 This evening or morning, I just saw, I just saw Lush, fine, he said it's 2 a.m. there. Some people it's early in the morning, late at night, say afternoon. But hello, hello to everyone. So excited to have everybody here. We have a whole bunch of people watching. I've seen a whole bunch of new names in the chat. I usually start by kind of saying hello to everybody in the chat, there's just way too many people today. But thank you everybody for watching. For those of you who don't know who we are. So I am Sarah, and then there's Julie and Aowyn. And we are WikiTree team members. Then we have Lucy here below me. She's actually the team captain for the WikiTree challenge for Judy's week. And then we have Mindy, who is the WikiTree challenge coordinator. And then we have Emma, who is the team captain for Dr. Gates's week. And then all the way at the bottom of the screen, we have Judy Russell, who we are starting her week this week. And we're actually gonna be starting for the first 30 minutes with her today. But first, we will begin with a quick, what is, for those of you who maybe just popped in as you saw Dr. Gates' name, what is WikiTree? What is WikiTree, Julie? That's for me, isn't it? So WikiTree is a community, mainly we're a community. And we work together on a single family tree. So unlike other genealogy sites where you would build your tree over here and I'd build my tree over here. And if we have a common ancestor, we never talk to each other. On WikiTree, we build on the same tree. And when we come to that common ancestor, we work together to fill out the profile, we find sources, we share our resources, we work together to make it the best that we can. So it's a collaborative tree. And you'll hear that word a lot if you are on WikiTree. We collaborate, it's our keyword. So we work together to grow an accurate and single family tree. And the best part, besides the collaboration, is that it's free. Free, the free family tree. And it will always be free. Yep, so that's WikiTree in a nutshell. I'm gonna go back and mute myself. Okay, bye. So that is WikiTree. And then the WikiTree challenge, if you guys don't know what that is, the WikiTree challenge is our year long event where each week we take on a different genealogy guest star. For example, we're ending Dr. Gates's week this week and we are beginning with Judy's this week. Did I say that right? We are ending Dr. Gates's for last week and we are beginning with Judy's this week. And our goal is to try to make their tree more accurate and complete than it is anywhere else. This challenge is part of our year of accuracy and our goal is to improve WikiTree and make new friends. So that is the WikiTree challenge. And so we're gonna go ahead and start off with Judy. We have, I'll go ahead, if you guys don't know who she is, Judy Russell, she is the legal genealogist, the genealogist with the law degree. She has, she does currently do her own family research. I know that we had a couple of guests before they aren't actively working on their families, but Judy is actively working on her family. She has Southern roots and then she also has some Derman ancestry. Your dad is from Dermany. And that's all I got really. I don't know, Judy, if you wanna cover anything else about yourself or... I don't think we need anything more. I'm all over on my mother's side and all general on my father's side. Great. So I guess we'll just go ahead and start off. What got you interested in genealogy? What kind of sparked that? You know, when you consider a Southern family and particularly a Scott's Irish Southern family, which is what my mother's side is, they're storytellers. They're all storytellers. And we used to spend summers at my grandparents' farm in Virginia. And as long as you were quiet, you could sit right outside the zone of light from the campfire and listen to the stories. And at some point you kind of think to yourself, is it even possible that any of these are true? And that's when you start getting interested in checking and finding out whether any of the stories really could be true. And some of them were, not many, but some. Now, Judy, who's your favorite ancestor? Oh, that's an easy one. It's my scoundrel. It's my second great-grandfather on my grandfather's side. His name is George Washington Cottrell. And George never told the truth in his life, as far as I can tell. He's the one who qualifies me for membership in the Daughters of the Republic of Texas because you have to prove that your ancestor lived in the Republic of Texas. George was indicted by the Republic of Texas for bigamy and adultery. I mean, how do you not like an ancestor like that? So he's my favorite. That's awesome. So I guess... He's also my total brick wall because I have no clue as to his parents. He lied about everything. I was gonna say he must have lied even about that. I'm sure he would have if anybody had ever asked him. So I guess that, you know, I also had the question of do you have any interesting stories of any ancestors? This guy seems like he has an interesting story, but do you have any other ancestors that might have any? You know, the reality is that every one of them has a story. It may not be the most exciting or adventuresome story, but they've all got stories. So it's hard to say that there's this story or that story. They've all got stories. My great grandfather on my mother's mother's side was a prison guard in Texas. And he worked out in some of the worst camps that the Texas prison system had. They leased convicts out to work in the sugar fields which were swamps with snakes and disease. I'm very grateful that he left that job, took my grandmother and moved to Oklahoma when Oklahoma opened up. So they've all got stories. My own grandfather on my father's side, deciding in 1924 that he'd had enough and he wanted to come to America. All of them have stories. Yeah, I agree Judy. That's one of the things that I really like about Wiki Tree is, you know, one of the things we like to do is breathe that life back into those people. So instead of listing off, oh, I have six census records and a death record. Woohoo, you know, we try and put the person back into the ancestor. So when did you first discover Wiki Tree? What drew you in? You know, I think it was shortly after I started blogging