Feeling Love Through Family History (Jim Ericson and Emily Schultz Live)

you both um are family search colleagues and friends so emily let's let's start with you great thank you wendy i'm so pleased to be here i love family search i have worked for family search for 26 years 26 years i know that yeah emily hold on a second 26 years okay what has been the biggest change in the 26th year we've we changed from microfilm to digital in those 26 years so charla yeah okay i worked in the catalog department for many years uh cataloging french and italian and um i worked uh public helping publish digital records and doing various project management uh assignments currently my assignment is with the integration team connecting us with projects that are happening at brigham young university so really exciting there's a lot going on okay um 26 years like i i'm still kind of hung up on that in the best way um okay and tell us a little bit about your family yes yes um my husband dave is an artist it does fantastic landscape painting and it's just amazing and i have two children ethan who's 22 and sophie who is 15. how fun the delight of my eyes and they are both bookworms like their mom so that makes me happy okay so what is something that you like to recommend for people read that it's like if someone says what should i read what would you say well my i read what makes read what makes you happy because everybody has a different thing that that speaks to them i like reading i like reading a combination of speculative fiction i which is like science fiction fantasy but i also really love good biographies and i love reading about my ancestors and i love reading histories really good histories that just make history come alive okay and that's what we are talking about today is history coming alive so emily we're so glad you're here and cannot wait to learn from you um for people who are joining we're we're thrilled to be with you today let us know where you are joining from and jim please this is you guys everyone jim's my boss so here we are tell us who you are a little bit about you and your family and what you do at family search okay so i'm jim erickson and i'm over marketing at family search um i'm married to my wife kelly we have five children our oldest is just about to turn 22 and our youngest on halloween turned six yes yes we love matthew he is so fun when he pops up in our meetings and we do have a 10 year gap between him and our our next oldest who are a set of twins so exciting it was very exciting anyway so i'm over marketing for family search and uh previously um in my career i was over marketing ancestry um when ancestry was just getting started um then i worked for one great family and a company called family link um so i i love being able to combine my passion for online marketing and interactive marketing with family history because as you get involved with family history there are no kinder people than people who are trying to figure out their family and their story and you get people when they're very tender um when they're feeling those feelings of longing and trying to connect and i think that's that's what we're going to talk about today is belonging to each other as we kind of belong to ourself and we invite you to do that at family search and it's a opportunity for all of us to understand how we're connected to each other so like you know we want to also talk for a minute just about there's a lot of uncertainty you know going on all over and um we sit with you in that space and honor that space and say you know we're we're here for you and one thing we have to offer is to say we want to understand you we want to learn your stories we want to find out how we're related to you we we want to connect with you so throughout the conversation today we're going to share a couple of ways that we can find out how we're related and we're going to talk about connecting to your past but we also want to say you know that from family search to everyone participating you know we are here for you and we welcome the opportunity to to be together and how fun that i get to spend time chatting with emily and jim and i say let's just jump right in i mean we have a lot that we want to talk about and it's mainly going to be around how understanding learning about our family history helps us gain an appreciation and and love for each other and so emily like this okay i know we have an outline of what we're going to talk about but i have to say this so a couple of times that i've worked at roots tech emily has been in charge of the family search booth which is no small task right like it's pretty big and a lot of people help a lot of people help yes and the last couple of years one thing that we got to both work on was using the family tree mobile app was relatives at roots tech and so this was a way that people could walk into the salt palace and be accept an invitation to connect in real time with attendees and emily was in the booth and had some of the coolest experiences of people finding out that they had cousins that they never met and meeting up at the booth so emily as we get started will you tell us like your favorite relatives at roots tech's story i don't oh that's hard it's hard to pick the just one so i want to say one that's on your mind just two things i want to tell two things about relatives at woodstock i really did feel when i was at the family search booth and watching people make these connections coming to the booth it was like little bursts of light like watching little bursts of light happen and it just is almost that visible when