 Welcome to the wiki tree challenge. Hi, I'm Mindy Silva. Welcome to the wiki tree challenge highlights reel. Today I have Tricia Andrew from the Kentucky Genealogical Society, as well as Kathy Kaiser. Welcome ladies. Hello. Hi. And I'm going to talk a little bit about wiki tree first for those viewers that don't know who we are. So for those people, our mission is to grow one accurate share tree that connects us all and is accessible to everyone free forever. It's all about collaboration. There's one 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. It's all one big tree. And we just passed 34 million profile milestone with almost 11 million of those having DNA connections to it. And I'm really excited this week because we're reaching another milestone with connected profiles. And we are so close to the 30 million mark. It's just really excited. We have like 29,640,000 something. Wow. I was looking at it this morning. Yeah. We need to connect us on. Yeah, we do. We have one coming up this month. So I think I think we're actually going to reach it before the thaw starts though. It's just crazy how fast these profiles add up, you know, with so many people working on it. And so what really makes wiki tree work is its community and a cornerstone of the community is our honor code. So anyone can view the profiles on wiki tree, but to edit anything more than the close family members, you have to sign the honor code. Now this emphasizes sources, giving credit, courtesy, understanding, accessibility, accuracy, and respecting privacy. And privacy is another aspect of wiki tree that makes it special. So even though we're growing a one world tree and we all collaborate, only close members collaborate on those modern family profiles. So as you go back in time, those privacy controls open up. And collaboration on deep ancestors is between cousins or other interested members who are serious about the genealogical research, careful about their 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 account at any time. Now the 11th wiki tree challenge of 2023 is over. We partnered with Kentucky Genealogical Society and boy, did we have a lot of fun with this. Of course, this was near and dear to my own heart. This is where my husband's family is from. And I've spent a lot of years researching the just really rich history of Kentucky. So I was excited to see that you guys were participating with us. Now they gave us seven names. We had seven days to find everyone we could within seven degrees. Seven degrees means seven steps in any direction. And on wiki tree, we call that a person CC seven. Our starting people were Jesse Hilton Stewart, who gained 3400 relatives. Alice Spencer Gettis Lloyd gained 20 or 2797 people. William Loftus Sutton MD gained 7,910 people. Josephine Kirby Williamson Henry gained 2124. Margaret Arvin Sasans gained 4,324. Cora Wilson Stewart gained 7,160 relatives. And Alberta O'Dell Jones gained 605 relatives. And here I'm going to show you a few of our top people during the challenge week. Patti LaPlante, who was our most valuable participant or MVP. Judith Fry and Sandy Paddock were our top bounty hunters. And Kathy Nava, who was the team captain for the week. Now, Trisha, do you want to go ahead and tell us a little bit about how you picked those seven people and, you know, tell us a little bit more about the society? Well, Kathy, why don't you tell us, tell them about the society and then I'll talk about how we picked the people. Sure, I'd be glad to. Well, the society started in 1973. And we have now over 1200 members. We're in all four, we're in 49 of the 50 states. We're still looking for a Rhode Island member. And we are in about eight countries. We have a number of programs that we extend out to our members. We have the grant program, which has been really very successful. It's been going on for about four years now, where we award money, have documents or photos, things like that digitized. And that opens up August 1st. And all that's on our website at kygs.org if you want to go over and check it out and see what all is entailed in the grant program. We also have on, we also offer our members, what is it now, Tricia, over 100 videos on researching that has been done by many great presenters across the United States. We also focus like in March on the Irish and Scotch Irish. And then we focus in August on Kentucky. And so we have a great resource there. We have a lot of digital documents available for our members. And this is all for just $20 a year. It's a great price for what you get. And we started up about a year ago, Front Porch Talks, where we meet once a month on different subjects. There's small groups and they meet online and discuss problems or new research techniques, things like that. And of course we also have a monthly Bluegrass Routes that is digital that comes out. We published our first book in a long time in May. And that's to celebrate our 50th anniversary this year. The book was Essential Guides to Kentucky Family Research. And then just now, brand new, last week we published the Kentucky and its Kin. So those are available on Amazon.com. And both of them must have if you're researching in Kentucky. So that's just a few things that we have going on at the organization. And we just, if you've got any roots at all in Kentucky, we think that you should come in and join us. We have a great time and we offer many things that'll help benefit your research. Some people just, they don't even have family in Kentucky. They just like our society because we're so involved. So that's kind of fun. And we are, if you're in Rhode Island interested in joining us, we'll give you a free membership. Just contact us. But the way we decided on our members, on the people we chose, Mindy, was we like to be very collaborative just like a wiki tree. And so we just did a little contest and we had people nominate people who they thought would be good for us, who would be notable. And we had over a hundred people selected and just nominated. So I palled through those and got it down to about 50 people. And then we sent that out as a survey and we let the members choose again who they thought would be the most interesting to do. And that's how we got our list. Yeah, that's great. You know, once again, I mean, there's just so many interesting people in Kentucky's history. It's just really hard I imagine pig just those seven, which makes it nice for us because we don't have to narrow it down. Just let you supply them. Really great stuff. Well, we have a good list. Returning to the challenge. It does take an entire year. You aren't the first society to say that. I know I'm still trying to figure out how I want the challenge to go next year. But definitely we will be having it again. It's just too much fun not to. So here we have, you know, it takes an entire team to collaborate and come out with these outstanding results. And we had more than 128 people participate over the week. And yeah, just an incredible show of collaboration. You know, so sometimes we'll get 150 people that sign up, but people get busy and things come up, you know, and we'll wind up with