 Welcome to the wiki tree challenge. Hello everybody. I'm Mindy Silva and welcome to the wiki tree challenge live cast Today, I have doctor. Well, I do have dr. Shelly Murphy. She's not on screen right now From the Freedmen Bureau Friday and our special guest. We have Oya Amakisi, Lyle Gibson, David Anthony Taylor, Adrian Wells, Dana Lee, Michelle Maylor, Vicki McGill, and then the captain of this challenge week Elaine Markson. Welcome everybody And I'm going to go ahead and talk just a little bit about wiki tree First for those of you who don't know who we are We our mission is to grow one accurate shared tree that connects us all and is accessible to everyone free forever It's all about collaboration. There's one file profile per person so if you and I share an ancestor we work on that profile together it's not that you have your tree and I have my tree and Did I mention it's all free? So we just passed that 33 million profile milestone with almost 11 million of those having DNA connections attached to So that's really exciting What really makes wiki tree work is its community and of course cornerstone of the community is our honor code Anyone can view profiles on wiki tree But to edit anything more than close family members you have to sign the honor code It emphasizes sourcing giving credit courtesy understanding accessibility accuracy and respecting privacy Privacy is another aspect of wiki tree that makes it special Even though we're growing a one-world tree and we all collaborate only close family members collaborate on modern family profiles As you go back in time the privacy controls open up Collaboration on deep ancestors is between distant cousins who are serious about genealogical research Careful about sources and willing to see their research validated or invalidated with DNA So if you aren't a member yet come and join us It just takes a minute to register as a guest member and you can delete a guest count at any time Now let's go ahead and get to the challenge of the week For this week we partnered with Friedman Bureau Friday, which documents Virginia enslaved ancestors The descendants of enslaved communities at UVA serve as the collective voice of all descendants of enslaved and free black communities who labored at the University of Virginia through research education and preservation and you guys are just a really super nice group to Really fun to work with they gave us seven names We had seven days to find everyone that we could within seven degrees And that means seven steps away in any direction on wiki tree. We call that count a person cc seven Um, would one of you like to go ahead and tell me how you chose your seven starting ancestors? Hi, I chose mine because Lewis McGill has been my brick wall for more than 10 years And there are a few other family members working on Lewis, but we're all at that brick wall Well, hopefully we can find some really good answers for you here And I'm going to go ahead and list off who our seven people were So and we had some big changes with these two Ellen Barrett Cornette started with 26 relatives within seven degrees Now, of course, you guys had your own personal trees built out on other sites But this is what we started our researchers with So, um, I think all that one only had minimal profiles attached We connected 1274 people to Ellen bringing her cc seven to 1300 Miles Haney started with 85 relatives. We connected 277 people to him Bringing his cc seven to 362 and you know what though the researchers were still working on those lines And so I'm sure his cc seven went up more than that But at the time that I went ahead and ended the week. That's what his number was at Now dolly epps burn started with 4,413 relatives. We connected an additional 175 to her So her cc seven is now 4,588 Alice Mormons started with 89 relatives attached to her. We added 319 people bringing her cc seven to 408 Ned Mason started with 68 people attached. We added 285 relatives within seven degrees Bringing his cc seven to 353 Turner Robert Malone started with 96 relatives. We added 250 people to him bringing his cc seven to 346 And louis mcgill started with only 12 relatives And we added 684 people to that line bringing his cc seven to 696 so Really a lot and especially when you're looking at the enslaved Generations where you know, you can't just push past that And blow out adding 150 200 people So, you know, we're kind of working sideways and getting the cousins and doing different things while we're working on this And now leave this one up to you lane Sure So kate was our most valuable person Because she added tons and tons hundreds of relatives In total to all the different lines. She didn't add more than 100 per line But she added to each and every one of the seven lines Which is especially impressive because it really Took time to get to know each and every line and then Both donna and lisa were bounty hunters, which i'll explain what that is So there are three types of bounties we have on this project One of them is a connection to the main big wiki tree if a connection is not already made Another one is if a brick wall is broken and these brick walls are not necessarily parents of the starting guests They're defined in in any challenge in about the middle of the week like any particularly challenging Brick wall, but maybe one that we think could be broken within a few days So we picked not like the most extremely hardest most anyway So that's the second type of brick wall third type And then a second type of bounty third type of bounty was interesting finds so often we'll find those in newspapers just unusual occupations or unusual migration pattern things like that So they found a couple of those but not only did they find them they got voted as the most interesting find And um, oh yes, and then i was the team captain i answered bunch of questions Um, I think that's it that's like Okay, was this our biggest one yet mindy. I feel like this was the most number of people who signed up No, we actually had 10 more than this last challenge week, but we this is we've had huge numbers this year Not like last year where we had a lot of smaller groups No, this one was really impressive and out of all those i'd have to pull up the stat sheet But out of all the people you see here probably a good 50 spent like many hours on the project Over the period of this week. Um, oh 60 more than 65 people. Okay. Yeah. Yeah, that's right. Okay um And then we have a lot of those people Maybe half of them chatting every day in discord Just sharing different research finds and giving each other clues and doing newspaper lookups and sharing each other on And it's just a lot of fun Okay, next slide Okay, so with all these starting ancestors, we didn't find a blood relationship between any of them, but um Once we built out all the trees these were the some of the closest connections that we set down So these 15 degrees 19 degrees 20 those are including Marriage and those got a lot closer as the week went on because of adding a lot of different ancillary profiles Yeah, and we certainly tried though. I know there were some of the researchers that were trying really hard