you saw someone come and and how excited they were to make that connection with the cousin that they hadn't they hadn't uh known or sometimes that they had known before but um i had a pretty cool experience myself where a cousin a couple years ago a cousin came to me and she she was my third cousin she is my third cousin kathy torkelson and she said i she had a packet for me of pictures that were uh that she'd like to give to me the next day and i thought well that's good because my grandfather and my father they were both they took a lot of pictures and i thought well kathy probably just had some prints that my grandfather or father took and that's what she'll bring to me is some copies and she said i just wanted stanford to have these and so i was like yay so she came the next day to the booth with a with a packet of 20 original photographs of my family from the 1900s 1910s 1920 era and i don't have them here because we just moved and also i have been slowly sharing them with other family members so like i find out i do some research and i find out that this this is the school picture of a of a cousin so i've been reaching out through family search through the messaging app and saying do you want this photograph of your of your grandfather he's my cousin but it's your grandfather and i've been sharing those photos with people and it's and then i send it to him in the mail and it's just been lovely my mother has has my great-grandmother's picture up by her sewing machine and um anyway it was just this really but it was it was just such a gift and i i to her it was just returning some old photographs and and but just having that moment where you're looking at the actual picture you're feeling them you're feeling their love and it's just it's priceless oh emily i love that and um it's just was such a fun way for me to interact with you every tech and sharing that experience with all the thousands of attendees who were connecting um jim talk to us a little bit about you know what does it mean when we say you know family history is love or you can feel love through family history well i i think one of the let me share an experience that kind of illustrates that um emily would know david bars pretty well um david barce recently retired but he was over a lot of our community projects the very first day i started at family search jake gehring who was a friend working at family search at the time introduced me to david and i sat next to him and i said hey we're cousins and he looked at me with the funniest look he said i'm from new jersey i'm not from around here from new jersey yeah but your last name is barce i said you're a descendant of augustine beers aren't you you said i am so augustine beerus was an early settler in cape cod who came over in the 1600s and just that connection made it so every time david and i saw each other we'd strike up a conversation and catch up with each other it was an immediate bond because we weren't just co-workers we were kin and i've had that experience over and over at family search and sometimes it's a surprise relationship um where but sometimes you start actually talking about what that means and the connections that you have and and in that line you know kind of the the controversies of whether or not that we have um native american ancestors and things like that so anyway it's fun but it gives you something in common immediately and the more you talk to people the more you realize that even if it's the experiences and the stories there are a lot of common themes that that we find as we start talking to each other i love that common themes and it's fun to see people that are joining us from all over we have someone who says it's time to go to issues saying goodnight from portugal and we've got austin texas and multiple other places and so i like how you talked about finding things like common or things we have in common as a way to connect and understand and um we've got one of our colleagues maril watching who talks about how how much he loves hearing stories i think we should share some stories um that you guys have and who wants to go first emily you share a family history story and i think this is one that you talked about earlier that involves um hearts gas station which if you're from utah you know that it is a local gem so emily tell us some stories yes so this is a really cool experience that happened to me last year i would go um this is a little personal to cherish her uh in the early morning i would drive to to work my 45 minute commute and i would stop for a sparkling refreshing beverage in the morning uh at the at the heart station and i got to know this young man parker who worked at as a as a clerk there he was always getting off his shift when i was leaving to go up to salt lake so we talked for months and he he was just friendly but then i was wearing my family search logo he's like oh what's family search and i said oh oh you gotta you gotta try it and all i had to do was tell him and by the next i think i'd remind him one other time but by the when i went in he had already downloaded the app he'd figured out how to connect and he was he was just telling me about all he said i was almost late to work because i was i was finding all these things out about my ancestors and we talked a little bit about one of his ancestors okay so that's the important part because then it was a few weeks later that i was reading on family search and i was reading a biography of my ancestor um james russell ivy and i was reading how he had saved the life of parker's ancestor and and and uh it's in their own