 out there in wiki tree land. Yes and hello to you Mindy. I'm here with Kieran Lowe who was of course the fabulous captain for the challenge week of Olivia Newton-John and I'll apologize ahead of time if I have some kind of leg or something with my communications here because I'm still having a little bit of internet issues but we're going to power through this anyways. So Kieran, how do you feel the week went? Oh I had a great time and I thought it went really well. We had over three dozen researchers working with us that had registered for our challenge and you know we always have those invisible friends in the background that like to follow along and help us out and stay out of the spotlight just building the branches together. It was very collaborative week. Yeah I agree it was it was really fun seeing that many people in chat you know and we always have somebody going since it is a global site but yeah with almost 40 people registered and then those ones like you said that are behind the scenes helping out there was a lot of people participating this week it was exciting. Yes and so many different areas to research we had folks working in Wales and folks working in Germany on Lutheran families and in Poland on Jewish families I was working on some modern families that any Australians watching will know like Olivia's niece Toddy Goldsmith has probably been on just about every television program in Australia for many years. Yeah and it was really interesting having like you said so many locations and you know we had pressure added to that we had an area that we got to learn a lot about this week which was coal which was East Frisia and yes I had to look that up because geography world geography is not my forte but really fun to learn about and luckily you know we had Guillaume there to explain the changes over the different years there were many of them many more boundary lines. Yes I know he learned a lot this week and the rest of us you know some of us Americans not known for our European geography expertise but we learned about East Frisia upon the North Sea that has influences from Germany and and from the Netherlands as well and Guillaume Albassini in Europe found so many interesting finds this week all of the members did around the world but there was just quite a line of interesting folks there in East Frisia. Right and you know I know that Olivia's background has been looked at before but from what I can tell they primarily researched her Welsh lines and showed those to her so she was pretty excited at that point because you know she didn't realize she had those Welsh ancestors but of course you know for the Wikitree challenge we do all the branches so right you know we we got to look at those ones like the Germans and those areas and yes there were just so many notables in her branches it was fun. Right and and then looking at the Welsh side I know Hilary Gadsby was doing all kinds of work in Wales and it's funny even myself I didn't realize so many names that those of us in the US just think about oh it's an American name or it's an English name they're they're really Welsh you know when you look at and it's a country where over half of the population shares just 10 names and those definitely came up this week I think we I saw John of course is a Welsh name it's like 27th most popular in Wales and we had some Howell research and and Howells came in at like number 29 and and Richards 20 but I know where Hilary and others really had some fun is when they start working on Morgan and Williams and Evan because Evans is like the number four name and Williams is the third most popular name in Wales and she had two branches of Williams family. Yeah I was going to say John Williams is not a name you wanted to have to search for and thank goodness for Hilary's patience and you know her dedication to staying on task because she did an awesome job with those lines. And hearing that people are researching you know particularly Hilary researching someplace and oh that's just down the road you know that the beauty of working on a global tree on a global challenge where we have people who can say oh yes I can actually go to that graveyard this week and folks going to special libraries like their family history libraries and and regional archives you know that's what's really fun when we work together around the world. I saw someone said they have low in their family and I'll tell you that personally my surname used to be Lau, L-A-U and it comes from Alsace from that part of France that has a lot of German speakers and has been tossed back and forth between France and Germany over the years just like there was the oh the dog was called Frisia that's right that's a no I'm thinking of Forcifia I was going to say that's a yellow hedge but no that's Frisia is a plant as well isn't it that's funny now I have to go look up Frisia that it's a little little white flower so I hope you know I'll get to um Frisia uh go ahead oh I was going to say I I stuck that dash 866 at the end of my name because that's my wiki tree ID so anyone who wants to go see my uh low family especially if you're from east Tennessee and you like to say Lau instead of low check out my wiki tree ID there and let's find out how we're cousins that's always fun so were you going to talk tell us uh about what was going on in east Frisia this week you know I I'm going to get to those but I wanted to start out with one of our um gentlemen that went from England to Wales first and that would be James Newton and you know that once again these names were all so similar and bless her heart Hilary just stuck in there and kept looking and several other people did too um there were a lot of people working on these lines but James was at least a little bit amusing because uh we were talking about the landlords and the bar keeps you know and she was saying how he was charged with and pled guilty to selling adulterated whiskey so for those that don't know that's where they go in and they either use inferior products and they say it's high end whiskey or they go in and they color the cheaper whiskey to look like the better whiskey so at any rate they were um find either 40 shillings a month or sorry 40 shillings or a month imprisonment so you know if it were me as a business owner I'm sure 40 shillings was a lot but I would just pay that and not do the month