maybe 50 people participating. But this was more than 128. So 128 that showed up on our score sheet are tracking for those wonderful reports we get from a lash. Yeah, but that means there were more than that because there are things that people do during the challenge week. Sometimes that don't get them points, but it does help improve the tree. And so, you know, I always say more than. Yeah, and it was great having the discord because I know I, I got like two, I got someone's grandfather and I couldn't get any further. And I'm like, ah, someone helps, someone helps. Oh, I tell you what, you get hooked on it really quick. And you know, I find when I go to do my own research, I'll hit a point like that. And I'm like, okay, I want to go to my, you know, my focus group here, where's my challenge room? I want four people to look at this marriage record and tell me what's wrong with it, you know, or what they think. It's just, it's too much fun. Now, you know, because we look at all these connections on WikiTree, we took a look at to begin with all of our starting ancestors to, and we did find a few blood relations, but we also found many, many connections. So these are just some of the connections we found. Now, Jesse Stewart is 19 generations from Alice Spencer Gettysloid, being her seventh cousin, three times removed. He's also 10 degrees from Cora Wilson Stewart and 14 degrees from William Loftus Sutton. Margaret Arvin is related by blood to many of our genealogists. This was interesting from the first year of the WikiTree challenge, you know, and it's just so easy to pull these things up on WikiTree and see who they're related to. So it was fun to see that so many people were, so many of our genealogists were related to Margaret. Now, she's also 27 generations from Alice Spencer Gettysloid, being her 12th cousin once removed. She's 12 degrees from William Sutton, 14 degrees from Cora Wilson Stewart, and 15 degrees from Josephine Kirby Williams and Henry. And then for Alberta, we had she's 21 degrees from Jesse Stewart, 21 degrees from Cora Wilson Stewart, and 25 degrees from William Sutton. So, you know, just a good reminder that we're all connected somehow. You know, I know back in the day when we were doing it before you sat and you wrote this stuff out on paper and you made little charts and, you know, really hard to track those like peripheral ancestors. You pretty much went in a direct line because that's all you could fit on the page. And now you just click a couple of links and it tells you who all you're related to. You know, am I related to the queen? How many steps does it take me to get to Abraham Lincoln? And it's just all right there. And then we do have a lot of fun using this connection finder during the week to see who we're the closest to. So this is your captain's connection to Alice Gettis Lloyd. They're actually blood relations being seventh cousins three times removed. And we do this a lot, like we follow it throughout the week. If you're in discord at all and doing the chat, you know, and we look at those distances. So, you know, we'll know that we were maybe 26 steps from Margaret at the start of the week. Well, of course, once you start adding these people in the connections get better and more accurate. And then all of a sudden, you know, you're only 18 steps from her. And so we like to follow those. Yeah, I was surprised that I knew Jesse Stewart because he was from Eastern Kentucky, I would be related to him. But it turns out I'm more closely connected to him through a marriage than through our shared grandmothers. Oh, wow. Yeah, that's always fun to see. And then, you know, here we never know where we're going to find a connection at when we start the week out. And we actually found out that Jesse Hilton Stewart, who seemed to be connected to everybody also, is a blood relative of Cassius Marcellus Clay, Ali, so better known as Muhammad Ali. He's actually his sixth cousin. Oh, wow. Yeah. Very cool. I was not expecting that one. Reverend Isaac Aira was the manager and founder of the Christian Standard in Cleveland, Ohio, which was the first of its denomination in the United States. And he was a close friend and eventually the funeral orator of US President James A. Garfield in 1881. Isaac is only four degrees from Alice Gettisloy. These are great for the descendants, you know, and I hope for all the things that I get to mention here today, there's like, you know, 100 more that I don't, I'm not going to be able to fit in. But I really hope all of the descendants of these people take the time to go out and look through the branches, because there's just so many fascinating people in there, you know, and we try really hard to bring these people back to life and find something unique and interesting and let you kind of know what their life was about. So hopefully, people are looking through the branches to see what we have. Now we'll take a look at some other interesting finds and connections starting with Jesse Hilton Stewart. He was the author of more than 55 books and 500 short stories, first gaining recognition for Man with a Bull Tongue Cloud. He won an Academy of Arts and Sciences Award in 1941 for Minna Mountains. His best known work, the 1943 novel Taps for Private Tussie, won the Thomas Jefferson Award. Stewart was appointed the Commonwealth's Poet Laureate in 1954. He later acted as a literary ambassador outside of Kentucky, spending the 1960s lecturing around the globe for the US State Department. So definitely a good one that was nominated during your big selection. Now did he have chat GPT to help him or did he just had to do it by himself? I don't know. I know. Can you imagine now if he had chat GPD, he'd be like he'd be at 1500 articles instead of 500. Here we have in his branches Hazel Sprouse Adkins. Now Robert Bob Stewart's sister-in-law was Hazel Adkins. She married one of the three Dottermont brothers, Ray, who was wanted after a failed deadly train robbery attempt in Southern Oregon in October 1923. So two years later they married. Ray used an assumed name on the marriage record and fathered two children with her before somebody figured out his whole facade and he was apprehended finally four years after the robbery. Yeah, can you imagine finding something like that out a few years after you married? That's just crazy. Well, the bad thing is at that time, you know, women didn't have as many choices. So your husband was a was, you know, was a big deal if he couldn't hang around. Did they stay married? No, should they wound up splitting up. He was arrested and she went to live with her parents and raised the children there and she did eventually remarry. Oh boy. The skeletons that fall out of the closet when you research, right? That's a fun one. And Bob is three generations from Jesse being his uncle. So Hazel is only four degrees from Jesse one step further. Oh boy. Archelist Kraft was also in his branches. He was in the American Revolutionary War as a private in North Carolina. He was a centenarian and he died at the age of 104. Now, according to an article from the Pine Mountain DAR chapter, Archelist split 100 fence rails