 Hi everybody, how's it going? We are here a little bit earlier than normal today because we have a special guest from the Netherlands So we're excited to introduce you to And we're excited to kick off our challenge for this week So we took a little bit of a break last week, which I think was good. I know I needed some sleep So it was probably although do as anyone on wikich you really take a break Really no It's kind of an obsession so for not doing the challenge we find other ways to keep keep ourselves busy, huh? We do hi hi to everybody in the chat. Let's see. I think we have a bunch of our usuals Chris F Tommy June Steven whose last name I never try to say I Know if is here And hioka Mm-hmm and Ann Maggie John from Ireland So oh John has this his first time he's come in He comes to date night, right? Yes, that's right. You're right. I'm going to come back on. He's one of our future guest stars so Let me introduce the people who are here case. You don't know most of us yet. I'm a when I'm a team member at wikich tree That is Julie. She's also a team member at wikich tree. That is Mindy She is our coordinator of the challenge and basically the one that keeps it running behind the scenes And then if you don't know this is event Hoytink, which hopefully I said, right? She is our Dutch guest star who will learn more about in just a little bit So I'm going to turn over to Mindy and just a sec after I tell you about wiki tree and the wiki tree challenge in case you Also aren't familiar with that So wiki tree is a community of genealogists who are working together on this single family tree In other words, we collaborate to grow an accurate global tree that connects us all and most remarkably It's completely free The wiki tree challenge is what we decided to do for our year-long event as part of our year of accuracy and Each week a team of wiki trees takes on a genealogy guest stars tree and collaborates to make it more accurate and complete than it is anywhere else Our goal is to improve our accuracy on wiki tree add more family connections and make more friends So Mindy is going to explain a little bit about how all of this works Now one thing we do have to do well is collaboration So good thing it's wiki tree and we have several ways to do that during the challenge week On the left you see the spreadsheet We try and put the profile that we're working on there We wind up with sometimes 35 40 people working on the branches at the same time So if you put the profile there then somebody doesn't come in and accidentally save over your work or something And then take it out when you're done on the right You'll see the g2g post and we have a new one of those each week featuring our guest star And that's where we go ahead and put any bounty points that we're claiming if you have an interesting fact You want to point out if you have a question and you haven't put it in discord? We use the g2g post for a lot of things And then finally is discord and this one we can't do without We have people that are from all over the world. So there's almost always somebody in there talking We churri chud chudder on we'll take a second look at a record for you We have people that do nothing but add stickers look up newspaper articles There's a lot going on in there And then there's two types of ways that we can score now Of course, we don't do this just for the points and we love the fact that we're able to give this kind of a Genealogy gift to somebody but we are human and it is a good motivator So there's two types of basic scores that you can get now we have the bounty points Which are the big ones and that would be ten points for each new brick wall and Ancestor on a line or if you find an incorrect ancestor and you can disprove them on that line That's ten points We have single points and these are given for every direct ancestor added even beyond the brick wall and for all of the nuclear family so that would be siblings or children and Those points can actually add up pretty fast We have at the end of a week somebody that we go ahead and announces our most valuable player MVP of the week and that would be the person that gets the total top score So all of the profiles they've added plus their bounty points Did I lucha Okay, sorry top teams My computer slowed down on me now We wanted to do a little bit of refresher here and and point out how well everybody's done I know how excellent you guys have done, but it's fun to see the numbers so we're we're heading towards that six months mark and These are our total so far. We have total points 10,553 created ancestors 1630 that's just direct ancestors. It's incredible Relatives now those are those nuclear relatives. We were talking about 4582 for bounty points. Here you go 4340 so that's 434 new brick wall ancestors You guys are awesome Profiles edited these are unique profiles edited 15213 So, you know, you guys have done a lot of improving and helping with the accuracy of wiki tree And then of course total edits and this really goes to show how much you're working on the health of the tree 64229 Wow Like I don't we didn't have because we had no idea how this would go and we started it So I don't think we had a way to even expect anything But I just I'm floored every week. I know and and every time they blow us away We get some new big number Numbers will double this week, right? Yeah Maybe triple they might triple We'll work on that just for you Okay, and then I want to acknowledge Two sets of top teams here now since this has started this year for the total score of the team that got the highest score For their week that was team cross on down cross this week. So they had 1202 total points 410 bounty points the team captain was Emma Macbeth way to go Emma and most valuable player Maddie Harbin And then the other top team I'd like to point out now This was our highest scoring bounty points in one week since we've started and that was team good one They had 1174 total points. So just a little bit behind what what Dallas team did But their bounty points were 610 that was just 61 brick wall ancestors. It was an amazing week that everybody was so hard to keep up with We just kept adding points and adding points the team captains were Janet Wilde and Joan Whitaker and the most valuable player Now this was her first time winning this award this year