in jail right closing the bar for a month that would be quite a hit to the business but I wonder what happened to the pub's reputation I mean if if in if they were in Cardiff you know that's probably not the only pub in town and it seems like these sort of stories are why now countries like the UK and the US take their liquor laws so seriously and they're very interested in measures you know in bars getting an accurate pour not having your thumb on the scale when you're drawing those those shots and and making sure that the product you're selling is is what is being advertised right you know and like you said a group of them and the standards there weren't standards really back then as much as far as quality but you know they said a group of landlords and barkeepers so you know were they all playing poker one night and got to talking about it and said hmm you know we can make some more money if we just all water down the way guys think especially that second or third shot you know who's gonna notice yep the temptation to put one over on the customers must have been too strong okay so we're gonna move next to everhard as Bachmeister and he of course was in Germany now this is Olivia Newton-John's sixth great-grandfather so and so he's way back there in 1684 he became the personal physician of the young prince of East Frisia he accompanied Christian everhard von Ostfriesland I know I'd say that wrong and his mother the princess on there are many many journeys and you know at one point the prince actually contracted smallpox and he cured him of the symptoms so you know and back then of course they just didn't have the the healthcare and you know vaccinations and all the stuff we do now so those were some pretty serious diseases oh for sure yeah I know smallpox was one of the ones that really helped us pioneer vaccinations when we learned that we could infect someone with cowpox which was a much less serious disease but it was so similar that you could build some immunity but of course that would have been a hundred two hundred years in the future here from everhard trying to take care of his prince because boy you can only imagine what would have happened to him if if that smallpox case had turned out to be fatal it might have been fatal for the doctor as well right and you know even during our lifetimes I mean you know my my children when they were born we didn't have a chickenpox vaccination so you know the way to make your children handle chickenpox okay and survive it was when you found a family member or a friend that called up and said hey little Johnny has chickenpox you loaded the kids up and you took them over there and you had a chickenpox party right because the younger they are you know as long as it's not a baby the younger they are the better they deal with it and recover from it um chickenpox and in a teenager can be fatal and you know so you went and you got had your kids all catch chickenpox at the same time and then you know then you just put them all in one bed and bring them snacks and stuff like that and keep out of school at the same time and now of course they have chickenpox vaccinations so my grandchildren have vaccinations against it yes yes I was um one of those babies who got it and they did have the vaccine when my daughter was young but I remember a time when someone in the family had gotten chickenpox and I thought my daughter did too but it wasn't really pox she was allergic to the antibiotics I was giving her for her ear infection and so every four hours nothing ever scabbed or you know turned into a chickenpox sore she just broke out and hides every four hours until I realized what was going on and then she got the vaccine so hopefully she won't have to suffer from shingles which comes up for those of us who have had chickenpox good morning to Stephen glad folks are here yeah definitely not something you want to mess with and then I'm going to move over to Martin Luther you know and of course I'm sorry but you see Martin Luther in your brain automatically wants to do Martin Luther King but it's not we're going way way back in Olivia's tree and this would be her 12th great-grandfather I believe yes he is and he was a reverend and a doctor and he was best known for shaking up the religious world with his 95 theses which of course started the Protestant Reformation movement so you know he was very very big in religion and I love this with like with a stained glass of him Luther before the diet of worms I'm not sure what the story is behind that but I'll let him have that diet because no thank you but just fascinating the different you know occupations and the varied areas of discoveries that these guys found during the week right for sure and of course Martin Luther King being named for Martin Luther because you know we think of Dr. King as a civil rights activist which of course he was but it was his Christian faith that really informed his activism and his belief of course that all of the children of God deserved the opportunity you know to have a fair and peaceful life here here in the US right and then I'm going to do one last one in East Frigia and that would be Frederick Wilhelm Halem and he was in Emden in 1786 so still way back there as a general practitioner and he had a very lucrative practice but and he did some scientific work on the side I mean you know the the minds of these educated ancestors is just amazing how much they came up with but he actually wound up being the state physician for East Frigia and so from 1797 until his death you know there were all these of course we I said briefly earlier there were all these boundary changes well you know the government and everything just kept going through political upheavals and you know things kept changing but the one thing that stayed consistent is he held this really high position you know very well respected position of the state position until his death right to be able to go on doctoring or at least keep that title even when he was getting up in years yeah late in the 70s looks like you made it too yeah not quite the same as you know what we have nowadays but to me it's so much more impressive back then you know when there weren't all these resources and you know different things available programs available for professional people such as doctors right but I bet being the state physician like we you