Thirsty Topics
A weekly podcast dedicated to trending topics on social media, pop culture and entertainment.
Thirsty Topics
Bonus for 2/21/25: Thirsty Conversations S4 Ep12 The Emotional Impact of Uncovering Ancestral Stories
This episode reveals the significance of exploring family history through the lens of genealogy with expert Nick Sheedy. He shares insight into the emotional landscape of ancestry research, the challenges of limited records, and the transformative impact of DNA testing in uncovering hidden familial ties.
• Understanding the role of a genealogist in uncovering family mysteries
• The emotional intricacies of revealing family histories
• Navigating the challenges in African-American research
• The transformative impact of DNA testing on genealogical discovery
• Shifts in interest towards exploring historical legacies within Black communities
• Crafting heirloom reports that connect past to present
• Emphasizing the importance of acknowledging both proud and painful histories
• Inspiring reflections on personal identity and family impact across generations
If you’re curious about discovering your roots, you can reach out to Nick Sheedy at nick@findingyourancestry.com for assistance with your genealogy needs.
Hello, and thank you for listening to Thirsty Topics podcast! I'm Lawrence Elrod, and every week Meryl Klemow and I dive deep into the stories that matter, the conversations that shape our world."
Please help support our show by following us and telling others about our show. New podcasts weekly.
Hello everyone, welcome to this week's episode of Thirsty Conversations. Hello, I am Lawrence Elrod.
Speaker 2:And I am Kristen Walinga.
Speaker 1:I'm really, really excited about our guest for this week. He's formerly the lead genealogist for the popular show called Finding your Roots, which is on PBS. He has his own, which is on PBS. He has his own ancestry company that he does work for private customers and you know help all kinds of people you know find out about their roots, about their genealogy and how their family is put together. Please, please welcome Nick Sheedy to our show. Nick welcome.
Speaker 3:Thank you so much, Lawrence and Kristen. It's my pleasure to be here.
Speaker 1:It is definitely our pleasure to have you. Now, nick, do me a favor, kind of explain to everyone what a genealogist does, and you know how do you help people, sure Well, a genealogist.
Speaker 3:If you're an amateur genealogist does, and you know how do you help people. Sure Well, a genealogist if you're an amateur genealogist you're probably interested in your own family. You might be the family historian, you might keep the family Bible and keep track of the family tree. You're the person at family reunions running around and asking everybody for birth dates and babies' middle names and things like that. And so you know a genealogist. As an amateur, you might be interested in your own family tree and learning more, not only about your ancestors, but connecting your cousins and recording family history and family stories for posterity for your own children, grandchildren, maybe your nieces and nephews or your cousins. But as a professional genealogist, I do much of the same sort of work. It's just I'm working for private clients and so my work is driven by the goals and objectives of my clients. And so some people say, oh, I want to know more about my ancestors and there's no real specifics, just as much as you can find and as far back as we can go. But other people have a very specific family mystery. They might have a grandfather whose name is not known, a father whose name is not known. You know, those become DNA mysteries typically, but there may be family stories that they'd like to try to either verify or dispel. You know, like my wife's great grandmother supposedly ran booze for Al Capone during Prohibition I suspect that she might have. But there's a lot more to that story and it's probably not as glamorous definitely probably not as glamorous as you might imagine when you say something like that. But in my own family I never knew it growing up until I started doing family history. But my fourth great grandfather, lot Holmes, was not only an abolitionist, he sat on the publishing committee for an anti-slavery newspaper called the Bugle the anti-slavery bugle in Columbiana County Ohio. But when I looked up he ended up moving to Marshalltown Iowa. But when I looked up he ended up moving to Marshalltown Iowa. When I looked up the little biographical sketch for him in the local county history book, it talked about the anecdotes of him and his brother, stacy Nichols, being conductors on the Underground Railroad and some stories of how they actually helped certain people escape slavery and, you know, go north. And that was something that was a story that was never preserved in my family tree. But and it's something that you so rarely document and I have people quite often say oh, we have this story and we don't ever find documents or records to verify it. So that was a surprise to me. But he was a Quaker and so it's not so surprising that he would have been an abolitionist or anti-slavery, but it's surprising to me that I actually found it.
Speaker 3:But so often our private clients will have a family story they'd like verified, a family mystery that they'd like us to focus on. And for finding your roots you know it's a little bit of everything the first thing you have to do is map out someone's entire pedigree, identify as many ancestors as you can and then start doing some deep dives or sniff around to see what stories might be out there and what documents could be located to help tell a story you know is TV worthy, and so you know, as a professional genealogist, it's really up to the client what their goals are, what their objectives are. I've also worked for probate clients, probate cases, and those are really interesting. We had an estate where the woman had a will, a trust. It was all bulletproof. We're not looking for heirs.
Speaker 3:But, still in New York. You have to notify next of kin that somebody died, just in case they wanted to contest the will or challenge something. And this woman had left practically everything she owned to the Studio Museum, which is a prominent African-American art museum in Harlem, and so her estate was to benefit the Studio Museum. And this was just a formality. But what it boiled down to is she had one sister who died young, no nieces or nephews, she never married, never had kids I should say that first. And so on her mother's side we're looking for first cousins, and there are a few, but they're already deceased. So you have to track down the children or grandchildren of first cousins. But on her father's side, her father was the youngest of 12 or 13 children, but on her father's side, her father was the youngest of 12 or 13 children and the oldest uncle was born like in the 1870s.
