Ologies with Alie Ward - Genealogy (FAMILY TREES) Encore with Stephen Hands

Episode Date: February 4, 2026

Histories, mysteries, memories and families: it’s time to clamber up our ancestral trees. Author and genealogist Stephen Hanks -- who teaches genealogy classes in Portland, Oregon and has contributed to PBS genealogy documentaries -- sits down to chat in this encore episode about what ignited a passion for learning about his own history. Also: how to find your family through census records, county archives, death certificates and more, plus which DNA tests he’s taken, our most recent common ancestor, and how America can try to heal from its past. Also: capes, detectives and hairy fanny packs.Stephen Hanks books: “1619 -- Twenty Africans,” and “Akee Tree”Publisher: Inkwater PressA donation went to: BlackPast.orgMore episodes to celebrate Black History Month 400+ Ologies episodes sorted by topicSmologies (short, classroom-safe) episodesSponsors of OlogiesTranscripts and bleeped episodesBecome a patron of Ologies for as little as a buck a monthOlogiesMerch.com has hats, shirts, hoodies, totes!Follow Ologies on Instagram and BlueskyFollow Alie Ward on Instagram and TikTokEditing by Mercedes Maitland of Maitland Audio Productions and Jake ChaffeeManaging Director: Susan HaleScheduling Producer: Noel DilworthTranscripts by Aveline Malek Website by Kelly R. DwyerTheme song by Nick Thorburn Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Oh, hey, 26 Allie here with a well-deserved encore of an episode that I love. Perfect timing also for Black History Month. And if you go to alleyward.com slash ologies slash Black History Month, you'll find a wonderful catalog full of great ologists and all of the causes that they chose for us to support in their name. So we'll link that in the show notes, but on to this chat that I love. Okay. Oh, hey, it's your fourth cousin, twice removed, Allie Ward, back with a familial historical episode of ologies. So you were here because people made babies with each other. And out of all of the

gametes, in all of the gonads, you became a collection of molecules. And you're suspended in a web of family. Even a cockroach technically has grandparents and cousins. Isn't that weird? Your cat might have an uncle. And if you have children, gaze at them. They may have children who have children. And then those children's might not even know your damn name. They'll just know you're dead. But before we get into it, first, a quick thank you to the select slice of listeners who are also patrons. You know who you are. You make the show possible. Thank you to everyone spreading the word with your mouth or by wearing my face on your chest via ologiesmerge.com. Also thanks to everyone who boosts this show for others to see by hitting subscribe and by rating it and telling friends, I read all your reviews

such as this fresh 2026 one from Birds for Brains who wrote not a single uninteresting episode in the bunch, not to mention life-changing. Birds for brains, thank you for letting us change your life. Okay, genealogy. The first topic ever to not be an ology. Look at it. Genealogy? What is this? The Berenstained Bears? It's an allergy? What the heck man? So genealogy comes from the root word Gina, meaning to give birth to, like Genesis. And genealogy is not the study of genetics and how DNA works. That's just called genetics. So this was news to me. Now, genealogy is the tracing of family origins. And in old English, it was called folk talloo, meaning folk tales. But the allergy and not ology is because the O in ologies is borrowed from the first word anyway. So this

week's allergist, I suppose, has been in this field for three decades, starting as a personal passion that just consumed him into making it a job. And I was introduced to him by someone who worked to publish his latest book, which is called 1619, 20 Africans. And I immediately ordered the book. I was so happy he was down to pop into a sound booth in Portland to chat with me about his passion, tracing family histories and chasing down records and also about mystery novels and capes, questions you should ask your relatives, U.S. history and how we are. treat the past, how to heal from our individual legacies, the joy of cracking a case, DNA tests, technology, brunch revelations, and how everywhere you look, there's family. So pull up a chair

and absorb the stories of two-time author, total peach, distant relative to Tom Hanks, and perhaps your relative as well, genealogist Stephen Hanks. I'm sure you get that with a lot of Stevens. I do, I do. My name is well with a pH. I'm just. My name is well with a pH. you probably notice. Yes. But it was funny. When I introduced myself, they say Steve. Okay, Steve, nice to meet you.

Yeah. I see Steve or is it Steve? And now you are a genealogist. Yes. And you've been a genealogist for quite a while now. Yeah, I started like in 89. Yeah, when I was like, God, how old was I? I was, oh, about 30 years old.

And that's, I got the bug. I was over at my dad's house that day and summer. July, and he was watching the baseball game, and he handed me this letter that he got from a cousin in Kansas, and he says, read this. And, of course, I didn't know anything about my family's history. You know, I'm just a kid growing up, Fourth and Ornian. And so he shows me this letter. I started reading it, and it's an obituary out of a newspaper, and all these relatives' names are listed in this obituary. And it's on my dad's side of the family. And I just said, wow, I don't know who these people are. And that's what got it started right there. I said, I got to find out who these people are. I got to find out about the history of my family. And so that's how I got started. 89, yeah.

And what was the first thing you did? Back in 89, we had libraries and microfeesh and the Dewey Deceal System. Yes, no microfilm readers. Yeah, the microfish. Totally, totally. No internet, no clicking of the mouse. You know, it was old school all the way. An old-school ways involved making the two to three-hour drive from Portland to Seattle's National Archives, and that houses 58,000 cubic feet of records.

That's a lot of records. All about the Pacific Northwest for Oregon, Idaho, Washington, and now Alaska. But just in the past few weeks, this is breaking news. Historians are rightly p-oed that the government wants to sell this building because the techie Seattle location has become so valuable. And a building sale would mean moving all of those records of the Pacific Northwest to Missouri or California, making the journey for people much longer, and let's face it, mostly impossible. And no, you can't just jump on the information superhighway. A lot of those ledgers and records haven't even been digitized.

So genealogy research, like family trees, still has its roots in the past. Well, when I started getting interested in this field and wanting to learn more, I had to learn the rules of the game and how the professional genealogist did it. And so I learned about census records, tax records, land deeds and all that sort of thing, courthouse records, and just on and on and on, museums. So I said, well, let me start with the census records. That sounds pretty easy enough. Every 10 years they have a census.