know see see in modern times your medicine can get political yeah you know so so the trials and tribulations of not just trying to be a good doctor but trying to practice your statecraft and and keeping in the good faith of those who have employed you when when you have strong opinions about medicine that you want to share right and reproving loyalties over and over you know seeing okay I really fully 100% support you now yes right for all time I support you right even though you just be headed the guy that I pledged my undyed loyalty to last week right yes exactly yes we have that who else did you find interesting through the week Karen you know I spent a lot of time with modern relatives I enjoyed learning about the synagogues and the Jewish families in Australia you know Olivia Newton-John has a niece Toddie Goldsmith who's very well known in Australian television and did some singing like her aunt Olivia in before her and her dad Brian Goldsmith is is said to be the fellow who took Olivia to her first singing lesson her brother-in-law who was several years older than her and very well known for running nightclubs in Melbourne so I had a lot of fun on the Goldsmith family in Australia back to England but then I noticed that other folks were working on the Goldsmith family in Max Born's line that's a totally different branch of Olivia's tree her actual ancestry and not her in-laws and I was impressed with how many of of her ancestors we were able to find I I've got Olivia's fan chart up but let me just show you that and here comes the infinite mirror I swear I'm clicking share it's thinking about it yeah it's thinking I'm clicking an entire screen and share and here comes the infinite mirror and then so I'll zoom in in a sec but just to see how much we did this is Olivia her parents grandparents great grandparents we had going for us but we were able to find all 16 of her that next generation her great greats and then almost all of her let's see third third greats no second greats as well so we're just we're missing a few on those hard traced lines if we come in and look at her at Oliver John oh Oliver Olivia I didn't make that connection until just now that must be her who she was named for in part yeah and then so so we had six out of eight there and then all eight of Daisy Newton and a lot of these are those Welsh names we saw like there's some Williams and there's some more Williams there that see we've got these two Williams from the late 1700s that neither one you know we can't fault anyone for not figuring out who's who's John Williams this was that married into the Moss family and then over on her mother's side where we see so many of the Jewish and Lutheran lines in Germany and off to East Frisia we had six out of eight here from max born just this Kauffman family again that's that's a common name and and with a first name like Solomon that would be challenging but a good good something for someone who wants to pick up and just keep on keeping on with the research here and then max born's wife Martha Ehrenberg we would manage to find all of her great-grandparents so folks did just so well and here comes the gerryms where we saw some and there's Bachmeister where we see those very folks you were just speaking about so I was impressed with just how much got done and here's here's the goldsmith ancestors and then of course I was working on on in-laws so just so many families that we made such great progress on this week I know incredible and you know I looked at the the amount of connections and profiles that we added things like that and there were 911 total ancestors added within seven degrees which in a week's time is just amazing even without any people that's still an incredible amount but we actually made 944 plus connections so some of those there were a few that were on wiki tree and we connected to them and you know I say plus because all of those private ones down at the bottom part of the tree that are really close it doesn't count and when it does that that count that relative count so we actually had more than 944 people connected to Olivia which is crazy right but we don't want to don't need to count the modern folks that folks are adding in their own part of the tree because that's definitely a mind your own business part of the tree so but it's so well and you know these apps and extensions yeah sorry um I know that's where my leg comes in I'm not trying to talk over you the apps and extensions you know we have these incredible developers that do this stuff just like everything else on wiki tree it's free and so in their own time they sit out of the goodness of their heart and they make these tools that are so fun for us to use and make our lives easier as you know genealogists or family historians and um but because of that you know that the say like for the extensions that show the fan charts and they don't have access we can't give them access to the wiki tree server so you know that's because we want to protect your privacy and your living relatives privacy and so they aren't allowed to pull any data that's private and that's why you wind up with a lower number than what you actually should have and that's great I love the way that we balance that um you know making the data available uh to folks to develop that that uh you know our founders and folks like you on the team are not trying to keep it all for yourselves because it is a free uh system you know when you're not looking to sell it and make a gazillion dollars you know it's promised to be free forever so we can provide that access and allow uh folks to innovate you know around the outskirts of wiki tree but still like you said those tools have the same access that I do um and so they are they can't see you know it's it's completely I think uh quite safe to add the grandkids you know to to wiki tree because those tools and those users um no one can see them except uh those you know aunts and cousins that you've specifically granted access to so I love that we can share our data without giving away people's privacy yeah since I mentioned it I want to sorry fix this real quick oh let's see what we're going to see I'm in suspense I'm just going to show that apps page because you know if you have not checked out the apps and the extensions on wiki tree dot com then you really need to and you know there's some great tutorials