Speaker 3:So you're going back and these are black people in Virginia coming out of slavery. There were hundreds of people that we had to identify in order to track down, you know, would be heirs if she had died with no will, and so that's something that a lot of people might not think about when you're imagining what sort of work a genealogist might do. I had another case where a wealthy philanthropist in California donated like a thousand acres to the state of California for a little experimental state forest and it's on the ridge just north of Napa Valley.
Speaker 3:Well, my grandma, betty's great grandparents were pioneer vintners in Napa Valley. I know that area well and what they wanted to do is the state forest. We wanted to build a fire station but the deed restrictions when the gift was made said you know, you can't build anything on the property. And there were other deed restrictions and so we needed to track down who would her heirs have been. And the state and the state's attorneys were asking them to waive certain deed restrictions so they could build a fire station. And when I was in Sacramento about a year and a half ago I flew down to do a PBS station, a fundraiser, and my wife went with me and we took an extra few days and took a weekend through Napa Valley over to the coast down to San Francisco. I said you know what, let's drive up there. I want to see if this fire station ever got built. And there it is.
Speaker 3:And we actually drove through a place where there had been a forest fire, but there's homes all over. They actually drove through a place where there had been a forest fire, but there's homes all over, and so you know, being able to build this forest, for the state forestry, to be able to build a fire station it's, you know, it's protecting homes in this little area from forest fires. So, anyway, that work ends up being a little more interesting and maybe you know not what you might expect when you're talking about doing family history research.
Speaker 2:So how do you handle cases that have very limited or obscure records you had mentioned? You know 1700s coming out, you know starting to come out of slavery. That has unique challenges of its own, I'm sure. How do you handle those?
Speaker 3:Well, I think the important thing to emphasize and this is also to anybody who does their own family history research is the paper trail runs out for everyone, for every single line, for every single person and every single ancestral line. The paper trail is going to run out at some point. Now some people can trace their lines back to early colonial America or back to medieval England, back to Charlemagne and even earlier, but that's actually rare to be able to do. Most people, you know you can take your family back. If you're immigrants from Europe, say. Most people can get their families back to the boat. I won't say most a lot. You know it's not uncommon. But then there's a. You have to jump back to the old country. There's certain information you have to know exactly. Where did they come from. You need birth dates and a very specific place to look for. You know parish records.
Speaker 3:Those are very local records, and so that's often where you end up hitting a brick wall, especially for Jewish immigrants, if we don't know the exact place where they came from in Eastern Europe, usually you're at a dead end. For African-American families, the brick wall, the very typical brick wall, is between the 1870 census and emancipation. You know those that five years after the Civil War, you know there's there's very few records that help you connect those dots, and so if you find people, if you can document a family back to the 1870 census, there's a number of things that have to come together in order for you to be able to delve back into the slave era and I'd say I'm only successful maybe 20 or 25% of the time to identify the likely or positively identify the slaveholder of any Black people that you find after the Civil War. And you have to know, you have to figure out who the slaveholder was in order to delve into those slave era records to see if you can scratch out any more information. And you know if I'm only successful 20 to 25% of the time, that means 75 to 80% of the time I'm not successful and that's typical.
Speaker 3:And so for a lot of black people to get back to that era. You know people born into slavery. You find them on the 1870 census. You know 75 to 80% of the time. That's as far as it goes, and so it's challenging. So you know, I preface that's's the preface to my answer is the paper trail runs out for everybody and it depends who your people were, where they lived, what records were kept to begin with, what records survived and then how accessible are they?
Speaker 3:so if the records were never kept to begin with or they don't survive, you're out of luck. But if the records maybe they were kept to begin with or they don't survive, you're out of luck. But if the records maybe they were kept, maybe they weren't, you don't know but if they're not very accessible for instance, jewish records in Eastern Europe they aren't very accessible to us. You have to know oh, they came from Lithuania, they came from this town, or they came from Belarus or Ukraine or Poland, or they came from Belarus or Ukraine or Poland. You have to have a specific place, and then we have to hire someone in country in order to go to the archives to access the records that maybe have never been microfilmed, have never been digitized, and so there's hurdles to jump over and you need a budget for that. And so, as a professional genealogist and working for Finding your Roots, there's a budget, but it's not unlimited, right, and our time is not limited. You know, for the TV show, you have hard deadlines, and so, whether you're a professional or an amateur, you're limited by time and budget. And so, as an amateur genealogist, if you're working on your own family tree, if this is your hobby, you can put in a lot of time. If you're working on your own family tree, if this is your hobby, you can put in a lot of time, you know, evenings, weekends. If you're retired, even when I was younger, I put in, I probably put in 20 hours a week on average researching my own family tree, just because I was, you know, super interested in it. I wasn't married, I didn't have, I was footloose and fancy free, so you put in a lot of time. But I was a poor youngster, a college kid, I had no money, so I had no budget, time but no budget. And so if you have a budget but you don't have the time or the inclination of the skill set, that's when you go out and you hire a professional and see what they can do and you tell them your goals, your goals, your objectives, and you know they'll take your money, your budget, and say, okay, that buys so much time and we'll see what we can accomplish. And that's the other thing you never know what you're going to find until you dig in. And so you know, to answer your question, what you're able to find, what family trees you're able to document. There's so many variables that you can never anticipate how the family tree is going to come together until you actually start documenting generation by generation.