was Carol Keeling. So way to go Carol That's fantastic So cool, you guys are amazing Just the amount of work that gets done and the collaboration like I think yeah It's taken a lot of us to a whole new level of collaboration, too It's fun to pop in on the discord server and watch the conversation that's rolling away It's like you can't pick up with it sometimes for sure So that's our overall progress which is great We're excited as we said to have a vet here this week She is from the Netherlands and so we're super excited because we have another lens project on wiki tree Our Dutch Reads project and our Dutch members have been pouring in this week to help with this challenge They're excited. We're excited everyone's excited So it's been nice to see them You know come and help because we really need them this week Not that we don't need them other weeks we need you guys every week We love our Dutch we do we love our ditch in particular and in a couple of weeks to you guys It's time to be in the spotlight We do and there was a lot of people in there making new friends yesterday. I know it was so cool Yeah, that was really fun to see that's one of our goals make new friends And we always thought that would be like an outside genealogy community But I think we've had a lot of wiki chairs make friends with each other Definitely it's been really good for that too so many extra bonuses to this challenge that we didn't even think about when we started it so Good stuff. All right Yvette I'm gonna tell you a little bit about her She is a board certified genealogist in the Netherlands who helps people find their Dutch ancestors A super cool fact that I learned about her today Is that she's the only genealogist in the Netherlands to hold the certified genealogist credential, which is pretty pretty epic Um, she has an amazing website. That's an excellent resource for resource for Dutch researchers It's uh, dutch genealogy.nl. She definitely check it out if you're doing any kind of research in Dutch. I was looking that or in the Netherlands I was looking at it today and Uh, she mentioned she started it in 1993. So it's probably one of the oldest genealogy websites out there And she's been blogging for years and it looks like there's a ton of great information there Uh, she specializes in tracing Dutch immigrants Including people who settled in new netherland the united states canada australia in new zealand She is a writer and a lecturer and in january she started up what she calls Level up challenge for her ancestors and if she's willing maybe she can tell us a little bit about that because it's pretty cool sure So the level up challenge is something I came up with because um, I'm revisiting my old research I don't know about you, but I've been doing genealogy for 30 years And some of my older profiles are in worse shape than my newer ones And I wanted to have a way to keep track of how I'm doing So the level up challenge is a level one is an ancestor. I only know the name for and level two I know their vital statistics at level three. I know where they live throughout their lives At level four, I also know if they owned property and if they ever were in prison And at level five, I've just about exhausted all reasonable records that I can expect to find And at level six, I've written all of that up in the form of a biography and Yeah, and dna painter actually added these levels now in a dimension So you can create a fan chart where you can manually add the different levels and then you can see in your tree Uh, what level you are. So I have a lot of like red orangey stuff. That's the level one maybe two But the recent ones are maybe level four because I've been trying to level them up Nice. My first goal is to get my first six generations up to level four So I know pretty much about their lives in in that's really cool easily accessible. Yeah Yeah, that's pretty cool I loved it when I first saw it and I've been meaning to try it So hopefully sometime this year I can kind of talk a lot because I think it's a great way to go re-approach your Research you can define your own level. Some people say well, I want to include dna in in these levels I haven't done that because uh, it's I There are not many people who test dna in the Netherlands not as much as in other countries So I don't have many serendipitous matches and not many people want to test for me So I have left that as a separate thing. This is just how my archival research is doing, but you can define your own levels It's just an easy way to keep score for yourself and see where you need to do your next work Yeah, definitely Now Yvette, what got you interested in genealogy? um I I had a lego city when I was 10 where I already had a population register Where of each doll in which house they lived so I think there were early warning signs back then But it all started when my first cousin was older than me She was pregnant and there was this story that it might be twins Because our grandfather was a twin and grandpa had just died earlier that year and that freaked me out The idea that I could be running into my deceased grandfather's identical twin because that's what the story said So I took the train across the country I was 15 at the time of course in the Netherlands across the country is like two hours, but still and I went to the archives and looked up my grandfather's birth certificate to see if he had a twin brother And he didn't his mother had had a child out of wedlock one and a half years before he was born So I had found my first scandal my first family secret that I debunked and well the rest is history So that's how I got involved in genealogy Very cool. Now. Do you have a favorite ancestor? Yeah, um, I think it's uh, it used to be aren't kastein. He's a constable who was It's a police constable and most of my other ancestors are farmers and laborers And I love them all equally, but police constables create more records Yeah So but now I'm currently doing a project where I'm trying to prove my descent from Eleanor of equity So we know France and England in the 12th century I'm two generations away. So I've now proven 27 generations If I can make those last two connections. I'm pretty sure she will take the first place Wow About that on my blog so you can go to my website and tip in Eleanor or equity and you can find all the