out there if you know you need a little bit of help learning how to use them if there's one that doesn't have the tutorial you can either ask the developer you know or you can ask somebody like me that does tutorials for a lot of these and we'll see what we can do about getting you on oh that's great you know having our chat going on adjacent to wiki tree on on discord and having the ability to have a zoom meeting together we've all leveled up our skills you know in the past couple of years and I really encourage folks to join in on that because I always learn you know when someone's sharing screen and showing how they research we can always go wait wait how how did you do that and you know show that to me because there's so many tools that you can't be an expert on all of them but you can find a new way of researching that just comes save so much of your time you know life is short and there's you know 30 million ancestors to look at on wiki tree so so I love that we are sharing skills and getting to have that real-time collaboration and chats like these with each other making friends and and sharing research ideas right and you know you definitely don't get that on the other sites you know you you can't go to one of the other sites and go oh what are there's new meetings to chat with the other guys yeah I certainly find something in for wiki tree there's always somebody chatting somewhere right it's it's such a great size you know that it's a powerful enough team to drive essential tools for research but it's a small enough going concern that you can chat with the founder that you can chat with members of the staff team like Mindy you know and and influence how the site is designed and you know it's seeing that path of folks become very volunteer leaders and then find you know important things to do for the tree professionally has been really great to see over the years right and then I want to go ahead and you know talk a little bit about the scorekeeping now of course we don't do the the wiki tree challenges for the points but it is kind of a fun way to motivate yourself and also to keep track of your progress you know to see how much you've really done that week and so we do give points out for various things and I'd like to go ahead and list off our top 10 if I say anybody's name wrong I apologize now for number one and Gio was not only Gio and Albusini was not only our top one with points this week with a total of 214 points but he was also one of the two they tied top bounty hunters this week so that was really exciting and number two would be Chris O'Connell three was Tracy Bent four was one of our captains Maddie Hardman five was Dungea Brandis and she's new to the challenge and she was just an amazing amazing amount of help yes again Caitlyn Emmett was number six Karen you were number seven so you were doing great at adding those profiles and another one of our captains Donna Bowman she was in eighth place another captain I see a theme going here our captains are we're all hooked on this that's why um yeah it's easy to score those points that it's really hard to walk away from the challenge when she get caught up in it number nine of course was Kathy Nava she's always such an incredible great help at looking up stuff for people and still doing the work to add family members and then 10 we have Stephen Greenwood who you know has participated in a number of these and did a great job too so you know hands up to you guys and thank you but thank you to all of them you know everybody that contributes to these challenge and you know challenges in any small way it benefits our tree and it benefits us right so often we see folks who aren't adding a gazillion profiles but they're instead transcribing an entire will and sloppy handwriting making us a space page that's not even about and you know particular ancestors but it's about an industry in the town or a topic where they just really dig in deep and and we get so well educated we we really get to focus on the history part of family history with some of these contributions of folks that you know you don't see at the top of the you know I added 100 people to the tree this week kind of chart although you know that's really fun as well yeah and you know and but that's one of the things that's great about wiki tree you know as we're not just here to document the sources and attach sources you know we're here to bring that person to life and to you know memorialize them in a way that future generations can go oh wow this was my seventh great-grandfather let me read about them and they can learn a little bit about them you know and go into the biography and read the story about his family and what he did for work and you know how many kids he had and just kind of feel like they're part of that person's life that they know them yes and to trace those connections sideways through brothers and sisters through partners in in families that you don't have to take an interest in your personal ancestry if that doesn't speak to you you know maybe you get excited about the state physicians of east frisia maybe you get excited about jewish pioneers in the southwestern us you know a story that folks don't know much about and that turns into your master's thesis in in history or you know the level of research going on is pretty astounding right you know and in the past we've even had like you know sometimes we'll find a factory that a number of the relatives worked at or something like that and then it's kind of fun because you go in and you start you know adding all the people to the space page you know doing a link to them so that you know who all worked at that same place and sometimes you go in and you find family members you didn't even know you know should have been on the tree you're like hmm that's the same last name i better go look at that one and it turns out you know somebody had eight kids instead of seven or yeah sometimes you get bonus family members and and by working these sideways connections you know i was just talking to someone this morning who had born ancestry in germany and as i looked it was well you know your families in you know that town that starts with a b that i can't remember for anything because i'm trying to but but her family was way over on the west of germany close to Alsace at the same time that max born's born family was