Speaker 3:When you do that and you test DNA and you go wait a minute, I don't match DNA with any of the cousins. I should match on that whole branch of my family tree you often get surprises. I don't have any surprises in my family tree so far where there's a totally unanticipated, what we call a misattributed paternity. We do have one on the Betty side of the family where her grandfather we suspected that his dad was not who everybody said the man whose name's on his death certificate.
Speaker 3:This is kind of a mystery guy. But then DNA confirmed that it was not that guy. It was a totally different name, confirmed that it was not that guy, it was a totally different name. This is somebody born in the 1850s in Canada and ends up in California as a teenager and so. But we've had guests for Finding your Roots who took a DNA test and they find out that their father or their grandfather is not the man that they put down on paper and so uh, that's not uncommon for anybody taking a dna test, um, and so that, uh, dna, that technology has really um changed.
Speaker 3:It's changed the landscape. Um, dna testing has changed the landscape because, one, we're we're able to connect dots that we would have never been able to connect without DNA. But, two, the DNA can tell you that there is in fact a family mystery, when you never even suspected it to begin with. So that's been very interesting over the past, you know, 10 to 15 years, with the advent of DNA and more and more people testing to see how prevalent you know, you get a surprise that was not expected.
Speaker 3:And you know, for some people it turns their world upside down. Yeah, Sure down, yeah, sure, and not only the person who tested. And they find out my dad's, not my biological father. But then if you identify the biological father maybe his family and your half siblings that you're just learning that exist, you know, maybe they had no idea either, and so it turns a whole family groups world upside down. And so you know it can be challenging.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 1:I can imagine, especially when you know there's an unknown out there. You know, you're actually kind of kicking over the rocks and turning the papers over to see what's there and I'm kind of curious and the reason I'm asking this. I remember watching an episode of Tamron Hall show where she had a genealogist on her show and she traced her family roots and this genealogist actually was able to trace it all the way back to the plantation owner and she did not want to know who that was. You know she. She's like OK, I know enough, I don't want to know that. Have you ran across, you know, without being specific, have you run across clients that you know they were like you know what Like? Have you run across clients that you know they were like you know what this is, as far as I want you to take this, or maybe you found something that you know they didn't know about their own tree and they were like you know.
Speaker 3:I really don't want to know about that. Oh, absolutely. And what's really interesting with you know that story you just told my mentor, johnny Cerny was chief genealogist for Finding your Roots up until about halfway through season seven. She passed away right before the COVID pandemic hit, but she was a dear, dear friend and for eight years she was just an amazing mentor. But she was one of the leading genealogists for conducting African-American research. Going back to the early 1980s when Roots came out. She was kind of the go-to person because she wrote a chapter in one of the reference books called the Source. She wrote the chapter on African-American genealogy research and so she was a go-to person and she became good friends with Quincy Jones and she did Quincy Jones' Family Tree. She worked on Michael Jackson very early on but she also did the genealogies for a lot of the actors on Roots who became interested themselves.
Speaker 3:So what? Johnny told me that in the 80s Black people who wanted to learn more about their roots had zero interest in learning about any white ancestors. They had very little interest in learning about the plantation where their ancestors were enslaved and forced to work. Um, that was not of interest to them at all and if you reported it. It was, you know, know, not necessarily like they turned a blind eye, but they're. You know that's not their goal, they're not interested in that. If you, you know, if you worked on somebody's family tree and phases and you said, oh, you know, we could follow up by, you know, identifying earlier generations of this white ancestor of yours, you know people weren't interested in that, this white ancestor of yours, people weren't interested in that. But now I would say most of my black clients that is one of their goals Like, okay, my grandfather was Malara and so that suggests that his father was white, his mother was black. Who was this white guy? I want to know who was this guy?
Speaker 3:and I want to know who, what, who is this guy and what can we learn about their family tree? Um, but, uh, one of the top goals for any black person that fills out one of my question questionnaires. It's often where were my ancestors held in slavery? I'd like to know whether, where was, where was the plantation? Can we identify its specific location? You know? I mean they want to take a trip and if it may, you know it's probably not still intact. It's going to be a, you know a suburb of Atlanta now, or you know something. But occasionally you can actually.
Speaker 3:You look on a map, you can delve into the deed records. You identify the slaveholder first. You know what land did they own. You can outline it on a map. You identify the slaveholder first. What land did they own? You can outline it on a map. We can nail that down sometimes. But that's an interesting shift for African-American research where that's actually becoming a lot more interesting to my Black clients, to my black clients.
Speaker 3:But also I have had white clients who say I know my ancestors held slaves. I would like to learn more about the lives of the slaves that they held. And then the questions are am I related to any of them. You know DNA is the only way to know and can we track down anybody? And I did have one client and he's deceased now and you know I work in strict confidence with my clients but I think that he would be OK with me telling this story.