I've written one blog post per generation documenting all the resources per generation documenting all that is so cool It's a very fun project, but it's getting really hard 12th century. Yeah Now you told us about the first scandal you found What other interesting stories or scandals have you found in your branches? Well, just this week I found it's not really a big scandal, but I thought it was fascinating one of my female ancestors She was very poor And I found her put in jail three times in three years for cutting grass in her neighbor's meadow And I think that's just so sad to think that she was so poor She probably had a goat or something that needed to be fed And so she Cut some grass and probably fed it to the goat But that was considered theft And she had to go to jail for eight days each time. So 24 days in all And what's special about that is that the prison records give physical description So now know what she looks like. Oh, this is a woman born in 1834. So you never know that otherwise No What a cool find Yeah So that may be the biggest scandal like grass, but still I love their personal stories So do I I love that I love finding those little tidbits Yeah, anything that tells you about their lives and not just the dates in the places Yes, and that's one of the things that That we love about the biographies on wiki tree two is that you are able to do that we can go in and narrate What we've learned and take some of that information out of the records we found and try and bring that person to life again And I just absolutely love that Yeah, me too Some of our researchers, that's one of their favorite things to do is to go out and find all little articles that they can So you'll you'll get some nice surprises. I hope hopefully and the Netherlands has great resources online Like delfer the newspaper website where they digitized many of the newspapers since the 18th century All for free. So yeah, the great resources And when did you first discover wiki tree? um, I think it was around 2014 It was for a client project a new netherland project and I was doing a google search and wiki tree popped up and it was They had some information that was incorrect and I figured well. It's a collaborative tree. I'll fix it um, so and I added the original record that approved the Origins of the family. I must say I haven't done much with it since because I'm very busy with client projects and I'm I'm studying and have a family But yeah, I've used it as a resource so more as a way to Find records and I've been impressed with the quality of the new netherland projects profiles Thank you. Thank you on their behalf Thank you for when you found something incorrect you came and fixed it because you know our collaborative tree Instead of just dismissing us And walking away that's we love that when people come and fix things Yeah, it's also a bit of an experiment for me. My first career was in it and I'm curious to see how this kind These kinds of systems work. So I checked it the other day and my edit is still up. So that's Fine I fixed it and I documented to make sure to include the original source with the photo and everything and It survived and that's what you expect, right? People do good at it. Yes. Yes Absolutely I just have one quick question from our chat It was actually from the previous question when you were talking about how you had the physical description of the woman And frank wanted to know if you had an artist to try to create a picture from the description I've actually been looking at those police mugshot like the police artist. You have software that does that for you but The details are too sparse to do that. It's like hair color round face Low forehead it's too. Yeah, it's a little too big too big. Yeah, but I've been Playing around with software just to get like mugshots Of my ancestors just as a mnemonic to see who has blue eyes who has gray eyes, but It didn't really work, but it was fun to play with I bet sure sounds fun. Yeah You do have that it bring there I can see that Yep, and then we've we've talked about the fact that your tree is already so just it's so impressive It's it's massive It is and you know out of the ninth generation and I know you're proven out to 12 or 15 or further on some of those But even at the ninth generation you only have 11 brick walls out of 255 possible ancestors on the paternal side and then 25 brick walls on the maternal side plus that little chunk that needs to be DNA proven But if you had to pick one particular area that you would really like to see expanded, what would it be? um, I think there There are some ancestors on my father's side that came from other countries to the Netherlands That those are the ones I haven't exhausted the sources yet in the Netherlands because they're all from the area around Winterswijk And I purchased those transcriptions when I was 16 from my pocket money. So I kind of Ducked deep there. So I think the best chance of breaking brick walls there is in The non-dutch ancestral lines actually. So I know you've all these Dutch volunteers lined up, but for those on my maternal side I think you should get a hundred bonus points if you break a brick wall there because those are all very solid There are some where there are online trees that have further ancestors, but I haven't been able to find proof And then I don't add them. So right Yeah, I know my mother's side. There are several People whom I just haven't had the time to research yet So there there's probably more potential for a brick wall breaking there And I have some missing fathers of illegitimate children on that and I don't think those will be solved without DNA So I think those are like I know in one case that a father Acknowledged the child when she was seven But I haven't found DNA evidence yet or convincing DNA evidence I have some that he was the biological father. So I haven't added him as the father just as the husband of the mother My program doesn't allow you to add multiple fathers. So I have to pick one Otherwise I would have added him as the legal father And then what is the main thing you hope to get out of the challenge itself? I think it's um like a bit of reflection or just a new Set of eyes like how am I doing? Are there things or these things I've been missing? and just also from Yeah, see how this works this collaborative