Ologies with Alie Ward - Smologies #15: FAMILY TREES with Stephen Hanks

Episode Date: September 21, 2022

It’s a shorter, swear-free version of the wonderful Genealogy episode with author Stephen Hanks -- who teaches genealogy classes in Portland, Oregon and has contributed to PBS genealogy documentaries. We chat histories, mysteries, memories and families, plus what ignited his passion for learning about his own history. Also: how to find your family through census records, county archives, and death certificates; which DNA tests he’s taken; our most recent common ancestor; and whether or not he wears a detective cape. Stephen Hanks books: “Three Brothers — 1626,” “1619 -- Twenty Africans,” and “Akee Tree”Publisher: Inkwater PressA donation went to BlackPast.orgMore Smologies episodesFull length Genealogy (FAMILY HISTORY) episode + links hereSponsors of OlogiesBecome a patron of Ologies for as little as a buck a monthOlogiesMerch.com has hats, shirts, masks, totes!Follow @Ologies on Twitter and InstagramFollow @AlieWard on Twitter and InstagramSound editing by Steven Ray Morris,  Mercedes Maitland of Maitland Audio Productions, and Jarrett Sleeper of MindJam MediaExtra help from Noel Dilworth, Susan Hale, Kelly Dwyer, Emily White, & Erin TalbertSmologies theme song by Harold Malcolm

Oh, hello, and welcome to an episode of Smologies, where we have taken a full-length episode like this one from a few years back and condensed it and decursed it so it is safe for all ages and sensitive years who are interested in learning. There are more Smologies episodes available to download at alleyward.com slash Smologies. The links in the show notes. Let's go. Oh, hey, it's your fourth cousin, twice removed, alleyward, back with a familial historical episode of oligies. So you are here because people made babies with each other and out of all of the gametes, 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 might not even know your name. Okay, genealogy. So genealogy comes from the root word gena, 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 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, US history and how we treat the past, the joy of cracking a case, DNA tests, technology, 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, Steven Hanks. 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 was? Oh, about 30 years old. And that's, I got the bug. I was over at my dad's house that day in 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 for sonority. And so he shows me this letter. I started reading it. And it's an obituary out of the newspaper. And all these relatives' names are listed in this obituary. And so my dad signed the family. And I just said, wow, I don't know who these people are. And that's what got us 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 it got started. 89. Yeah. And what was the first thing you did? Back in 89, we had libraries and Microfiche and the Dewey Desktop System. Microfilm readers. Yeah, the Microfiche. Totally. No internet, no

clicking of the mouse. You know, it was old school all the way. And old school ways involved making the two to three hour drive from Portland to Seattle's National Archives. 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 genealogists 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. You know, every 10 years, they have a census. And of course, they put a privacy restriction on the first 70 years they released it to the public. So the most recent census that was available to me at that time was, I believe, the 1920 census. Yeah, 1920. 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, you know, just start looking under the rocks. And so with the 1910 and 1900 census, and this was really getting exciting, I finally was able to locate my great grandparents,

knew their names, and it just blew me away. Found them in Kansas and found out that they had moved to Kansas from Mississippi under a different set of living as you, as you know, where I'm coming from, you know, slavery, you know, kind of the slavery thing. So that was a big shocker rule. But Stephen's first book was 2013's A Keytree, a descendants 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 1880 census. The 1890 census, I guess, was burned in a fire in 1921. So that's, yeah, that's something that you have to live with.

The 1890 census is gone forever. 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. When I got to that point, I was just in heaven, you know. But the problem is, you know, you go in beyond 1870 is the trick for, you know, as far as African American genealogy. Because as we all know, you know, Abraham Lincoln, he ended slavery. We know that in 1865 or 1863, some say, because of 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, because it was five years after the end of the Civil War. And so now everyone was just, you know, a regular citizen, you know, the way it was supposed to be. But if you want to go further back, 1860, well, then you're going back into the old system of things 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, 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. So the further you go back in time, it just gets harder and harder to locate your family if your ancestry or your inheritance was slavery. But it can be done. It can be done.

You've had a long history of going into, you know, musty bookshelves and microfetion 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 how has the advent of, you know, consumer DNA tests changed what you do and how you research? It's very interesting. This is a very interesting question. When I first took the test and got the results back and all these I had like about, I think it was like 2000 connections of people that were related to me. And they did it from the highest ratio down to the lowest ratio. And so I could look at my top 20, you know, and I say, 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, this works. That did validate that, that this, this DNA stuff is for real. Because I did know their names and they did show up. They're on my mother's side, but not on my father's side, so that... How does that work? And I might have to look this up. But how does that work with like the mitochondrial eave 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 eave 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 eave is what's called an MRCA, most recent common ancestor. And she can vary depending on genetic discoveries. So for more recent common ancestral lineage is discovered, for example, it's a different mitochondrial eave. But yes, all related, all of us wild. 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. And I actually, 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 them? 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 Steven 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.

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. So the first thing to do when you want to get started on your genealogy is 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 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 that I don't even remember. And he'd be telling me, yeah, and I'd say, 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? Who are the great grandparents? How did they meet each other and go to the family closet, you know, or whoever's the one that's holding the records in the family, you know,

whatever blanks you have, fill in the blanks by interviewing your relatives. And when you interview, you know, someone that's really old, what does that mean? I feel like I'm really old. But when you interview a parent or a grandparent, I even ask them, is it okay if I can record it? And that way, you're not missing anything. Yeah. That's great. And then you're also like, learn so much about your family. Who doesn't want to learn more about 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. Rachel C wrote in shit, 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? So true. That is so true. I mean, race is just just a classification. We're all related. It's interesting, the book that I just recently came out with 16, 19, 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 desolation 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 what I also found out was that a lot of the African families that were free and 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. 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, you know, 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. And it's just a fact, 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. 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. So your listener brings up a very good question there that chances are if you have three people and if you're white and the other

one's black, you're probably just as much related as the two persons that are of the same race, definitely. 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, and 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. 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, 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 that challenge. And then once you find him, you're like, oh, yes. This is just one. Love it. Do you wear a cape? Do you have a big pipe and a cake? I got a cape on right now. Big mustache, one of those hundred. So find the most wonderful, smart people and ask them questions. And before you know it, you might be sitting on a plane and discover that the person next to you is your fifth step cousin-in-law, four times removed. And you might know them the rest of your life.

So to get copies of Stephen Hank's books, you can go to the links in the show notes or ink, water, press. You can also find links to the sponsor URLs and blackpast.org. In the show notes, we are at oligies on Twitter and Instagram. I'm at alleyward with one L on both. So follow along. Let's be friends. And in the interest of keeping things small around here, the full credits are listed in the show notes. More small oligies episodes are available at alleyward.com slash small oligies. And before I go, I usually give you a tiny piece of advice. And this week, it's that if you have something to do that you don't want to forget, what I like to do sometimes is pick up a little pebble and put it in my pocket. That way all day, I'll feel the pebble and I'll

think, I got to do that thing. And at the end of the day, when you take off your pants, if there's a pebble in your pocket, you know, had to do that thing. So sometimes a pebble in the pocket will help jog your memory. I hope that helps. Okay, until next time, small oligites, bye-bye.