And of course, they put a privacy restriction on the first 70 years. They don't release it to the public. So the most recent sensors that was available to me at that time was, I believe, the 1920 census? Yeah, 1920. But they had no National Archives branch in Portland. I could either fly to Washington, D.C. Well, that probably wasn't going to work. Or they said you could go to Seattle, Washington.

They have a branch there. So I would just take off whenever I could and just drive up three hours up to Seattle and just spend time looking at the old microfilm. and putting the old microfilm on, you know, cranking the machine. And boom, there they were. I found my grandparents in Manhattan, Kansas. I started getting excited in 1920. And the genealogist rule, this is the genealogist rule, Alley, is work your way back from what you know to what you don't know.

That's the rule. Never do it the other way around. Never go to what you don't know and try to work your way up to the present because you don't know who those people are in the past, right? past, right? So you don't know what journey or what path you're going to be on. So start with what you know and work your way back. So I found my grandparents' names. I said, okay, I'm on the right track and just started working my way back. But it started getting tricky as you get, you know, further back in time. And that's what even got me more excited because, you know, I'm like a detective, you know, like the Perry Mason, you know, just start looking under the rocks. And so went to 1910,

the 1900 census, and this was really getting exciting. I finally was able to locate my great-grandparents and knew their names, and it just blew me away, you know. Found him in Kansas and found out that they had moved to Kansas from Mississippi. And the thing about that experience was they came from Mississippi under a different set of living, as you know, as you know where I'm coming from, you know, kind of the slavery. So that was a big shockeroo. But Stephen's first book was 2013's A Key Tree, a descendant's quest for his slave ancestors on the Eskridge plantations. And he has such an amazing way of writing about the process of genealogy through his own

narrative and how one discovery can kind of ignite another. The further you go back in time, I was able to find them on the 1880s census. And the 1890s census, I guess, was burned in a fire in 1921. So that's, yeah, that's something that all genealogists, if you're studying Greek, Italian, whatever your, you know, ancestry is, that's something that you have to live with the 1890 census is gone forever. Wow. So, yeah. Stephen told me that through the 1870 census, he discovered that his grandparents lived in a little town called Duck Hill, Mississippi, hailing from what is now Montgomery County, the same place that Oprah Winfrey's family is from. Small world,

but big deal, given that Oprah Winfrey is like the closest thing this country has had to a queen. There they were. 1870, June something, I couldn't believe it. Couldn't believe it. There they were. Never met these family members, but these were my ancestors. And so when I got to that point, I was just in heaven, you know. But the problem is, you know, you go and beyond. 1870 is the trick for, you know, as far as African-American genealogy. But I enjoyed, you know, doing it for, I've had many different clients, many different people, just even friends that I've done it for, for all type of different Italian, Greece, so forth. So it's exciting.

And you've established yourself as a genealogist. You've written multiple books. You've consulted on multiple documentaries. And, you know, going back a little bit to your own history, were you always someone who liked mystery novels, like detective novels? Like, what? Yeah. Was that going to be in your jeans? Oh, my God.

Sherlock Holmes, I can remember as a kid, just staying up late at night and just watching the Sherlock Holmes with, who was the guy that was playing that. But, you know, it was, it always had to be this one actor that played Sherlock Holmes. He was the one that I fell in love with. I can't remember his name. off the bat, but... Oh, look it out. My guess is that this is Ronald Howard, who in nearly 40 episodes of Detective Capers, portrayed the caped icon. What are you doing anyway?

Research. Research. P.S. Side note, I just learned that that cape is called an Inverness Cape, and it's named after a rainy region in the Scottish Highlands, where Scottish, Scottish, wear this sleeveless cloak thing because it allows for easier access to their sporean, which is their long. hairy fanny pack coin purse that hangs over their junk area. Anyway, yes, Sherlock Holmes loved a good problem to solve and on the topic of clever Scots. But I love, love TM Sherlock was my guy. And then, of course, you know, James Bond. I mean, who's not going to like James Bond, you know,

the Sean Connery? I know, I love you, James. But yeah, I totally was into the, into the mysteries and the detectives early on, definitely for sure. And after you were handed this obituary and you started driving up to Seattle to look in the archives, you mentioned during your 30s, have you been able to balance genealogy with other careers? Or did at some point, did you have to decide what you were going to dedicate your career to? Well, you know, that's a good question. And I did have to kind of juggle back and forth because I had, you know, the passion and the drive to want to be any genealogists. I tried to start up my own business. Actually, I did start my own business.

It was called Genealogical Networking Services. And I went back to school and learned how to do computers because I didn't know that. And so I started up my own little entrepreneurship. And I was getting requests all across the country. It was amazing. It was amazing. I still have those inquiry letters to this day. And it were all over the country.

People asked me to do this, that. Can you look this up? Native American. and just anything you could think of. And I had fun doing it. The only problem was people had a tendency to not want to pay you, but they want you to do the research first, and then, okay, now send me a payment.

So it got to be kind of hard to make a living out of it, but I always had the passion for it. So I had to do other type of work just to pay the bills type of thing. But finally, I was able to just recently actually, five years ago, I finally got a really nice job that goes right along with my genealogy. I'm working for the school district here. And, yeah, I'm a records clerk, and it's amazing how many people come in, walk in or email or phone. They want to do research about this down the other, and that's just right up my alley doing research.

And it ties right into the genealogy. So for the first time, after so many years, I finally got, you know, they both together genealogy and just doing historical research and local research. So it's cool. Oh, that's amazing. And, you know, I know that you chronicled these discoveries that you made with your family in your first book, the Akitri. And yeah, I would love to hear more. I know it's the Aki tree or Aki tree.

You can pronounce it either way. I know, I know. I say Aki tree that I've heard people say, no, Aki, you know. I know. I wasn't quite sure. So I just messed it up either way. But I guess it's my auntie who, she just recently passed away in St. Louis, Missouri, but she was my mother's sister.