to build Out sideways and hop over to another ancestor's line Um, but they weren't able to to make those connections So we do have a lot of fun using the connection finder during the week To see who are closest to so here's your captain's connection to ellen barrett and When you look through the connection finder Goes through that it shows you the path used to reach her with one connection being by marriage So elaine is 15 degrees from ellen And where you see the green is highlighting it where it went to yellow That means there was a swap at marriage at that point not blood But only one swap in that 15 degrees which is really crazy incredible. That's pretty cool Wow And then Here we have another connection And you know, we did a lot of it. This is our euro community connection. So we did a lot of the connection Fun this time But we have ned mason who was a member of the african-american great migration His journey took him from north carolina to pennsylvania And he's 21 degrees from alice ruth moore who also migrated to pennsylvania Now she was an american poet a journalist and a political activist Among the first generation born free in the south after the civil war She was one of the prominent african-americans Embalmed in the artistic flourishing of the harlem renaissance And you can see more information about the great migration on a space page that was created by the us black heritage project Um, you know, and just looking at this. It's always so interesting to look at the history around, you know, the people that were um talking to or researching and Ned migrated between 19 and 20 and 1930 making him really historically part of the first wave of migrants When the second wave started moving in 1940 you can kind of see that map on the lower right There was a large increase in many of the new england states as well as california, which was interesting But all of those dots that you see the ones that are like oranges and reds those like blew up, you know Really really big increase in migration during that second wave And then this one, of course, we had to look at so connections to martin luther king jr. And the closest ones were ellen barrett at 17 degrees Uh dolly epps was at 18 degrees Turner malone at 19 degrees and only miles alice and lewis had no connection But you know, here's where alema is talking about the more you build out those outer relatives The more likely it's going to be that you're going to make a closer connection to the people that are already on my country So now we'll take a look at some of the other interesting finds and connections starting with ellen barrett And you know before we move on to um her relatives I want to take a minute to focus on ellen herself And you know ellen did a fabulous job of just keeping everybody going and trying to straighten out conversations And there was so much in depth on several of the lines and you know, this was one of them And I think um You know, you'll probably be setting the standard now for some of the guests that pick ancestors for this challenge because Because we have such a large set of very specific questions It gave us a good idea of what you want it to know And so i'm just going to go ahead and go through some of those You asked was my great grandfather older than the date he consistently lists on his records And the answer to that one is if this is about you list, I believe he was the ages listed now it corresponds with the early census records um For robert the 1870 census record together with a freeman's bureau work record suggests It was jeff who was born into slavery rather than robert So, you know, you know these branches and there's just a little bit of uh, one generation off on which one was born into slavery But you know, that can really commonly happen Now your second question you had was is abner wentworth copton lee awcl the biological father of my second great-grandfather robert e lee And you know, I think you're still going to want to triangulate using those older ancestors And I know you do have um your dna on several sites the only one that we were able to work with Was the ancestry dna But looking at that from what I can tell I really strongly believe that that connection is 100 correct And one of the reasons that I believe that is because There's you have a match to w a and I'm just going to say the initials there who descends from his daughter mary jane lee and You know, and that's a blood match and the connection points are the right amount You know what I mean? They're the right amount of distance. So, um, this person is descending through his white daughter mary jane lee and then it's um your connection And I I really do think that that is uh sound proof on that Now you also asked was ellen enslaved by his family at some point And you know, this one sorry. It's kind of a long answer here Um ellen may not have encountered him actually until 1867 Now the friebe's bureau documented a contract of employment between ellen and john cornet in 1866 in kelham county, arkansas The terms included board for her four-year-old son jeff barrett. So she already had jeff The contract was renewed in 1867, but the names were crossed out as if the new contract wasn't finalized And then in 1867 she went to the section of conway county that would later become faulkner county That's where she had robert in 1868 apparently with awc and His father john lee a missionary baptist Preacher and his brother william lee also a missionary baptist preacher were residents in conway where it became faulkner And those people had all moved from castwell county north carolina At different times in probably the late 1850s So ellen had another child in 1869 And possibly about the same time as ellen moved to faulkner john had also moved to faulkner county and he married a neighbor widow there in 1869 So, you know, you know what happened with the history after that And who she was with and who she wasn't But you know, we definitely we went a little bit earlier than what the dates were that you had records for her You know, we went back to the 1866 And I think that pathway is really really sound So the next question was if ellen was not enslaved by the lee family. What was her association with awc And you know, it's really likely that she was enslaved in georgia at least originally and we found no records of him owning slaves, but He and mary mason kelly cornet who was in the household Was ellen in 1870 had Priorly lived in missouri together and we were unable to document any association between the two But if you look at the way the families are intertwined now as far as the the connections afterwards You know, I think it really is friends that he had and family that he had that did own slaves that Put her and him together in the same place in the universe because he was not from any Way that we can tell a slave owner Now How did she get from georgia to arkansas? Well, georgia to arkansas was actually a really common migration route for the enslaved once slavery ended And you know, once again, we believe she was enslaved in georgia And you know, you also want to note that makin georgia and samana georgia were both confirmed underground