on his 100th birthday. Can you imagine? Now, Mindy, this is my grandfather. So he also started that Indian Bottom Church. He was a very religious man and was very instrumental in getting that church started. I think it was even they sometimes met in his house, but that's just family lore. So I don't know if that's true or not. Oh, wow. Somebody does something to aspire for though, right? Ladies, I mean, come on. Not that I want to go split 100 fence rails, but I want to be able to split 100 fence rails. Now, he was the fourth great grandfather of Jesse Stewart. And coincidentally, Archelist is my sixth cousin seven times removed. So you and I are connected in Mindy. I can't believe you're not connected to Archelist. I'm not familiar with his name, but you know, it could be just a branch that I haven't discovered yet. Right, because he was in Fulwood County or Lettuce County. So there's there's no way that the Hall family isn't somehow hooked in there. Yeah. Just a little more research on you'll find it. I hope so. Now, Alice Spencer, get us Lloyd, a.k.a. cake was our second starting person in 1902. Alice was the publisher and editor of the Cambridge Press in Massachusetts, which was the first publication in America that had an all female staff. Eastern Kentucky was sorely lacking in educational opportunities when Alice arrived in 1916 in Ivest. And, you know, she saw the need for a regional uplift and felt through education that Appalachian people could have a brighter future. She was the co-founder with James Buchanan of Cane Jr. College in Pippa Passes, Kentucky. The school was to become a four year college and was renamed in her honor as Alice Lloyd College. So, you know, definitely a trailblazer and out there, you know, trying to improve our state through education. And it was really hard to pick for Alice. She had, she was one of those that just had so many interesting people in her branches, you know, and sometimes we don't find as much for the ancestors and the peripheral relatives, but other times they just find all kinds of discoveries for me. And so then it's kind of hard. But one of the people that was found out in her branches was William Herbert Murphy. Now, he was the co-founder of Cadillac and Lincoln automobile companies. Murphy was the lead financial backer of Henry Ford's first gasoline powered vehicle, a delivery wagon after Ford had taken Murphy on a three hour drive in a prototype. Murphy would be the main, yeah. I know, and you know, you hear these names, though, I mean, you're like, okay, Ford did it, but you don't stop and think, well, Ford couldn't have done everything on his own, right? I mean, who were all the people around him that supported him and gave him ideas and gave him money and, you know, all these different things. There's just so many people that went into the, you know, these, these discoveries and these, these new companies and you don't really hear about the rest of them. And, you know, poor Mr. Murphy here isn't as widely known as Ford. Is that supposed to be a Cadillac or is that a Cadillac in the, in the picture? That's supposed to be one of the wagons, the original delivery wagons that had been fashioned to be, yeah, before they came up with the regular automobiles, they had these, these delivery wagons. And I guess it didn't really, they didn't really do very well. So I'm not sure, you know, what it was, if it was something with a designer and what it was, you know, that didn't do really well, but they still believe both of them in the future of the gasoline automobile. And of course we know what happened to that, looking at the roads today. They were highly successful, even if that original delivery wagon wasn't, wasn't as great. But, you know, Ford eventually gave up the right to run the company, but he allowed them to retain his name. And once he was gone, Murphy went ahead and rebranded it to the Cadillac Automobile Company, which was established in 1902 and named after the French explorer, Antoine Lemaite de La Molse, or the Cadillac, who is the man that founded Detroit in 1701. So yeah, yeah, now we know the true story of where Cadillac came from. Ford, we love you, but it wasn't all you, honey. And William here is 18 generations from Alice Lloyd, being her eight cousin. So fun. I like that you know the little wiki tree, the way you show the, their little connection there from wiki tree. That's nice. Yeah. And you know, I mean, that is kind of our focus this year, we're doing 2023 is our year of community connection. So not only are we connecting with genealogical societies such as yourself, you know, but we're really supporting people in learning how to make their own connections on their tree and increase their family. And you know, in modern day though, I mean, sometimes you see so often that people just work on those direct lines. But if you think about your own life, I mean, you know, your, your sister in law might affect how you see the world. You have cousins that you grew up with, aunts and uncles that had something to do with your life. So really all of these peripheral people make up your family unit and kind of how you view the world and what your world, your life experiences are. And so, you know, we really try and encourage people to do this. And of course, from a genealogical standpoint, you know, you hit a brick wall, sometimes that is where you find those little jackpot treasure, you know, and you find the brother Robert left a will that said, Oh, my nephew, John, son of so-and-so, you're like, Oh my gosh, why didn't I think of this five years ago? I've been looking this whole time for something. I love probate files. So, you know, we try and provide these experiences that teach people to, you know, improve their own genealogy skills so they can get through those difficult brick walls. Now, here we have an educator in a different way. We have Dr. John Leopold Will and he, along with his wife, Jerry Will were superb clinicians who spent their adult, adult lives helping heal emotionally troubled children. Their goal was to strengthen their psychological well-being. He was a published author on the subject. And in their memory, the John Leopold Will and Geraldine Rickard Will Memorial Charitable Foundation was created in 1999. Now, the tasks of emotional development, the TED test, everybody hears about today, those were created by Jerry in 1971 and they're still widely used in the schools for the assessment of children 60 years later. You know, so John and Alice were both committed, obviously, to the education and wellness of their communities and what wonderful ties to find out in those branches. And John is six degrees from Alice Spencer Gettis Lloyd. I also want to give a quick nod to Edith Marion Kingsley, another of our centenarians. Now, she was also six degrees from Alice Lloyd and lived to be 101. Very nice. But not splitting any friends. No, no. And she didn't go bake 100 cakes either. So a kudos to her for toughening it out in the region at eight. Third starting person we had, of course, was William Loftus Sutton M.D. and born following the aftermath of the American Revolution. So in a very