From Paper To People

First off, welcome back - to us all! Glad to be recording again. This season will be all about confirmation bias and the many ways it can get in the way of writing accurate life stories. My focus has been on FamilySearch in the past few years, so we'll be talking about writing those Brief Life Histories there. This episode is about a specific search for answers about my great-granduncle, Harley Wa...

Today's episode is a Family Cookbook episode that I've wanted to make for quite a while. It features two of my favorite foods from the area where I went to college (and where MANY of my ancestors lived for over a century) - Deep Fried Biscuits and Homemade Apple Butter, from Indiana. See the shownotes for the recipes. The part of the apple butter recipe that fascinates me is that my mother's mothe...

Here's another biography I developed on my quest to achieve one biography per day on my platform of choice, FamilySearch. With each ancestor, I always start with the auto-generated Life Story on Ancestry, copy it and paste it in the LifeStory field on FamilySearch. Then, I augment it with facts from census, vital, and other records, along with a little logical deduction thrown in for good measure....

This February is going to be on fire with four Saturday Zoom seminars, ABSOLUTELY FREE OF CHARGE: Dr Shelley Viola Murphy's "African American Genealogy Challenges," Angela Y Walton-Raji's "Researching African/Native American Genealogy," "African American Genealogy Research in the North Carolina Portion of the Gullah Geechee Cultural Heritage Corridor" with Renate Yarborough-Sanders, and finally, a...

Have you ever set a goal or {shudder} made a New Year's Resolution, and then not kept it? Yeah, you're allowed to look at me and point on that one. I am a terrible offender. But this year, I don't have a goal, or a resolution, I just have a hashtag. A THING, if you will. And that thing is - #BioADay2022. I am working hard to write a bio, little or big, for an ancestor, every day, for the year. And...

Happy New Year, and welcome back to the post-champagne life! I have three recipes for you today, and each will appease your cheesecake cravings in different ways. The first is a traditional recipe from my mother's mother. The second is a Ricotta Cheesecake (or Ricotta Pie) from a local real estate agent, AnnaLisa Bossio. The last is one of my own creation that is small yet flexible, and can be mad...

2021 is definitely in the running for my least favorite year EVER! It has given me reason to reexamine what I'm doing, however, both with the podcast and with my own work. Join me for a list of thank-you's, and for an introduction of the quickest, easiest solution I've found so far to distractions, brick walls, and the genealogy blues - #BioADay2022. Let's join together to hold one another account...

It's that time of year again - Happy Halloween, and Happy All Saints' Day too! This episode is full of delicious stories and delicious recipes. Dai Davies of GenealCymru and Andrew Martin of Family Histories Podcast contributed their own stories to the episode, as have I. I'm also providing you family and historical recipes for chocolate orange bars, apple crisp, apple cake, burnt butter icing, an...

I have three things on my mind today, and all opportunities for sharing and growth: Share an mp3 recording of an ancestor's story that you think is interesting, unique, creepy, or fun! I will edit it into the Halloween, Skelly Rellies episode of the podcast. Soft deadline is October 15, hard deadline is October 20. Don't be a Jeffrey, part #9,237 - there's been some jackery-peggery and we need to...

At long last, a proper Zoom class! I'm holding my first class on September 5, 2021 at 3pm ET - cleaning trees in Ancestry, and the basics of FamilySearch, in order to get moving on transferring reparational trees (for those who want this service). If you attend, you'll learn a lot of basics FOR FREE. If you're LDS, we need you all the more - only LDS Church members have the capacity to transfer tr...

It's July 4th, and I'm feeling reflective about what patriotism means to me. I'm discussing my Patriot ancestors, the 29 (or so) men who participated in, or supported, the American Revolution. What I've found is that patriotism isn't as simple as it seems. Please join me. NEW: I'm on Clubhouse @ancestorsalive. You can join my Facebook group by visiting  this page for the link. Please follow my You...

Have you ever wondered what it takes to have a genealogy blog? Whether amateur or professional, blogging is a great way not only to publish family information, but to find information from others. Lisa Lisson, author of the "Are You My Cousin?" blog, stopped by for a chat last year and told me all about it. Listen in and learn why blogging is good for your work, platforms, content, publication to...

