Genealogy As Entertainment

Television has a major impact on our lives. Today we see genealogy related media on a regular basis. The emphasis of many of these shows is on discovering our lost histories and they are often sponsored by companies such as Ancestry promoting their products to the masses. These programs have opened the door to a vast audience of people who may have never thought of their family histories before.

The first television show that I know of which focused on genealogical research and stories of individuals was Ancestors. Each half hour episode focused on a specific research technique as well as including stories from individuals on how their research had affected their lives. This series ran for 23 episodes on KBYU and also on local PBS stations starting in 1997. It was sponsored by Ancestry. The series can be seen in its entirety on the BYUTV.org website.

In 2003, PBS aired the first episode of History Detectives. This series has a team of experts who research the history of items, usually family heirlooms, that are believed to have historical significance. Even though this series wasn't specifically devoted to genealogy, it provided great examples of how family legends may have grown over generations and how the detectives are able to find evidence to prove or disprove the stories. Information about this show can be found on the PBS website.

In 2006, Reader's Digest Canada presented a series called Ancestors in the Attic. This show was part personal drama, part forensic investigation and part historical revelation. The hosts traveled around Canada and the world trying to discover the truths about a family's skeletons in the closet. The series lasted 15 episodes but ended when one of the hosts died while on the road filming an episode.

One of the pioneers in genealogy television was Henry Louis Gates, Jr. His first show, African American Lives, aired in 2006. This series consisted of four episodes featuring Quincy Jones, Mae Jamison, Chris Tucker, T. D. Jakes, Sara Lawrence-Lightfoot, Whoopie Goldburg, Ben Carson, and Oprah Winfrey.

In 2008, Henry Louis Gates, Jr. followed up with four more episodes titled African American Lives 2. This series highlighted the family histories of Morgan Freeman, Tina Turner, Tom Joyner, Chris Rock, Don Cheadle, Peter Gomes, Jackie Joyner-Kersee, Maya Angelou, Bliss Boyard, and Linda Johnson Rice.

Henry Louis Gates, Jr., RootsTech 2018, keynote speaker.

Both of these series emphasized the use of DNA to trace heritage. Henry Louis Gates, Jr. spoke at RootsTech 2018, and explained how he became interested in the use of DNA to aid in ethnicity research early on. He mentioned that early DNA tests were done with blood samples and that samples had to be done in the labs. Through the use of DNA, Gates and his research associates were able to determine that more than 50% of African Americans have at least 12.5% European ancestry. That is the equivalent of the DNA contribution of one great-grandparent.

In 2010, Gates hosted Faces of America, a four part series that focused on the ancestry of Elizabeth Alexander, Mario Batali, Stephen Colbert, Louise Erdich, Malcom Gladwell, Eva Longoria, Yo-Yo Ma, Mike Nichols, Queen Noor of Jordan, Mehmet Oz, Meryl Streep, and Kristi Yamaguchi. In this series, Gates focused on how the diversity of our immigrant ancestors made America what it is today.

Gates continued his documentation of the ancestry of celebrities in 2012 with Finding Your Roots. This series is now in its fourth season. Each episode covers the life of several individuals and presents them with their very own book of life which includes a family tree and copies of photographs and records discovered through their research. Recent episodes of this series can be found on the PBS website.

Beyond what Gates has done there are several other series that focus on genealogy. One of the most well known is Who Do You Think You Are? This is actually two series, one for the BBC and the other aired in the US on NBC and then on TLC. The BBC series began in 2004 and is now in its 14th season. The US series began in 2010 and is now in its 10th season. Both series follow the same format of a one hour episode focused on the family history of one celebrity. Each episode tracks the path of research, going from place to place where important parts of their history played out. Seasons 4 through 8 can be viewed on TLC's webpage.

The Generations Project from BYU TV, began in 2010. It follows the story of an individual as they discover their family history. Each episode tells the story of one individual through their meetings with researchers and travels to important places in their family history. This program lasted three seasons, all of which can be viewed on BYU TV's website.