interesting time in our United States history, William was described by his great-granddaughter as thus, Dr. Sutton was a large man of medium height. He had dark hair and blue eyes, a well-shaped nose, and on the whole, a rather commanding appearance. He was genial in disposition and enjoyed the company of his friends and neighbors when he had time for social activities. William was called an unsung hero to the Kentucky genealogical community and was the author of Kentucky's Vital Statistics Law. So we love this man because that was one of the greatest things that happened for us in Kentucky. He is our hero. Otherwise, you're relying on trying to track down a church record and that's knowing what church they were in. I mean, you know, Kentucky records didn't even say, oh, they belong to the First Baptist Church. You had no idea unless you had another one tracking them down. Here we have Charles Lensford Neville Buck, who was an author and had several of his stories adapted in place for the theater and also his silent movies. Now, he also wrote under the pseudonym of Hugh Lensford. He grew up in Kentucky except for four years spent in South America with his father, who was serving President Grover Cleveland in Paris. Wow. Yeah, that was really cool. Yeah, one of the other really fun things about, you know, wiki trees. I mean, I always tell people one of my favorite things, above and beyond the community, because that's my absolute favorite, you know, the collaboration and the community spirit, is I love this white space of the biographies. You know, you can go in and you can, if you have the time and the skill, go in and narrate what their life was about and, you know, kind of bring them back to life. But, you know, it also gives you a place to put your research notes and your sources and, you know, you don't have a separate research log. And then just as a fun thing, we have these little, what we call stickers. So like where you see, you know, that he's an Appalachian notable, that one just says he is notable. That's called a sticker. We can put those on there so people are aware as soon as they go into it. And then as you see these little snippets of the profile, like here on the left, where you see the bees, that's where we can put a wallpaper. So, you know, you can pick a feather design or books or just a pattern or whatever. If you want to, you know, I mean, you could leave it the gray that it is, or you can pick a really cool background and just put something to kind of liven up those and catch somebody's eye when they get in. It just makes it fun, I think. I'm a big fan of stickers. Oh, yeah, I am too. I like to end the categories. I tend to maybe over-categorize. There's no such thing. There's no such thing. And it's great, you know what I mean? You can go in and say, oh, I want to know, you know, how many people were in the Georgetown cemetery and go into that category. And you can go, oh, there was all these, you know, there were five different losses in there. Wow, I didn't realize there was that many, you know. And then not only that, but since we've improved to this connection theme and we've really gone with it, now you can go to that category, click on the button that says my connections, and it'll tell you how many of those people you're related to. Oh, I know that. Yeah, just looking off your tree, you'll have to try it, Trisha. It's awesome. I'm like, wow, I didn't know I had that many cousins there, okay. That's awesome. And they're all dead. I don't want to buy Christmas gifts for them. Yeah. Yep, it doesn't increase my Christmas list at all. Now, Charles is three generations from William Sutton being his first great-grandson. Next, excuse me, we have Edmund Kirby Smith. And he was the last surviving general from the Civil War, dying in 1893. He fought on the Confederate side. I know not popular, but it is part of our history. He was also a professor of mathematics after the war. And you know, after the Union won the Civil War, he retreated to Mexico and then to Cuba to escape charges of treason. And yeah, later, for whatever reason, was given amnesty by the United States, but obviously very, very unpopular after the end of the Civil War. Wow. Well, when I was studying Florida, because I live here, they, you know, once they became a state, once it became part of the CSA, you were told to go fight. It wasn't like you're like, oh, I'm just down with this whole CSA. It's like, you know, here's your gun. Get on. Get on. Get out there. Yeah. Yeah. And I mean, sometimes forcibly, you know, if you value the health of your family, you better get out there and fight on our side. And, you know, right. And we'll be covering that at the end. Like I always do a little military section as, you know, just kind of a salute to anybody that had to go out and serve. But the Civil War is such a, it was not a thing like, oh, I support this war. I'm going to go out and fight it, you know, like the American Revolution, they were like, oh, we want to fight for our rights to be a country for ourselves. I mean, here was a lot of infighting and, you know, very political war. And not only that, a lot of the soldiers really didn't have a choice. You know, it was so, so terrible, but sad. It wasn't really a good outcome for anyone. Well, obviously there was some good outcomes. But yeah, but it unfortunate that it needed to occur, you know, that the country couldn't straighten itself out without coming to that. And, you know, one of the other things I know I saw even in my own branches or people that bought it on both sides within a family and yeah, you know, I just can't even imagine. So it's not even like you're saying, oh, I'm going to go out and, you know, I'm fighting against the Germans. You're like, oh, I hope I don't run into my brother because he's fighting on the other side and, you know, we're in the same area. Well, it's especially true in Kentucky, these are border states. So it was, you know, easier to happen. So just traumatic. Now Edmund is six degrees from William Sutton. I really wanted a picture of William because he was the only one of the seven starting that we did not have an actual photograph for, but I was not able to manage that before we could have used anyone. We wouldn't have known. Because of another sitting Harvey, this is Edmund. Now here we have Harvey Samuel Firestone and Ida Bell Smith Firestone. So I know we recognize that name. And besides being famous for the Firestone tires, they had a radio and television program called The Voice of Firestone, which focused on classical music. And I never knew that. Well, I always think of classical music when I think of tires. Yeah, me too. I mean, where else would you go? Now their grandson married Shirley Tender Firestone, who was the second great-grandnie of William Sutton. There we go. Yep. Oh, Bill's family got around. Next we have Josephine Kirby Williamson Henry. She was born in 1843 in the northeast part of Kentucky. Josephine was an American Progressive Era women's rights leader. She was a suffragist, a social reformer, and a writer. She was instrumental in the passage of the 1894 Married Women's