Researching Female Ancestors (Courtney Connolly, Beth Taylor, and Miya Jensen Live)

first of all can i say thank you to youtube for coming and i'm just super excited about the topic that we're going to talk about today and so before we get into the topic you both just introduce yourself briefly in kind of what you do at family search courtney do you wanna you wanna yeah i'm so excited to be here so i'm courtney connolly i oversee our product marketing here at family search which means that our team's in charge of letting you know when new updates come out so letting our patrons know when there's a new experience that's been released or something's been updated so that's what our team does we oversee that and yeah i'm excited to be here and talk about my female ancestors the amazing woman in my ancestry yes we're so glad and courtney where are you quarantining i'm in sugarhouse utah in my cute little neighborhood with all my awesome neighbors yeah great area yes and courtney and i are quarantined family so we are we're hanging out okay back will you introduce yourself yeah hi my name is beth taylor and i work as a us canada research specialist at the family history library so i work downtown salt lake city utah i'm there if you come in the building and have a research question or right now we're doing a lot of online virtual consultations so i'm reaching out and connecting with people and helping them solve their research problems oh and where where are you quarantining i'm in i'm located in west jordan utah okay that's right okay and me you made it i respect it sorry i was like i was trying to get something ready but yeah i'm here we're and we're live so we're all just hanging out yay hi everybody will you just um just tell everyone a little bit about yourself and what you do at um family search sure hi everybody i'm mia so i was born and raised in hawaii in hawaii um best place on earth and i so i work at the research right now and i research pacific island records and specifically oral genealogies so i'm mainly learning about the record and um compiling reports about the nature of oral genealogies and hopefully we have um just a better way of capturing all genealogies at family search and basically we all want to help out the specific islands and all the people there so i'm so happy to be a family search and i'm happy to be here with you wendy and everybody else too we're thrilled and there's just something uh your volume is a little um not crisp and i don't know if anyone is catching up on that so i don't know if there's something you can do but but okay i mean it'll work it'll work um we are just abs i'm just gonna play on here and see if there's anything i can do nope i don't think so so it's it's on your end sorry i think it's no no it's okay i can hear you but it's i'm gonna quit let's try that yeah put headphones on okay um so today is super exciting because first of all i get to hang out with these fabulous colleagues and and everyone here who's joining us and we want to jump right into understanding how to research and learn more about our female ancestors and so before we do that it's kind of a big day today and um well obviously because we're all here together so that's a big deal um our family search family we just want to say let us know where you're joining from and we're happy you're here and um beth could you tell us that this is our historian so can you tell us a little bit about what's happening or what happened in history on today so today is believe is called women's equality day um 100 years ago today the 19th amendment was officially added to the united states constitution the 19th amendment gives women the right to vote so there had been a few states that had given women the right to vote prior to that time period but with that that final addition all women were um allowed to to vote for the president in 1920 so it's kind of a awesome day we're celebrating 100 years of guaranteeing women that right and it like started females voting right because um yeah definitely a journey yeah yeah and so that i think is just appropriate that we are here um to talk about you know understanding our female ancestors but why is it hard harder sometimes to research female ancestors who wants to take that one and like mia we just saw your is that your son that just walked by that was awesome i love it we're real we're living real lives you guys like we have lots of roles right that's great um but yeah so so why is it difficult to find your female ancestors who wants to take that one courtney do you want to take that one sure they just weren't recorded as much as the men were i was looking at some research trying to find one of my ancestors and even her obituary talked more about what her husband did than what she did it just wasn't as common for women's history to be as recorded and you think about like who's the head of the household and who had those rights back in the day and they weren't as recorded as often as the men sadly yeah yeah i think another big thing that makes it difficult to find women is just that at least in western european culture women take on their husband's name so even finding their maiden name and then trying to find their parents can be even more difficult because they don't show up in the records and you they don't have the name to get us into more records yeah mia what have you found in um your experience trying to research and understand like genealogy and fema and find female ancestors right so um can you hear me clearly yes okay okay good okay so okay for me when it comes to researching my female ancestors especially on my polynesian side um this is great it's so cute i love it okay thank you everybody appreciated it so um for for me i've noticed that yeah sometimes it's like everyone else is saying it can be difficult to find your female ancestors i think more um as we have as i have looked at recent time periods so more so like 1854 to present day um that's where even in written