Locations so those were both locations that a lot of the enslaved used to try and get out of those areas To where they could be free Now if the 1870 census is correct her son, jeff was born about 1862 in arkansas So, you know by the time of emancipation, she was already in arkansas no longer in georgia Did she change her name from eta now we did not once again We found records pre 1900, but we did not find anything Showing her name is eta, you know, but the problem is is that we don't have an exact location that she was enslaved in georgia So, you know, I really wouldn't doubt the family lore on that because family lore holds a lot of weight You know, it really does I I wouldn't think anybody was making up something like that. I would just think that, you know, there's no um records and of course, you know that a lot of times it's just Um, that they're counting how many enslaved people are there They're not listing their names and ages and and all of that. So really really hard to track Oh, I don't you agree on that one. I know you do a lot of work for usb h Yeah, you have to research all the neighbors all the families Um, see if you can turn up any probate papers family papers and somebody's attic preferably Yeah, um, I'm sure there's more that can be done here. Um, but I I didn't exhaustively research every line So I can't I can't really say but I know there are more notes on the profile Um, um for further avenues to explore Yeah And you know our research notes is one of the unique things that we have that we can share and use to communicate as far as a genealogy site And I always encourage them with a challenge You know with a challenge, but I know a lot of the project leaders do too because then You know, if you have to stop like well, we didn't really stop But we tried to stop when the weekend did we have to stop at some point And you know, the next person wants to come along and pick up the baton You kind of want them to know what you already looked at what you didn't find what's still needed So um, you're going to find some really great research notes on these people And then this one was just for fun, of course, uh, Oya is one of our featured guests here and the third great-granddaughter of ellen barrett and oya and eddie are 25 degrees apart Here was ellen again. We know she was born into slavery in 1842 most likely in georgia We know she migrated to arkansas prior to 1861 But also in jefferson county arkansas was thomas ruffin. He was a really interesting fella And he was born in north carolina and is one of the previous landslade people that was interviewed for the book 100 voices Harris bergs historic african-american community And you know, he was the son of an enslaved mother and a slave owner father Which happened a lot and the interview is held by the library of congress And you know, this is where his descendants are really lucky that there is that documentation and there is that story put down that um, you know, he His uh His father was a white man. His father was a slave owner who Evidently though never got over his mother He just kept his mother in his heart for all of his life never married And you know to him that's who his family was so My hats off to that Next we have myles haney who's the ancestor of our guest liall gibson Myles was born into slavery about 1830 Neither he or his wife knew where their parents were from And elaine, do you want to go ahead and talk us a little bit about the search finding who he was enslaved by? well, I basically just used the usual method of Starting at the 1870 census and checking out families around there And I have not exhaustively looked at all of them yet, but they're noted on the profile like octavia haney There were three different families with the black families with the surname haney, right? by him in 1870 and Another avenue for research, which I haven't looked at yet I was a sin since he was there were two places where he could have been born According to census, tennessee or mississippi, so it would be great to look at Other black families nearby who were born in either those locations. This didn't seem to be very common locations Okay, and then So frances What is the last name here haney as opposed to satter white? Yes, so there could have been three brothers Although I wonder if frances haney was actually first cousin we haven't figured that out yet Lucy Diaz was researching this for us And I need it would help if I pulled up the profile so I could see Yeah, so frances haney was born in virginia white slave owner had around 100 slaves at some point But his brother if he had his brothers bj haney and john d. Haney ridger haney They There aren't that many There aren't that many names recorded One name I was sorry. I'm kind of going out of order here. Um It would help if I had all the right profiles pulled up here, which I don't The most interesting thing I found was in a In one of the probate records back in mississippi Um There is a daniel haney named a slave and He later resurfaced at least I think it's the same guy in arkansas. He followed Um Lyle, what is the name of the guy? Um Um White guy George George luke haney died in alabama and he left away I meant to say alabama. Yeah, sorry. I don't have I don't I have like two notes Here and I it's not enough. Yes. So george luke haney's Alabama will name daniel haney. Don't know if daniel is your relative. Um, but I was very interested to see that he did track I I could track him to arkansas and he lived right next to One of george luke haney's Kids the one that you mentioned in the profile the starting profile Willburn willburn Thank you. Yes daniel lived right by him. So anyway, the more We can figure out about daniel's family. I think the more we can figure out about yours I did not figure out for sure who Your family was enslaved by I think you're absolutely right That's the haney and the satyr white families, but there were no definitive documents that turned up on that But a whole lot of leads most of which I followed I followed daniel the furthest There are a bunch of other leads that have been followed by like halfway by me and other people And further research can complete those lines To resolution. Hopefully so those are mainly using families on the 1870 and the 1880 censuses In wilburn And i'm just going to show this real quick. Um, this is one of the you know One of our great resources when we have too many notes to put on our profile I know david knows all about our space pages. They're wonderful, aren't they? I love them, but this one in particular was started for the slaves of thomas satyr white And so, you know, here is where people could collaborate and say, okay Um, you know, here's where we know we had some named slave. Here's where the 1840 census was And we're trying to figure out, you know, that one might be rhoda. We're not sure Um 1850 and it's so horrible when you see this and you just have male age 11 You don't have a name. You don't have anything and so You know, here's where we have the count and we're working through it trying to hopefully find names I know on one of the other spaces that we did this with on We wound up with more of