and somebody said, do you know about this? And I didn't. I wasn't even on it. As a matter of fact, when I checked to see my own entry on Wiki Tree, I didn't put it there. Somebody else did. So it was called to my attention by other genealogists. But you know, and I've said this repeatedly, I'm a skeptic about these collaborative efforts and I'm delighted to have this challenge so that you can show me why I shouldn't be so skeptical. We're gonna win you over Judy. I'm ready. I'm ready. And I, so, and also if anybody does have any questions for Judy, you can put them in the chat and we will ask her. So we already, you already told us one brick wall that you have. Do you have any other brick walls that you currently are working on? You know, when you're talking about Southern research, it's like one brick wall after another. You wanna deal with my John Jones problem and try to figure out his parents. That's John Jones of probably Mecklenburg County, Virginia, but he ended up in Rutherford County, North Carolina. But you know, you're talking the late 1700s, early 1800s now. John is a tough one on my mother's side. So anybody named Jones is gonna be an issue. Who is he? Is he on through the? He is, you look at the, he's, let's see. Jones is on, this is my grandfather's. So Clay Cottrell's side, it's back, oh boy, a whole bunch of generations. This is not a, if I think he's either a fourth or a fifth great grandfather. Okay, maybe we don't have him on here yet. Probably not, but if you want one to clean up right away, my grandmother's grandparents. All right, so you've got my grandmother on there, Opal Robertson, and her father was Jasper Robertson and her parents, or his parents rather, were Gustavus and Isabella Gentry Robertson. Right now, their page says that he was born in 1827. She was born in 1832. They had a whole bunch of kids between 1847 and 1871, the youngest being my great-grandfather, who was born in 1871 in Texas. They weren't married in 1899 in Mississippi. They really weren't. They didn't have two daughters named Martha. They didn't have two daughters named Lily. That probably needs some clean up there. And Gustavus didn't die in October. He died in December. That's what we could use just a little bit of help. Lucy's probably writing all of this down so she knows what to work on. Righta, people might already be starting your week, but I know right after the chat, people will begin to work on your tree. I would love it. That's terrific. So what do you hope to... I'm sorry, Mindy. Yeah, you are. I was actually gonna say we've already, she's already told us what she hopes to get out of it. She wants to be convinced that our collaborative community can actually bring some results. So we're gonna show her that. So I'm gonna replace it with this question, Judy. What's the most interesting place you've ever gone to research? Oh boy. Give you a tough one. Well, I think the one that probably touched me most emotionally was when I was speaking, was it just last year? No, it was 2019. It seems like this has been, what, a century in the last 12 months. In 2019, I went to the genealogy show in Birmingham, England. And I had done some research before going over and I was able to stand in the church and put my hand on the baptismal font where my ninth great grandfather had been baptized. And then walk up to the little side chancery chapel where my 10th great-grandparents were married. And it's in that church from which my 11th great-grandparents were buried. Oh, wow. That was a moment that I really didn't expect. Everybody says the hard part is getting your ancestor back across the pond. Not on my father's side. I have his birth certificate in German. So I know where my German ancestors are from, but this was the first line we've ever taken back across the pond on my mother's side. So that was really exciting. I think that's probably the most emotionally powerful moment. That's pretty great. I know I saw some, I think I saw some questions in the chat. Bird for duty. What? Here, hold on a second. I'm gonna show one here. What's the story that you heard as a child that you found out that was true? Because you said that you started off with people saying this and that. And... Well, the one that always blows my mind is the story about my grandfather's father, Martin Gilbert Cottrell. And it's not a story, it's stories that he was a cowboy, that he was a rancher, that he was a farmer, that he was a traveling salesman, that he was a sheriff, and that he was a Baptist preacher. Yeah, right. Except every bit of that was true. Just at a different point in his life. And we were able to document every bit of it. He was a deputy sheriff in Wichita County, Texas. He was a cow puncher there when they first, you know, he first became a man in Texas. His son, John, ran cattle between South Dakota and Texas. And then at the end of his life, after having been the traveling salesman, he converted to working as a Baptist preacher, spent the last 20 years of his life in New Mexico, preaching at a Baptist church. So it's like, whoa, it's all true. Wow. A multi-faceted man, lots of things. Absolutely. That's pretty cool though, that they were able to just feel like, yes, yes, yes, yes, you did all that. It was amazing. I absolutely did not expect it. Mm-hmm, let's see. I think somebody had a question. It was what, where'd it go? I think it was, what is the biggest legal problem in genealogy today? There we go. Oh boy. Your opinion, or what you've experienced. You know, I think the one that keeps coming up to the point where I blogged about it again today is the fact that genealogists and everybody in general doesn't pay attention to terms of service and terms of use at websites. And when they violate them or the website does something that the terms of use clearly say it can do, everybody acts like, you know, this is the worst thing in the world and it was a surprise. No, it's not a surprise. I mean, we should be reading these things and we've got to learn to stop just clicking on the, yeah, yeah, yeah, I've read the terms of service. We really have to read the terms of service and that's nowhere more important than in the DNA area. So the developing use of DNA and its implications for privacy and the way that that's intertwined with what the companies