records in hawaii and other places it's been difficult to find female ancestors because like um beth was saying and even courtney that um the females were taken under their husband's names or they just weren't as viewed as important as their husbands or as the men in society um and yeah so that's more of like an ancient phenomenon it was a little different in um ancient yeah it's more of a modern phenomenon sorry but in ancient times it was a little different um mia speaking of names you know because your captive audience here yes what your name is and a little bit about the significance of it because i think that's a great story oh thank you sure i'd love to so my first name is miyamoto it's all one name and um it's actually my great great grandmother's last name on my japanese side and my dad saw that name when my mom was pregnant with me he saw my second great grandmother's name taka miyamoto on my mom's pedigree chart and he was like i think if we if you're pregnant with a girl we need to name her miyamoto and of course everybody thought that was just so bizarre because that's a last name it's not a first name at all and um but now that you know it's been 27 years since then i'm i'm so grateful my dad did name me miyamoto because that's so fitting for what i do as a genealogist and um i and i think too that's empowering for me especially being named after such a wonderful woman in my family history so um yeah that's my first name and then loretta is my middle name i'm named after my dad's sister so again the celebration of women in my family is all inherent in my name is that wonderful i just love it thank you yeah i love that and i love how it's a combination of some of your backgrounds and cultures and um i think that you have a fascinating story so i can't wait to dive in and we've got so many people joining and a lot of people alert we've got we've got someone from tahiti no yay hello welcome australia and all the states that are mentioning where you're from we're so happy to have you here and so we kind of just briefly talked about why it can be difficult to find um female ancestors but i think we want to go into how can we help people right like how can we help them find and there's going to be a couple of different perspectives and we'd love to include every perspective but we've got the western european and then me is here to represent just a broader scope of you know opportunities for us to improve records access and so thank you for representing that and courtney's here as someone who's really enjoyed the opportunity to learn more about her ancestor her female ancestors and she has some cool stories to share so those of you that are watching we'd love to hear from you and your stories and if you have questions we will have time to take some at the end um that's area of expertise is u.s and canada right yeah and media is the rest of the world yes yeah i'm just here asking questions so no excuses other than just having a conversation but um okay i think let's start with you beth and then we'll go to mia but how how do you find female ancestors it can be tough um you know in the united states especially where i do most of my research we kind of break things into a pre-1850 post 1850 split because in the 1850 census we started getting everybody's name so post 1850 there's a lot of record census records um vital records start becoming more common in the united states um uh one of my favorite sets of records though happen for women especially our newspapers i feel like newspapers especially as you know you get a little bit later in the 19th century into the 20th century there's a lot of reporting of we kind of call it society news but it's not you know big society it's just like so and so through a party yesterday and invited the following eight people and then it names them all these are the couples that showed up i've seen listings of they had a fish game and so-and-so won all of the prizes and here's the prizes you get a lot of little details about what's going on in the community and that includes women so for the first time you know women's you know what women were involved in and the the you even get what societies they belong to like the women's aid society or the red cross they might have little gatherings or fundraiser events and these don't have to be big or people with a lot of money they just happen to be the members of the community so these sometimes we call them gossip columns too these little gossip columns the the things that happening in the neighborhoods for post 1850 research is finding out about women that's where you can find those kind of the meat of the story so they're in a lot of the other records post 1850 but kind of that's that's the big thing but if you move back to before 1850 that's where it gets a little bit tougher because newspapers in that time period are mostly just doing national news or you know whatever they want to talk about a lot of the newspapers have um you know just just less information you don't even get good opportunities in that time period so you know that's when we we start looking at things probably court records are where you're going to find women the most so um i love laurel thatcher ulrich famously said uh well-behaved women seldom make history um that's the thing to remember is that the women who are going to be more named and discussed are the ones who are not following the rules in the social moorings but at the same time there's a couple other things to keep in mind um one of the big things in the united states is something called the dower right which not a lot of people are familiar with the dowel right but the dower right guarantees women one third of their husband's property upon his decease or what they call a life interest meaning when she passed away it went back to his kids but she still it gave her something to live on land to live on or property well after her husband died but because of the dow right you'll see women a lot in probate records