tree like is this something that Um, yeah, it's worth doing. I think it is but how does it work in practice? My knowledge is mostly theoretical. I've doubled a bit with the family search family tree Uh a little bit with the wiki tree and I think it's just fun to see how it works and if you break any break walls, I'd be Highly surprised to be honest because I've been doing this for a while and I'd be so blown away. So any break wall is like 100 There you go guys So one or two right Just one really on my father's side the last time I broke through a break wall was six years ago Just to give you an idea Yeah And that was actually while working on my portfolio for the board for certification of genealogists Where I was documenting a known line and doing reasonably exhaustive research and found out I have the wrong cousin To same-named cousin as my ancestor. So I found an error in my own tree So if anyone finds an error in my tree, I would be really happy too because I want to improve the quality So that would count as a break wall as well. I think I don't know Yeah, and then we do like to make these profiles as nice as we can so we generally ask if you have any photographs that we can use for Some of the profiles if there are my photos that I uploaded you can use them if I save them from other people's tree You'd need their permission Like all my ancestry trees some of them are safe from other people's trees. So I can't give permission for them right Very cool So we do if you guys have any questions free vet you can put them in the chat and we'll ask her I did see if said You didn't have any ancestors who are sent to v in hueson Fane house or the call v in hausen Yeah, that's the that's the colonies where they sent to poor people. No, mine were just not Just right side of poor to stay in their own communities So no, that's most I think one in five or so people in the Netherlands one in ten Have paupers who were sent to the the colonies to dig peat then those people who were Convicted as beggars. You would be said you would be shipped there and work in the peat colonies and that's just a Part of the Netherlands that they were trying to cultivate using force labor. Interesting. Wow Yeah, yeah, I guess she said I Guess she said they took pictures of all the people who were sent to those Yeah, I know And also some of the Hardened criminals that were released but mine just cut grass. So they didn't make the no pictures No picture And then another question is do you have a language preference for the profiles that they're creating? No, because we can we like to do them and Especially when we have people who can do them in the native language But then we usually also do them in English. We kind of try and do both When we can touch touch or a French English German doesn't matter all four guys all four Latin All five Yeah, I read 12 languages. So I'm good. Oh, well, then you're good Yeah, good to go Um, and then Lewis Kester asked do all your ancestral lines as far back as you can go originate in the Netherlands And no the constable I just talked about he Moved across the street when he was young and that street was the border between the Netherlands and Germany So he was born in Germany moved across the street and then he was that Which meant he had to have a royal decree to be naturalized before he could join the police force Wow So yeah, I have a few Germans on my father's side because Winterswijk is just on the eastern border of the Netherlands And some of them are just across the border I have a few jugonaut lines french jugonaut in my zealand lines from my mother's side And my mother's side lived in the south of the Netherlands and some are from what's now belgium So and and I've won scottish line the There's scottish soldier Paul Trommel t-r-o-m-e-l And he came from Edinburgh as a mercenary soldier in the early 1600s to fight in the Netherlands And a very distant cousin of mine did why dna testing and it's supposed to be turnbull in Edinburgh, and he even found a marriage record. So Oh my wow in 1615 98, I think so, yeah, that's uh, that's my And I'm now studying at the scottish university. So that's my one uk ancestor that I can click That's really cool Um, do you have any questions for us? No, I I I sit on my hands for a week, right? We want to be able to surprise you Yeah Yeah, like I said, I haven't broken the brick wall on my father's side in six years I don't think the chance is very large that I will do the break one in the next week now I'll be Curious to see what you do and if you need any help or or need more information about my tree You can go to dutch genealogy dot nl and use the contact form to ask me a question. I don't know if that's allowed, but Absolutely, that's uh, that's fine No beeping. Okay Yeah, that's good that you mentioned it. Yeah, I'll uh, I'll stay off wiki tree for a week It'll be hard. Yeah Well, you can do it. You're luring me in I think I feel myself Pulled in. Yeah, that's good. That's what we're trying to do The week goes by fast for the researchers Yeah Yeah, I'm gonna be curious Yeah Um, Mindy, did you have any other questions forever? But I think we've covered it Cool. Well, I'm gonna say Let's wrap this up so people can go and research. So Thank you Yvette for being one of our guest stars. We're so happy to have you Thank you Mindy for all the work you do to keep the challenge going Thank you people who have come and hang out on this chat with us We always appreciate that and your comments wouldn't be the same without you We just talk to ourselves and we do that all the time. Anyway, so we like having fresh voices Thank you ahead of time to everyone who's going to do the research this week We're excited to see you guys find And We'll be back in a week so we can Share with you about what we found So go to work. Can't wait success. Hi everybody Success That means and if you have How do you say it? Success, but it means good luck in Dutch. It's not just the words the same. It's success in English, but it means Yeah Now we know Cool and if you haven't subscribed to us. Yes, that's what we're gonna say. Hopefully we have a lot of it Um, oh and if you haven't subscribed to our channel, you should subscribe to it because we do these awesome videos every week Can you don't want to miss out? So is that We will say goodbye Have fun research hard