family search and it's in uh parker's ancestors biography anyway so i told parker this and he just lit up and we're like no wonder no wonder we felt like we were kin anyway just a slow from this um connection from your daily soda sparkling beverage on your drive you befriended someone who worked there named parker and then you found out that your ancestor saved his ancestors that is so cool um and if you've had experiences like that let us know in the chat because i think that's what's awesome you know emily's been at family search for 26 years and she loves family history and inviting people to learn more about it and you can just tell by these these stories she could tell stories for hours i'm sure um jim talk to us about some i i think you have some stories where um you've recorded or you have stories of ancestors that are really contextual and rich yes so i have an uncle who was a historian and uh he has written a couple books one of them is called shepherds of ashley valley which was about the my my great-grandparents and their experience out in ashley valley which is vernal utah and uh he also recorded my grandparents in 1971 the year i was born um either right before or right after around christmas time that okay we have these recordings and it is so fun i hadn't ever heard i didn't know these even existed but my cousin susie about 10 years ago said look for something in the mail i'm sending you something and she said on cd um these stories and my my grandmother passed away in 1981 so i hadn't heard her voice but she used to sit us all the time because my mom taught school and so um she would drop drop me off in the morning sometimes with my grandma and grandpa so i have just fond memories of her rocking me to sleep oh yes so i heard her voice and so i'm gonna play i'm gonna i'm just gonna play one little story here and i'm not clear my screen because i just it's just audio okay but this is the kind of gem that that we can share with each other so this is a story of her when she was a little girl um playing dolls and this is something that you've um is on her her her person page on family search on family search so so this is this is her telling the story and i'll probably have to explain the ending because she starts laughing okay i knew his neighbor lived about a block away mr mrs daniel evans their daughters were grown up but they raised a granddaughter and we used to play with her often and if mother needed to go on a quick errand she would ask mrs evans if we might play there for an hour while she was gone we often played in the shade of their orchard and one day as little children we were playing with our dolls out there and a quick shower came up we grabbed our dolls and ran for the house we couldn't think where nellie's other doll was but about a week later when we went to play under the apple trees again we found that her doll that she had lost had sprouted wheat all through it for she had been stuffed with wheat so just a fun little story but it was that personality and uh her memories are very specific she names everybody in the whole town um and she talks about what it was like in 1918 um seeing in up to four funerals a day um because of the flu epidemic at the time and the singing going to roosevelt and other towns singing for the the victory bombs and her mom was given a a german helmet to thank her for all of the the money that they'd raised on behalf of the war effort that was wow that was the award so jim you have you have inspired me i have some cassette tapes that my cousins gave me that have my grandparents voice on them and it's been years since i've listened and you have now inspired me to get them uploaded digitally and onto the memories page is where they belong so thank you thank you for that and my cousins are listening i'm going to give up i'm going to get this off everybody add some audio stories that made me feel so close to my cousin susie for that act of generosity for taking the time to digitize it and share it i played it for my dad this was probably a couple years before he passed away and i just started playing it and my dad looked at me with this strangest look he said where did you get this because he he hadn't heard his mom's voice and uh it was just a remarkable shared experience that we had because he didn't know that that that recording existed either well and you know we know we've talked talk a lot about this here and and at family search that hearing and sharing stories helps connect us and jim hearing you share that story and emily hearing you share that story i you know i know you better and i feel like with everything that's happening like meryl has talked about like listening to someone's story and inviting someone to share their story and not you know just just just be curious about it it's it's really like it's kind of like what susie did for you and emily what your cousin did right and then what emily you've done when you've mailed these photos off to other family so it can be something we do today it doesn't just have to be about the past um and we know stories connect us we love connecting okay emily you have something fun um to talk well see emily or jim i don't know who wants to talk about the relative finder group that we set up because we want to see how we're related to people that are watching um do you want to explain it emily do you want to explain what that is and we'll have our moderators put everything in the chat we want people to join this yes so relatives of ritz tech was a a one-time opportunity during ritz tech but this is an ongoing this is something byu's relative