the the names themselves, but uh, really really hard on those Yeah, on rhoda and her child pink It was lil who went to the county courthouse and transcribed Some documents and sent them to me at the very beginning of the week when I gave all my Email address so I was able to make them profiles on wiki tree So instead of sitting on a piece of paper now They can be real people who are searchable on wiki tree And if anyone else has family lore of a rhoda or a pink or whatever in their family Now it'll turn up on wiki tree. It'll even turn up on google Because wiki tree is crawled regularly on google so that's really beneficial So another one that we looked at was miles connection and he's only 22 degrees from abraham Lincoln Which of course is the united states president that led the union during the civil war And here again you see the connection finder and you can follow the path Seeing how they connect It's just really just so much fun once we get you guys connected to the tree We can we can look at all kinds of things And you know here was another great one to look at the connections for ellen smith craft and her husband william craft are of course known for their unusual and daring attempt to escape slavery And when she masqueraded as a white male slave owner And you know william was the slave that belonged to her or him And you know they traveled by train and steamboat and nobody questioned it at all Their escape, you know, of course was very well known And they arrived in philadelphia on christmas day So that's just such a touching story and it was really fun to find out You know that one of the ancestors was connected So 23 degrees from miles haney was ellen smith craft and then her husband william One thing that's I really like about the connection finders when I do click on that It draws me to look at the fourth or fifth connection or something to me and check out to see if there's something I missed or something I should fix and usually You can end up adding more profiles and you can make those connections even closer Yeah, that's it So next we have dolly epps who Well, this one changed a little bit Unfortunately this week. This was really we had a very very focused group that spent an immense amount of hours And you know, I didn't realize we were going to have such huge changes about the Some of the ancestors and so of course you definitely weren't warned on that But you know anybody that was looking at their tree before the week ended probably was a little panicked you know, but But we don't take any of our research lightly So even though we do have some beginning researchers that are mixed in with the regular researchers and the professional researchers You know when it comes to something like this We we have to be really really really really sure of our proof and you know how that goes um Before we make that big of a change and you know, unfortunately on everybody's branches at some point We get a chain saw out and we have to disconnect something and it kind of breaks our heart But you know, it winds up being the better and sometimes the reason somebody is a brick wall It's it's for a reason. It's because they really shouldn't be in that slot on somebody's family tree So in this case Go ahead Oh, I was going to say in this case. I think dolly. I've got scooted in position still In a manner related but not in the way that we thought and anytime we change something we have several researchers And in this case, um, we had a A professional and a genetic genealogist look at it So that was Yeah, we definitely did a lot of DNA work and looking in the matches both on david's Branches and oil. So it was really really nice having those But once again, like I said, you know, they they really work to get to get it's impressive It's impressive to watch the conversations and everybody gets together You know and they're like, oh, I think this person belongs over here And then you know, there's four other people but have you checked this and what does the DNA say about this connection? And so they're really solidly Done before they did make the changes But there will be changes that you'll see where dolly epps position like elaine said is We did still have her though as one of the connections on so we'll go ahead and talk a little bit more about it And you know, she was one of the 74 people that richard lynch enslaved in 1860 And she's only 15 degrees from mary and elena anderson Who was the first african-american singer to perform at the metropolitan opera and a really respected civil rights activist In the 1950s maryon was a goodwill ambassador for the u.s And a presidential appointed delicate to the united nations human rights committee And coincidentally ellen barrett is only 12 degrees for a maryon maryon so, you know, we kept finding these things like this where You know dolly and ellen were connected to the same person about the same amount of distance We just weren't we're just missing that one little extra step to find out who the cousins were And you know, this is a good time to ask so david Um, you know, I know that there is some amount of connections that should be there for you guys But do you want to tell me how much you do know? I mean Between do you know what all of do you know what your connections are to each other to the other guests that are here? No, we don't know the connection. We just know we're dna connected, but We don't know how It'd be really fun to um, you know, just really crunch all of your dna and try and figure out where those were We tried with the records. We tried really hard the researchers We're trying to connect these these lines and once again, I think they did fabulous, you know, because we did find You know different people that you're all related to And just really interesting to see all these stories overlap each other Now this one's uh, julie julia maddie hooks hampton and her husband And you know, one of the really notable things about her is she had an amazing 22 documented children 22 Just crazy and eight of those children preceded her in death She's only five degrees from lewis mcgill and then she's 33 degrees quite a bit further out from dolly epps And you know, we know dolly had at least seven children, which is still a large family and lewis had at least nine So next we have alis ali mormon wells who was born in 1865 in georgia Henry mormon the father of ali was identified from his will That wasn't a big fine. So that was kind of exciting. It also mentioned several of alis's siblings Let me see if I have the connection on that one Well, we'll look and see um, who else she's connected to you first. I'm not sure who all we had on that list for her Uh, but you know, we did add a lot of Of people to her lines and so her cc7 really grew But uh, once again the will gave the father's name and so there There's a lot more work that could be done on that line trying to see who which additional relatives You know can be found but once again, we only have a week So and it was one of those names we kept finding, you know, like I know the tis dells kept Popping up the mormons kept popping up There were all several of these names that kept popping up