served, we didn't see that many, you know, in your lines. And then we kept finding them or rather all kept fighting them on the other side. You know, so you did have some nice World War Two. And like I was talking about, there were the Crown's Regiment. You did have military on the the paternal side as well. Valentine Bloss. Yes, that is a cool name. And this is another space page that was done for you, Connie. You'll get a link to this as well. And, you know, of course, we just kept finding that all these families were so established in the Quaker meeting houses and locations. And so somebody went through and put a whole bunch of information on the meeting houses, the specific ones. Now, she started to do and we all learn from each other during this process. You know, I I have a trick to do this and somebody else has a trick to do that. And I'm like, wait a minute, let me write that down. OK, that's cool. So she was learning and she did this, but she started out trying to put the names on the page. And she quickly found out that you had way too many ancestors to, you know, just link in there. And so somebody was, you know, showing her to do the category for him. Now, if you go to this category for the Quaker, these are all people that went to those that meeting house. Yeah. Yeah. And it's it was one of my ancestors that donated that land. Oh, really? He'll be original meeting house. That one, the black and white photograph of the meeting house. Yeah. And I took a couple of those pictures. Oh, we were just a lot of those. Yes, very cool. Thank you so much. Wow. So so the original one was donated by who? The original meeting house, the land that it sat on was donated by one of my I don't remember his name offhand, it was one of the Henleys. Hmm. In fact, I believe I was related to most of those people in that meeting house. It's kind of cool. Those Quakers, man, they have the greatest records. Oh, man, they do. I know they do. I have a whole new level of appreciation for him. Now, this you'll get to. And it's a little course hard to see on this screen. But this is where your brick walls are marked. So everywhere you see one of those little dots on there, that's a B. And you kind of see it in the pop out there. And those are numbered for you. So you can go through the sheet and see, you know, where those new ancestors exactly popped up at that. So that was the first new ancestor on each line. They probably go further. You know, there's more ancestors after it, but they got bounty points for the first ancestor they got to on each line. Fantastic. Now, we used another one of our cold toys or tools on the wiki tree is the Ancestor Explorer app, and it was showing that you have seven hundred and twenty eight ancestors now within twelve generations. And so this chart here, though, is showing the difference, of course, between, you know, where you started and where you ended. And this is where you can really see some fun numbers. So if you see the first numbers, we looked at where it went to 56, twenty two, eleven, and you were down to that sixty six percent on the tenth generation. Now it's eighty eight for the seventh, fifty four percent for the eighth, thirty four percent for the ninth and a full twenty five percent on that tenth generation that you have filled in Bravo. That is fantastic. You guys are awesome. Thank you so much. And thank you all the volunteers. Oh, my gosh. What a gift. Thank you. Right. They are just amazing. People just they never cease to amaze me how well they do. And it was an awesome week. We did, you know, we found so much stuff. And I hope I feel like you're excited, Connie. You have to go through it all. I can't I can't wait to dig in and see all the details and read through it all. Yes. Very excited. Thank you so much. And I know I know you'll get all the the links to everything. And you know, it's all in wiki tree, so you can also explore it all. I'll tell you what, and fish, you're going to have a hard time with this. It's really hard, not the peak. I didn't think I didn't think I've been told that. I wanted to, but I had too much work to do. Keep busy with other stuff. And then well, thank you, Connie, for letting us wander through your branches like that. Well, what a privilege that you even invited me. I'm just I'm so grateful. Thank you. Well, we think we thank you and thank all the wiki trees Thank you, Mindy. Just it's it's awesome what we the power we can do when we all collaborate. So I can't wait till we all can get together again at a conference and see each other in person. Yes, I hope I still hope so. And in February, so unless in Connie, do you have any last remarks? If anybody has any questions for Connie, we might go into switch gears and go. Yeah, I'll hang out. Let Fish do his deal and. Okay, well. Connie, you're a cousin to my wife. She descends from Zachariah and Nixon and I saw Aaron Hill on there, all these Quakers, very familiar with a lot of those Perkwomens and Pasquitank County Quakers. Well, tell her welcome to the family. I'll do it. Cousins. So we will go ahead and start to introduce Scott. I have a little I have a little intro to talk about Scott. I hope I do a good job. Let me know if I missed anything. Okay. So Scott, he is the host of Extreme Jeans radio show since July of 2013. His shows heard in many