want to do with our data. I think that's gonna be the big challenge for all of us going forward. Yeah, I definitely agree about the terms of service. Well, I guess there, any advice for researching German roots when you don't speak German? Can I plug a conference? Yeah, please do. My personal international German genealogy partnership conference will be this summer. And it's speakers from all over the world focusing on German genealogy. And I'm gonna be giving a talk called which Johann Kristof is mine because there's no Johann Kristof ground rulers in that town. And I think that's gonna give you some really good hints on the things we need to do as Americans or at least as English speakers in dealing with German records. Now, what about finding resources though? I know you said you have people transcribed for you that you can translate, but for people that don't have that background that you do growing up with a German father, what resources or where do you recommend to go? Even just today, I was on Facebook and the German translation page, which is a help site right there on Facebook. Anybody can post there following the rules of the group and ask to have a document. Either transcribed if it's in the old German script or translated into English. And fortunately, it was an easy enough thing that even I was able to translate it into English for the questioner. So start on Facebook, start on social media. People do, can I borrow the word? Collaborate on this sort of thing. There are resources out there. There are people, the old random acts of genealogical kindness and they exist for virtually every language. I was gonna mention that we have our own German crew here on Wikitree. So we have a project and they're very active and they've pitched in and helped quite a bit with some of our records that we've gone back to. I know we've requested some German project members to help for this week, you believe? Yes, we do. We have several of them and they're excited to be helping. I hope they don't do too much overlap because I have done a lot of work on my German side and there's a lot that's on my blog. So before they go out and take a lot of time checking on something, they may wanna see if I've already written about it because there have been some big breakthroughs just in the last couple of weeks, I had a contact from a second cousin that I knew nothing about. And that was just fabulous. First contact on my father's mother's side ever. Wow. So that was really exciting. So we check out your blog. Do you have any, so if you've posted photos on your blog, would you allow us to take those photos and upload them to Wikitree or I'm asking you? Yeah, it's a great question because it gives me a chance to give my favorite answer, which is it depends. And the reason why I have to say that is because with respect to some photographs, I don't have the authority to consent to put it on another site. The permission was limited. So I'm gonna have to ask you to ask first. Okay, if Lucy will probably reach out or Mindy if they wanna use anything in particular. Yeah, if you have any questions about that material at all. And I know Lucy's been doing a lot of reading on your blog. It's very informative, so it helps a lot. It's cousin bait. Anybody, this is how that cousin found me was noticing that there was a reference to her grandfather in the blog. Lucy, did you have any questions besides what we've asked to Judy, that maybe your team had or you had? And I think- I don't really have any questions because it's pretty much going over everything. But we had already decided we're gonna pretty much just rebuild your tree from the ground up because there's errors, you know, it's everything. Yeah, there are some interesting mistakes. But somebody actually pointed- I wonder if your cousin emailed me the other day that she's gonna participate. Yes, I'm really excited about that. Not somebody making mistakes. She wants to focus on her father and grandfather and that's my uncle's line. So I'm delighted to have that information. It's not something I've really focused on. So I'm just thrilled that she's actively engaged. Yeah, somebody had mentioned earlier because you said, Judy, that somebody put your profile on there, but it wasn't you and it was Thomas McEntee who had started her profile. I don't remember him asking. The truth is I don't think he did ask. I think he just did it. But I'm fine. We'll have him on in a couple of weeks. So I understand. So you can zing him for that. Yeah. So we have... Anand, do you have any questions for us, Judy, before we have... Or... Well, if somebody is so inclined, it did occur to me that there was one kind of thing that I could throw out because February is Black History Month. And since my mother's family is from the South, yes, I discovered that there was slave ownership among my ancestors. Not something I'm particularly proud of, but it is what it is. But my second great grandfather, Gustavus Robertson, is on the 1860 at Tallah County, Mississippi slave census as claiming ownership of two enslaved females, a 25-year-old woman and a three-year-old girl. Now, in 1870, when they moved to Lamar County, Texas, just beneath the Robertsons in the census is a 36-year-old Black female, Mary Robertson, and a 13-year-old Black female, Anna Robertson, born in Mississippi. It's got to be the same people. I don't know what happened to them. And I would like to know. So as somebody is inclined to take on a particular emphasis challenge for Black History Month, I would love to know what happened to those two Robertsons if there's any way to find out. Yeah, Emma leads our U.S. Oh, I'm sorry, Emma, go ahead. I was gonna say, I lead the U.S. Black Heritage Project, and that's something we could see if some of our team members experienced that kind of work. That would be really fun to follow the line so that we can find the descendants. It would be. I would love it. I would love to see anything I can do to help and to explain to them what I know about where they came from in Mississippi. Now, Judy, somebody else in the audience had a question, Chris Veriello. He asks, is there any connection to definitely a family history fanatics? Her maiden name is close to you. To what history fanatics? Definitely. Oh, we've looked and we can't find