And she would take trips to Jamaica, you know, as often as she could. And so she pronounced anarchy, and she sent me a picture of it, and I put it in the book. So the acci tree, or akitri, depending on how you say it, is native to West Africa. And it bears this red fruit that in due time yawns open to reveal dark, black, glossy, seeds and this yellow spongy flesh. And it's popular in Caribbean dishes. But if you try to eat that sucker before it's ripe, your impatience might get rewarded with the very self-explanatory Jamaican vomiting sickness. Anyways, let it ripen and then cook it with cod and it's just supposed to be heaven on earth. Now, Stephen's book, the ackey tree, has sepia-toned photographs of his ancestors

and the silhouette of this tree behind them. And he told me that his first book was narrows. He of fiction based on his family experiences and inspired by books like Alex Haley's roots. But later he revised it to be purely nonfiction. It took about 10 years to do the research on that. And my whole goal when I first started out was just to learn about my family on both of my sides, my father and mother's side. I wasn't trying to like go all the way to Africa or anything like that. Just learning about the family.

But every time I would go further back in history, I kept getting excited. I'm like, how far back can I go? Yeah, yeah. This is getting to be interesting now. I mean, because as we all know, you know, Abraham Lincoln, he ended slavery. We know that in 1865 or 1863, some say, because the emancipation proclamation. And like I mentioned here earlier, I found my parents or my great-grandparents on the 1870 census. That was the first time, Ali, that African-Americans were listed on a federal census for the first time as far as everyone.

Yeah. Because it was five years after the end of the Civil War. And so now everyone was just, you know, a regular citizen now, you know, the way it was supposed to be. So, but if you want to go further back, 1860, well, then you're going back into the old system of things, you know, when the South was at its peak and the cotton was king and all that. So 1860, that's when you really get into the struggle of trying to identify who your parents are and your ancestors, I should say. Now, for some people, they have what they call free people of color.

I learned about that as I became a genealogist. There were some people who had the designation of they were a free person of color, meaning they were emancipated or they were set free long time ago, maybe 1800s. And their family just were free all the way up and right through the Civil War, everything. They were just cruising. They were free. And so they never had that problem of being found on a census record because their family had always been free.

Free people of color, by the by, are referred to as free people of color. And just the distinction is a very painful reminder that they were the, exception and not the rule. Stephen explored the beginnings of the laws that would shape and scar the nation for the last 400 years in his book 1619, 20 Africans, their story and discovery of their black, red, and white descendants. But in Hampton, Virginia, there was a little ship that came in August of 1619 and it had 20 Africans on it. And they were taken off of a, of a slave ship that was heading to Mexico, Veracruz, Mexico. And some pirates attacked the ship and took about 50 Africans off of the slave ship.

And it was true story. And 20 of them came to the coast of Virginia, Hampton, Virginia. And they let them go. They traded them for food. And long story short, I did this book based on this. And DNA is so interesting now, too. Everyone is taking a DNA test, trying to find out about their ancestry. You know, we have TV shows about it.

Please see Finding Your Roots, Genealogy Roadshow, Faces of America, and who do you think you are? The latter of which, fun fact, is produced by Lisa Kudrow, aka Phoebe from Friends. And she even did an episode on Courtney Cox and... Okay, and she was hoping that, you know, her family were good people and no one, like, murdered anyone. And it turns out her ancestors murdered the king of England. I looked into this further and a red hot poker may have been involved, but we don't need to go into it. Anyway, part of discovering one's genealogy is facing that, guess what? Just because they're your ancestors doesn't mean that they're the protagonist of the story. So it's easy as a white person to think that, say, Black History Month doesn't involve you. But if you live in America, it does. It involves all of us. And with knowledge comes context. And with context comes understanding. And DNA tests. And DNA tests. are expanding that knowledge more and more. It's just phenomenal.

And so I took my DNA test and come to find out that I have some connections to these first Africans. So that's what this latest book is about. And so the further you go back in time, it just gets harder and harder to locate your family if you were, if your, you know, if your ancestry or your inheritance was, slavery, but it can be done. It can be done. And I'd love to hear more about your personal family discovery and what that was like for you when you were tracing your genealogy, tracing your family history, and you made that discovery that you had, obviously, relatives who were slaves in the South. What was that like for you to connect? It was amazing. I interviewed so many different relatives, so many different cousins.

Most of my father's side had passed away, but my mom's was still around. But it was just amazing, just interviewing people. But then, as we mentioned earlier, we didn't have the Internet back in those days, so you can't just get on Google and, you know, type in a web search and click on a document and, you know, print out your family tree. It doesn't work that way. So I had to travel around. I didn't go fly, but I would get on the ground bus, and I would just travel to,

Mississippi, to Kansas. I went to Virginia, South Carolina, just interviewing people going to courthouses. And I'll never forget this day, Allie. September 22nd, 1994, I'll never forget that day. That was the day that I took a trip down to Duck Hill, Mississippi, to meet the great-granddaughter of the man who my ancestors to work. for. It was deep. Yeah, we corresponded over the phone and she said she'd be happy to meet me, her and her husband, and I told her about my book and that I'm trying to write this information. I'm trying to research my family, and I just would like to know where my ancestors lived and where they worked at and the land and just everything about it. I just wanted to breathe it, touch it, smell it, whatever.

I wanted to get down there and see that. She says, come on down. You just let us know when you come in and we'll meet you. So I planned my trip, went down there in September, 1994, and we met at the local bank there. It's a little small town. And we just embraced. And we just embraced and we just made a really deep connection. We're still friends to this day.

Well, actually, her son and his wife, or, are friends with me because she's now passed on. She was about 75 years old in 1994, but she just opened her arms. And we just, I had to rent a car, and I drove up from Jackson, Mississippi, rented a car, drove up the Interstate 55 and got into town there. And she hopped into my car. She didn't know me from Adam. The first time we met, you know, she hopped into the passenger side.

And she told her daughter drove her up there. And she tells her daughter, okay, I'll see you later on today. Bye-bye. And she's that confident to get into the car with me, a total structure. But that's the connection we had that day. It was amazing. It was amazing. I never forget it.

And she took me to the old family site, the old plantation home that her great-grandfather lived in. And she took me to the family cemetery. And some of my ancestors were buried into her family cemetery. It was just amazing. And yeah. Just side note, I was casually, fully crying in my recording closet at this point. I just was taking notes the whole time. And that was the turning point.