probates settling a state so so-and-so died what happens to their property you get women named there a lot both the wives and spouses as well as the children um and then the other big places in land records because because of the dower right women though they didn't own their husbands land they had a vested interest in their husband's land and so they had to sign away their right to the land when the husband sold the property so in the land records when a man sells property they have to list out and say oftentimes you'll see little notes that say that his wife was taken separate and apart and approved the sale of land so um they they are named a lot in land records we don't of course get married maiden names there but we do at least get that first name and you know something to start with so when you're looking for 1850 you really do want to start looking at court records courts the types of records that ended up being recorded in the courts wow okay so this is why it can be a challenge and where's your favorite place to look for the newspaper gossip column variety pieces what's a good resource there there's a lot of good online resources there's a couple subscription so you'd have to pay for websites newspapers.com is is huge um the family history library does have a subscription to it so when we open again you can come down and take a look uh genealogy bank has a lot there's another one called newspaper archive or if you're just going for free if you're in the united states um go to chronicling america which is uncommitted by chronicling america it's hosted by the library of congress so the website's chronicling america.loc.gov or you can just google chronicling american you'll get there but they've put a lot of free newspapers online so those are a couple good resources to get started okay do you have any like crazy things that you found in newspaper records i'm sure that you could tell us or share with us um i'm trying to think just not as much for my female ancestors i always see you know when people die they'll there's always these great obituaries with lots of fun details um the thing about my great grandmother is looking at her stuff and it it detailed how every single week she opened every month she opened her home up for a full day women's aid society meeting and that was kind of fun or um actually when my great-grandparents got married somebody wrote them a poem and published it in the local newspaper so it's kind of a fun little history there and they actually describe her outfit and the flowers she carried and oh and it was a very small wedding just held at the postmaster's house but it still got a nice little write-up in the gossip collins of the newspaper oh i love that i love that thank you and um if you have questions for us let us know we're here talking about um help finding our female ancestors and and mia uh we just heard beth kind of talk about the western europe and the us and canada and some tips for looking there mia it's your turn like help us out what can we do and then we'll go to courtney who's gonna share some fun stories of female ancestors okay yay okay beth wonderful job i loved everything you talked about and i especially was getting giddy about newspapers.com and i just love researching newspapers so thank you so much for sharing all that information okay um so i right so um thank you wendy yes so i i love researching the females in my family history but especially in oceania and polynesia and that's what i'm mainly going to talk about today so i wanted to highlight that originally polynesian and oceania societies were orally based so that means things and information were passed down word of mouth and passed on generation after generation and when it comes to looking at oral genealogy specifically they were shared in what's called descendancy order so they would start as far back as possible and then they would work their way forward to the present and so and what's also great too is that genealogies they serve more so as a function of society than anything else so instead of genealogy being kind of like a hobby which a lot of us have experienced here in the west which is wonderful that's how i got into family history but um in oceania societies they were more of a function so they determined you know your organized territorial organizations so where the boundaries were in a land who got to own what land inheritance marriage social control feud support ritual observance so it determined basically everything in your life and um surnames and oral genealogies are a modern phenomenon back in the day um our ancestors their names they were only given one name and that name could change over time and so it's important to know when you're researching your female ancestors or any of your oceania ancestors to know and try to find all the names that this individual was known by um and and those names changed over time based off of who you got married to or a significant event you were a part of in your life so just taking the time to find out all those names is really important but more importantly it should be noted too especially with oral genealogy is that they are sacred because of all the functions they serve they were very much guarded and they still are today so in terms of what's the cultural perspective then in oral genealogies for our female ancestors it's that the women were celebrated they were loved because they were powerful they were strong they're viewed as mythical um beings as one not like goddesses and gods and they were loved and revered and listed in chants and legends and also when foreigners came to oceania they listed the women in their historical records and um it should be noted too that they were heavily involved in politics and leadership and in war so there's strong evidence too that before colonization happened in oceania that these societies were heavily matriarchal so they they again they love their women and they celebrated them they were revered and honored you know