markets across the country and it's heard over 500,000 times a month. Is that number seem accurate? I think it's more like, no, I'd probably be. I think it's like 630 or something. I don't know. It's a lot. It's a lot. It's fun. You know, the fun part about it is just knowing that new people are learning about genealogy and getting excited about doing it. Yes, that's. Mr. Connie feels the same way. That's the joy. And that's kind of what we're doing here too. It sure is. Getting people excited. So Scott is also the author of the New York City Methodist Marriages 1785 to 1893. And he also published in the New York genealogical and biographical society journal as well as the Catholic ancestor. And in 2015, he offered services to help local authorities find necks of kin for murder victims, for a murder victim. And he found them after three weeks of diligent searching. The story received national attention and Scott was presented with the Citizen Excellence Award. And in 2017 was sworn in as a volunteer as a deputy sheriff to help with cold cases. Yeah, that was pretty great. But the theme seems to be murder here today. You notice this? We've got Connie's murdered ancestor. She's related to John Wilkes Booth. And then we have this thing. That was a crazy experience. They did a whole feature article on that in People. And it's like, you just never know what's gonna come out of this stuff, you know? Well, so that's all I got for you, Scott. Unless you wanna add anything, we'll dive into your... I'm ready to go after I watched Connie. It's like, man, why didn't I hire you guys a long time ago? And we're doing it for free. I know, I love this. So Scott, what got you interested in genealogy? Well, by the time I was 21 years old, I had lost all my grandparents, two uncles, my brother and my dad. And so by the time I got to 26 and I was getting married and getting ready to start my own family, it was kind of like, I didn't know who these people were. And so I started interviewing the old folks who are much younger than I am today, probably. But I got a lot of stories from them, gathered a lot of pictures and was often on the way. And of course that was long before the internet. So there was a lot of using directory assistants and self-addressed stamped envelopes and a lot of time at the library. And I was fortunate to be living in Utah by that time. And so the family history library was on my way home from my morning radio show in Salt Lake. So I'd be done with my day at about 11 o'clock and I could park in the streets for free for three hours. And that's kind of how I learned how to do it. That's very cool. And who is your favorite ancestor, Scott? That's hard to pick usually. There's so many, that's a hard one, isn't it? I would have to say. You're like asking your favorite movie. Yeah, it's your favorite movie, but my great grandfather, Andrew, he was kind of a scoundrel. And for the longest time, I couldn't find anything on this guy. And I was able to crack it open, start cracking some things open about 15, 20 years ago and I finally found a photograph of him and that's a long incredible story to find that first picture, which led me to a second picture, which led me to that one. And he didn't ever meet a woman he didn't like and he died of cirrhosis of the liver, but he was a volunteer fireman in New York City and a merchant there as well. So there are a lot of interesting things about him. And I think part of what makes me appreciate him was he was so hard to find anything on when digitized newspapers came out and other things came along that was able to help me dig in. And then also tracking down other distant cousins who had things in their drawers. When you have to really work for it, those are the people you appreciate the most. But my wife really wonders why I like him so much. Because he was a scoundrel? Well, he's a pretty interesting guy. So the next question is, if you have any interesting stories to share that you found out about your family, so I don't know if you wanna go into that ancestor or you wanna talk about somebody else and then another interesting story. I can tell you about that since we're on the topic here. I had always wondered, New York City is a fascinating place if you've ever had to research it. It's too big in some ways, especially before the internet for you to ever get into anything. Because it has so many records, but then that's the benefit also is that there are so many records for you to potentially find. So when newspapers.com came along, and I'm sure you're all familiar with FultonHistory.com, one guy in upstate New York with more digitized pages than the Library of Congress. There were some stories in there about New York firefighters. And I discovered that my guy had been one of those firefighters. And I was pretty excited about that. And I thought, well, let's start learning all we can about them. And eventually I was able to learn that they put together kind of a club, a veteran fireman's association about 30 years after they were done fighting fires as young men. So this is around the 1880s. And Andrew was one of the original guys in that group. And they decided they were gonna travel and party with other former veteran firemen. And they would go around, they went to, they marched in the inaugural parade of Grover Cleveland