it. The problem is that my maiden name of Geisler, you know what it translates as, it's goat herd. This is not exactly German royalty, folks. You know, this is the myth of Germany. So I don't, we keep looking to see if somehow there might be a way to fit us together, but we have not come up with it. Have you found a connection to Dr. Seuss, then, since Geisler was his real last name? Again, no, and part of my problem is that in that Geisler line, it turns out from the wide DNA perspective, we're not Geislers at all. My second great-grandfather was illegitimate, born out of wedlock. And when I got his baptismal record in 1855, and that is on my blog, it's like, oh, Friedricha, how could you not name the father in the baptismal record? But yeah, when I got it, I'm looking to see his parents and it's Herman Geisler, born in April 1855, baptized in April 55, mother Friedricha Geisler. So I have no idea what the father, who the father was or what the familiar line was. And the only wide DNA my brothers match is other brothers. We don't match anybody else. Not enough Germans to do DNA testing. So I'm not giving you that as a challenge. That's way beyond what we can do with it. You never know what we can do. Outside of manufacturing evidence, that one I would put on the bathroom. So for everybody who's watching, if you are wanting to participate or you are participating, we have, if you are interested, now you can't, well, let me go ahead and let Mindy take over. Hold on, I was gonna, oops, there. Oh, talking about the reward of ours, collaboration. So we have three ways, three main ways that we communicate. We have our names on the spreadsheet for the people that are participating. I know we had almost 90 people for this week. We put the ID of the profile we're working on so people aren't tripping over each other and having added issues. The second way, next sheet, Sarah. That's okay. It's Discord and we keep Discord going. We have chat in there so we can have somebody, a second set of eyes we need. If we need help, we've done one thing on a profile that we would like them to work on something else. We have people that just build biographies, things like that. And then the third way, of course, is the G2G. So we have a forum post where we can put questions or we post our bounty points where people get points for breaking brick walls down, which we like. And there is a post for Judy already up, I am sure. So, and then we did have Dr. Gates pop in while we were finishing that up. Ha ha ha ha. Yay. Hi. Hello. Skip, this is the second time I told him that I am so glad that I got to go before you and didn't have to follow you. Ha ha ha. Well, I was on, you know, I have a big news series on PBS and that airs on Tuesday Wednesday called The Black Church. And I did a Zoom thing and they stopped so I could jump on Wiki Tree with Bishop Michael Curry, who was, remember he did the ceremony for Megan and Harry. Remember he kept trying to get the Brits to give one amen and buggy in Westminster Abbey and they had like, well, I can't say polls where I was gonna say, but. Ha ha ha ha ha. And Bishop is at Flunder. And we were on from seven o'clock till just 10 minutes ago. So here I am. And I'm just telling people calling me about it that I'm on Zoom with Wiki Tree. So tell me what you got for me. What do we got for you? Well, just before that, I just wanna say thank you, Judy, for having us interview you and we will begin, I do, and then we will begin talking about Emma. We'll go over everything we've found, all of our interesting finds for Dr. Gates. Are you ready for me? Yes, so let's begin. You know what? Can you give me one second? Mm-hmm. I'm gonna pour myself a glass of red wine right here. In my kitchen. No. There are reasons why I really like that man. Ha ha ha ha. You can hear me. I'm in the kitchen. I'm gonna go out over and get a glass. Not illegal, is it? That'll not be. All right. Here. Cause I'm gonna toast my ends this one. Yes, and that's what we're here to do today. So that's perfect. We had an amazing team this week. And as a matter of fact, we had people literally from around the world working on your tree in at least seven, eight different countries, which was incredible. Yeah, even some people who, English wasn't their first language, but they are incredible researchers and were able to do the work and then help have people who spoke better English, helped them write it out. It was an absolutely amazing collaboration. We also had a couple ambassadors, Karen and Denise who went out to trees at other websites and said, hey, you share some ancestors with Dr. Gates and we're doing this really cool thing over here. Would you like to come join us and plug your tree in and be a part of this? Well, what did Bill Gates say when you said that? Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha. Well, that's awesome. One of the most incredible things that came out of this is not a lot of people have experience in African-American zoology. And so it was very much a culture shock for them to come in and be faced with some of the challenges, especially when you hit that wall of slavery. They weren't used to seeing the derogatory way people are talked about in the records. They weren't used to seeing disconnected families. They weren't used to seeing a lot of missing documents that should have been there. And so it was an incredible experience, learning experience for people to learn a different way to do genealogy for these families. And we're gonna show you how we did that and how we expanded your tree as a part of that. This is where we start, obviously, most people are used to just looking at a tree very literally. We start with the parents, grandparents, and we work our way out. But with your tree, obviously, we weren't expecting to break down some major brick walls in a week. So we had to go wide and extend sideways. And if you think about it, the family story isn't just about your parents and grandparents, it's about the extended family, the second cousins, the third cousins once removed. And when you're doing African-American genealogy, working in family groups, that fan principle of family associates, neighbors is very, very important because when you look at the family cluster and everybody who lives in the same area, you start