Heir Hunters is a BBC series that is now in its 12th season. This series traces the research of heir hunters and probate detectives looking for distant relatives of people who have died without a will. Information about this show along with episode clips can be found on BBC's website.

Long Lost Family premiered in 2016 on TLC and is now in its third season. This show focuses on reuniting biological family members, with many episodes being the search for biological parents of adoptees. The series also has versions that run in Britain and Australia. Each hour-long episode focuses on the stories of two individuals, how they became separated from their families, and the search for their families. Ancestry databases and DNA play a big role in the research. Full episodes of the TLC series can be found on TLC's website.

BYU TV is in the third season of their family history reality series Relative Race. I like to think of this show as a mix of Amazing Race and Long Lost Family. Four pairs of contestants race across the US looking for relatives they have never met or ones that they were separated from many years ago. Each pair is given the same set of equipment to start the game. This includes paper maps and a flip phone. At the beginning of each leg, the teams receive a text message telling them which city/town they are headed to. Once they arrive at that location they have to take a selfie to prove they have arrived. Then they each have to perform two challenges in order to receive the clue to their relative's home. Once they arrive at their relative's home they have to take a selfie of them with their relative. The winner of each episode is the team that has completed the trip in the least time compared to their estimated time. The losing team gets a strike. After receiving three strikes, the team is removed from the game. The winning team, after 10 days of travel, receives $50,000. This series can be viewed on BYU TV's website.

Another series that began in 2016 is Genealogy Roadshow which is now in its third season. This series focuses on ordinary people and their family histories. There are three hosts who discuss the research that was done to discover the stories behind each person's discoveries. Episodes from this series can be found on the PBS website.

PBS, BYU and TLC have lead the way in airing of these genealogy related shows and Ancestry has been a major sponsor. Some of these shows, especially Long Lost Family and  Relative Race are real tear jerkers and can leave you feeling exhausted for the individuals. If you want to see these shows and can't find them on their hosted sites you can try looking them up on Youtube.

Now that I have provided you with all of these great shows I know what you will be doing this weekend. Can you say binge watch!?

Thinking Outside the Box

I have been somewhat busy with conferences and speaking engagements lately. As you all read in my previous posts, I was in Salt Lake City for a week earlier this month attending Roots Tech 2018. The week after that I did a presentation for our local German Genealogy Interest Group and a couple hour talk for the Treasure Coast Genealogical Society then went up to Jacksonville for three talks at the North Florida Genealogy Conference. The next week I did a radio spot where I talked about genealogy research and had a presentation at the Martin County Genealogical Society and did a two hour program for our Stake Family History Consultants. So now I am getting ready for the Indian River Genealogy Conference coming up on April 14th where I have three more talks and am the conference coordinator. 

One of the talks I have been giving lately is called Thinking Outside the Box. This talk discusses websites that some may not have considered. The following post is a shorter version of that talk, explaining how some of the sites I included have helped me with my research. I hope you enjoy it and find something useful to take with you.

We all tend to begin our genealogy research in similar ways by looking for names, dates and places. We gather family information, visit cemeteries where our ancestors are buried, look at the books in local libraries and search the major online databases. But limiting yourself to these sites may result in you missing out on some important clues and great stories. Thinking Outside the Box is all about finding those rare and little-known stories that may be stored in the corners and attic of the internet. The sites discussed here are the ones that you may not have considered in your genealogy research but just may turn out to be treasure troves of information.

To begin thinking outside the box, you need to consider what information may have been important in an individual’s life. Consider their career, land ownership, writings, travel, accomplishments, voting, and pictures. For example, I have a relative who was a veterinarian. I happened to find an article that he had written in a veterinary journal. My wife had a relative who ran a lumber company. We were able to find a picture of his company's steam locomotive that was used to transport the lumber. In this discussion, I will give you some hints on web sites that may help you find these little known treasures by thinking outside the box.