in 1885. And then they would take trips upstate New York. And then they decided, let's do a trip across the country. So they went, they took a train and went from New York to San Francisco and back in a month. Saw the entire continent marched with former firemen in Chicago and St. Louis. And so I decided to go through all the digitized newspapers and try to take the trip with them. What happened at every city and what did they write about them? And I found several references that further confirmed that I had the right guy. It wasn't somebody of the same name. And then I found an article in a Salt Lake Herald newspaper from a month after the trip saying, Mr. Andrew J. Fisher of New York City sent a thank you note and a full body photo of himself to Mr. Jacob Alts, who was a barkeeper in Salt Lake City and a former New York fireman, an old friend of his. And so I was like, wait a minute. He sent a picture of himself here where I live, just outside of Salt Lake City. That was insane. So I called a friend of mine who was really into local history, because I didn't research a lot of Utah history. I have some, but that hasn't been my focus. And he learned that there was a display of volunteer fireman material for the Salt Lake area up at this is the place heritage park, which is the state park where they show where the Mormon pioneers came into the valley and they recreated Old Salt Lake City. So I went up there and they said, we don't have a research center. They just have this old building that recreates the old fireman's hall. And we went in there and there are photographs of the wall and old pumpers and parade sticks and things like this. And I went upstairs and on the wall was a picture of all the New York veteran firefighters. And they had sent it as a gift to thank Salt Lake for hosting them. And I thought, well, one of these 104 guys has got to be mine. And then I noticed at the bottom, there was this long little piece of card stock and all these names on them and little numbers on them. And I looked at the thing closer and saw they each had a number on their sleeve. And I found my New York firefighter ancestor hanging on a wall on a windswept hillside in Salt Lake City, Utah. I couldn't believe it. It was 30 years I'd been looking for that picture. And so that's how I got the first one. And then that led to identification of a second one, also of that group in another setting. And then because we knew what he looked like, I had a cousin who found this picture downstairs in a cardboard box with no marking on it. He had no idea who he was. But once I found the other one, I identified it. We now, now we've got three of them so. That would be exciting. Wow. That's an awesome puzzle and this three, yeah. Yeah. I didn't know photographs is hard. Yeah. You're very lucky. Oh, insane. Connie, I couldn't believe it. I mean, it's still, it's one of my very favorite experiences, you know, ever. Great story. Okay, Scott. And when did you first discover WikiTree? I want to say about six or seven years ago and found it to be an amazing source, especially seeing all the volunteers and the documentation that's put there. That to me was more impressive than anything else. And I also see where people can comment on there if they disagree with something. I really thought that was really useful. I had run across what I thought might be an ancestral breakthrough or something. And then somebody had put something else on there and said, no, I don't think you have this right. And then I researched it further and realized the commentator was correct. But I love the collaboration, you know, and I know that the more people dig into it and find the documentation, I mean, that's the key to everything, isn't it? It's a little different than it was. And I know Connie knows this for 20 years ago, how bad some of these lines were, how horrible some of these online trees were. And, you know, you would, and we still use them just as a clue as a hint. But boy, they're so much more accurate than they ever were because people like WikiTree are doing what they're doing. Well, we have more records available to us now, too. Yeah, but we also have ways to link them and people are now thinking that way. I don't think we used to think that way. We had more copycats than researchers. Yeah, we hold sources in the very highest standard. As every genealogist should, but, you know, usually people are working on their own tree and just have their sources in their little cave. Well, when we start out, don't you think that in that time we're not necessarily very good at it? And you think, well, if somebody else had it up there, they're probably smarter than me. I mean, we're always correcting those stakes we made the first few years. Cause we're always just so excited to just dive into the research and not really wanting to, oh, the sources, that's right. Yeah, how far back can I go? So Scott, what are your current brick walls that you would want to bust or you've been trying to? Oh, I can talk about that. I've got two very, you know, my mom and dad sides are very distinct and I'm very fortunate that way. My mother's is entirely Scandinavian. So I am three eight Swedish and one eight Norwegian. And then on my dad's side, it's completely different. It's mostly British. There's a German branch of my third