to find clues to other family members. And so that's what we started doing was creating, and it creates a ripple effect when you create this incredible family cluster, you build all this information, and then all of a sudden, you can go out and you find another family and you create that whole family and you know this. But a lot of people were discovering that this week. And so this is what we started with. We had 29 nuclear family profiles. Yes, oh, we did this out of order, sorry. We're gonna celebrate your family today, yay. We're gonna celebrate both the wine because that's what we're doing. The next one. I got a bottle of wine. This shows the 20, we started with 29 profiles because we were just looking at nuclear family and we really didn't have the extended family that already existed on our radar. So there were a few more than 29, but we were able to extend it from 29 nuclear families to, 662 extended family members. And the awesome thing about this is, we know that you're a giver and this is actually a gift, not just to you, but to all those extended family members that are related to you in some way to some of these people here. Wait a minute, you're gonna send all this to me, right? Oh, absolutely. Okay. Yes. So what this does is it allows all the people related to you in some way, either related by blood or related by marriage, they're now gonna be able to come in and plug into the work that we've done and maybe even break down some of their brick walls. Are they gonna ask for loans? This is, I don't want to. No, no, no, no. I'm gonna say, those people with you treat live, I don't even know who you are. And they may not even see right away that they're related to you. They're gonna just see their portion of what we built. And what we did is we really strengthened each family cluster and made it very accurate with as much information as we could on every single profile. And I'm gonna show you here what we started with. Wow, you know what? Are you all on a clock? Cause I wanna yell upstairs to my wife, who's this story, and to come down to see if she's free, okay? Okay. Okay. Give me one second. Who are in this schedule? Give me one second. We may have to go back and try to show her. So as we wait for Dr. Gates to get his wife. Look at this. How is? You won't be on camera, but now. All right, she's coming. As we're speaking, people are still working on the profiles, so, and they'll continue to work on it, which is fabulous. And she does, she works with a woman in Miami, you know, for our Cuban guests. Cause she was very famous historian. My wife is Cuban. She was a professor at the University of Havana for 25 years. Come sit here, you won't be on the camera. She, cause she's shy. She won't, but they just repeat so she can hear cause she's standing over there. How many names did you start with a week ago and how many family members do we have now? So we started with 29 nuclear family profiles, which you can see here, that's 29 right there. And we now have 662 extended family profiles. So that does include by marriage. And we just kept branching out. We just kept adding families, branching out, adding families, branching out. And people are still working to keep branching. And tell Mary on what you said, you had people working on this with last week from all around the world, right? Yeah, like eight different countries, people were working on this. For three years, what? Volunteers. Were they volunteers? Yes, this was 100% volunteers. Wow, somebody just emailed, I'm an historian too, but this is the first time I did American research. Oh yes, that's Eve. And we're gonna talk about her work in a minute cause she did something incredible for you. So the next step that we did is we took each profile based on the records and we tried to fill it out as much as possible. So this is what we call a stub profile. It's very, very basic based on one record and it's not good enough to get you to the next step. So we go in and we add every document. They won't be able to see. Marielle's shy, but I'm one of her. Leave me alone. Well, I just want you to see, it's amazing. I can't see that without you. I'm sorry, you see well. I'm sorry, I don't want to bother you. This will be recorded. Amazing, I never saw this document. What is this thing? So this is one of your relatives and this is her profile at the very start of the week and what it looks like is very, very basic. And I'm gonna show you now what we did to as many profiles of the 662 that we possibly could. And here's an example of your dad's. Yeah, that's World War II. His originally was very basic and we went in and found every single document we possibly could, added it to his profile, filled out a biography and the awesome thing about everybody trying to bring in information is when this photo was added, we hadn't found his World War II documents yet, but I saw the picture and I said, wait a minute, that's a uniform. There must be a record available. Oh yeah. And so then somebody, Debbie went and looked for the records and we found that he was in the quartermaster corps and World War II and we were able to add that to his profile. Yeah, that's right. He was in Camp Lee, Virginia and his nickname was Heine. You know, he was born in 1913, Henry the German, Heine. Awesome. So the more information we add, it brings in more clues and you know, that just is a constant cycle, which is wonderful. So our goal this week was to do this to every one of those profiles we possibly could in order to help people find more family members, more information and build upon that. And speaking of military, so far we have counted 15 soldiers in your family and we're still working on that and filling out that information. Wow. How many in the Civil War did you find? You know, I don't, I think just a couple. Yeah, there were. We'll give you a list. Yeah, there are eight Cliffords who were in the US color troops that we found. Okay. Seven and one sort of volunteered. But they would be lateral, you know, not like my great grandfather or anything, but like my grandmother's uncle, stuff like that. So the next picture is your grandfather, Paul Coleman, we discovered he worked for the Devon Club. And this, we came across these amazing pictures of what it looked like before and still standing today and what it looks like now. And Eve, who I'm going to show you what she did with this information, discovered that the Devon Club was connected to the paper mill that a lot of your family worked at. Yep. And this club, which Paul worked at for 28 years, was built by the West Virginia Polk and Paper Company. Oh, we're running ahead there. And it was a really interesting club. There were three different floors and they had everything, including pool tables, card rooms, reading rooms. I've been there. I mean, I was a kid. Was it still, was it still a movie theater at that time on the third floor? No, I don't think so. It was, you know, I would have been a really little kid when, you know, everybody, well, my grandfather, Daddy Paul died in 1945, right? As you know, five years. Or what'd you say, 48? 