finder will allow you to create groups and see how you're related to one another and if you log in you can also see how you're related to famous people famous writers famous presidents um there's different options you can pick um to see how you're connected and it's it's a lot of fun i've done that with my kids they that that speaks their interest especially the writers and they love their connection and know that they dickinson is a cousin you know that kind of thing they love that so so everyone watching um take a minute you know don't leave us just maybe open another tab and log into this group and see how you are related we invited some of our colleagues to do this earlier as well and so i'm thinking that the information will be posted in the chat but we have found oh go ahead jim i was just going to say there is a password required yeah i think we're going to post that i'll post it it's cousins for sure um then the number four and then sure okay so we have marta she's one of our top fans and she is saying um a couple months ago she was browsing the comments and um someone was requesting help and finding her ancestors in mexico and the last name was familiar to marta she got in touch and found out that her grandfather was my grandmother's brother talk about coincidences so this has happened right i love that barna thank you for sharing um we've we've posted the group and we would love for everyone to pop in um and i love martha's idea is that people should get story audibles from hallmark books i miss my mom's voice every day but there it is her reading a book so yeah like people reading stories i love that um and then nelson talks about using the memories app where you can record in the memories app or the family tree app and you can just push the green icon with the microphone and invite people to talk right then and you can record the stories of your parents but really the the audio recording is like the easiest well for people like me it is because i like to talk so um okay something else that i think you have talked about and maybe it's it's emily is using um the calendar at family search to talk about ancestors and celebrate them and use that to kind of connect with cousins will you share that with us emily i would love to share that so okay emily yes so uh this is oh whoops this is not the right screen but i will get there momentarily so okay okay while i'm doing that let me tell you that before we had this um ability in family search to to do a calendar of your ancestors which we do now have and you can we'll we'll share that link with you it's it's a way that you can get on on and look at that i had actually gone in manually and and just ancestor my ancestor put them in my my outlook oh my goodness because i just loved that that i loved it when i could find and and have be reminded that it was a ancestors uh birthday or anniversary anniversary yeah yeah so i did that and i share it on facebook and i love the responses i get from cousins and um you know my cousins they thank me for it but i also love the the feedback i've gotten from friends who said that it's inspired them to go and look at their family but even just taking that minute when i put that one or two photos from my ancestor i just it makes me feel closer to them i love seeing that picture i love um having just that moment where we're thinking about them and i and i'm so distracted telling you all about it i'm not sharing the screen so hello okay well well while you look for that screen i think there is something and this is something that jim does as well is he'll post in different social media sites okay yeah emily walk through this and then we'll talk to jim about what he does with this um yeah so yeah yeah.org campaign calendar and if you're logged in and then you can it can tell you and all over um it will even remind you when you're when you log into family search it will remind you is a little notification will pop up with in the upper right hand corner telling you that you have a notification and one of them could be and it might be these ancestor birthdays but you can look at them all this way um you can subscribe to to get notifications so yeah i just and so so here for example is my grandma pearl um her birthday um will be tomorrow and i'm really excited to celebrate that i did not know her she uh she died um six months after i was born and wow but i've heard so many stories about her um i feel like i know her and i'm getting to know her um one of my best compliments i've ever gotten from a second cousin who knew her very well um he said you know you don't look like her but when you talk and you get all excited and your eyes they sparkle like like our grandmothers so um you do have sparkly eyes grandma pearl did and i i apparently she would get animated and talk about things and that's grandma pearl so i love grandma pearl and i love that her birthday's tomorrow and i'm going to celebrate that on on on facebook so i think that's wonderful and um jim as you get ready to talk about what you do um i think it's cody cody brown is asking what's an easy way to help those without an lds account use relative finder you just need a family search account yeah um so it pulls from your family search account and your the tree that's how it finds out um how you're connected and robert raymond is also talking about how he uses it so hello robert always good to see you and randy seaver we're happy that our friends are here and jennifer is she your cousin because she's saying that you do this for them all the time yeah she's my cousin and yes we do oh my goodness this is