Speaker 3:I had a client. He had never married, never had children. He had a little estate, not a huge estate. He owned a home and had a successful little business in town and he asked me to. He knew that his ancestors held slaves but he asked me to track down, or see if I could track down, any descendants of any slaves slaves that his ancestors held. And I did. But his intent was to make them his heirs, write it in his will and leave something to them. Not a lot this is not a super wealthy man, but it was something that he thought. I mean he wanted to do it, he didn't want to leave it to his nieces and nephews. And it turns out you're less successful. Actually starting way back when and trying to come forward.
Speaker 3:It might be counterintuitive, but if people move around you might just lose them. Especially between the 1800 and the 1900 census, or sorry, the 1880 and the 1900 census. We have a 20-year gap in censuses. We often lose people if they move, but we're not always successful tracking down to the living generation. But it turns out one of the descendants of an enslaved person that his ancestors held was actually a close friend of his. I mean, he knew the guy, he knew the guy. They were fishing buddies. He's like I, I never imagined, he never knew, and so he's like this is fortuitous.
Speaker 3:And so I have had that's probably the most interesting white client I've had who wanted to track down descendants of the enslaved people their ancestors held. But I've had some other white clients doing the same. They want to learn more about that history and some of them may have had deep pockets and they don't have a clear idea what they want to do. But they're thinking about reparations, they're thinking about healing, they're thinking about you know how do we use this information? But you can't use it unless you know it Right. So, yeah, you can say in general oh, my ancestors probably held slaves, may have held slaves, who knows? My ancestors probably held slaves, may have held slaves, who knows? And oh, yeah, those black people, well, yeah, maybe they're descendant from some of the people I held. My ancestors held slaves.
Speaker 3:But if you don't know the particulars, if you don't know the details, you know you're just guessing.
Speaker 3:So with Finding your Roots, you know, when I write up a report for clients and we're giving people details I write up a report for clients and we're giving people details that knowledge becomes power because you are getting specific and you are connecting the dots and all of a sudden you're taking like a general idea of history and you are giving people specific knowledge and this is how you are connected to history and you know that can be really powerful.
Speaker 3:I descend from a man named Nicholas Gassaway. This is through my grandma, betty, and this is a whole branch of the family. I haven't actually documented very well myself, but when Nicholas Gassaway died in the 1690s he would have been one of the larger slaveholders in Maryland and he was not one of these one percenters you know who held hundreds of slaves. I forget how many slaves he held, but it was 20 or 30. It might have been more, but my point was going to be when I've done genealogical research throughout the South and I will be just going through census pages looking for whomever I'm looking for and I'll come across people named Gassaway.
Speaker 3:Well, nicholas Gassaway is the progenitor of the white Gassaway family in America. But I will also come across Black people named Gassaway. Where did they get that name Right? These people had to have been held in slavery at some point by some cousin on that branch of the family. You know, maybe a very distant cousin, but it jumps out at me and you know it's there and I can't unsee it. You know it's like oh, gassaway, yeah, that I probably have a connection to those people somehow. But then of course you're talking about slavery. I may be related to them by blood as well and you never know the circumstances of that. Even with DNA you get back so far. You may or may not actually match DNA with true distant cousins at some point, and so the DNA may or may not show that relationship. But it's been very interesting to me.
Speaker 3:My grandma, betty's mother's maiden name is McCrimmon, so it's my middle name or maiden name. My great-grandma's maiden name was McCrimmon. It's my middle name or maiden name. My great-grandma's maiden name was McCrimmon. It's my middle name. Mccrimmons are great bagpipers from the Isle of Skye in the highlands of Scotland. They're actually well-known bagpipers the great Highland bagpipe. My McCrimmon ancestors immigrated to Canada in 1815. From Canada they went to Minnesota for a short time, then on to California after the Civil War. You know, they never lived in the Deep South. They never held slaves. Although my grandma's cousin, adele Adele, told all sorts of stories, she thought that our McCrimmons had been loyalist refugees from South Carolina who ended up in Canada. Totally not true, although there were McCrimmins in the Deep South before and after the Revolution we're related somehow.
Speaker 3:Mccrimmins all come from this little place in the highlands of Scotland Isle of Skye and the Glenelg Peninsula and I do match DNA with them. We have letters back and forth between some of these people in the Carolinas and some of the people who end up in Ontario, but our connection is way back in Scotland. Well, fast forward, dna comes out and I match DNA with some people named McCrimmon in Texas and they're black and I reached out and I heard back and then I never heard anything again. But I'm like I need to know more about this and from the little information that they had shared with through their DNA profile in their family tree, I was able to oh, they are.
Speaker 3:They were held in slavery by a particular white guy named McCrimmon who came out of the Carolinas but could never quite figure out who his father was or you know, connect all of those dots. But I'm like I match DNA with this person. There's no way in the world I have no, I had no ancestors in Texas. I had no ancestors in Georgia or South Carolina that I know of, in Georgia or South Carolina that I know of, and the only way I might connect to this person is through my McCrimmon family and our connection is going to be way back in Scotland in the 1700s. But their line immigrated to the Carolinas white people who obviously fathered children with black slaves and end up in Texas. And my line ends up going from Canada to the United States and ends up in California shortly after the civil war, in very different paths. We are related back in Scotland, you know, 250 years ago or more.
Speaker 2:So I mean, obviously, gene genealogy is like full of surprises. Has there been, you know, any surprise, or really just anything that you've uncovered that has felt, maybe especially you know, rewarding, or just particularly like moving to you a specific discovery that comes to mind?