um and so sometimes those roles were kind of misunderstood when foreigners came about so for example when captain james cook came to hawaii him and his crew noticed that the women didn't cook and we know out here in the west that it's more traditional that the women are in the kitchen cooking and taking care of their children but they didn't see that in um in the pacific and in hawaii specifically and so they were they noted that the women seemed almost lazy because they didn't cook but that's their cultural perspective right and so as you research your female ancestors take the time to understand their perspective where they were coming from outside of what others other cultures have brought forth and put upon them right um and when you are trying to find them again you're probably like so what about finding them make sure you talk to your family they will be your greatest source in finding your female ancestors and also too kind of like what's already been said i think it's really wise and good for you to be curious about why are my female ancestors missing in my family history ask yourself that question and ask your family that and sometimes the answers may not be what you want to hear sometimes they are well she died in childbirth that's why she doesn't show up in a lot of records that we have today or she might have been abusive and so she our family kind of wrote her out of the narrative maybe she went against the family and the culture so she was banned from the family so being curious about that will hopefully help you to find the answers that you're looking for so just ask yourself that why are they not here and were they written out on purpose and if so what happened what caused that and i think that applies to everybody not just oceania culture right so just take the time to ask those kind of questions and then um realize too in oral genealogies this might seem pretty progressive but i think what would be helpful is taking the oral genealogies that you do have and then comparing them to other oral genealogies to see what information you both have and be able to um compile that information to help you and that other individual and your families and in doing so you can probably con you can make a bigger picture and paint a bigger scope of who your female ancestors were and with that too use written records to support your um your initiative and finding your female ancestors so those are just a few tips that i have and hopefully that'll help you if you have questions feel free to ask is there um like there's some wiki pages or some places that you would recommend people um research in that area as a as a reference is there sure yes there are so i would recommend going to family search fam uh the family search wiki pages they do have um we do have a few pages up on oral genealogies in the pacific as well as collections that we do have available as well so that would probably be my go-to source for reference and for help and mia i'm so grateful that you're here to um just be a voice and a perspective and i every time i talk with you i i learn more and one other thing you said when we were preparing for this which i thought was really interesting and you mentioned the descendant view you that the names were more important than the dates yes exactly and then challenging two right yes exactly and i'm glad you brought that up wendy because um the way oceania ancient oceania reckoned with time and space and just their universe in general is very very different from western perspective whereas here in the west we we do care a lot about okay tell me the specific day and month and year that this individual was born or when they were married and the places i need to know all this information and which is fine there's nothing wrong with that but then when we go back to our indigenous culture in oceania that wasn't the case and i think what would be helpful is if all of us took a step back and thought why why was that not a thing and it was because the stories of the ancestors were more important so their meat their what made them who they were was more important than a specific date and a time and when you hear stories even in mythology and polynesian cultures you'll hear them say in the time of maui in the time of kanaloa and the time of this specific ancestor that's how they that's how they showed the kid it's around this specific you know capture in time where this event or this story took place and again with this note on time and space when it came to understanding the difference between the paths and the future the past was behind or no in western culture we think the past is behind us right as we move forward into the future but when it comes to oceania we believe that the past is in front of us and then the future is behind us so just real quick to explain that perspective i know isn't that different and it took me a while to grasp this but not again sure yes so the feature is behind us and the passes in front of us and the reason behind that is that when um something has already happened we can see it clearly so it's imperfect view in front of us but the future is something that we can't understand or clearly see so if that's the case then it must be behind us because i can't see what's behind me unless i turn around right and so as we move forward into the past as we embrace and learn from our ancestors who are in front of us they are telling us what we can't see they're helping us to prepare for what is coming in front of us the future is behind us and as we listen to the past as we maybe not so much get caught up in what happened but more so learn from what happened and listen to the advice and the guidance and the wisdom of our ancestors they will help us to navigate what is coming and what we cannot see naturally and so isn't that powerful beautiful and that great so and then when it comes to the present so what about the present right and what i've learned is that we are the living embodiment of all of our