Isn't it high time for a 2021 episode of The Family Cookbook? I think so, and not just because it's grilling time in the Northern Hemisphere! I'd love to interview you about your family's foodways, but in the absence of your recipes, here are four of my maternal grandmother's: Pepper Hash, Chutney, Sweet Watermelon Pickles, and Crisp Cabbage Relish. Serve these up at your next barbecue, or when gr...

First, a big welcome and thank you to Lorraine Anderson, Jenna Robertson, Jeanne Arp, Margaret Eves, and Charles Andrews! Some things are changing at my Patreon - there are new quarterly loyalty rewards in some categories, and I am dropping the $1 and $2/mo support levels. From June 1 on, the lowest support level for the podcast will be $5. Please support me - we have monthly giveaways as well as...

Finally, part two of my January 2021 interview with Michael Twitty, in which we talk much more about food than we did in the first half. We start by discussing how genealogy is a part of becoming whole, which enables us to be of service in this world. Then, we talk about how food isn't just food. There are revelations about fufu. Michael makes all kinds of links between foods from the African cont...

I don't know how to introduce this - I GOT TO INTERVIEW MICHAEL TWITTY!!! </fangirling> We talked for so long that I was able to break the discussion into two episodes. This is part one, in which we talk DNA and how it doesn't serve Black researchers, writing as a protection of memory the ultimate smallness of the world, human interconnectedness, and many aspects of Blackness as they relate...

I cannot believe my sheer luck in getting the opportunity to interview Michael W Twitty! Well, luck and a year of trying. The man is BUSY. In 2017, Michael published a watershed book called The Cooking Gene . It's an amazing work of research - into folklore, into genealogy, into history, and deeper into his career of choice, Southern foodways and their connection to Africa. This is a sneeky peek i...

Twitter bots attacked my account and I can't get in, so I have a new one - fppppodcast. Yeah, I reported a fascist and BAM! So, THAT happened. Otherwise, I want all of 2021 to be audience participation time. Please join me with your family stories about life on the homefront during World War II. No matter where you're from, I want to hear how your family dealt with radical life changes, deprivatio...

This is not an episode so much as an announcement: it's holiday time and that means it's time for taking folklore! But, with the increased need to stay home and separate, and with more people than ever relying on devices and video chat to communicate with family, why not see this as an opportunity to use Zoom.us to not only communicate, but to record family members telling stories? Look to your el...

Yes it's Halloween, but we're not really getting scary with it - maybe a little spoopy, but more misty. And hungry. This episode has stories, a few laughs, a few recipes, and is a tribute to YOU - my audience - for sticking with me since January 2018. Next year, maybe you'll contribute a story or a recipe yourself? In the meantime, listen and enjoy as the stories I collected LAST year finally get...

Do you have family recipes that pertain to the Autumn, or to Halloween itself? I'd love to read them out in our upcoming Halloween episode, Skelly Rellies! Just send me the name of the person who made the recipe, why it's important to you or your family, and the text of the recipe itself. I'll read it into the episode, with full credit to you and yours. You can join my Discord server and Facebook...

This episode is super-sized, because the topic is that important: racism in genealogy and the new AncestryDNA policy that will eliminate all matches below 8cM for all users. I mention the multiple hacks and security breaches on genealogy and DNA websites within the past week, too. But more than anything, this episode allows my cousin, Brian Sheffey, to discuss his experience with multi-ethnic DNA...

This is the soundtrack of the YouTube video I released on June 10th, combined with some further explanations and discourse in reference to Reparational Genealogy. It contains challenges to White American genealogists to use social media platforms to start to publicize the facts about their slaveholding ancestors. For those White American genealogists whose ancestors didn't enslave, there are quest...

The world is upside down, and even those of us who work from home are a bit, shall we say, off. I know that I am having trouble with concentrating. Are you? Today is an off-the-cuff episode. I'm discussing my solutions for the problem of being distracted and worried while needing to stay involved with my volunteer and personal genealogical work. I'm engaging in hygienealogy and scaffolding. Listen...

Are your kids bored with homeschooling yet? How about some good, old-fashioned Home Ec! Were you required to take Home Economics in order to graduate? I may be dating myself, but I was. We had to learn how to cook, and one of the best lessons was making candy. My mom had it even better - she grew up in a household where making candy was a part of the family's culinary tradition. Some of these reci...