Speaker 3:Oh, you know, certainly with working for Finding your Roots it's very moving to me. I would get to watch the full interview with the guest and the interviews might be, you know, four or five hours long, and so you know it's from that footage that they craft the final episode for each guest, and so you might only end up with 20 or 30 minutes of footage in that final episode for each guest. But that's taken from a five hour interview and that you know long interview is taken from really hundreds of hours of research to go into it, to identify ancestors and then try to craft stories, and so the majority of the work that's done never makes it on to the air. And finding your roots, but that's the way it works with most documentary type television or documentary series. But watching the guests' reactions I'm getting teared up, just like everybody else watching is getting teared up. But I'm reminded of Michael K Williams. His father died when he was fairly young. He didn't know a lot about his father's family tree but they had deep roots in the South and when we did the research and you know pulling it together, I'm like we identified the slaveholders. You know we had some records to work with and his ancestors ended up owning land very early after emancipation, like by the 1870s. They were landowners and well-established and relatively prosperous black farmers in their region.
Speaker 3:And if I read the script of after the interview, we didn't, I didn't watch that interview. We that was pre-pandemic and we weren't always zooming every interview for me to watch and review. But I read the transcript of the script, you know post-interview script and this is like what's going to end up airing. Just, fact-checking is part of our protocol. And I was thinking, oh, this is kind of flat, it's part of our protocol. And I was thinking, oh, this is kind of flat. You know the responses aren't that great. He doesn't have a lot of insight here. You know, some guests think quicker on their feet or they know more about history and historical context. And I was just thinking, michael K Williams, it's all right, we have, we present a story, story, but it's kind of flat.
Speaker 3:However, when it airs, he was so emotional and the way he said, you know, the way he crafted his responses, he's tearing up. I'm like whoa, this is so powerful. You know he is very moved by this and you didn't. You don't get that if you're just reading the words on a piece of screen, on a piece of paper. Um, you don't get that if you're just reading the words on a piece of screen, on a piece of paper. You don't get that from just reading it. But watching the guest's reaction, you know, brings a tear to my eye and really, you know that starts you thinking.
Speaker 3:Doing that sort of research, you know you want those stories that are going to elicit emotional responses, not only from the guest but from the audience, the general audience, because for finding your roots, a lot of the stories that get told end up being representative of many stories that maybe can't be told because of you know, you, a lack of records allow you to document certain things, but when you're able to do it and get back into the slave era and tell some slave story, that becomes representative for so many stories that have been lost. And we do that, you know, for any immigrants, where you have a difficult time jumping into the old country, especially Jewish research, immigrants where you have a difficult time jumping into the old country, especially Jewish research, the stories that you're able to tell become, you know, representative and kind order to understand the dynamics that might have been going on and how your family fit into you know general history.
Speaker 3:And so you know that's. I think that's a good example of something that was unexpected to me because I thought that the research was kind of ho-hum, you know, kind of typical Black Southern research in the Carolinas. Kind of cool. Yeah, we identified the slaveholder, we, you know they were landowners shortly after emancipation. They did pretty well for themselves. But then to see on the screen Michael K Williams, you know really emotional response, how meaningful it was to him, and then to understand, for him to understand why his dad had such a deep connection to this place, you know, for him to connect those dots, you know that's pretty powerful. But then you also have the angle that this is impacting, you know, millions of viewers.
Speaker 3:And you're helping other people wrap their head around a similar situation and maybe inspire them to learn more about their family history or at least think about, you know, the context of your family history, and so that's been very impactful to me and I think the work on that show, it was not lost on me that you know that we were doing work that was very meaningful to the guest but also could be very meaningful to the viewers, and so. But when you work on private client projects, you know I'm working for typically one person. Occasionally we have, you know, somebody's putting together a family reunion and some cousins chip in. It's a much smaller audience, but often I start crafting my report and I say to the client I'm like, you know, I like to make this more of an heirloom project. You know what, if your grandkids pick this up 40 years from now, what you know? Maybe they don't have kids or grandkids. They're like I don't have any children, nieces, nephews, cousins, anybody who's interested in this. Um, I try to craft my reports in such a way that it tells a family story, uh, that's going to be relevant to you know, that person's whole family, anybody that might pick up, uh, that report or that booklet. You know years from now, and so you know that's.
Speaker 3:I think as a genealogist, you're always trying to connect the dots, and some of the dots that you're connecting might be, you know, living people like, hey, we want to try to make this relevant to the living generation. Otherwise, you know who, if I, if I write a report about these people that have been long dead and you read it and then you know, 20 years from now you die and that knowledge is lost again, you know what's the point, right, and most people that it clicks like, oh yeah, I want to preserve this for future generations. And a lot of people go into it with that mindset. Some people don't, they're just curious for themselves. So I tend to approach family history with the idea that, yeah, we're connecting dots going back to earlier generations, but you also want to make it relevant to the living people. And that's where you know you kind of help inspire people to understand. You know where they came from, how they got here, and if you know that, hopefully that knowledge helps you think about well, what am I doing today to impact the future? And that's my hope when putting together any family history project is to help people put their family into historical context.