And that just broke through to finding another generation of my family. And long story short, Allie, by the time I was said and done, I was able to work my way all the way from starting in 1920. I went all the way back to like the 1700s. Oh, my God. 13th. Yeah. Couldn't believe it. I had no idea that I could go.

that far back. But I had paper documents from the courthouses and estate records that just, I just followed the paper trail, you know, just like, you know, Perry Mason and Sherlock Colson. Followed the paper trail. I heard you had a reputation for resourcefulness. So Stephen followed those clues, and it led him to Virginia in the 1730s and an archived estate inventory. You know, when somebody dies, they have to do an estate inventory.

of all your property. And they did that back then, too. Nothing, you know, pretty much the same. And so this person's plantation home that these, this paper trail pointed me to, his name was Colonel George Eskridge. And he had Africans that were working on his, he had a tobacco plantation. Tobacco was the main crop, I guess, at that time. And he had on his estate inventory when he died, he died in 1735, they had to do an estate inventory of all his belongings.

And of course, unfortunately, they listed, you know, human beings, this property at that time. We get that. You know, that's how they did. But they were African names when I looked on the inventory. They were African names. I couldn't believe it. And so through a little bit of more research, I was able to identify one of them. and it was just amazing.

Just amazing. You've had a long history of going into, you know, musty bookshelves and microfiche and all the way up to Internet, into DNA tests. And, you know, genealogy, the field expands, it seems like, you know, every year with technology. And on one hand, you know, we learn that we're literally like all related. but on the other, it uncovers some really painful truths about our histories and about slavery and about colonialism. How do you feel as a genealogist that can affect us emotionally? Do you think that can bring up pain or do you think it can help heal something or is it empowering?

I think that initially it does cause a little bit of pain and uncomfortable. because for some reason in our country of America, United States of America, I don't think we've fully ever grappled with what happened after 1865. I don't think we ever really had any discussions about race and, you know, that topic. I just don't think we ever really dealt with it because there were so many things that came on right after. you know, okay, slavery ended. Everybody's celebrating. Da, da, da, da. And then, boom, we had a whole set of other problems that came right after that, you know,

with Jim Crow and segregation and the, you know, the KKK and on and on and on. And so we never really dealt with it. And so I kind of look at it like this here. It's just like a person that's maybe has an addiction, you know, maybe have an addiction with alcohol or drug addiction or whatever it is. the first step is acknowledging that you have a problem. And then you discuss it with someone and you try to get help. And the more you discuss it and you acknowledge it, it starts to heal you and you start to feel better.

Stephen notes that South Africa's post-apartheid public hearings held by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, which it was then called, allowed victims of abuses and violence to speak out and explain the physical and emotional impacts of apartheid. And it also gave those who perpetrated violence a chance to ask for amnesty and forgiveness. Stephen thinks that having a similar healing process in America could lead to better understanding, compassion, and healing. If you study your roots and you find that you have people that are in your family that are of a different ethnicity or a different culture, embrace it and get to know who they are or reach out to them and introduce yourself because they're your family, you know. They're your family. And the DNA test that's so popular now, that people are finding that out more and more that we're all so more closely connected than we ever have been.

Because we're all related, really, when you look at it, you know? And so it is painful at first, but just acknowledging that we had a problem, but that we want to move forward and just be in peace. And that's one thing about doing genealogy for me is that I have to. Look at it. It is a little emotional sometimes, but I have to put that aside and put that on one little compartment and look at it from the perspective of this is history. And I want to learn about history. I want to learn about people. And because we're all the same. And so if we do that, you know, we're going to do fine. We're going to be fine. The time for the healing of the wounds has come. How has the advent of, you know, consumer DNA tests changed what you do and how you research. It's a very interesting. This is a very interesting question. When I first took the test and got results back and all these, I had like about, I think it was like 2000, at least about 2,000 connections of people that were related to me. And they did it from, obviously, from the highest ratio down to the lowest ratio. And so I could look at my top 20, you know, and I said, wow, these are really close to me. So Stephen has taken two DNA tests, and his father, before he passed away, also took one.

And their raw data led them to the Eskridge family name he was already familiar with, which validated the technology for him. He was like, oh, this works. But sometimes results might surprise you. Turns out that iconic Lizzo's iconic truth hurts, genealogical Ripper. I just took a DNA test, turns out I'm 100% that bitch. Isn't 100% her brainchild? So a London musician with the handle, Mina Linus, tweeted that exact line in February 2017, and then it became a meme. And Lizzo liked the meme. She tossed it in a song. And the original tweeter was like, hello, excuse me, Lizzo, that is my DNA joke. And some legal things ensued, but fences have been mended. And fast forward to October when Mina tweeted out, quote, I just took a DNA test. Turns out, I'm accredited writer for the number one song on Billboard. All as well that ends well. And I'm getting ready to take another DNA test here shortly because there are so many companies out there and people are choosing what companies they want to do it with.

So either my cousins haven't taken the test on the companies that I took it with or they haven't taken one at all. Or it could mean that my family that I thought was my family. Maybe they weren't my family, you know. You never know. take a DNA test through 23 and me, say, but then you have relatives who have taken it through like ancestry. Does that mean that you just might be like not connecting because you're using different companies? Exactly. Exactly. And that's the point is that I want to take another test through another company. Actually, I do want to take it through ancestry because I think that a lot of more of my

family. In fact, I know I've heard that more of my cousins are taking on the ancestry one. So I want to get on board and just see how I line up with that. So at 23 and me, I've gotten a lot of good hits and connections with that. That did validate that, that this DNA stuff is for real because I did know their names and they did show up and they were on my mother's side, but not on my father's side showed up. How does that work? And I might have to look this up, but how does that work with like the mitochondrial Eve and things coming down from the X chromosomes?

like, do we tend to find out more about our maternal sides when we take DNA tests than we do paternal? Mitochondrial Eve, side note, has become the pop cultural name of the most recent known maternal ancestor that we all share because mitochondrial DNA is only passed on through maternal lineage. Scientists do not love this biblical name as it's misleading from a narrative standpoint, let's say. But this mitochondrial Eve is what's called an MRCA, most recent. common ancestor. And she can vary depending on genetic discoveries. So if a more recent common ancestor lineage is discovered, for example, it's a different mitochondrial leaf. But yes, all related, all of us. Wow. For a female that wants to do genealogy and using the DNA tool,

in order for them to learn more about their father's side, they need to try to see if they have a brother that can take the test or their father or an uncle, you know, anyone on the paternal side. This side note is called a Y chromosome test. And it's helpful to figure out, say, if two families with the same surname are indeed genetic relatives. So ladies, surprise your dad or brother with a DNA test. It's a gift that just keeps giving you information. And then, of course, there's the mitochondrial DNA test you can do. Everyone has their mom's mitochondrial DNA, and this is helpful because historically women's history can be erased, or at least very allegedly smudged by the taking of surnames. More on that later. Oh, and you can get single nucleotide polymorphism testing, which scans your DNA for

variations in the CG and AT pairings. And they'll tell you what traits or diseases, or in some cases, parents you might share with folks in their database. And that's another thing, too, about these genealogy, these DNA companies, is they're always updating their results. The results get updated because more and more people are joining them. And so they're getting more hits. The DNA results keep updating. And you get more or more people that join and you get new names that just keep popping up.