First of all, Google is your friend. Beyond the standard Google search engine, Google has many very specific search engines.

1.    Google Books (books.google.com) is a great source for out of print and out of copyright books, especially regional histories. One example that I have found is the 10^th reunion of the Princeton University class of 1895. This book had a short one page biography of one of my wife’s relatives. The biography included his wife and son’s name, date of marriage and birth date of son, and some details about his business ventures.

2.    Google Scholar (scholar.google.com) is a search engine for professional, educational and government journals and documents. While researching a family name, I ran across an article from the Smithsonian Institute about the restoration of a 19^th century English papier-mache chair. You may wonder how this could provide relevant genealogical information. Well, in one of the footnotes it discussed the invention of a new papier-mache technique developed by Charles Bielefeld, one of my wife’s relatives. The footnote referenced a London newspaper from August 1853 where a story of Mr. Bielefeld had run. The newspaper story described how his new technique was used to construct houses that could be shipped in pieces (early modular homes) from England to Australia. Builders were then able to use these modular pieces to construct a small town in just a matter of days.

3.    Google Patents (patents.google.com) searches the US Patent Office records. If any of your relatives submitted a patent, the record would be found there. I have discovered that several of my relatives, as well as my wife’s relatives, were inventors. One of them invented the insulation for the Arctic pipeline.

4.    Google Images (images.google.com) searches a large collection of images from all over the internet. These images can be used to help tell the story of your ancestors. You can find images of places, events and even people that might be important to your research.

5.    Google Maps (maps.google.com) is a great tool that many of us probably use frequently to find directions. But did you know that you can actually add features to the map? You can add information, like addresses and dates from a census, to a Google Sheet and then import it as a map layer. I have used this to trace migration patterns of families. You can also see landmarks such as towns, cemeteries, churches, schools, rivers, mountains, etc., that might have influenced your ancestors’ lives. These maps can be used to place your ancestors in context with their surroundings.

Now that you have explored some of the Google world, we can move on to some other outside the box sites. Since we were talking about maps, let’s look at a few real estate sites. I use Zillow and Trulia quite often to research residences. Using the address from a given record, such as the census or city directory, you can search these real estate sites to see if the residence is still there. They often give you information like the year it was built and details about the floor plans. One example of this showed that my great-grandparent’s home in 1930 was built in 1925.

Have you ever gone to an auction and found some antique that intrigued you? You might have wondered what the story behind a photograph or painting might be or who was in that image. Internet auction sites provide a great opportunity to find old treasures. One of my favorite auction sites is eBay. There you can find old family bibles, photographs, books and other memorabilia. Some of it might even belong to your families. I have been able to find tokens for a bakery that my family had run as well as Westerheide Cigar boxes and other items. You can set up e-mail notifications by saving your searches. Our most prized discovery was found in an online second-hand store in Seattle, Washington. That was a painting on my wife’s 4^th great-grandmother, Sarah Pullen Walters (1816-1896). Not only is it a great painting of her, but it also had some family history information written on the back.

Many states have Memory Projects. Florida’s is located at www.floridamemory.com. This site has a variety of records that you can search through. They have voting records, vehicle registration records, military service cards, and a huge collection of photographs and post cards. It was interesting to learn that a relative drove a Cadillac Touring Sedan in 1913, or that one served on the USS Wissoe during WW I. We have found photographs of a relative’s front porch and even a steam locomotive with their company name emblazoned on it. All of these small items provide just that much more to the story of their lives.

There are many more sites that you can discover beyond the standard sites when you start to think outside the box. But before I end, I want to recommend that everyone take a more detailed look at social media as a research tool. Facebook has thousands of genealogy related groups and pages. A document at https://socialmediagenealogy.com/genealogy-on-facebook-list lists nearly 12,000 Facebook groups related to genealogy and is about 400 pages long. This list is updated regularly so you should check it often. I have found these groups to be invaluable in discovering new research sources.

I hope some of these sites give you ideas on how to think outside the box as you research your family history.