Speaker 3:And one thing that's interesting to me is, occasionally it's something really specific, but it's clear that so many things that happen throughout a family's history come back to one moment Somebody's decision to immigrate, somebody's decision. I mean, it could be something you're never going to document, but you know some, some girl ends up going into town today and goes to the county fair and she ends up meeting the guy she's going to marry. You know, and it's just totally capricious, you know how this happened. My dad hadn't broken his back. If my father hadn't broken his back and I hadn't decided to go down to Arizona to spend some time with him and help him get him back on his feet, I wouldn't have met my wife.
Speaker 3:You know little things like that that end up turning, you know, a whole family's story in a different direction. And so if you read between the lines, quite often you start realizing that you throw that puddle in the water and it makes some ripples. The little things you do today have an impact around you, not only to the people we might interact with on a daily basis, but maybe generations to come.
Speaker 2:Which is horrifying. Let me tell you of all the horrible decisions I make on a daily basis.
Speaker 3:The fate of the world depends on whether or not you drank this cup of coffee today.
Speaker 2:Right, have chicken or fish.
Speaker 1:Yeah, horrifying you know, nick, I'm really curious. I mean, obviously you find out a lot of great stuff about about your clients and you know they learn a lot about their history. How do you handle the range of emotions? Because obviously you know there's gonna be times where they're like, wow, this is great, I love, I love that you found out this. And there's going to be times where, let's say, there are some really disturbing things that you uncover, like, for example, let's say, if you have a white client and they found out not only that they have an ancestor that was a slave owner but was one of the most brutal slave owners at that particular time, and you know they're kind of not really processing it because they're kind of horrified about what they find, how do you handle your emotions when you know you come to that situation where you have to deliver this news to your clients?
Speaker 3:Yeah, it's really interesting. And I have a philosophy about this, and that is that it's really kind of silly one to be ashamed of anything your ancestors did because you had nothing to do with it. But two, also it's kind of silly to be proud of anything your ancestors did because you had nothing to do with it. I had an ancestor who was an abolitionist and a conductor on the Underground Railroad. Should I be proud of that? I mean, I can cherish that heritage, I can latch on to it, but at the same time, I had ancestors who also held slaves. I mean, they're the same degree of relationship some of them Do. We latch on to that and cherish that heritage as well? And so, or should I be ashamed of that? Should I be, you know? Is that something that should impact my self-esteem?
Speaker 3:And the answer is no on both accounts. And so my philosophy there is your heritage can ground you if you want it to. But also, you know, I know people who maybe they didn't have a very good home life or maybe they came from an abusive home, and that, you know, encourages them, it really catalyzes them to make sure that they break that cycle and, you know, they end up becoming wonderful parents and providing a wonderful, safe home for their children. And so recognizing and realizing oh, I had some ancestors, a real son of a bitch. I have an ancestor who murdered his brother. We don't know the circumstances, but he was convicted of murdering his brother, shooting him from the bushes while his brother was plowing a field, shot him off of his plow in front of his son. What would motivate a man to kill his brother like that? And that kind of also maybe answered the question why that branch of the family wasn't well remembered. You know, down to my grandfather, who remembered lots of other family stories. Why wasn't that one told? You know he probably never heard it, but you know you. You know you cannot choose who your ancestors were.
Speaker 3:And we have had, I've had clients who were conceived through rape, you know. Maybe they were adopted, fully adopted. They didn't know who either of their biological parents were, or they knew their mother. And their mother told them you know, you were conceived through rape. And I had one situation where a cousin of mine maybe she's a third cousin somebody reached out to her because they matched DNA, so this cousin of hers is not related to me. But it came back that this newfound first cousin of my cousin said I think that your uncle might be my father. And my cousin said well, you don't want to have any contact with that man. You know he's a terrible human being and you know. The person finally said well, my mother said that she was raped and so that makes sense.
Speaker 3:But you know there's a caution there and how do people wrap their head around it? Well, therapy is a good avenue. My wife's a therapist, by the way, and she actually specializes in helping people who have experienced trauma and abuse, and especially children, but some adults as well. But you know, when you learn something about a very close family member, that's unsavory, terrible news. Yeah, that can, it can really be devastating. But it goes back to are you responsible for that? You know, do you have to carry that? And you know that's more of a philosophical and psychological question. And the answer is no, you're not responsible for it, you know, and you don't need to carry that guilt. But at the same time, yeah, I've had clients who learned that they had slaveholders and they're not interested to know much more about that side of the family, and usually it's crickets, you know. And I've had some black clients and some there are guests for Finding your Roots, too, that have had a hard time wrapping their head around Discoveries. And there are guests for Finding your Roots, too, that have had a hard time wrapping their head around discoveries.
Speaker 3:I'm thinking of Jay Johnson. We discovered a pretty cool story for him. He descended from a white man who was part of a German-American ancestry in Virginia but he was married to a white woman, had children. But he also had a bunch of kids, like eight or 10 children with one of his slaves and at the end of the day he ends up not living with his wife his legal wife. He ends up he has three plantations. He ends up living on a plantation with the woman that he has black children with and after the Civil War they end up living together. I mean, he's choosing to live with her openly in a state where it's illegal. You know they obviously had a long-term relationship.
Speaker 2:Absolutely.