just so fun and hello to sarah and ireland okay so oh in newfoundland jim talk to us about what you do on um i think you know we can say facebook because we're on facebook so there are a few things we have uh and i i'm guessing emily has similar things um we do have some groups of descendants of so and so and so and so like we have a group that's descendants of of my grandparents on both sides of the family and it's really fun to share memories there because they're very accessible and and we're organizing a family reunion right now and that started by gathering together on facebook another thing that i enjoy doing is to look for little tidbits so one of the things i shared a couple years ago it was an anniversary and i actually went and found the picture of the the church house in england where they were married in in chorley and uh posted that and a little did you visit there i did okay that was where miles standish and his family worshipped and they still have his pew um the standish family pew in this little church in chorley so if you if you've gone to visit where your ancestors are from let us know we'd love to hear but yeah you like that was a huge reason you went right yeah yeah that was one of the big stops we wanted to make um and it was fun we had a little tour from the church historian he took us into the vestry and we saw the the silver that had been donated by the standish family and it was just an amazing experience to have and so i love that sorry um i asked if there were any nightingales and he said that there had been as recently as uh like two or three years ago an elderly couple by the last name of nightingale who were still worshiping there so it was kind of cool i didn't make that connection with them but it was still cool to to know that you know some relatives were still around there so when you both will post um ancestors sort of tidbits or photos on facebook with your cousins what kinds of conversations happen do people pay attention are they interested oh yeah i i get cousins who comment and their own memories sometimes they comment about the you know oh what a wonderful you know what a wonderful memory but yeah sometimes they'll say that's how i remember grandpa too yeah i love that jim what about you what kinds of conversations happen when you post stuff with your cousins um a lot of the same type of conversation um one of the things that's been fun for me um is also collecting extended family members so one of the things that is really fun is uh i'm connected with some third cousins i am going to share my screen because this is a little bit of a gem that was uh just shared with me by my cousin um yes and we've got we're getting some comments from people um who have traveled suzanne has gone to italy many times and um jennifer said that they spent the night in a little town in england where her great-great-grandparents were married i think you know when we can start traveling we need to do this more everybody because it's just and and kathy talked about being in some ancestral places in 2010 and for me i have a lot of history in in the state where i live in utah and so i haven't uncovered all of them but yeah jim share it show talk to us so this photo here is a photo of this mary e is mary elizabeth phelps that's my second great grandmother and this is my grandmother who was married in a flapper dress in about 1920 and i had never seen a photo with her and her cousins i'd seen a photo with her and her siblings i'd seen a photo with you know one or two cousins but all these cousins and look at the the background i mean that is just really cool to get that real that background yeah this is in rollins wyoming um near the the scythe family home um who married into the family but did you find this on family search at the cousins no so this is the thing this is my my cousin he's a third cousin he and i met um through a message board years ago and uh it was while my my mom was still alive and i recorded a little message from her making an introduction so his mom was my mom's second cousin um i went and i met her in colorado she's no longer with us but when i looked at her i i just thought wow she looks just like my grandma so the family resemblance everything and uh i had no idea who bob was but he actually presented with me at rootstech oh yeah a couple years ago about some of our common findings so this was sent to him by one of his cousins um so it is kind of neat to see how the artifacts and the photos they continue to emerge and this is what happens all the time on on family search you know you just go in and every day you log in and you know there's new memories that people have shared and uh they're sometimes really near relatives and sometimes a little bit more distant oh yeah really cool to see how that works on family search my wonderful cousin kathy who who shared those photos with me before she gave me the originals she had uploaded them to family search herself which was which was brilliant and i want to say too i love going on and just reading the stories and memories could i tell a brief a few weeks ago i went in and read um it was a now i'm going to blank on the name but it was a it was a second cousin once removed from escalante utah who who had a history on family search that and i'm not sure how i might have ended up there because of the feed that tells you new things are posted i read his history and he mentions my family a lot in his history is you know going from the 1930s up through the 1950s and 60s and i learned so much about my family even though it was directly about this other cousin but i