Property Act, you know, which said in an act approved 1894, married women in Kentucky obtained the right to hold real and personal property in their own name after they were married. They could acquire, purchase, and sell property as if they were unmarried and make contracts and sue or be sued. You know, and of course this we know, especially, you know, as women that this was impactful and genealogist, because women's names didn't often make it on the land records at all when they were married, let alone, you know, be able to be on a piece of property all by themselves and own it. Well, there's so many stories like I think it was Cassius Clay's, when he died, his property passed to his brother who was no good, and he squandered his brother's fortune leaving his widow and children just penniless. And, you know, he, like, what money should have gone to her? It should have been her home. I mean, she lost everything because of this scandal and the laws. Yeah, yeah, I'm so unfortunate. But, you know, I know just even looking back though sometimes and overall women just of course did not have the rights that they have today, you know, so when you're trying to trace your genealogy, you can find all kinds of things on your great-grandfather, you know, but the most you might know about his wife is that she's Hannah. Yeah, exactly. I talk to, I talk to Kathy about it all the time. I'm like, I've got a grandma's soup. That's all I know. Yeah, that's all I know. Sorry. I don't know. You know, and I'm a member of the Daughters of American Revolution, and, you know, that's one of the hard things we have. I handle lineage research is, you know, trying to convince people that they have to find something just a little bit more that proves who that wife was, you know, and it's not that I don't feel for them now because I know myself, you go back in those records and they're just not on the deeds. They're not in the early census records. You know, when they, when they made any kind of big transactions, the women were most likely not married, and even in the birth registers for their children, you know, it would say, okay, Henry so-and-so, and his wife Hannah, and that's it. You get no maiden name, no nothing. Well, I know Kathy recently helped a DAR person. She popped over to the KDLA. Yes, and there was, she was looking, trying to connect her, one of her females to the father, and the only way we ended up was we found a piece of paper that was, it was even a little torn-off piece of paper where he had said, and I give to my daughter, you know, Hannah, who married, you know, John Jones, so that that was just a, you know, a diamond in the rough to find. Yeah, the idea. KDLA hit over there all the time. It's a great place. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, I love anything to do with probate, you know, and then when I find those ones that just say, I leave everything to my wife and all of my children, then I want to cry. They don't lose the children, they just say, and all of my children to be split equally. Yeah, like it would be so hard just to name them out, dude. I know. Did it take you that long to name your five children, really? Did you forget their names, maybe? Well, some of those family have like 17, so probably they did forget some of them. Yeah, yeah, I know. Yeah, I hear that, definitely. I have a lot of large families back in my branches, some very large ones. As a matter of fact, if I'm researching on my dad's side, and sometimes on my mom's side, and I only find eight kids, my husband will go, okay, who died? Does the wife die? Do you need to find the second wife? They only have eight children, and I'm like, I know I'm still looking. I'll find the other seven or somewhere. I have a number of lines that they want to have multiple wives and children from each wife. One passed away, and of course he had to marry again to take care of those children, and then he had more children and more children, and so sometimes it's difficult to figure out which wife belongs to which child. Uh-oh, Euclid Avenue. Yeah, well we're on Euclid Williamson. Now he was the owner of a steamboat, the Paul Jones, and on the 3rd of February, 1848, the Paul Jones collided with the steamer Major Barber. There were several deaths reported. In 1851, the owners of the steamboat Major Barber brought a suit of trespass against Euclid Williamson and the owners of the Paul Jones before the Circuit Court of the United States for the District of Ohio, and you know in one article it was stated that they put the blame on the captain and the pilot of the Paul Jones, so the error was supposedly in that crew, and you read the article and it's just kind of heart wrenching, and it says, you know, if there's any way to reach the guilty ones, we hope they may be punished as they deserve, and you know accidents happen though, I mean. Well they were always so harsh at that time, I mean. I know, and so eloquent, I mean, you know, and verbal, they were very verbal about, very vocal about what they felt. They would have been good tweeters. Definitely, and Euclid was Josephine Kirby Williamson's father actually, so. No, okay. I don't usually do them that close, but that story was interesting, you know, and just interesting to read the articles and stuff that you find, and yeah, like you said, you know, they were very creatively written back in those times. Now here we have General Scott Brown Jr., who was the Adjutant General of Kentucky from 1849 to 1861. He served under Governor Brian McGuffin. Scott was born and died in Franklin County, Kentucky, and laid to rest in the Franklin Cemetery, and you know, I couldn't find a copyright free image of Scott, but he reminds me a lot of Abraham Lincoln. He has a long face and the hair and the beard, and I was like, is that Abe? Okay, that's not Abe. Maybe someone just used my trick and said, oh yeah, this is Scott. Very true, very true. And Scott Brown is only three degrees from Josephine, so another, you know, fairly close connection, which is fun to find, and only changes once by marriage. So when you see those connection paths like that, where it goes from green to yellow, that's where it swaps over. So it's a blood, blood, blood, you know, relationship, and then by marriage. Okay. Well, I think Josephine's hair there, it's really, it's really smart looking. It's awesome. Yeah. Fifth, we had Margaret Willie Mary, Arvin Cissons, her mother Betty joined the American Red Cross in 1917. Now, Mary was stationed at the Harvard unit, Base Hospital number five, a hospital staffed by physicians and nurses from Harvard University in Boston, Massachusetts. Mary was living in Orlando, and later moved to Kentucky. She was a graduate nurse and was said to have held an enviable record in Red Cross overseas service. She married a World War I veteran, William Tiller, and then after he died, of course, she married Robert Cissons, where she got the current, her final surname from, who was also a veteran. And Mary is Kentucky's most highly decorated female veteran of World War I, having served in France at a British Army hospital. So, you know, really did some incredible things. And