48. And the Devon Club was a sort of social club for the paper mill, I guess. And I was so little that I was only there, I can hardly remember is what I'm trying to say. Yeah. It was folded, its social functions were folded by the time I got older now. Yeah, in 1960, it was closed because people were watching TV rather than going out and socializing. Yeah. And I was 10 in 1960, so, you know. Gotcha. So, Eve Van Hout, who is from Netherlands, caught onto the fact very quickly that a large number of your family worked for this paper mill. And so she built this entire history page on the paper mill, talks about its origins, it's how the location moved because of the river changing course. Yeah. And she lists your family members that were a part of this paper mill. And this history page is linked on every family member's profile page. So anybody who reads their family page can click over to this and read the history. Wow, that's amazing. But this is a very fabulous, she spent the whole week just pulling in newspaper articles, resources about this paper mill, very informative information that was a very big part of your family. Yeah, it was very big, on my mother's side. Was that the Cole, Coleman's? The Coleman's? Yeah. Yeah. Okay, so now we're gonna move on to some change makers in your family. It just so happens that this week, Wikitree is celebrating black change makers in honor of Black History Month. So we want to highlight a couple in your family. This first one is Charles Kinnison Redmond. Born in 1938, he was your first cousin, once removed. The son of Oscar Earl Redmond and Sarah Washington. Yeah. And he is a change maker in the area of integration. He went to this, you'll see this is the yearbook from 1956, the year he graduated. Allegheny High School. Allegheny High School. Integration began in that county in 1955 and you'll see this is 1956. So he was one of the first black students at Allegheny High School and helped to integrate it. Wow, that's great. Yeah, because all my cousins, that's across the border in Maryland, in Cumberland, Maryland, but I'm a Redmond on my mother's side and a Redmond on my father's side. Right, we saw that. Yeah. Yeah. And not that many black people in the hills of West Virginia, so sooner or later you're marrying your cousin, you know? Well, that's just across the board everywhere. Yeah, that's true. You run into that a lot. The next one is, if you go up your tree to Mod Gates, who is your great aunt, she married George Ernest Lee and his father is this man, John R. E. Lee. Oops, go back there. This is, lost track of where it was. Oh yeah, Helen Lee is like my sister and she's a professor at MIT. Oh, okay. And her father is my father's first cousin. He graduated Harvard Law School in 1949, George Lee, and then he married Dorothy Hicks Lee. She got her PhD from Harvard in 1955 in comparative literature. And then daughter Helen graduated Harvard College and Harvard Law School. And she just lives down the street. I mean not down the street, but in Somerville. You know, one of the other suburbs of Cambridge. But where they're, the Gates is married to Lee's is what I'm trying to find. Right, exactly. And this family is an incredible, they're change makers in the area of education. Apparently, I mean, you can tell that education was very important to John because every single one of his sons went on to college. Yeah. And this was early 1900s. So it's a time when not a lot of people are going to college. My father, I wish my father were alive. He would love this because he always talked about the Lee's. He became, his son became a pharmacist, right? In Baltimore. Yeah, one of his sons was a pharmacist. Yeah. And that's how my cousin is descended from the pharmacists married pansy Gates. Oh, okay. Yeah. So there's more than one marriage. Yeah. Anyway, keep going. I'm supposed to listen to him, sorry. Well, that's okay. I mean, it's wonderful to hear your commentary because you know it on a personal level. This man was incredible because he worked his way up from small school principal to a dean of professor, dean and professor at Bishop College. He worked as a consultant for black schools and churches in Marshall, Texas. Wow. And because of this, he got to, he was brought to the attention of Booker T. Washington who invited him to become the head of Tuskegee Institute of Mathematics. No kidding. I had no idea. Yeah. That's amazing. Pretty amazing. It's super cool. It is super cool. Mary, I was like saying, it's cool. It's very cool. Mary, I'll somebody, by the way, he made a lot of contributions in the field of education at other institutions, ended up as president of A&M University for 20 years. My dad told me when I was little that one of our relatives who married was president of a college and that's Helen's great grandfather. My cousin Helen Lee, who's at MIT. See what I mean? Yeah. He was president of what college? A&M University in Florida. Yeah, Florida A&M, which is very famous. Oh, I live right next to there. I live right here. Yeah, well, Florida A&M is very famous. And my dad just, he tell me stuff like that, but I thought it was bullshit, you know? Well, it's definitely not because John R.E. Lee has a Wikipedia page written about him very extensive Wikipedia page. And the U.S. Black Heritage Project, which I am the leader of, we have taken him on as one of our notables. And so we'll continue to work on his profile and expand on it and on his family. Oh, that's great. Well, you should contact Helen