ancestors in the present form so all of them are in us but they are also in front of us to guide us to show us the way and so even if you don't tighten this back to your female ancestors even if you can't find their stories even if you can't find a record about them just know that they are already within you and they are showing you the way even if you don't realize it and this talk to you of your hearts turning to your ancestors that we share a lot here at family search and in other organizations as well i would argue that oceania and a lot of other indigenous cultures were already there their hearts were already turned to each other and now it's our job in just family history in general and no matter what background you come from to remember that your heart is already there and almost have like an awakening moment where you're like oh they're here in front of me and they're here to guide me wherever i go in my life so oh i love that oh mia and i think let's jump into sharing some female ancestor stories that have basically done what mia just so beautifully described and courtney you have will you share with us um how like if one of your female ancestors has impacted you or learning about them and screen share show us some pictures and then we'll go to beth with the same question and then mia and you guys this is great we've got a very captive audience and i have to give robert raymond a shout out because he's adding links in the chat so thank you robert keep keep doing okay courtney yeah thank you this is so beautiful i'm so fascinated by everything that's been said um and it's true all the stories i've learned from my family are through newspapers and oral histories that have been passed down so i have this one ancestor that is perfect i've been thinking about her a lot today as we think about this anniversary today the beginning of women receiving the right to vote my this ancestor her name is ella lorraine bishop drury and i'll show you a picture in a second um she graduated from one of the first women's colleges west of the rockies called mills college in california and she was a newspaper writer she wrote for the oakland um oakland newspaper in the san francisco chronicle um she and i found out from her oral history that she's actually an early advocate of women's suffrage and as someone who loves talking about like empowering women i love studying that talking about it um i try to do what i can to empower women i was so empowered by her example to hear that that was important to her that she wanted to help other women and empower them so i will show you a picture of her she is so cool i love her so okay let's see here she is so this is ella lorraine bishop jury and here is the college that she went to called mills college in oakland where the first graduate graduates of this women's college and yeah so she has been such a good example to me i love education i love learning everything i can and to learn about her recently i only found out about her in the last year it was one of those family history miracles that i think a lot of our audience can relate to or praise for or hopes for um someone in my family tree on family search on the family tree reached out a distant relative and she's a direct second grade second great grandmother yeah and someone reached out that was doing research on this line a distant relative and found this information about her and asked if i wanted a copy and of course i did i was so excited i'm so so excited to learn about these stories that came through newspaper articles and came through oral histories of my past down and i i truly believe we all have these amazing stories in our tree and it's just the we have to find them and then be inspired and empowered by them so i think about her and her drive independence and her love for education and i hope that part of that is a need i feel like it is and i think maybe that's why that's so important to me but that's one example i have this other example i don't have a picture to show but her name is susanna vieder and she came from england to america all by herself and in her oral history talks about how her family thought she was crazy they're like what are you doing why are you going by yourself but she just really wanted to feel like she should and she became a doctor in nevada and it talks about how she wrote on her horse across nevada for doctor visits and she talked about she's very social and she had all these little social gatherings at her house with music and friends and i loved her i loved learning about her independence her adventurous spirit and how she was social and loved being with other people so i just think that these stories of our ancestors can really inspire us we can read we can connect with those and feel like oh they get me like and yeah they're really empowering really inspiring to learn about those awesome thank you courtney that was awesome beth before before you tell your story we have so many questions and there's and i don't know if this is going to be an easy one for you to answer but i just i want to bring this question up and then and then we'll go right to your ear janice is asking she has a great grandmother that was lost on the trail of tears um and she's wondering is there any recommendations for research you know so if you think about all the you know the frontiering and the homesteading and as people are you know moving from parts of you know is there is what recommendations do you have for her you know the trail of tears is such a tough situation um for those who don't know it's when andrew jackson ordered all of the native americans east of the mississippi to be sent to oklahoma pretty much so i'm sure there was a lot of death but unfortunately i don't believe that there's much in the way of recording that unless the tribe itself made you know made notes but since they were kind of being forced out of their own lands i don't know how much time they had to sit down and make notes about right about anything