grade grandfather, early colonials, a lot of French in Dutch New York. And I've got several Patriots in the revolution. And I go back to the Mayflower on a line as well. So I have lots of choices as far as it goes. I spend most of my time on my dad's side for reasons largely that my mother's side, there are a lot larger families and a lot more people involved in those sides who are into genealogy. And I just figure, okay, good. I mean, I did a lot of cleaning up of generations back to about my second grade, solving some mysteries. I've written kind of the definitive book on that family from the immigrant forward on all the branches there. But my dad's side has been a lot more difficult. And so the lines I've been fortunate to deal with is my grandmother Fisher, who was originally a Waldrion. Her side is entirely British and all those grandparents of hers were a real challenge for me to try to get back. So even though I've had some great luck in pushing back her maternal grandparents and great grandparents, let's see, maternal, no, her maternal grandparents, her paternal grandparents have been a real problem. I have a brick wall at the second grade grandfather there. I can tell you a little about it and probably tell you that I don't know how you would solve that Arthur George Waldrion was his name and then the name was later shortened to Waldron among the family. But I see things like two years worth of the New York directories after he came over to New York from London in the 1830s. He's called Alfred Waldrion. He mostly went by George, his middle name, but he named a son, my great grandfather, a castus. There's a castus right there. And in researching the name, I found that came from Jason and the Argonauts by Plato. So I assume Arthur was a well-read man. He was in theater. He was a theater stage carpenter, as were two or three of his sons. Worked at the Old Bowery Theater in New York. So my belief is, since the name Waldrion does not appear anywhere in England and only once it gets to New York. And I have found his wife's christening and her parents and her maternal line over in London, but I can't find the christening of any of his English kids over there. I can't find their marriage over there. I think it's a fake name. I think the name was changed. I don't know why that name in particular, but that creates a real challenge. So I'm hoping some spit will come through eventually, but I haven't found the matches yet to really make that work. But on his wife's side, Annalisabeth Stocks, I've been making some great headway on that the last few years, but the funny thing is, it's always the mother's line that I can get through. I have like three straight generations of brick walls. Annalisabeth Stocks' father, her maternal grandfather is a brick wall and her maternal great grandfather is a brick wall going right down the female line. So there are some possibilities there over in England that are kind of challenging. On my mother's side over in Norway, my great-great-grandmother Elise Torkelson, who also went by Oles' daughter, her parents are there, Oli Torkelson, and yeah, her parents are there, but I've never been able to sort out those parents and push those lines back in a way that I trust. So that- We have some experts in that area. So- Well, we saw Oli there earlier. I think it's pronounced Oli, not Ol. Okay. Because my mother's side was Olson and all the men were called Oli. So maybe Oli can make something happen there. It was a conscious decision on my part that I'll spend more time over on that one area that wasn't as well-developed because Scandinavian lines are wonderful. I know- Terrific. There's a lot of interesting information there, but- I know Laura already has some- There are people who have put some parents' names on there for the Torkelson thing, but I haven't been able to convince myself that there's been enough evidence that that's the right person or the right people. So, you know, we'll see what happens. Well, I know Laura has some great people lined out for this week to experts in both of those areas that are just chomping at the bit ready to get into your branches. They may have started already. Now- See what Thomas has already. What's that? Thomas has already started working. Thomas Katelyn. Well, if it comes up anything like Connie's, I know I'm a winner, winner, winner. I know, and I was gonna ask, what do you see- What do you hope to get participating in this challenge? Although I know Connie's week is gonna be tough to beat. Well, you know, I don't know. I'm semi-retired now, so I've been spending more and more time on my research and I know it's- What I have left is pretty challenging stuff, but I am not foolish enough to believe for a minute that I'm an expert in every aspect of every place in the world and all the record sets in different times. That's just silly. And I've hired professionals in the past for various things to see what people can come up with. And because I think, you know, as researchers, we need to be humble enough to realize, no, I'm not getting it. We need another set of eyes. So whatever anybody comes up with, if any line were to be broken among these especially, it'd be off the charts, unbelievable. Isabella Waldry on Fisher's family going back is where kind of I've been focused most recently. There's