in the different groups Which was fun because you know, you'd have one group working on oya's family and somebody else working on vicki's and We'd go wait a minute. Is that the one i'm talking about over here for this person? and so we did to have the uh Henry's will and he left alis her mother's chest A spinning wheel a kitchen table a slab a bedstead and a bed and the household furniture Now dolly was davids. Yeah, somebody was asking Um, alis is only seven degrees, which is really close From the founder charles richard paterson who's the only african-american automaker Uh, he was born into slavery in 1833. He was inducted into the automotive hall of fame in 2021 So 111 years after his death He was finally inducted into this hall of fame and you know, I happened met I saw that one of the researchers had found this and I saw that and thought oh that has to be wrong Maybe when he died he was the only african-american um automaker, but no when they uh inducted him in 2021 They said he was the only one that had an automobile company. So um Yeah Something interesting that'd be fun to follow through on just a little bit more And then you know an interesting little tidbit about him as the family legend for them How's it that charles his parents and his three brothers swam across the ohio river In 1840 so for anybody that hasn't seen it that would be quite a feat. Um, yeah it's big Now the fifth ancestor we researched was ned mason. He was born in 1903 in north carolina And you know, here's one of the views you can see on wiki tree using the tree apps tab And this one here is called a dynamic tree by tophala and you can see that ned has ancestors For another three generations and his wife. Ella has ancestors for another five So those ancestors really stretch out um The father of moses richardson who you see at the top was benjamin richardson So that goes up even further one more generation. He was born about 1750 in north carolina And though, you know, some believe that he was a native american They've done wide dna testing on him and it's proven his lineage to go back to africa So, you know, that would be a really really um fun one to follow through on also And see if you could see where that migration happened Just because it's so hard to get back You know before what would you say elaine like 1840? Sure something like that. Um any anyone who's born Well before general emancipation seems pretty tough Now here we have rebecca deldridge who's five degrees from ned mason This was interesting. She died in 1936 from pilagra And you know pilagra was so pervasive in the southern united states that the u.s. Congress asked the surgeon general to investigate the disease So in 1914 joseph goldberger who was 22 degrees from rebecca discovered that pilagra was caused by mal mal nutrition It was an infection and it wasn't contaminated food You know and that it was prevalent among poor people subsisting on cornbread and molasses So the indigenous american people They already knew what they needed to do and they were treating their processed corn with lime water You know before they made their tortillas and their pizzoli and other foods But when the europeans came in and the african americans Cones came in they didn't know that you needed to take this step And you know, so there wasn't any niacin in it and this is what was happening And you know while many grains contain niacin it's bound in a form That's really hard to absorb. So you have to have some sort of an additional step to that This missing nutrient was discovered by conrad elvaham in 1937 Who's 39 degrees from rebecca? The year after rebecca's death By the mid-century breads and cereals were routinely fortified with niacin You know and it just was crazy to me to see I did quite a bit of reading on this and it's crazy to see how people were, you know Coming up with all of these panic reasons why somebody contaminated the food and you know at one point It was oh the poor people aren't taking care of themselves And you know really what it was was a matter of education and finding out what was wrong And the only reason it was More prevalent in the communities that didn't have you know that weren't as wealthy Is because they were eating more cornbread In their diet And so the people that had more money and could go out and buy all these other different foods to supplement it You know, it's like when you see on the ships and the people that travel and they have a really limited diet You have all these different things popping up Because they aren't getting fresh fruits and they aren't getting the different things they need But um just really kind of cool to see those and that those two people You know we can connect them and tell the difference the distance between Rebecca and both of them, you know, and then they had to go out and say, um, okay, we're sorry, but yeah You know, it was the way we were processing it and that's what was wrong So, you know, of course, they just fixed it and it was a relatively easy fix Now michelle's ancestor was turner robert buck malone. He was born in january of 1844 to john liam's and aliza kelly He was born into slavery on the plantation of mrs. Lynch roll sister of tom lynch Near alexandria city virginia. And so here's another one of those names that, you know, we saw popping up in several of your branches uh the different lynch families and We have turner buck who was born into slavery in 1840 now He ran away in 1864 to join company g of the 136 us colored infantry Turner is 16 degrees from charles henry allston Who is the person that created a bust of martin luther king for the white house? And he's 25 degrees from prince edward who deserted after they forced him into the confederate army And he also joined the 136 us colored infantry with Buck malone So luis mcgill who is another starting ancestor is 29 degrees. So also connected charles henry allston Which was just really cool And then this was something This was such a great great find and you know, we have a lane to thank for this and brian rinehart who went and made some copies for I wish we would have had this for all of the starting people But you know turner malone had a 403 page pension file And sometimes you get really good information out of that and sometimes you don't and this thing was just a Loaded gold mine. It just was incredible And you know, one of the things that we find out yeah 403 pages and a lane How long did it take you to transcribe or abstract that? Um, I went through I I did it the wrong way instead of going through and looking for the most interesting stuff and grabbing that I went page by page through page 100 and then other people took over the rest and they got to find the cool stuff Um, but um Anyway, well a lot a lot of these pages are cards So like some of them have a tiny bit of information other the other bits You'll see in a couple slides are a giant amount of information Like like really long letters and stuff Um, so like it's 400 pages like if you type wrote it out it'd probably be like 100 pages or something Um, yeah, so think I just realized lisa has been working on this So much over the last couple days because I haven't