I love to see these, these females that were out there making history. Yeah. She looks like a pleasant person. She reminds me a lot of my maternal grandmother who was also a nurse. Now, this was just kind of cool. Kenshin Davis Little, if you've never heard of him, he was actually born in 1830 in Georgia. He married Elizabeth Martin in 1864, who came from a family of noted Georgia educators. Kenshin was a county commissioner for many years and said to be held in high esteem. He owned a plantation on the Okeney River in Putnam County, Georgia. A bird shaped mound was present on his plantation created by Native Americans. And it was present on a stony ridge built from white quartz rock, you know, that really be cool to be hovering over or flying over where you could really see the true shape of it. They go into extensive details about the shape of the wing and what the distance is and what it all means. The bird's 102 feet long from head to tail. He kept this lamb protected. He's never cleared it and kept, you know, something around it circular so that no harm would come to it. And when Kenshin died, he was called one of Putnam's oldest and most highly esteemed citizens. He left behind his wife Elizabeth, four sons, two daughters, and a large number of grandchildren. But I mean, can you just imagine having this amazing good history on your property and just the fact that, you know, he was willing to preserve it and go, oh, I have this big plantation and, you know, these crops are my livelihood. But I think I'll just leave this little patch over there because it has a bird on it. Well, he probably is like everyone else. He's like, let's really curious. And Kenshin is five degrees from Margaret. Now, here's Granville Martin Sems. The second is I learned something for every one of these challenges. I learned some. He's the original founder of 1-800-FLOWERS. Now, he had the idea while in the shower, he claims. He was friends with both a florist and an executive with a telecommunications company and he thought, wow, why not just bring those two things together? So, you know, he looked into it and 1-800-FLOWERS number was already taken. So he flew to Wisconsin to purchase that number from the person that currently owned it. And, you know, the business eventually floundered and the assets were bought by the current owner who, of course, appears prominently in the commercials, Jim McCann. Now, both Sems and McCann claim to be the founder, but Sems is the one that actually started the company up and, you know, had the original idea. So, Jim, you didn't go beg for the number. I don't really think it's yours. And pay attention to those ideas that you guys have in the shower. I mean, you're best thinking there. And Granville is six degrees from Mary. Now, sixth, we had Cora Wilson Stewart. She achieved her teaching credentials at Morehead Normal School, which later became Morehead State University and the University of Kentucky. She began teaching in 1895 at the age of 20. She, of course, paved the way for adult education by opening her first mainline school in 1911 in Rone County. The idea was that the adults could attend school in the evenings where the children attended during the day. So, ideally, the school only operated on moonlit nights so that the attendees could get there and back safely, hence the name, and the program was later expanded across the state and the nation. And, you know, it was just really cool to read about how many people went in and volunteer their time in support of this program and, you know, help educate these people that were looking to improve their lives. Yeah. I mean, education makes such a difference. And Kentucky's got a, you know, a long reputation, if not of illiteracy, that it's just good to see someone like her. Uh-huh. We need those role models. That's right. Yeah, here we go. Now, you know, Cora had so many interesting people in her branches and, once again, always difficult to pick who to highlight. And, you know, though she represented what was good about Kentucky communities, I did choose a few that are a reminder of the more turbulent side of Kentucky history. And the first of those being Leslie Obadiah-Faltz, born in 1845 in Carter County, Kentucky. Now, he married Winnie Davis in Grayson, Kentucky at the age of 24. She was a mere 15. And apparently there was a feud between the Stamper and the Faltz families. So Leslie was shot while pursuing a wanted man with a group of other family members and died at the age of 32, leaving behind a wife and, you know, three young children. And of course this, yeah, this isn't a sad but true part of it, US history anywhere, you know, but I think it's more pronounced in some areas in our state when you look at how many of the communities were so small or isolated or bold, you know, and that they're so closely knit that any kind of these disputes popped up and everybody knew about it. You know, you're like, oh, man, watch out, the Stamper's are mad again. You know, it was, I mean, it was, everything was common knowledge. And, you know, the thing that I try and bring out of these is that, you know, really they're not indicative of these communities and they don't define them. So you do read about them a lot. And, you know, one of our researchers had mentioned, you know, so the Hatfield and McCoy's weren't the only one. And, you know, we know that that's true. Oh, but far not the only ones. That was how they said everything. It's just, I mean, Bloody Britt, they got its name for a reason. Yeah. You know, but more often, I mean, if you look at the overall history, more often you find that families, there are just so many families that pitched in when somebody was in need. And, you know, neighbors that were really more like family than just friends. And so while these things were publicized and we know that we have this dark side of our history that we can't really hide because it's there. It's the truth. You know, we really did have a lot of good people that have come out of the state also. And here we see the path where Leslie is six degrees from Cora. Let me go. Next we have James Claiborne Jones. Now, he was on the other side of these views. He was born on Arnold Fork, so a branch of Beaver Creek in Floyd County, Kentucky. He served in the Harlem Battalion during the United States Civil War. They called him Old Claib Jones and a famous gunfighter in the Old West, his occupation, a lawman. According to Knot County history, Claib and his men turned the jail into a fort during the feuds of Kentucky. And that's pretty bad saying, you know, that there's enough of the feuds that they had to take the strategy, right? And, you know, he and his men barricaded themselves inside a shootout with Captain Anderson Hayes and the Hayes family clan who were in a log house across the street. Another big feud, of course, was the Wright family, where William Wright had murdered Linville Higgins in Knot County. And this feud lasted for several years. And they say approximately 150 men were killed by the time that feud was ended, 150. Sheer craziness. And James is seven degrees from Cora Stewart. You know, so yeah, when