been a lot of fascinating stuff in there, but I've got a lot of other lines back there in Yarm, Yorkshire, England, where the Fishers were from, that there's a Jane Ridley that I've been stuck on forevermore and many others. But, you know, when you get into Catholics in England in the 17 and 1600s, that becomes a problem for records too. So I just have a rebellious family, you know? And Laura, do you have any questions for them? Yes, is it okay if we use the pictures that you have on Ancestry? I would hope so, Laura, absolutely. And are there any particular lines that she's like us to focus on? Yeah, I think my grandmother, Fisher, who was a Waldry and would be a great place. I love another set of eyes on her grandfather, Arthur George. You know, somebody can figure out something that I'm not figuring out. You know, I'm, to be honest, very skeptical that that could be done. But again, I'm not, you know, I'm not the only one who can figure things out. There are a lot of great people out there who can research it. James Stocks, who would have been his father-in-law, was from Scotland and I haven't been able to break that line, I'd love to do that. This is a guy who abandoned the family in 1818 and they put an ad in the newspaper because the church was now supporting his family. I just found the fifth child in that family last week, which was a kick and found a DNA match to prove it. So I love the biology side of things. So, you know, any of those lines down the Stocks family would be fabulous if somebody could break open. It would be, let's see, it would be Tinch, Paris, Pavia and Stocks down that branch. That would be, that would be fantastic if something new could be found there. That's like, it looks like Laura, Laura and your team, you got some work to do. They're ready. So, do we have any other questions? Ask away, bring it, bring it. Scott, do you have any questions for us? We didn't have any questions. If there's anybody who has questions for me along the way, I don't know what the rules are with this, but you know, you're free to email me. Okay, well good to know that. And Laura will go ahead and she'll field any questions and make sure they get to you. Yeah, absolutely. Chris wants to know if there's any connection the Fishers to the maiden area of Massachusetts? Maldon, no, I know what you're talking about. I think that's Anthony Fisher. No, my people didn't come over till 1802. It was interesting because my Robert Fisher, who was just a child, he was two years old, came over with his mother and father and mom was an Anglican, dad was a Catholic. He was then christened as a, let's see, no, he was then married as a Methodist and then he became a Baptist. So I followed him through all kinds of records through there, but yeah, they didn't come over till after the revolution. Okay, well I... Northern Yorkshire. Okay, I think that answers Chris's question about that. Thanks for the question, Chris. And unless there are no more questions, we'll probably head off for the night. So people can start working and we can keep Scott in suspense until next week. So I gotta show you all, this is a fabulous gift I just got from my brother-in-law. My wife hates it. It was given to her great, it was given to her grandfather for his fourth birthday, given to her grandfather on his fourth birthday in 1902. And her brother was horrified that the ear got chipped. And we were hoping that maybe the whole thing would get chipped, but there it is, it's the family pig. So I'm thrilled to be the proud owner of that heirloom. You can never get rid of it now, just be passed on from generation. I think so, it'll be kind of one of those things you send back and forth the Christmas time every year to someone. It'll be the gift. Oh, look, it's Merry Christmas. It's your year to have the pig. It's your year for the pig. That's some pig. Exactly. Thank you all for whatever you're gonna do. I'm looking forward to seeing this. Well, I know people are already working. So thank you, Scott, for letting us work on your tree. We're super excited and thank you again, Connie. It's been a pleasure having you. Thank you so much. This was so cool. This is a real honor. And yeah, and thank you for the volunteers. Oh my God. Oh, Cheryl has a quick question. Jesus, does the family pig have a name? Is it named or no? Not yet. We just call it pig. Just pig. There we go. Whoever gets the most points. I'm looking for a year. Look at that face. Look at that. You can name the pig with the most. RMBP can name the pig. So thank you, everybody who's watching. Thank you, Laura, for Captain Ink Scott's week. Thank you, Mindy. Thank you, everyone. And don't forget, you can check us out at wikitree.com. This Saturday, every Saturday at 10 a.m. Eastern time, we have our weekly live cast where we wrap up the week, see what happened during the week. And we'll also give a quick little update about the challenge for Scott. And then next Wednesday at 8 p.m. Eastern time, same time, same place, we will be wrapping up Scott's week and who are we kicking off? My mind always blanks. Is it Devon? Noelle. Devon. Okay, yes. Oh, yes, Noelle. So you'll both, we'll see Scott and Devon next week. Congratulations, Connie. I am very jealous. I am feeling very grateful. So we'll see you all. Thank you all so much. Have a nice evening.