Speaker 3:He never freed her and you know there was. There's a will where he makes provisions that his executor, one of his white sons, is to build a house for this black woman who fathered eight or ten children with him. And she got land. You know obviously had a long-term caring relationship with this woman and his children chose to live with them after the Civil War. Jay Johnson had a really hard time wrapping his head around that you know and so you know. But the records are clear. You know this was not your typical situation that you would imagine, where a white man fathers a child with an enslaved Black woman.
Speaker 2:Mm-hmm, Now you have a very, I think, unique opportunity or view on, like humanity, with what you do. What do you think that this you know, being a genealogist may have taught you as far as you, far as resiliency and family, that maybe you would not have otherwise known if you became an architect?
Speaker 3:Well, one thing would be that we are all much more closely related and much more closely connected than we can imagine. And that kind of begs the question well, if we're so so much more closely related, you know that we might realize, you know, doesn't that mean that you know people would treat themselves better if they realize each other? We would treat each other better if we realized how closely related we are. But if you think about it, even in some nuclear families siblings don't get along. You don't get along. I mean I went a year without talking to my sister one time. I don't think she realized I had a couple of uncles that didn't talk to me for a while. We had a business together and there was a falling out. My mother had a strained relationship with her siblings after father died. Probate stuff, stupid stuff, sure. So you look at any family dynamic. Even the people you're born and raised with, that you grew up with, maybe they don't treat each other the way they're supposed to.
Speaker 3:And then you always have situations where you know the people that were supposed to love and protect you as a child didn't, and maybe they did terrible things. You know, maybe, that were supposed to love and protect you as a child didn't, and maybe they did terrible things. You know, maybe, that instead of loving and protecting the child they should have they were abusive, terribly abusive. And so what does it tell you? They're people, are human, and so, yeah, in one sense, if we realized how closely connected and related we all are on this little blue marble out in the middle of space, you would think people would treat each other better. But if even your closest family members end up not treating you the way that you deserve to be treated, that's not a realistic expectation. And so one, yeah, we're all more closely connected and related than we might imagine. But two, that doesn't translate into the world being a better, more harmonious place, because we're all human. People are people, and my dad has a great, great bit of advice. He says you can never be disappointed if you don't have expectations. And so I'm doing family history research. One time there was a big question about, you know, one of my branches, my family. It was in colonial uh, colonial new jersey and back into colonial connecticut. And I reached out to a woman who had done a bunch of research for it, for one of these lineage societies like the colonial dames, or one of these lineage societies like the Colonial Dames, or one of those, and her question to me was well, who do you hope to be descended from? Well, which of these families do you hope to be your ancestors? I'm like this was 25 years ago, before I was a professional genealogist. I'm just, you know, an amateur wanting to learn more about my family tree. I'm like well, I hope I descend from the people I actually descend from. You know who are, which there's confusion here. You can't choose who these people are. And so when people hire me to map out their family tree, or you're learning more about your own family history, if you're expecting to find a bunch of happy, rosy stories, you're probably going to be disappointed. But if you go into it without that expectation, your expectation is I'm going to find out who my ancestors were, what made them tick the good, the bad, the ugly. Then, when you put those pieces together, you let them fall where they fall and you learn more about that historical context, and I think that that actually speaks louder to the fact that we're all individuals. None of us are perfect and the background that our ancestors lived in it can't be changed. And I'll throw one anecdote out there. I was contacted one time.
Speaker 3:People will often reach out to Professor Gates and he'll loop me into a question, and it was, I believe they were in France. There was a journalist who was writing a story and they wanted to know if we could estimate how many living people in the United States today had at least one ancestor who held slaves. Well, that's a hard number to come up with, right, that's a PhD thesis. You're going to have to do statistical analysis. But just off the top of my head, I said well, there's 40 million African American people living in the United States today, roughly, and I can say every single one of them has some white ancestry. I've never seen a black person in America, unless they've had recent African immigrants, you know, post-civil War. Any black person in America that goes back to the Civil War era and the slave era. If they test DNA, they're going to have a little European admixture in that DNA. Where do you think that white DNA came from, that European admixture? A white man fathered a child with an enslaved woman at some point. Even if he wasn't the slaveholder, he probably came from a family where, somewhere along the lines, there's a slaveholder.
Speaker 3:So my immediate answer to this question is well, there's 40 million African-American people living in the United States today. You know that's 40 million out of the. How many people are in the United States today? 300, 400 million people. And so, if that's the number you know, the first number I come up with it's really, I would say, almost any white person who has colonial roots in the United States. I would say a majority of them, and I don't know how big the majority is, but I would say the majority of white people who have colonial roots in the United States have at least one slave holder in their family. That's just a guess. And so 40 million here and maybe 40 to 80 million here. We're looking at maybe 120 million, maybe more. At least half the United States Could be much higher, could be two-thirds of the people living in the United States Descend from a slaveholder in North America.
Speaker 3:Now, slavery didn't exist in a vacuum in North America. You want to go back to Roman times, to biblical times? Everyone on Earth descends from a slave holder. It's an institution that's been around for millennia, even among Native Americans. Before Columbus sailed there was slavery in America between certain Native American tribes and that's been kind of a fascinating thing.