you look at the movies and depictions of the Wild Wild West, part of that was also Southern, because if you look at some of the Kentucky locations, that was us. Well, you wonder how this influenced Cora, like did she start thinking about these people just, you know, if they had more education or if they had more opportunities or, like my mom always says, if they just had, you know, if they had a mortgage, they wouldn't be getting in so much trouble, they'd have to have a job. Right. I mean, she had to have been somebody that could look at the bigger picture, you know, and say maybe if we can educate the state, you know, then people can move on to do better things. Because yeah, it's when there are no opportunities and you're looking around at life and there's no way to improve things, you know, you find that those are the ones that are getting into trouble. And you know, the ones that are like, oh, wow, I can do these great things with my life just aren't. So I mean, she just did so much, so much for the state. And a smart dresser. Yes. Very much so. And then on the lighter side of things, we have Alfred Charles Danna, and this was fun. He was a Kentucky Appalachian who helped make bacon and ham more flavor. Right. Right. In the packaging business. Now he first worked in the steel mill, so that's kind of a big jump. And they even said that when they talked about them later. He was a native Kentucky and that also lived in Virginia and South Carolina for a while. He says he got into the packing business through the back door. So see an opportunity opened up and he just slipped on in there. Now he wound up actually moving to Texas, where he worked at the Gooch packaging plant. And they say his methods reduced the curing time making bacon tastier and that the country style ham and sausage he introduced were reminders of the old South. So, you know, I couldn't find a reference to cornbread anywhere during the presentation. But surely the country style ham is a Southern treat if not a staple in some homes. So yeah. Gotta have that country style ham. But who knew that, you know, the person that made bacon better came from Kentucky. That's awesome. Now you can remember that any time you're serving bacon up in the future, you guys should be thankful for Kentucky. That's right. Or your bacon wouldn't taste as good as it does right now. And Alfred is seven degrees from Cora Stewart. And then our final person was Alberta Odell Jones. Alberta was an attorney and a civil rights icon. She was one of the first African American women to pass the Kentucky bar. And the first woman appointed to a city prosecutor position in Jefferson County. She also helped educate and register black voters, integrate the University of Louisville. And she negotiated a contract for boxer Cassius Clay, of course, Muhammad Ali popped up again, which was fun because we found that connection earlier. And it was before I even realized that, you know, we were going to be talking about him in relation to Alberta. And that he was her neighbor. I mean, who knew, you know, she was like, oh, you're my neighbor. Sure, I'll do that contract for you. She was murdered, unfortunately, in 1965. And I know as of 2017, her murder still had not yet been solved. So sad ending on that one, but, you know, did a lot of powerful things during her time. I don't know if you've ever read anything about Muhammad Ali, but I've read a lot of interviews with him. And he was so charming and so funny when he, when he spoke, just, and you can see that with his, you know, fly like a butterfly, sing like a bee, but he really was something. Yeah, he was very personable, I think. And then not only was Alberta notable, but she was surrounded by many notables in her branches. So here we have Grace Morris Allen Jones. She was an African American educator, a school founder, a fundraiser, postmaster, club woman, reformer, and a writer. Not an overachiever at all. She just did everything. She was superwoman. And as well as founding her own vocational training school in Burlington, Iowa, she was instrumental in the success of the Piney Woods Country Life School, which she ran with her husband Lawrence in Mississippi. Her grandmother was abolitionist Charlotte Gordon Piles. And Grace later wrote about her in the Plympsest in an article titled, The Desire for Freedom. Among Grace's many accomplishments was establishing an integrated kindergarten in Burlington, and the Grace M. Allen industrial school for African American youth. So, you know, here we have another one that's interested in improving the community and hopefully opening up opportunities for, you know, the young to keep them out of trouble. So they aren't huge. Really, really amazing. I guess they weren't interested in improving the community because there's never anything written about them. Like they must have just went to church and took care of their farm and that was all they did. I have some of those that just live completely off the grid. And, you know, and I talk to people on withy tree and they're like, oh, I'm still waiting through the 37 letters that my grandmother wrote to my great aunt. You know, and I'm like, oh, I wish I had those. I wish my great-grandfather could have was literate. Right. Right. I want to go back and say write this stuff down and name all the kids because I know you had nine, but I can only name six of them. And spell their name correctly too. Don't use nicknames. Write a diary. I want to know what your house was like, what you grew on the farm. I want it all. I need Facebook for 1850 is what I need people. Very definitely. I know everything's out there on social media now. You know, I mean, I think back to when my own kids were little even and my grandkids, I mean, all I have to do is pick up my phone and, you know, I've got a Marco Polo video. They can FaceTime you. One of my grandchildren learned at like age three how to call grandma and, you know, everything's on Facebook and Twitter and wherever. So you have a million pictures and I mean, I think back to when it was like a huge deal to get a picture taken of your children when they were little and to be able to, you know, hand that out to people. Now you don't even do that. You're like, well, you follow me on Facebook, right? They're all there. Yeah. You had to flip over to Ola Mills and in your best outfit and hope you didn't miss it out. Right. And Grace Jones is six degrees from Alberta. Next we have Helen Jones Woods. She was the adopted daughter of Lawrence Jones and Grace Morris. She spent a brief time in the orphanage for white children in Meridian, Mississippi before being adopted by Dr. Lawrence and Grace Jones. And Helen was a jazz and swing trombone player. She was a founding member of the first integrated all women swing orchestra. Very cool. We had a lot of really strong women in this, in these branches. And, you know, she, the orchestra, the international sweethearts of rhythm did a United States service, so a USO tour for the troops and performed at very prestigious venues ranging from the Apollo Theater in Harlem to Wrigley Field in Los Angeles. She shared the stage with or back