And so, hey. That's got to be the best email to get because I get those from 23 and me that'll be like, You have new relatives because my family's Catholic on both sides, which means there's a million of us. Oh. You took your test through 23? Yeah, I did. And I, yeah, I have so many relatives. And my dad's one of 11. My mom's one of six. So we got a lot of us out there. But that's got to be the most exciting email to pop up in your inbox is that you have new relatives. Totally. Totally. Totally. You've got to be like jackpot. Man, totally. Yes. And I actually, I. I told our listeners that I was going to be talking to you today and they sent in questions.

Can I ask you some questions from that? Absolutely. Absolutely. Okay, great. Like literally hundreds of questions for you. Oh, my God. I know. Everyone's so excited.

Okay, but before we dive into your genealogical queries, as you know, each episode we donate to a relevant charity and one that Stephen advocates for is blackpast.org. And Blackpast is dedicated to providing a global audience with reliable and accurate information on the history of African America. and people of African ancestry around the world. And they aim to promote greater understanding through this knowledge and to generate constructive change in our society. They have over 6,000 pages of genealogical resources and history available and, again, are at blackpast.org. So that donation was made possible by some sponsors of the show,

which you may hear about now. Okay, let's hop into your questions. And so let's see, first Patreon question, this was asked by Rachel Kasha, Jennifer Tran, and first-time question asker, Danielle Levoy. I asked, what's the deal with second cousins versus first cousins once removed? Rachel Cash just says the whole once removed hurts my brain and I don't understand. What does that mean?

Yeah. Well, that's a good question. Well, I'll take the first part because that's easier. Okay. The second cousins would be like your, you have your first cousin. Like say you have your mother as a sister. which would be your aunt, and your aunt has children. And those children would be your first cousins.

Cousins. Cousins twice removed and all that. I'm still trying to wrap my head around there. That makes you feel better. If a genealogist who's like published several books and is like a consultant for PBS shows, does it quite get it? That makes me feel so much better. Yeah, I tell you.

Okay, side note, I looked up a flow chart for this. and my soul hurt, but I think I got it. So your first cousin's child is your first cousin once removed. So your first cousin's kids, kids are first cousins twice removed. So removed is in regard to generations. So same grandparents, different generation. Now your second cousin, according to genealogy.com, is someone who has the same great grandparents as you, but not the same grandparents.

So third cousins have the same great, great, great grandparents. Fourth cousins have the same great, great, great grandparents and so on. So that cousin removed business is about generations, unlike on my Italian side, feuds, blistering, family-shattering feuds. In my family, my dad's, you know, one of 11, and then each of those siblings have a lot of kids. And we just resort to levels. Like my grandparents are level one, my dad's a level two. That makes me a level three.

if I'd have kids. And so in our family reunions, which are like ginormous, literally different colored t-shirts. So you know who's a level two. And you're like, whose kid is that? And you're like, I don't know. They're in a yellow shirt. They're level four. So it helps us.

A lot of people wanted to know about the reliability of sites like ancestry. Maggie Frazier, who's a first-time question asker, wants to know about reliability. Michelle Minor, Lisa, M., Kendall Burnell, Jesse. Cole, Bennett Garber, who's also a first-time question asker, Deanna Juan and H. They all kind of want to know, can we rely on these? Yes. Yeah, cool. Good question.

Very good question, yeah. I have heard of different comments about different companies, and you definitely want to do your research and, you know, know which company, whatever company you choose to go with, know a little bit about their ratings. how they're doing, how the people feel about them. And I've heard some things about ancestry, pros and cons. So I have heard that, I don't know if this is true or not, but I'm going to find out because I'm getting ready to take my test with ancestry,

so I will know. But I have heard that they ask you different questions about putting in a profile. And so you start putting in names like, well, this is my grandfather, this is my grandmother, my great-grandfather, boom, boom. He was born in Maryland. or, you know, Jackson, Mississippi, whatever. And if someone else on the other part of the country, they go in there and they, if one of their names matches with yours, just on the family tree, not the DNA part,

but just the profiles, they seem to, they'll send a message back and forth to each other that you might want to look at this person. This person might be interested, or might be related to you, just by the names that you put on your profile. And so that's kind of something that makes you wonder, be careful because you may not have been able to fully established those names that you're putting on your profile if they really are truly related to you. I mean, unless you have concrete proof, no problem. But if you're a genealogist and you're doing the family tree and you've been following the paper trail, you know, the old school methodology, that's just what it says on paper that these are your family. but how do you really know?

You know, what if somebody had a child out of wedlock? You know, so, you know, be aware because that could throw you into the wrong direction. If just because you match another person's profile just based on the names, that may not, it may or may not, you know, hold water. But if you take the DNA test and you're connected, well, then you have something to work with. But so I kind of was like, well, if I take this ancestry test, I'm not going to put any names right. yet on my profile. I'm going to just wait and see who pops up first. And then I'll go from there because I don't want too many people. You know, it might give me the wrong leads. You know what I'm saying? So yeah, do your research and just kind of know what company that

you choose to go with. You know, along that line, a lot of listeners like Aaron, Jess Lin, Maria Kumro and Conchetta Gibson, Jess Lin is a first-time question, asker, all asked about surnames. Jocelyn asked that there's a mention so there's a law in Quebec, Canada that forbids a woman from taking her husband's surname after marriage and asks, are there any cultures or countries in which women traditionally don't take their husband's name and does that ever cause issues when tracing back families? Wow.