even then the um the records that we have those who survived are pretty sparse too and again it's up to the tribes to keep track of that because by that point at that point oklahoma wasn't the united states i mean it was territory but it was we're sending you out off to you know settle somewhere else because we don't want you in our on our space so i'm guessing that you know women people who are lost on the trail of tears even people who went on the trial of tears a lot of them aren't recorded so it is one of those time periods it's some it's it's a tough time period to research so i don't know that there's a lot of recommendations to make at this point no i i think acknowledging it is is really valuable and important so thank you we have so many questions so but beth i want you to share a story of female ancestors that have impacted you um yeah i'm excited okay um if it's okay i was just gonna share a picture of her because it's always fun to see you love pictures you're actually looking at except for just a second i'm not sure why my screen decided to change the thing about doing live is things always change while you're not looking uh so this is actually my second great grandmother um and i've done a lot of research on her she's i think she has kind of an interesting life story i think most women do but you have to kind of dig into the records to learn who they were um her name is elma ann griest and elma's kind of an unusual name but there's a um but it comes actually from her background she was a quaker so she belonged to the society of friends or what we more commonly call quakers um quakers were a large group in pennsylvania early on um and then they kind of spread west from there so elma uh was born in 1833 in indiana um she was raised on a very rural very backwards area her parents had just barely bought the property and they were the first owners so of course step one was to clear the land so that kind of time period um she was i'm guessing she was pretty active in the quakers until i don't know she's around 25 26 when she got in trouble with the quakers the quakers have a pretty strict set of rules and if you don't if you don't follow their code then you can get disowned as the term they use or kind of kicked out it's not it's not a i mean you can still attend church if you're disowned but you're no longer on the membership roles so when she was about 25 um her name got brought to them what they call a meeting which is their you know their community the church community um because she was she had attended a marriage outside the faith which could get you in trouble and she was not being plain in dress and a dress so i guess somehow her clothing had gotten a little too decorative and quakers did not like buttons and you know frills and lace they were very simple people um and i'm not sure what they meant by a dress so somehow the way she was talking to people i guess was not quite in the faith um but they what they the quakers tend to do is they send a couple people out and they say um you know are you going to acknowledge your misbehavior and ship you know shape up pretty much or are we going to disown you and they went out to meet with her and she wasn't there and they did this every month for about a year they they kept looking for her and i find that she's actually off in ohio at the time where she met my second great grandfather so she comes back to indiana they decide to disown her they say okay she's like i'm not gonna i'm not gonna change my ways and then my second great grandfather joined her and they got married wow so i think i kind of wonder you know she seems a little bit stubborn she married a guy a couple years younger than her which is a little unusual he was three years younger than her she only had one kid which is again unusual for the time period and i think she might have had a lot of health issues as i read some of the records but um the family settled in ohio and then moved to indiana and then kansas and eventually settled in southern california which is where she died in 1901 but i kind of think she's probably pretty strong independent woman even when they traveled out to california they traveled by rail there was the southern line out to southern california so there had been the transcontinental railroad in 1869 and then they added a couple of additional lines and they um traveled in 1887 but my great they didn't travel together her husband and her didn't go at the same time he went and then she followed a couple weeks later and it was a three to four day trip and it didn't seem to be an issue for her that she just you know that she was gonna do things separately she you know her husband was there for support but i just feel like there was a lot of independence in her so um she ran a boarding house in ohio and then when she got to california my second great grandfather never bought land but she did so all the land records are under her name and i don't really know she was running a boarding house or she was i think my second great grandfather went bankrupt and he was a little worried about creditors so they just put everything in her name but so she kind of ran things i think she was she was a strong independent woman so somebody i definitely um appreciate one of the fun things little tidbits though was because she was a quaker so i do have some of her letters and the quakers all spoke in the form of the less formal d and thou so all of her letters will say i hope thee will do this and that will do this so it's kind of a fun um you know a different way of speaking than what we're we're used to so i think she was a kind of a fascinating woman yes that is you you have a relative you got kicked out of something interestingly enough she came back i find records of her being reintroduced in the church and when she died her picture is published in the quaker journal so there is evidence of that but yeah and um we've got some great conversations happening um people are recommending wills or