looked at this page in two three days. Um, so lisa christensen Reformatted made it a lot better made it easier to see who the relationships are And um, who wrote what throughout this entire pension file. Yeah, so lisa was a transcriber and then Um, one other person i'm blanking on who um, but there were a number of people Yeah Really just incredible and so, you know now, um, you'll have that to go to to look at and see You know, which pages are worth you may be looking at the the original record because there are that The record copies in there and which pages are just to repeat something you've already seen four times But this one in particular. I was really impressed with the amount of details that came out of it And one of the things that did come out was a family story that was told by his daughter And so they were talking about mary jones, which was uh turner's mother Mary jones was an indian baby found in the woods of alexandria city by a white man By the name of mr. Tom lynch She grew up in mr. Lynch's home She had one daughter aliza who was also given to his sister Mrs. Rowell She grew up and married a free negro john williams. They had three sons namely john augman and turner Now grandmother aliza was sold with her three sons for debt to bill malone in fayette county, georgia And um her father turner was only six weeks old at that time He was just a baby at that time and so they grew up as slaves of bill malone Eventually ran away of course and joined sherman in his march to the sea and augman turner's brother died so just some really really incredible stuff and You know who lists a lot of different family members and any medical issues and then you know, of course the normal things That you see where he's mustered in and out Uh, the one in the middle there the big square one that's that's in his handwriting And there were a few letters, um like that from him some of them were Kind of repetitive because he's asking the pension folks to please get back to him. They haven't gotten back to him But in any case, yeah, there are maybe five full page letters like that from him And then we have uh, william bugs and we always find these sad points along the way But here he was born 1907 in rome georgia. He was the son of columbus bugs and lula malone And william died in 1944 in springfield clark county, ohio He was accidentally killed in an elevator at the first national bank building He had suffered a skull fracture and he's buried in ferncliffe cemetery. So just really, um Just really kind of a shocking So next we'll go ahead and move to luis miguel and Albus and luis were the only two ancestors starting ancestors that died in the state they were born in and In 1880 the us census of agriculture shows luis in turkey township Williamsburg county south carolina as a tenant farmer paying cash rent So he wasn't a sharecropper And his farm only had 17 acres now that of course is a lot less than was promised to uh, you know, these these people that Had earned this land bounty They I believe it was 40 acres that they were supposed to have earned and he only got 17 But at any rate, you know, he had no horses or oxes or cattle on the farm But he did have a mule. He had 25 swine and five barnyard chickens in 1880 The total value of farm production in 1879 had been $123 Indian corn was the only cereal crop he reported that year 75 bushels had been produced on eight of those acres And then on the other crops that he grew were canadian peas sweet potatoes You know, but when they came to Close out his land and deal with his estate because he did not die with a will after his death They he had a 300 acre plot of land So, I mean, that's a huge explosion to go from 17 acres Up to 300, you know, whether he owned it entirely or or not And you know, the researchers did look Once again at the slave holders in South Dakota for each of these people and Estee McGill McGill was listed as owning a lot of slaves But none of those were the age to be lewis And there was also Mary McGill who had a really really large personal estate Which must have consisted almost entirely of enslaved people. It was like 12,000 in something. It was a lot Here again, we have, you know, just another kind of sad story And this was Bertha Scott Hooks. She was the great granddaughter of Lewis McGill. She died in 1961 after a stroke during labor She was only 35 years old Her unnamed daughter died 55 minutes after birth Due to a lack of oxygen to the brain. So I just can't imagine, you know, the tragedy for this family Now on the lighter side We're going to go ahead and talk a little bit about bubber Turner Chisdell and you know, he was born we got to lighten it up somehow We find all these sad stories that we do all this serious research. So, you know, you find this and it just makes you smile He was born in 1917 in Williamsburg County, South Carolina where the Chisdell families were very abundant Um, according to Wiktionary.org though it the name can mean several things and all of them are obsolete So bubber can be a person who steals plates from public houses Um, I'm surprised they have a name for that very specific thing It can mean a drinking bowl and can mean a person who drinks a lot of alcohol So, you know, needless to say, I think the parents had uh, very very different thoughts when they named them That there's a famous bubber or bubba bricks was an american jazz tenor saxophonist Um, I had a son named his nickname was bubby, which is You know really close, but it was a term of endearment. So, you know names mean different things to different people Um, but it is no surprise to see that he went by john later in life. So bubber was uh, john And bubber was only three degrees from lewis mcgill And you know, we always keep our eye out for people who serve for their country and You know, whether we believe in war or not, they did something that they felt they really needed to do for their community and their country So my hat goes off to all of them We have sergeant john henry malone The son of turner robert malone who was a lifelong member of the fame buffalo soldiers He began a service prior to the spanish american war And he served after the close of world war one at the very least. He may have stayed longer We have samuel malone who was a private in the us army during world war one He was killed in france in october of 1918. He was the grandson of turner robert malone He was also the nephew of sergeant john henry malone And six degrees from lewis mcgill is jackson munroe who also served And then we only had two pop up for this one I'm sure there's more but sometimes we get you know, we're chasing those rabbits down those holes them and Following the research trying to get these families sorted out and we forget to mark them down But we do have west lee hooks who's four degrees from lewis mcgill who served in the us army during world war two And then steve hooks who's five degrees from lewis who served also in the us army during world war two And then on wiki tree. We're all cousins by blood or marriage. There are currently 28 745 641 cousins on wiki tree alive or not And then our research this week was entirely in the united