learned and he mentioned my my my grandfather he mentioned you know the the way things um were in the town at the time and that very a lot of local color that just brought my grandfather to life as well as his extended family and i spent my i found a photo i'd seen it before but i found it again on on family search and i just spent time looking at it and just imagining and wondering about those people and that just gives me such strength it really does like a gateway right it's a gateway into what things would have been like and um i think you know if you don't have um photos on in your family tree like are there some people alive in your family that might have photos that you can you know you can you can scan or just take a photo with your phone and it's fantastic you know most phones it's fantastic quality and you can upload that for someone else but think about your your own story as well and we have a question um this isn't necessarily um related to our topic but it's a good one so frank and i think this is a common question and he's looking at some records and there's a marriage certificate um but he can't figure out the handwriting because some of the words are in spanish so how can we help frank who wants to answer that because you guys are like family search experts so we'll take any question anybody has um but who wants to answer that and help frank um understand how he can or do you want to do it emily give a gym and then i'll yeah that's good guys try let's try to stump them so ask some good questions sarah and nate and merrell well paleography is one of those things that you end up needing to know a little bit about as you get into research and so there are resources on the family search wiki that will show you different letter types for different languages um this is one of the the reasons why if you can if you're familiar with another language to do indexing because as you get familiar with the records um that that can help um and then the other thing that we're doing a lot of right now is the the staff from the family history library is actually helping people with one one-to-one um assistance right now um the library itself is closed but they're still busy helping people so and we do have expertise in spanish records so that's awesome someone will post a link to that but it's called the online consultations and you sign up um for it's like a 20 minute i think time period and it's an area of focus the intent isn't for them to solve the problem or challenge but to help you kind of kind of on your way so that's a super good um idea and emily what do you have another idea which is i've seen many success stories with people posting on facebook find a group that is that is from that locality that does genealogy just do a keyword search you may find a group that you can join and and the members are so gracious they they often are just gracious and and they love to help people and so you post an image saying i can't read this and someone will pipe in and say i think it's this yes just a way that people give back and help one another so yes and like like you talked about at the beginning this this community is very generous um and we've got nelson who's got a great idea for recording stories he picks one sunday every month and he records something and it's like a photojournal of his life so make it doable right like that's that's a great idea um okay i'm gonna see if we have any other really great questions oh this is so great to see conversation happening happening in here um linda from australia has lots of photos and records and wants to put a book together any recommendations on the best programs to use and ideas on format so before i'm gonna like maybe emily answer that before i do everybody come to roots tech come to roots tech next february it's free it's virtual and we're gonna have a ton of classes that really dive into lots of things like this topic not only records and research in areas but also scanning photos and digitizing things so like please join us it's gonna be like one big love happy family fest but emily will you answer that question like what would you recommend what would i recommend i don't wanna you know be a commercial for someone else but they're a lot of good there are a lot of good options of places um that that offer photo books um ask around what did you do if this were you what would you do i'd have my sister do it okay what would she do so there's i i can't remember the guidelines about using other other companies names i'll just say it it's fine shutterfly snapfish um photos yeah places that are really easy on lots of different options okay okay so super good suggestion emily and and i would say i think it was linda from australia come to roots tech and take some classes if you want to kind of drill down did you have something to add to that jim no no when when we did it um like my my mom did one of my grandfather it was all done in a word processor and it was a labor of love with the emphasis on labor yes yes in fact i want to say something about that because my parents also have done that and we have i have a lot of really rich resources that my parents have given us of of scanning and putting books together they spend a lot of time using using word no no word perfect word perfect um using it and having it printed but i will tell you that it doesn't matter so much which format because over time the format and the styles will change have you ever looked at an old photo album and seen the styles about how they chose to put the pictures in the photo album they change so i think focus less i would say