acts such as Dizzy Gillespie, Billie Holiday, Ella Fitzgerald, you know, Louis Armstrong and Count Bessie were fans. So I mean, here's all these big names that she was associated with or knew or met. And she was inducted into the Omaha Black Music Hall of Fame in 2007. So, you know, I mean, once again, like I said, there's just so many of these people out in these branches. And, you know, we get excited during the week and we're like, oh, look what I found, you know, and you see somebody else pop up with, oh, I can't believe what, you know, happened with this family. And it's just so much fun, these challenges are. And Helen was six degrees from Alberta. And then here's what I was talking about, you know, with our veterans, they all gave their all to support and protect our country. But, you know, it was hard. It's hard to look back at wars like the Civil War. And we still want to acknowledge the fact that these men did go out and perform their duty, whether it was voluntary or not, and, you know, tried to protect freedoms or, you know, support whoever it is they were supposed to be supporting and protect their families mostly probably more than anything. But we have James Little, who served in the 49th Volunteer Georgia Infantry. He was wounded in June of 1862 and unfortunately died the following month. Algaron Forrest Little served as a Sergeant in the 12th Regiment of the Georgia Volunteer Infantry. He was wounded at Allegheny Mountain in 1861 and he died 12 days later. Thomas McBride served in Company K on the Union side of the 100 Regiment Pennsylvania Infantry. So he went in a private, came out a Sergeant. And as the captain of Company B of the 39th Regiment of the Colored Infantry, William Asif Judd was a private who served in the 53rd Regiment Massachusetts Infantry. Joseph Howell served in the 26th Regiment Tennessee Infantry, went in as the 2nd Lieutenant, came out as an acting quartermaster. Francis Pennington was a private in the 10th Regiment of Kentucky Cavalry, Confederate side. And Ruth Huntington, 9th Regiment of Illinois Cavalry Union. Erastus Buck Cake, that's a name, that's a mouthful. 142nd Regiment Ohio Cavalry Union. William Smith Arrett was a private in the 65th Ohio Regiment Union side. We had James Arrett, 21st Michigan Infantry, Company D, and then Alvin Buck, 17th Virginia Infantry, Company B Confederate. And anybody that's following this is welcome to go look. When you see our post and you'll see the highlights post in our G2G, which is our genealogist to genealogist forum. And it links off to our resources page. And what that is is kind of our catch all page for everything. We really rely on it during the week. And it has our quick links off to the starting people, but it also has resources for the location that you're researching. And we put our discoveries there, and we put the military there, and you'll see the other ones that are veterans from the various wars that people come across. Locations we research, there's a little of everything on there, but it's not just the Civil War that we focused on. People were really good about notating those military profiles as they found them. And here we were talking about this earlier on Wikitree. We're all cousins by blood or marriage. And right now there's 29, and it's actually more than I looked this morning. At the time I did this, there were 29,934,319 cousins on Wikitree alive or not. And so very, very exciting. We're going to hit the 30 million mark of people that are connected before we even get to the connectathon. And then we'll just bump that number up even more because people do crazy big numbers during the connectathon. Wow. Well, it's so exciting, Rudy. I mean, I love the way Wikitree, like we, KYGS does a good job of like educating people and connecting them, but you guys really kind of put the rubber to the road. And that's, that's why this was a good partnership for us. And just a very exciting and interesting to see, you know, Kentuckians, how they've made an impact in the world. Yeah, definitely. I agree. And, you know, here our research focus began in Kentucky, but by the end of the week, we had researched in the following locations, Austria, Canada, England, France, Germany, Ireland, Scotland, Switzerland, and of course the United States. And, you know, this is one of the fun parts for me is I love seeing where we wind up tracing those family lines. And, you know, it'll start in some little community or some state in the United States. And, you know, we'll find people in Japan and Australia. And I mean, just never know where people are going to wind up at. So for anybody watching, if you have questions about the presentation or Wikitree, you can find us on Facebook, Twitter, or wikitree.com. Don't forget to like the video and subscribe to our channel. And then while the image credits play, I want to take a minute to thank for one thing, all of the incredible Wikitreers that helped with this research during the week. Once again, we had more than 128 people that took time out of their lives to volunteer and do this and take on this challenge and improve the presence of these Kentucky ancestors. They found an amazing amount of discoveries and we're just such a fun group to work with. You know, I want to congratulate and thank Kathy Nava for leading such a successful week as a captain. We broke records for all of our numbers for the challenge for 2023 so far and so for people created and, you know, points that everybody got. It was definitely a record-breaking week. And the enthusiasm of everybody was just so much fun. And, you know, also to you, Tricia, for providing us with this just richly historical set of people to start with and allowing us to honor so many, you know, Kentucky natives. My pleasure. So how did we do? Did we meet your expectations for the challenge or did you have any? Well, we know it would be fun. Like I told you earlier, a lot of people in the society who had been kind of stale Wikitreers, I got turned on the Wikitree again and they found out some of the different parts of Wikitree that maybe have developed over time and got them back interested in taking care of their own trees. Did you think that was true, Kathy? Oh, I agree. Me being a newbie, you know, I had never done Wikitree and so I'm excited to learn more and many of you've even extended things here on this presentation that I didn't know about and I'm sitting over here making notes so that I'll think, oh, I've got to try that. I've got to try that. And another thing is when I'm doing research for friends or family, I use some of the other sites. I've never used Wikitree in and the last few weeks, that's the one I've been using is Wikitree because I like that the resource and the sources are there. So, you know, I just, I think it was wonderful and I really appreciate all that you and your team did for us in helping us break a few records here. That's exciting. Yeah, it is. Well, thank you again and I hope anybody out there watching, if you haven't tried out Wikitree, come try it. And if you're interested in one of these challenge, Wikagall newbies, you're welcome to join us. Thank you. Thank you.