states So by the end of the week we researched in the following states arkansas california florida georgia illinois indiana losing anna minnesota missippey north carolina ohio pennsylvania south carolina virginia and michigan so really we just kind of went all over And then if anyone has questions about the presentation or about wiki tree, uh, you can definitely find us on facebook twitter or you know wiki tree dot com So, you know, do you feel that this is kind of what you guys were expecting or nothing close to what you were expecting or I had no expectations I was just open To see what would happen How about the rest of you oya you had a lot found on your line You can comment Thank you. Um Ellen is amazing. So I've loved her since I was a a very little girl She was one of my first family stories. So she's very special to me um I found her in uh, the freeman bureau records the records that you referenced I just wasn't sure enough that that was her. I wanted to have more information to substantiate that Um, and thank you so much for all the work that you put in for her. These connections are wild I mean from mlk to eddie murphy to maryon anderson Um, thank you so much. I'm looking forward to Going into my profile. I'm looking at all the wonderful records. So thank you so much everybody who did the work Yeah, you know, and if you guys wind up with any questions at all, you know When you do go in and look at these research notes and it'll take a while You know once again, we added so many profiles You can reach out to a later me and you know, if we don't know the answer We'll find out for you who researched on that profile But yeah, so I'm really incredible research notes left. I know um anybody else I just want to say thank you so much. Um, I've been looking for turner gosh I started in 2008 And the moan side has always been my favorite side of family. I don't know why Why I saw the pictures growing up as a kid And I've been looking for him forever and I was excited. I found him in the freeman's bureau late last Fall and I was just still trying to find him and it was so hard to trace him back to alexandria And I just appreciate and so thankful for you guys for finding him And then finding his family and I had no idea that we would find a free person Um on that line. Um, so I thank you and your team and I appreciate everything that you've done to help Take this line further back. Thank you You're so welcome those usct pensions are just amazing. I've gotten to look at a few of them before and um It's it's like christmas morning or something You get to open it up Yes, I forgot even when it's not my family That's what it feels like. I forgot to say thank you. I can't wait to see more of that I saw a couple letters and it's just blowing my mind. I shared it with my aunt And that's another important thing. I wanted to share this with her before she passes away. She's 84 And I was trying to work this line for her because she's the last surviving daughter of my grandfather and so She started this family search with her brothers and she's the last one And so I was trying to work to find this line for her and so Sharing this with her is just like a dream come true. You guys made that happen. And so thank you again Oh, it sounds like things turned out just right. Oh, that's so great Yeah, and you know, we get so excited michelle It's like it like elaine says, you know, it's not even our family and we forget we find something like this And we're just all super super excited There was just so so much information in that pension file Just an incredible amount And you know, but in other places that we look to and really fancy in the collaboration between everybody And seeing how excited they get, you know, like some of them really attached to a certain persons like danas or You know, they went for vikis or whatever family and you know, we feel like we know them at the end of the week So, yeah I know I try not I try not uh for the people that work with me know that I usually try really hard not to get points Because I don't want to get points that somebody else could get during a challenge week And I was in the top 10 until the end and I was sitting there going, okay I can't do anything somebody's gotta butt me out of the top 10 because I don't want to steal anybody's thunder And like on the very last minute, I was like, okay, why don't you go in there and make contributions and butt me up and they did so But you know, even I got caught up with it And you know, there's so many people When you look at the list of the 65 plus people that worked on it, there's so many of them You know that we just have those conversations going around the clock and you'd see people tag out and tag in Okay, I'm gonna stop on this ancestor now and then somebody else would come in and a different time zone and go Okay, I got it, you know, and they'd run with it for a while. So really just really fun and amazing Yeah, I just wanted to add, um, you know, kind of going into the challenge. I really didn't know what to expect Uh, but I appreciate, you know, lane mendy and the entire team You know taking a look at it because sometimes when you do have that brick wall You need additional folks just to kind of take a look at it at least to say a You know We're at the same point and you know, we even need to go left. We need to go right and so, um I still have a lot of research to do to try to flush out which of was it sat or white wasn't hainy and You know, Elaine, as you know a wilburn married sat or white and so it just kind of Uh conflates the issue when you try to figure things out, but I appreciate Uh, what you guys did and in the back of my mind with the degrees of separation when I saw the hank first saw the hanks connection years ago I always want wondered about was there a connection in some kind of way indirect to Abraham Lincoln. So that's kind of cool Yeah, really fun to find Yeah, and I want to say the course the whole team as well Um, I know belly ups is a little challenging and then with her son kill burns and That line in general is uh, they were a handful Um, I didn't expect you guys to really find anything So finding just one document for me. I'm just blown away Because you know, you spend so much time Years after years trying to find one document anything and then you guys come along within a week you're like bam There it is I've never had any family members in the freedman bureau. I mean dr. Shelby talk about all the time, you know We try to look through it and work To find documents and it's like you can find stuff for everyone else that you can never find anyone for your own family And so you guys have given me the first freedman bureau Um record that I have so just thank you Yeah, and I agree sometimes, you know, it's just that one thing that you find that just tickles you totally You know certain and we all have family members that are off in our branches that sometimes mean more to us And you know, you may not even know why but they mean more to you than other people So um to be able to have anybody add to that and give you something is is really wonderful For I've got a scoggins who I care a whole lot