Yeah, totally. I have heard that, too, that there are some cultures where they, it's a maternal line. And the female just goes by her maiden name. It's a surname, yeah. I would say, too, that that happens to be a problem a lot in genealogy, not a problem that cannot be overcome. And I have come across that, even myself and my own research, say I find a person on the census. Let's say her name is Mary Johnson, just for example. But then if you go and you read further in the other columns of Mary Johnson's family line, it says that she's single.

But then she has two or three children in her household listed as son, daughter, whatever, but they are her children. So then you have to ask yourself the question, she's single, but she has children. Okay. And then the children have different names. And so sometimes I've had that problem where I'm trying to figure out, well, Mary Johnson, And if I can't find her marriage certificate to show that these are her children from her husband, I don't know if she's going, if Mary Johnson is her married name or if that's her maiden name. And so that happens sometimes. It's a question mark.

That is a really big challenge with genealogy, trying to locate maiden names. And the best thing that most genealogians are able to do is try to find a marriage certificate. and if that doesn't work, then a death certificate sometimes will show the maiden name. And if you can't find the marriage or the death certificate, it's going to be a tough one. Just quick aside. One study showed that in 1980, 98.6% of American women, almost 99% took their husband's name after marriage. But that's declined in recent years to about 80%. Now, what percent of men adopt a new name after marriage these days?

3%. So this next tip is a revelation. The other genealogist rule is, look at who's living next door. Oh. Look who's living next door or even a few houses down because families tended to stay together. Families tend to stay together. And so your family that you found on the census might be living right next door to another family member. And so it's just amazing when you find that connection like that. And yeah, I've found that many times I've had that.

discovery. And I was like, wow, I've spent two years trying to locate. And here they were living right next door. What? Were you there the whole time? And that kind of brings me to a question. A lot of people asked Anna Thompson, Conchetta Gibson, Jesse Dragon, Margaret Avaqar, Rini, Chelsea, O'Leary, Sarah Jean Horowitz, and Larissa. Larissa and Chelsea are both first-time question And Laris asked, what's the best place to start to actually look into family history? What are some questions that we should be asking ourselves and our family and professionals like librarians in order to look into our history? Great question.

Great question. They're all great questions. And the first, yeah, obviously, your listeners, they're the best. So the first thing to do when you want to get started on your genealogy is, you know, ask, start assembling your family tree and ask questions from your family if they're still living. If your father is still living, your mother's still living, or grandparents, whoever's the most closest to you that's still alive, even your siblings. Sometimes your siblings have more of a recollection than you do.

I know sometimes my brother would be coming up with stuff I don't even remember. And he'd be telling me, yeah, and I said, oh, wow, I didn't know that. So just sit down with a pen and paper and just start making a list on the paternal side, your father's side, and the maternal side, your mother's side. And then just start going from there. List your parents first and then list their parents. Put down where they were born, obviously, if you have that information, where they died. If you can find the county name of where they were born or died, that even helps too.

Find out what year they were married, like your grandparents. Find out how did they meet each other. That's always been such a fascinating question to me is how did the grandparents meet each other or the great-grandparents? How did they meet each other? Because just because you were born in Chicago, Illinois, and you died in northern Louisiana, for example, how did great-grandpa meet great-grandma or how-to-grandma meet grandpa, you know? And then you find out, oh, they got married in, you know, Atlanta, Georgia, you know. What were they doing there? Right, exactly.

That's the point is what were they doing there? Was their family there in Atlanta? So write all that down of where they got married because those could be clues later on down the road. They may not mean anything now, but they might later. And so just start putting a chart down, father's side on one side of the paper, mother's side on the other side,

and just work your way back on who their grandparents and great-grandparents were and just list as much as you can. And then whatever blanks you have, fill in the blanks by interviewing your relatives and, you know, the aunt and the uncles and the grandfathers and try to fill those blanks in as much as you can and go to the family closet, you know, or wherever, whoever's the one that's holding the records in the family, you know, consult them. You know, there's always somebody in the family that's got all the marriage records. They've got all the pictures, the photographs, the obituaries and the death notices and all that sort of thing. thing and the birth certificate. So go to that person and just plow through all that and write all that down. Maybe make photocopies if they will allow you to. When you interview, you know, someone that's really old. How old? What does that mean? Really old. Sometimes I feel like I'm really old.

But when you interview a parent or a grandparent, I even ask him, is it okay if I can record it? Yeah. You know, record it. And that way you're not missing anything. So yeah. That's great. That's And you also learn so much about your family. Who doesn't want to learn more about, you know, people's histories that are right around them? I think that's such a good bonding project, too, you know. Yeah. So treat yourself to a nice new notebook, brew a pot of tea, and then sit down and interrogate a loved one. Gently.

A few people, including Beatriz, Bella Clava, B. Wilson, and first time question asker, Lizzie, for example, they all wanted to know about adoption. And Lizzie asked, my dad is adopted and knows some of his biological family's background. But what does that mean for our genealogy? Do we trace the adopted family's history? Do we trace the bio family's history, both? Excellent question. I would say, do both. If you feel like it, if you have a yearning for wanting to know both, go for it.

I know that in my family, my grandfather, who I met, I never did meet my father's parents. So I never did know my paternal grandfather or grandmother. they both passed before I was born. But on my mom's side, my mother remarried. And so her husband was always, he was the one I always called Grandpa, but he was not my biological grandpa. But to this day, he will always be my grandfather. And so I did a genealogy search on his family.

I wanted to know about him and found out about that he had Native American heritage from Tennessee and, you know, I found out that he had an Aunt Minerva and she lived to be 100 years old. And I recorded that. I still have that on tape, cassette tape, by the way. I need to update that. So I would say that for adoptions, why not look at both sides, the biological and the adopted side, absolutely. And for adoptions, I've had people that have contacted me over the years that have wanted to get help and try and locate their biological parents. What about turning over some hefty forensic boulders?

I had a few people, Julie Bear, Laura Merriman, Stephanie Burr-Hertes, and first-time question asker April Perry. April Perry wrote in and said, I'm a forensic scientist, a DNA analyst more specifically, and our field has been all a buzz with genealogy in the past few years as cold cases are being solved using public database searches. And April is curious what your take is, including some possible ethical dilemmas. How do you feel about it? Yeah, that's been on the news recently here.