Lee. Fabulous. And just, you could Google her at MIT. And now I know about J.R. Clifford because, you know, I was on the stamp commission when we did this series of pioneers of the rights movement. And he's the first black man admitted to the bar in the state of West Virginia. He's my grandmother's uncle. Right. And when you first told us about him and said, you know, he was a soldier and he was admitted to the bar, I thought, well, that's pretty special. But then I started reading more and more about him. And I thought, my goodness, this man was a pioneer in so many ways. And that's what he called his newspaper. Yes, he was also the publisher of, oh yeah, the Pioneer Press. That's right. Pioneer Press, he was the publisher and the editor. And he co-founded the Niagara Movement with W.E.B. Du Bois and he hosted the second meeting in Harpers Ferry. That's right. And I had not heard of the Niagara Movement. And so we started a history page also about that which is now connected to his profile and we will continue to work on building profiles for every single one of the members of the Niagara Movement so we can honor them as well. He was a handsome man. He was, look at him. Definitely. And then when I saw the stamp, I was like, oh my goodness, he's so incredible. He has a stamp to honor him. And he's on the same page with, I can never pronounce it, Spingarn. Spingarn. Spingarn. That's the Spingarn Medal it was named after which is incredible. Yeah, that's right. He also won the landmark civil rights and education case before the West Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals, William versus Board of Education. He did. That was a big step towards integration and equality, some equality in education. So this man has an arms-length list of contributions and to change in the country, just an incredible man. No, he was a great man. Definitely. I enjoyed very much learning about him. We added additional things to his profile. Now remember last week when I said, all of these people for 200 years live 30 miles from me? Yeah. You know, so did he. Except when he founded his newspaper, he moved to Martinsburg, which is like halfway between Piedmont and D.C., you know. But my family's very regional is all I'm trying to say. Right, right. And I don't know if that's good or bad. It can be both, it depends, yeah. As far as research goes, we have discovered this is just a sampling of some of the change makers in your family we have discovered and we will continue to work on them over the following weeks and months. The U.S. Black Heritage Project will be a big part of that. We don't have time to cover them all tonight. They're so all incredible. But we wanted to, I want to end where it all started with Jane Gates. Okay, talk about Jane. Incredible woman. It's not so much that we found out more about her. It was more that we just discovered how incredible she was as a woman. She was a slave. She raised her children herself in a mostly white neighborhood. She worked in a position of trust as a nurse and midwife. And she was the first black woman in Alec Gwinnick County, Maryland to own a bank account. So this was a- Really? I didn't know that. You didn't know that. Did you hear that? To have a first to have a bank account. I hope it's been compounding interest since 1879. That went to- And I am the direct descendant. And as you know, her home on Green Street still remains in the family. And- Yeah, Johnny Gates and Sook, his wife, they own it. And it's on the Maryland Historic Register. I donate every year. My brother does. Oh, yeah. Somebody just emailed me and said, oh, Cece, Cece Moore said, where did you find that? That's great. Somebody else, Cece, just emailed and said, you can get a loan from her. And then Cece just emailed taunting this because she knows who, and you all, you know, you couldn't reveal us, but you know who the white man was who was my great-great grandfather who had pregnanted Jane Gates, but don't stop. This is great. This is fabulous. You know, we're all on the edge of our seats waiting for the answer to that question about who he is. So one of the things that we wanted to do was just kind of a culmination of this week to honor Jane because, you know, her obituary said she was an estimable woman. It's obvious in everything you learn about her that she was and that she was a matriarch of this family. We would, I would call her a changemaker as far as the family goes. It was because of her that the family had such a strong start, a strong upbringing. So let me ask Melanie in Australia who does some graphic work for me. If she would create a banner for Jane's profile, can you bring that up, Sarah? Jane's profile. Oh my God. Yeah. This woman in Australia created a work of art. This is all being taped, right? Yes. Yes. So I'll be able to show it to all my family? Definitely. And we also have a page where all this is outlined for you so you can read through it. Oh, you'll send me the link, right? My brother was like, kill me. Yeah. Oh my God, you did the word estimable. I can't believe that, that is so great. We added a banner to the top of her profile because, you know, it just brings me to tears learning about Jane and just what an incredible woman she was. And the, like I said, I would call her a matriarch. The head of her family, the strength of her family and everything that I read tells me that she was definitely estimable and deserved that, deserved that name that was in her obituary. Yeah, that's amazing. She was definitely an inspiration to all of us. But that's where my name Henry comes from, you see? She had five children, Laura, Alice, Claire, Clara, Henry and Edward. Ah. And my brother's Paul, Edward and Henry Lewis, you know. But, oh, that's fabulous. But one of, that's just, that's just great. I mean, that's really, really beautiful. I'm really moving. I feel like I'm on Finding Your Roots. How does it feel to be the recipient? It feels wonderful. It just is one of the kindest, most generous things that anybody can do is to restore the stories of their ancestors. And I think that's what, you know, we're in the seventh season of Finding Your Roots and our ratings have never been higher. It's amazing. You know, usually it goes down, but ours, our ratings are just going up and they're at an all-time high. And