don't crop a lot because i love it like jim you found that picture that has the background of the place they lived sometimes they would crop those things out i i one of my favorite pictures is my um a picture of my grandfather in the in the farm kitchen it's you know early 1900s and i love that picture because it shows what their kitchen looked like back in that day and i can't pull it up here quickly or i would but it's just the best so i would say don't crop a lot or or upload your originals to family search and then do a cropped version for for your coffee table or whatever so that you can show people but i i love sharing those kind of um those books my sister does a really good job with this and she's kind of our family guru my sister charlotte so oh charlotte we all need a charlotte in our lives to help with this yes um and miriam we're excited looking forward to seeing you at roots tech as well so make sure that you um say hi and um i think the other thing is someone is having a question this is this is one that is um how do you find hard to find people so i don't have context for that but um i think jim talked about when checking the home page and your logged in home page and you see photos people have added this is the same we had tai davies on last week and ian james talking about records new records are made available all the time so what would you what advice would you give to someone who's struggling to find somebody without knowing anything about where this person well is hard and their name is john smith as well right yes yes or yes yeah well you so you especially for western um family history like we we do you want to start with what you already know and uh sometimes you can go and you can you know find uh if you can get to a location you can start especially in census records start looking at neighbors and things like that you can pick up because people didn't travel very far if you go back far enough in time we learned about that in italy like they didn't they've lived there in the same places for like hundreds of years so yeah i had an experience with one of my lines um i got back to this uh morengo county alabama and i could not find the mother of a woman who died between the census before the 1850 census so there was no name in the previous census um but i just went we knew her last name was shoemaker and guess what george shoemaker was their next-door neighbor and i could then do some research and uh cousin my cousin jeff lowery actually found the connection and we had her first name wrong through family lore for generations because she died when either in childbirth or when the baby was like one years old and so we we never had that so it could be tricky but census records birth records marriage records any records that have a relationship if you can fill in what you know and then you can go to the records that actually include family relationships that's the easiest way to extend what you know about your family i love that and i would had too we have a lot of partners family search has a lot of great partners who have people who are also searching and if you search their sites as well um you might find something that that they're adding records as are we and there are a lot of places you can look for um look for those names and and you know take advantage of the online consultations at the library this could be another opportunity um and jim you have a thought oh i have a thought so yes what is it talk to us i received the greatest gift i've received in a long time one of our library consultants her name is kara jones [Music] she was talking about the value of the 1812 the war of 1812 pension files and she in a meeting she surprised me and talked about my ancestor hannah mcfarland and uh this pension record and it had everything in it and when when so it had where they were married the year they were married it had her birth date his birth date um information that again is hard to find when you're you know looking at somebody who was born in this late 1700s and i knew a little bit um but that gift again when you help somebody um i mean the gratitude i felt yesterday from that one record that she was able to find and this was on fold three where they have the the war of 1812 pension records available for free um that gave me so much information so surround yourself with people who who can help you yes yes well and that's like you have both mentioned that is what this family history industry is and does is we want to help each other we've talked about facebook groups online consultation the wiki you know our facebook pages you know talking to people neighbors friends just you know maybe we should give them your email emily and jim and they can reach you directly no we won't do that um okay you guys as we are wrapping up um i think to i think there's a couple of things we want to do we want to talk you know is there emily i just think in the 26 years that you've been at the family history department and you talked about the change from microfilm right is that like what has it been like to be a part of helping people find out who they are for 26 years well i really love helping people connect i love seeing like i said earlier those little sparks of light whether um where someone connects with either an ancestor or with another person that's um i love that and i i hope more people can do that in fact i know we can and that's why ritz tech connect is called where it's tech connect our whole goal is to make those foster those connections with people and help us understand how we really are connected um it makes a big difference