Some people are kind of leery about putting their DNA information on a website where law enforcement agencies can come in and check into that. And they have cold cases where they're trying to solve. And you might know some information about it. It's kind of scary, you know? I don't know. That's a good question. If it can create closure to someone, I wouldn't mind participating in solving something. But of course, I wouldn't want anything to turn back on me, you know.

But I'm clean. I haven't done anything. So I'm good. I haven't cleaned of conscience. But I guess, you know, you have to think about that if you, you know, if you, when you take a DNA test, you're susceptible to whatever is out there. So, you know, just be careful. I know there's a lot of pros and cause on that. That's a very, very big question right now.

It's such a new quandary. It's such a new ethical dilemma. that we've just never encountered before. So I think a lot of people are still wrapping their brains around the benefits of getting closure or apprehending someone versus the how from a molecular level invasive that is on, you know, some of your actual genes. So yeah, it's really interesting. I think a lot of people are probably super ambivalent, meaning, you know, just seeing the good and the bad. And Rachel C. wrote in, she had a great question and said, I've heard that out of a group of three people, two black and one white, it is just as likely for a black and white person to be more related as it is for the two black individuals to be more closely related.

If that is really the case, then what the heck is race anyway and why does it persist in modern times? That is so true. That is so true. I mean, race is just a classification. I mean, even now we have, when we fill out forms, they have checkboxes where you can mark whatever ethnicity you wish. But now they're becoming more where you can mark. that you're a bi-racial and even tri-racial. And so that's a problem for the governments. They want to have solid data so that they know who is in our country and da-da-da.

But I say, hey, why not just embrace all? Why do you have to pick one or the other when you have so many that are part of your DNA? So, you know, I have to admit I've been just picking the one African-American, but there was a few times where I did pick biracial, Because I am, if I can remember my ratio, I am, oh, I'll just round it off. I'm about 80% African and about 18% European, which includes Scandinavian, British, and then 2% Native American and Southeast Asian, which blew me away. So I'd like to learn a little bit more about the Southeast Asian part, you know, the Philippines, Vietnam, type like that, and the Native American.

I love to learn more about my Native American ancestry. In regards to that, race is just a classification. We're all related. And it's interesting, the book that I just recently came out with 1619, 20 Africans. One of the points I mentioned in the book is that when those Africans came to Virginia in the year 1619, they didn't come as slaves as we know it as slaves that come to our mind. they were indentured servants. And so they didn't have the designation of being slaves.

So what that meant was indentured servants, just like those that were coming from England, they worked for a certain period of time. They were indentured to their employer. And so those Africans were indentured. Once they served their time, they were given their freedom, just like all the other indentured servants. Virginia wasn't until 1705 is when the slavery laws, you know, the really hardened slavery laws came into being, was in the year 1705. So prior to that, there were a lot of African-American families in colonial America, colonial Virginia, who were not slaves. They were not under slavery.

They had a hard life, yes. They had a very hard life. Many of them were taken advantage of, no doubt about it, but they were not classified as slaves. So what I'm going with this is that many of these Africans, as they had children and their children had children, there was probably about two or three generations of African Americans who were free in this country before, and I got before in big, large letters, before the slavery laws were even enacted. And that's huge. And a lot of people don't know about that.

And I didn't know about it until I took my DNA test and found out that I was related to some of these early African-American families. And so what I also found out was that a lot of the African families that were free in the early part of our colonial history, they were intermarrying with the Irish, with the Native Americans, with the Germans. They were intermarrying. They were becoming a family. But many of the American families that are in this country today, whatever surname you want to use, Johnson, Smith, whatever. If your family's been in this country for going back to colonial times or even the American Revolution times, chances are you are a mixed family. Chances are you're a mixed family, you know, in some way, shape, or form in one way or another, in Native America. or, you know, because it's just a fact.

And but that is not taught in our schools. It's not taught in our history books that there were at least two or three generations of free people before slavery laws even were passed. Virginia is kind of what everybody looks to as the mother of the slavery laws. But, and other states look to Virginia, you know, whatever they pass, they'll pass. But yeah, there was quite a few years, quite a few decades before slavery even. got entrenched. And so that allowed a lot of families to have freedom. There was a lot of African families that were able to buy land. You couldn't do that as a slave. You couldn't buy land.

They could sit on juries. They could barter and trade. It was just, and a lot of people just don't know the history of that. And so, again, there was a lot of intermarriage. A lot of the Africans were marrying Irish women and Scottish women because there was a shortage of African women. And so there's a lot of intermixture in our society today. And so your listener brings up a very good question there that, you know, chances are if you have three people. And if you're white and the other one's black, you're probably more related, just as much related as the two persons that are of the same race. Definitely. And was that a discovery also that you made in your own family with your sister-in-law?

Yes, my sister-in-law. Yes, absolutely, yes. Yeah, my sister-in-law, this blew me away is, yeah, this is a perfect example, is my wife's sister, which would be my sister-in-law, she has children. And we went to go visit one time, and we were sitting around the breakfast table there and a restaurant and chit-chatting. And my sister-in-law's daughter says, well, yeah, I can remember old grandma, you. You know, she was from Mississippi, and she used to cook so well. And I remember all these different dishes she would make. She said, she was from Jackson, Mississippi.

And I said, oh, really? Well, what was her name? And she said, well, she was Grandma Grantham. Her maiden name was Grantham. I almost fell off my chair. I said, Grantham, that's a name that's come up in my family research. Well, when I get back home, I'm going to look that up because that's very interesting. I said, so maybe some of my family members,

be new, you know, your grandmother's family. So when I got back home that night and I went through the records and I said, I'll be doggone. But these, my sister-in-law's children are related to me because when I took my 23 and me test, there was one genetic cousin that we had a connection with. This was like 2011. And me and her, we, we, had communication back and forth, trying to figure out how we were connected. We couldn't figure out a thing. But she sent me her family tree and her family name was Grantham, her ancestor of her grandfather. It was just amazing.

In his book, 1619, Stephen writes of the encounter, quote, we might be related. We joked. I was black and they were white. When I later got home, I looked up the information my sister-in-law's daughter gave me about her paternal grandmother. Turns out it wasn't a joke after all, that my sister-in-law's children and I were related. So if everyone learns a little about their genealogy, chatter over waffles is about to get way more interesting. If you hadn't asked over breakfast, what was their name?