just one showing how we're all connected. But when I sit there at that table, which used to be three feet in diameter, now six feet because of COVID. And then, I don't know if you all watched last night, Tony Shalub and Christopher Maloney. The ratings were like off the charts. It's just, they both broke down and cried. And then I had three of my friends email me after every, they said, they cried. You know, it's just, it's a marvelous gift to be able to give to someone. And no, I'm, I'm asked often, why do I think it's so emotional? And I don't know, you know. But it is a way of giving immortality to people. If you say their name, you record their story, you know, the analogy I use for all my guests is that they're all in suspended animation, you know, they're in purgatory and you open the vault. And they tell the story, which is somehow informed who you are, even if you don't know it. That's what's creepy, you know, and exciting and wonderful. And I believe that, that you're playing out these familial repetitions that, and you know what, some of the most profoundly repeated stories are the ones that are silenced because in the process of trying to censor the story, the story gets told. I don't know, you know, you'd have to consult with Freud with how this works. But there's a family secret that no one can talk about, but it gets transmitted anyway. It's very curious, but it's true, it's true. So what you're doing with genealogy is, I want every American to have their family tree done. I want them to do it. I want them to go to, if you're in Massachusetts, the New England Genealogical Society or the New York Genealogical Society, or my God, if you're in Salt Lake City or in Genealogical Heaven, but you can get help. What happens is people go to ancestry.com, full disclosure, they're a lead sponsor, so I can't endorse any company, but they are a gateway. Family search and wiki tree. But people get intimidated. They think, well, how can you do this? You know, well, here's a keyboard, you know, on my virtual iPad, which I have on a little telescope here so I can be on TV. And you just go to one of these things and type in a name and then boom! And then it's like crack. Now I never did crack. I don't encourage that. I think it's a terrible thing. It's just a metaphor. It's highly addictive. But it is so addictive and you hit, but you also need filters because you can get what in English we call false cognates, you know, just cause your name's Washington doesn't mean you're descended from George Washington. You need filters, but it is so exciting. And my wife, the great historian, she just has opened up for people of Cuban descent be able to tell people in Cuba working with Lourdes, her colleague and our friend. I like this, I'm getting these emails. Genealogy crack, we love it. Everybody has a family tree. Yeah, I remember at the very beginning, somebody said to me, oh, you know, people in India, they don't care about genealogy. People in Iran, they don't care about people in China. It's like rubbish, you know? Everybody is into genealogy. Remember all the baguettes in the Bible? And the parts when you're a kid, you go like, what the baguette? I want to be, get, be God here. But that baguette was a family tree. Remember all the baguettes and they end up connected, David with Jesus and all that. And that was a family tree. And you would sit there and listen to these baguettes and wonder why we have to be begatten here in church when we want to be begatten. But it is lines of descent and establishing where you are in the uncertainty of being, you know, the uncertainty of life. Somehow it gives you a foundation, I'm trying to say. And I'm very moved by what you've done. And I had the whole apparatus of PBS conclude this big event tonight. They had the Corporation of Public Broadcasting, President PBS, Bishop Michael Curry, Bishop Yvette Flunder, just so I could join in through the tail end of this celebration of my family. And I cannot tell you how deeply moved I am to you guys. Any way that I can help you, I'll be glad to help you. And I just want to thank you. It just makes me, makes me feel good in it. Wish I had a bottle of wine here. So, oh, yeah, I do. Oh yeah, you do. I wish we had hours to go over your family. This was just a very, very tiny sampling of everything we discovered and learned about and improved and built on and honored. So, am I gonna get one of those wheels behind your head? We do have, we did create a before and after chart of what it looked like before to show you how to make it. This was before and then this was after. So we added some. Wow, man, that's fabulous. And this was actually created within WikiTree with Greg, one of the people who was in the chat, one of our WikiTree volunteers, he created an app to create these wonderful trees, little fan charts. Well, I want a hard copy. Can you send me a hard copy that I can have framed? Yep, we definitely can. The link to all my cousins, they're go crazy. This was great, really, thank you. We're thrilled that you're so thrilled. No, I am, I'm thrilled and I'm humbled and I'm deeply moved, all of which is hard to be. You guys are fabulous, you know? And I am just really touched that you chose me. And Judy, thank you for hanging in there. I was delighted, Skip, I wanted to see what they found and what I'm in for. Yeah, oh, you're next week, huh? I'm the next one, huh? Oh man, that's great. Well, anyway, bravo. I have any Matt dinners, nine o'clock at night. This is my second Zoom, but I'm married to Cubans so we eat dinner at 10 o'clock at night, you know, like sophisticated, civilized people. Anyway, you guys, thank you. I'm listening to you, you know, sending you kisses. Thank you very much, Dr. Gates. We appreciate your time. Oh, I appreciate all your effort and your loving attention, it made me feel. And it was a true honor for me to be a guest on your show. Okay, bye-bye. Bye, Dr. Gates. And I guess we will also just say goodbye to everybody. And thank you, Judy, for coming on. We will be seeing you next Wednesday while we wrap up your cheerings, show you what we found. Hopefully you will be thrilled and impressed by what we have found. And yeah, I guess we will see you all next week. Thank you all for joining us. This has been really fun. Yeah, bye folks.