Speaker 3:And so you're going to find unsavory facts and how you wrap your head around it. Some people do that easier, much more easily than others. And then what do you do with that information? I think is the more important question. You know you recognize the good in people. You want to embrace that, you want to emphasize that heritage. But if you have heritage that was unsavory, do you sweep it under the rug or do you acknowledge that as well? Because you can acknowledge the mistakes in the past and by doing that you're really helping prevent those mistakes from being repeated in the future. Sure, because if you sweep it under the rug or just we're not going to talk about that, we're not even going to go there. What good does that do to help future generations?
Speaker 1:That's true, that's true. Wow, I tell you, I wish we had more time. This is, this is a great conversation.
Speaker 2:So, insightful.
Speaker 1:Yes, now, before I let you go, nick, I want you to tell people about your business, how you can help them, and then, possibly, how can they reach out if they want to maybe look at hiring you to find their roots and their ancestry, for, you know, to find their roots and their ancestry.
Speaker 3:Sure. So I've done private client work full-time since 2012. And my main client was Finding your Roots, which was more than a full-time job, and so when I was working with Johnny Cerny and her business, we did take on private client work, but unfortunately the work for the show, the TV show, prevented us from getting a lot of work accomplished for the private clients. We had some other people working with us and for us who we could pass some of that work off of, but I left the show after season 11 this summer and season 11 is going to air coming up this winter, probably start airing in January 2025. But I did have. I've had some private clients reach out over the years and you know I they were on my queue and I have been taking more projects. I'm probably four to six months out starting a new project if somebody were to reach out. But you know I work for, uh, anybody who wants family history research done, uh, and and any background. That's the kind of I would say.
Speaker 3:The interesting thing about the work that I've done as a professional genealogist is I have both depth and breadth of experience you know we had for finding roots. We had to work for clients across the board for guests who come from all backgrounds and all over the world, and it really opened my eyes. But also having just a great mentor in Johnny Cerny. She's like, oh, you know, if a client reaches out, you know we need to be able to either say yes, we can do that, or no. Sometimes I'll refer somebody to an expert in another field, like, oh, you really need to hire a Jewish genealogist and you know you're going to need to focus in the Ukraine and here's the go-to guy there, or Belarus or wherever. But so my company is called Finding your Ancestry LLC and I'm based in Montana, where I live, and my email address is nick at findingyourancestrycom. I don't have a website up so far, just people who've reached out over the years and I said, yes, I'll get to your project when I can, and I have a backlog of projects I'm working on and then a few other people who've reached out, since I have a busy schedule without advertising too much. But I will be getting a website up and running and I'm glad to field questions and even if I'm not ultimately able to help somebody, I can point them in the right direction or kind of explain the pitfalls or what a research plan might look like, and occasionally someone doesn't have the budget that would allow them to hire a professional genealogist. That's, I think, an important thing to understand is professional genealogists build by the hour, just like an attorney would.
Speaker 3:I rarely would sit down and work on a 40-hour project, start to finish, and I'm done, you know, monday through Friday finished. It's more like okay, we do a little work, we order some records, we see what they say. Sometimes it takes weeks or months to get those records back and then we go from there. And so what a professional genealogist is able to accomplish depends on so many variables and it's, you know, every family's unique. Every pedigree is unique, um, so what we're able to accomplish it depends on where your ancestors lived, what records were kept, what records survive, how accessible they are, and then the dynamics of your particular family, um, and what the complexities of that are.
Speaker 3:And so, whether you're going to reach out to me or hire any professional genealogist, you know you can never guarantee results, something, even if at the end they say you know the available records don't allow us to do this. Oh, this is a DNA mystery and you know we've looked at your DNA matches and we still can't quite connect the dots. You know you might end up getting a report that's inconclusive, and unfortunately that's just the way it goes. Sometimes I have dead ends in my own family tree. I have mysteries that will probably never be solved, and so if, as an amateur genealogist, anybody out there hits a brick wall, you're in good company, because we all have them. But anyway, I do do private client research and I'm happy to field questions from people, offer my assistance. However, I can at the very least point someone in the right direction or describe the sorts of record groups that they might search for what they're after. And yeah, you can reach out to me by email, nick, at findingyourancestrycom.
Speaker 2:Perfect, thank you.
Speaker 1:Thank you, you nick this. This was a great, great session and, uh, definitely don't be a stranger we'd definitely like to have you back on oh, absolutely, uh, my pleasure.
Speaker 3:and, and you know I'm researching people who have been long dead for many years for the most part, you know. So it's nice to see the faces and hear voices and live in the land of the living once in a while, and so it's my pleasure, absolutely my pleasure.
Speaker 1:Thank you. Well, for everyone else, we're going to take a quick break and we'll be right back. Hello everyone, welcome back. This was a great, great show oh my gosh.
Speaker 2:yes, thank you so much, nick sheeny, for coming on so insightful, so just knowledgeable in genealogy. Um, if you are interested in watching other amazing interviews, log on to elrodtvnetworkcom. Or if you want to connect with us, you can also check out our instagram at elrodtvnetworkcom. Or no, not com, just ElrodTVNetwork.
Speaker 1:Thank you again for watching Always, always remember to have those thirsty conversations. I'm Lawrence Elrod.
Speaker 2:And I am Kristen Olinga.
Speaker 1:Enjoy your weekend, everyone, bye-bye, bye.