You'd never would have known that. Never would have known that. If you weren't Sherlock Holmes, you're like, wait a second. Get your notepad up. And we embraced it. We just love that little facet. I mean, we loved each other even before we knew that. But that just kind of put a little spice into our conversations now every time.

we meet and we can bring that up. And so it's just a wonderful thing. And, you know, race is just color. It's just nothing. It's just a classification. We are all related. Stephen says that the next book he's working on, which will be his third, will get deeper into how we're all related.

And I realized just then that this episode would come out near the start of Black History Month, which is in part a celebration of the birthdays of Abraham Lincoln and abolitionist Frederick Douglas. I told Stephen that International Women's Day kind of pisses me. off because it's like, hi, here's your 365th share of the year pie. And I asked him if he feels that way about February. Like, this country was literally built by people of color. But it was conceived first by history professor Carter Woodson in the 1920s and finally recognized by Gerald Ford in the 1970s. Stephen says that he too feels it should be more than a month, but that... I think it's just a good

opportunity to educate people, all of us, even for everyone. When I say everyone, I mean including African-American, everyone to be educated, re-educated about just getting along with one another. Martin Luther King Jr. said that one day on the Red Hills of George, sons of former slaves of some of former slave owners will they be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood

I have a dream. You know, we don't judge one another based on the color of our skin but on the basis of our character. And so that's what it's all about is just embracing one another and just getting closer as a human family.

Because we need each other. This world is as it's ups and downs as we know. And so we all need to stick together and just be civil. And I think about, you know, colonial America and how, you know, when the first Africans came here, well, I shouldn't say the first African America. That's going to be, that's going to be something coming out of my next book.

Who were the fur? But those that came in 1619, how they were just treated just like everybody else. And then the slavery laws came along and just took away everything they had. But think of the Native Americans of what they've gone through. I mean, good. It's gracious. That's why I'm really interested to want to learn about that. But yeah, Black History Month is, I think, is still needed to, as an opportunity to talk about things that we need to talk about to acknowledge and to heal.

Yeah, absolutely. Now, from the biggest issues to perhaps some sillier or petty difficulties in the job of genealogy. And the last two questions I always ask every guest is, what is the hardest thing about genealogy or the most annoying thing? Is it water-locked books? Anything that just is really difficult about genealogy? Or this just maybe pesteres you at all, even if it's petty? Yeah, yeah. Well, the one thing that kind of irks me is someone will take their DNA test.

They will log on to the website. They will download their data. They will click, yes, I do want my information to be posted on this website. site, here's my email address, and then when you connect and you find out that, oh, I'm related to this person, I'd like to know more about you because some of the names that you have on your profile match my family, and then you reach out to that person, and they don't even reply back. That one just really gets me.

I mean, like, why did you want to put your email address on there in the first place? if you're not going to correspond. So that one, that one's kind of, that one makes sense. Yeah. So if you ever, if anyone ever gets an email from a long, lost relative, reply to them. Yes. It's worth it. It's worth.

Do not sit on that email. What is your favorite thing about genealogy? What just like fills you with butterflies or just makes you love it? Wow. The thing that makes me always love genealogy is being able to go on the hunt, go on the search to try to find, to find someone's, brick wall, someone who, you know, what I mean by brick wall for any of your listeners, is you just come into a point where you can't go any further in your research. Gotta break through it somehow.

You just, you've come to a brick wall, you just, you've exhausted all your avenues, and you just don't know where to go. You just don't know who this person is, where they were, where, who their parents were, or whatever the question is. And I just love to take that brick wall and try to see if I can go through it. I just love that. And, you know, just take it on their challenge. And then once you're finding, you're like, oh, yes.

You know, this is just wonderful. Love it. Do you wear a cape? Do you have a big pipe and a cake? I got a cape on right now. No, I'm just kidding. A big mustache. One of those hundred hands.

Right, with the old pipe. Yeah, no, no, no. So find the most wonderful, smartest people and ask them about their great work. And before you know it, you might be sitting on a place. plane and discover the person next to you is your fifth step cousin-in-law, four times removed. And you'll kind of know what that means, and you might know them the rest of your life. So to get copies of Stephen Hanks books, you can go to the links in the show notes or Inkwater Press. Ologies merch is available at alleyward.com.

Thank you to Shannon Feltis and Bonnie Dutch of the podcast. You are that they manage the merch. And thanks to Aaron Talbert for adminning the Ologies Podcast Facebook group. Thank you, Jared Sleeper of the Mental Health Podcast, My Good, Bad Brain for the assistant editing. And of course, to a guy who's like a bro, Stephen Ray Morris, who hosts the purrcast and see Jurassic Right, which are about kitties and dinosaurs. Nick Thorburn of the band Islands wrote and performed the theme music. And you know, if you stick around past your credits, you get a secret. And this week, I'm going to tell you, I drove to an ex-boyfriend's house in the middle of the night.

We dated for like four months, a decade ago. but in the parking lot of the apartment complex, I remember there was a lemon tree that was overloaded with fruit way back then. And this was not just any lemon tree. This is a Meyer lemon tree, which we all know how it was like way better lemons. Regular lemons are like a mounts bar. Meyer lemons, they're like an almond joy. They're just better.

I think technically there's some type of orange. But the point is, from memory, I drove through the L.A. Hills alone at 10 p.m., I felt like such a creep. And I found the side street. and the lemon tree was still there with literally hundreds of my lemons. So I took maybe like eight or ten. I put him in a hat and I ran back to my car. Now granted, he hasn't lived there in like 10 years, but it still felt dangerous and skeeby and very thrilling to have a bowl of the best lemons on my counter. 2026 Alley here again, I kid you not. I happen to go back to that tree this weekend. I hadn't been in like years. I got myself so many lemons. The Tree was stuffed with them. Also, thank you to managing director, Susan Hale, scheduling producer Noel Dilworth, and editors Jake Chafee and Mercedes-Maitland for helping the show these days. But yes,

back to our secret from them. God, I love Meyer lemons. I've been pulverizing them in a pitcher and drinking it as lemonade, and then I eat their ragged flesh and skin like a buzzard. Also, if fruit overhangs a fence, technically it's legal to pick. Also, no one's going to ever eat All those limits. There's so many limits. Okay. So good. All right. Bye-bye.