in posan in poland and you know her family was getting baptized in the lutheran church and and max's family was was having you know a jewish life at the same time and but then i thought well look here's all these cousins that are on the tree on a different line or here's the wacky path between your born's and his born's that maybe maybe you don't share the same ancestor but those sideways paths can be really fun to explore and meeting those cousins you know that might have the the photographs or or the family record books that you've never seen you know because uh some third cousin is like why did i wind up with grandma's brother-in-law's family album you know and and then they get to you get to find each other through a a great global tree right and you know and i think that's one of the things that people forget sometimes you know we we try and take the oh you know the whole family approach we want everybody that belong in that family or in their life hopefully on wiki tree you know and we want to attach them as best we can you know but you think about your your own current life you know and you have cousins that you know you might have grown up with and you know maybe aunts and uncles that influenced you or somebody that passed on a you know a love of cooking or piano playing or whatever it is and you know maybe just the appreciation of nature and these people are all important to you well it's kind of the same and you know it's really easy to get stuck in a rut and go oh well i have my great grandparents i'm going to add their mom and dad and now i'm going to add their mom and dad and just go up that direct line you know but they were any different than we are those cousins were you know most likely in their life and especially back when there weren't you know you get far back enough where there weren't cars where you could jump and go you know drive two hours to see somebody um you know a lot of them were right there in that same area and so there you know those aunts and uncles were important the cousins were important and the neighbors even were right yes that that uh you know if you just focus on the parents and their parents and their parents who get to a part where you're stuck because you didn't know what the origin of the family is and rather than giving up and turning off the hobby uh like you said you know what about those people that were in the same school you know that were in the same um club that played cards or decorated flowers or or tried to help each other survive the winter you know uh folks that were in the same grange or or union hall or place of worship as your ancestors um you know can probably help tell the story uh even better than chasing that elusive uh person you know four generations back in their tree and like I said the ability to just totally put your own family aside and work on something else can uh bring you so much joy you know like I'd always much rather wash your dishes than my dishes because if I'm washing yours we're together and I'm helping and and I'm being a good friend you know if I'm at home that's just work right and you know talking about those connections um kind of brings me back to the point system just a little bit you know because one of the things we definitely try and do is once again make as many of those connections as we possibly can and you know the more that you add people that are in these peripheral relatives to your branches the more likely you are to solve those mysteries or to connect like Karen said you know to a cousin and so you know out of the eight great grandparent lines there's eight of them and we had five of those eight lines people made brand new connections on so you know instead of being only connected this way you know now you had all these other directions you could take and possibly wind up related to Olivia or have your relationship shortened Stephen says he's gonna save save me some of uh some of his dishes okay I'll be over it wasn't let me all right I'll come on over and then you can you can come and do mine because there's plenty yeah I have some chores I don't have any canning for you to do those Stephen and my garden's done with so you can't help with that stuff yeah I was surprised to see a lot of canning though oh nice um was surprised to see people here in Utah saying they're finally eating tomatoes oh boy I haven't eaten tomatoes for two months some folks are just behind getting ready to have a whole bunch of tomatillos though so I guess I better figure out how to how to make some green salsa oh there goes Mindy's internet that might be the end of this show we'll have to see if we get her back otherwise I'm here talking to myself well let's see what I can think of uh to tell you we've looked at the fan chart we've talked about the score sheet um and Stephen's got more tomatoes and a handful of purple beans it was so hot here in Utah that my beans and peas just absolutely refused to grow in the 100 degree heat so the eggplant thought it was great and the tomatoes of course loved the sun and the heat but but it's been awfully hot and awfully dry I just want to take time to thank everyone for getting together on the challenge we had like I said over three dozen people working a bunch of you chatting away on discord and even if you're not a big chatter I'd encourage you to check it out just to see what people are finding and what skills they're sharing to maybe pop a query into the channel there and and see who who you can find to give you a hand with your research let's see Mindy did you make it back with us she's got a lag I am trying but I don't know if my video is going to hold out for this um like us yeah it might be time to um to call it a day Stephen's asking if I have Lowe's in Michigan and I'd encourage you to just go to Lowe-866 and check out my tree um there are a number of people that headed north out of the Smoky Mountains to find work I haven't run into my cousins in Michigan Lowe is a pretty common name in England as well mine was originally LAU from Alsace into York County Pennsylvania and then to uh many points west from there yeah and at any time you know look for us for the next challenge of course we'll be doing the sourceathon coming up and then we'll be focusing on Mark Hamill which will be great so if you haven't registered look in the g2g forum and find us there sounds good use the source