about that I've been trying to work on that brick wall for a long time So I was excited to see this pearly burn scoggins. I doubt there's any kind of real connection, but it's interesting anyway I'll check it out Well, I'm going to appear and I'm going to say thank you to you guys for For taking that chance to be the ones to let them look at your profiles number one And and dig into your you know wiki tree Family there and just thankful that you know, you got something You know, if nothing else, I'm going to say you got a whole lot more to do You know now that whatever they presented even if it didn't solve anything You're questioning. Well, wait a minute. They found what and wait, it doesn't connect But who doesn't connect to so I think there's even more to do So i'm appreciative that they asked that you know freedman friday that we can come and join this And stuff because of course we like wiki tree. Anyway, we build an outro files on there as well So again, I'm going to thank the seven of you plus the research teams as well elaine and mendy. So It's a great opportunity also to have someone else look At what you've been looking at and seeing if you missed anything Or is there another opportunity to go left versus right, you know, just as everybody has expressed so again Thank you to you guys And you're very well. Yeah I'm very nicely said shelly and you know, we appreciate that too I mean you guys open your families up to us and you know your hearts up to us And these people that you've spent countless hours already researching and you know, we feel that When we get in here and start looking through these branches. So very you know, it's just such a such a satisfying Thing for us to do also And we love feeling like we get to give this gift to people You know of what we can find and what you know, sometimes all you need is just a different group of people looking And you know, they'll come up with different resources and they may look at a problem differently and tackle it differently. So And then I do have to say though with all the connection finder work I'm blessed to find out that david and I are 19 cousins So that is an actual blood relation Well, David and I also are connected way back from where Is that a most recent common ancestor born in 1200? No Yeah But for davids, it's 1300. So yeah yeah So the interesting is back on my henneger line, which is on my mom's side and those people have done so much dna That's the biggest section of dna contributors and genealogy contributors that I have anywhere in my tree So I find a lot of connections just because they are adding all those people and because they're testing those connections with dna So that's a great project to be part of Yeah, great one So good luck you guys and what you got going Yep, enjoy all the little breadcrumbs that we left you there are That they they get as far as what everybody looked at Which is also really good because now you'll see what the volunteers and what they were doing so they can I'm going to say scratch that off of their list You know just as a verification on something and I think you know like lile said he saw that hanks You know, but wondered about it. So again, he can check that one off of his list and so forth And so again very thankful to you guys and you know what don't forget us We can always come up with another seven anytime y'all want to do a challenge But I do have one last question the researchers that researched the volunteers Were they all united states found folks or or some outside of the united states? No, we did have some that were outside of the united states, but for this challenge the majority was I believe Um, elaine, don't you agree? I believe it was mostly united states a researcher. Yeah, probably yeah 90 percent or so Yes, and like when we did australia It was a mix of all different continents and we do have we usually have a ton of english contributors But we only had a few this time because well a lot of them are still really good at american records But yeah, probably 90 percent. Yeah, I think I think a lot of it just was because there was the enslaved aspect And you know, they just didn't feel like they qualified good enough You know, and I've seen them say that in the past. They're like, we don't know us records You know before 1800 we can't do them. So forget it We're not going to be able to help you and then sometimes they turn around and they find out they can help and contribute in other ways But you know, I think that was pretty amazing for Volunteers standing up to take that on knowing that they were going to run possibly into slave era research So kudos to the folks at volunteer, you know, and I just volunteered to do plantations slave plantations And to help build some of those on wiki tree. So Looking forward to that. But again every time I do research or volunteer It turns around and adds another skill set for me looking at stuff that I'm not familiar with So I hope you know That happens for everybody when you look at something And doing things like wiki tree or transcribing or whatever it is that you add more to your Feather it, you know into your cap because you're crossing into lines that you have not done before So again, I'm going to say thank you guys and and I'm going to sign out And let y'all go and thank you for that adrian. I saw your message in the team So appreciate that we we need to follow up on those Mormons again because I have the Mormons as in the whites that are in Louisa county and obama county virginia and it's the same spelling But they go back further. So I don't know You know, if we're going to connect there or not in which side of the family it's on That's another maybe you can't say something before you go. Um, or you have to show Really one thing dr. Shelley for this not for just selecting the seven of us to be part of this project, but It was actually dr. Shelley that told us she said you guys need to get on wiki tree She's the one that told us this. I mean without her none of us would even be here So we started from scratch like no one really knew what was going on We're making things up as we go. We're trying to teach each other, but she's the one That really, you know all this she's one that all the clues go to her because without her None of this would actually even wouldn't happen Yeah, well, thank you for that. That just makes you makes me also feel bad because I've made more work for you guys Please right here come honestly on different lines. You're the best dr. Shelley You're the best. We really love you. Appreciate all you do for us It's the next thing we just gotta keep telling that story and combat those myths and And whatever and we're doing it and and got wiki tree is 65 people to look at stuff. So, you know I appreciate it and long as it's helping people we can just keep going, you know, so call on us Anytime, you know, we're ready for that at whatever length we can go So and again, I'm gonna sign off and let y'all go and have a good evening you guys and thank you Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Shelley And I think I'll go ahead and wrap it up there and you know, it's just really been so much fun