in your life when you realize that you are connected and you are connected to a family and you're connected to others and that the people around you are not random strangers on the internet they they're your cousins and you're connected and you have that bond of love and yes there might be some difficult things in your family history but trumping all of that is a bond of love that you have that you can you can um share with them and i i love that you mentioned you know the challenging pieces in family history many of us have that and i have found that when i read about the hardships it it is it is very um sort of healing and restorative to me personally especially when it's a hardship i've experienced and i did this this last weekend and um i just someone uploaded like a 10 page typed out you know um story that was written by my second or third great grandmother's sister and um and oh my goodness reading about her the strengths that she gained from the hardships it was like it was a gift so somebody recorded that somebody uploaded it and then i found it so what treasures are awaiting everyone right like your own story is going to be a treasure to someone don't forget that but you can find treasures today and then when you find them like emily and jim share them you know put them on facebook and let everyone also feel connected i think that's a wonderful thing and jim as your whole professional sort of career you've worked in the space how has that changed who you are or really helped form sort of your outlook on people well it's really interesting you recognize again the commonality that we have is we're all seeking meaning we're seeking meaningful connections with each other we're seeking to understand where we belong and that i think is one of the biggest gifts of family history is to better understand who you are and why you inherited what you did and i'm not talking about blue eyes you know brown hair i'm talking about the situations that we were born into um understanding why our parents did what they did and the experiences that they had that formed them um you know historically you know how we got to where we are so that that to me has been and everybody wants that um there's nobody and it's i've been listening to people who write these great autobiographies especially when they've been displaced um you know the immigrant story is one that is a recurring and everybody that i've heard talk about why they did it they did it because they got to a point where they felt a deep desire to understand where they came from and why they they got to where they were i i just think that is and when somebody wants that um it's a shared passion and it's a real passion that people feel it's a love that they have for understanding so i i love that from both of you and i think you know as we wrap up let's extend another invitation to um help those that may not know the stories that you found just look for stories and then share those but also remember that your story is so important and we're going to be talking more about story here on our live streaming and we have some really really fun exciting guests coming up so please continue to join us weekly here on family search facebook and it's just a real pleasure to have conversations with these amazing radiant the radiant emily and the fantastic jim he is my boss so i could say more stuff but um okay is there anything else that either of you two want to add before we say goodbye can can i just add one little thing um it it is the importance of capturing and and sharing and it's never too late right even if somebody's passed on you can share your memory of them yes um and i shared this uh last week in a meeting that we had but my mom when i was growing up my favorite book to hear was the little engine that could and before she passed away um i got her reading that it's now on family search where my nieces have said jim uncle jim where is that again i want to listen to it my son who's six was born a year after my mom passed away and he has been able to listen to his grandmother reading to him the little engine that could at night when he goes to bed and it's it's this isn't a guilt trip but it's that multi-generational legacy of love that we can feel if we're in the moment and we're thinking you know what this is something that i'd really like to share so and our story is going to have that same meaning at some point to our children yes absolutely i love that and i love thinking about matthew listening listening to that like i don't i don't know i don't know your mom but you know obviously what she did as a mom was awesome because look at what you're doing today um and an invitation is extended to everyone to do this and and share it on family search and you can leave it you know for your posterity or it can be something that you'll treasure and cherish forever um emily do you have anything final to add just find ways to share that um that love just find one little thing to do it doesn't have to be a big thing yes one photo one story and share it with love yes and and with every photo or every story it's a it's a connection and you talked about a light and i think that i welcome that and i i need more light so thank you everyone we will see you next week and we so appreciate you joining us we love hearing from you we love reading your stories we love answering your questions and we can't wait to hang out with you at roots tech connect so thank you everybody

Channel: FamilySearch

Views: 1,090

Rating: 5 out of 5

Keywords:

Id: epCr8KwIsdY

Length: 50min 49sec (3049 seconds)

Published: Wed Nov 04 2020