looking um at the name of male siblings to find information about females and all of these great tips so that's one of the things that's so fantastic about the opportunity that we have to come together and talk with each other and our our family search global viewers we appreciate you being here and mia we would love to hear from you about a female ancestor story that is particularly motivating um i can't wait to hear it yes of course thank you i'm gonna go ahead and share my screen as well okay hopefully that works love seeing the pictures of your your um families i think it's just you know wonderful to get an understanding so thank you okay so i'm sharing this picture because this is who i'm named after my great great grandmother taka miyamoto i just this is one of the this is the only clear picture that i have of her and i just sometimes i just love looking at this picture i'm like she is so beautiful and i love her dress how she's dressed up and whatnot and traditional japanese clothing and you know even though i'm i i know i don't look japanese and that's totally fine but like i i do have that answer she within me and i'm named after her and i'm so proud of that and as i've done more research on her and her life um i've come to find that she left japan with her first husband and they had a little boy and they moved to hawaii to koi island and that's where he worked on the sugar plantation farms there and she helped to raise their son and then he her husband her fur and passed away and then she remarried uh this man named sosa budo and so that's who i am a descendant from from this marriage and um as i was looking at some of the children in her family i found some death certificates and i found that she had a stillborn at the beginning of the year and then a few months later she had she gave birth to two stillborns and my heart i know this is not like the most uplifting story but like this just made my heart hurt so much because this was just one example of i'm sure many of the other struggles she had growing up in hawaii being away from home and then to lose three children in one year i mean i get emotional talking about it because that's just so heartbreaking but this is a realistic problem and um trial that a lot of women all over the world go through where they may feel separated from their homeland by choice or by force or some of them have experienced some issues with fertility and so and with wanting to have more children and i'm sure this was um i don't have a journal or anything of what she went through but um i would assume through just my own human experience that this was a heartbreaking time for her and her family but you know she was resilient and i am born of resilience because of her and because of all the other many women in my family um she's just one wonderful ancestor and the second one that i wanted to share is um this woman named kamaka opio pio nui she is actually um i would say pretty well known in the hawaiian um diaspora here in utah and um namely because she so she joined the church of jesus christ of latter-day saints in hawaii back when the church was first formed so way early in the days and her and her husband joined the church together and they left they wanted to leave oahu island to come to utah to settle with the saints there and to also participate in temple work but before they had the chance to do that her husband passed away and so she ended up making that trek to all the way from oahu she came on by boat landed in san francisco and she came by buggy across the plains and came all the way to utah um she reunited with one of her daughters here and um there was a hawaiian polynesian settlement created out in skull valley utah so it's about 70 80 miles away from salt lake and that's where a large group of islanders made their home their new home and they called it yosepa which means joseph in hawaiian and it was that place was named after joseph s smith who was a prophet of the church at that time and he was beloved amongst the hawaiian people because he was a young missionary there and so but with kamako piopio she was the first one to pass away at yoseph colony she died of leprosy and so um she passed away there and she was buried at the colony it's now a ghost town if you look it up you can see that um yeah no one lives there anymore but it used to be named the most beautiful place in utah um now it's just uh like i said it's a ghost town as a desert but if you go there you can see that my family actually oh whoops that's the reverse side they created a monument for her and of her life and experiences so they have some of this vital information here of her birth her baptism endowment and her death and so i love this story of her and who she was because when i came up here to utah to go to school um from hawaii that first winter was rough and i've never seen snow until i came up here to utah right and at first was magical and then it became like treacherous because it was so cold but i thought about her and i thought about all the other hawaiians and polynesians who first came to utah and what that first winter for them must have been like and how hard that was and again as i reflected on that experience when i was just a young college freshman here at byu it gave me so much more comfort knowing that i wasn't the first to come here and to live through a harsh what i thought was really harsh a harsh winter um and and just again knowing that i've been born of this resilience of someone who is willing to cross an entire ocean literally and come across to a new land a new place for herself and for discovery as well as for um unity and camaraderie with her faith i mean it's just incredible right like this these women are just amazing so those are just two stories of the many that i know and have of my wonderful female ancestors will you pronounce the name of this one that you just shared will you tell us how to say your name sure kamaka o p-o-p-o i love that yeah that is beautiful okay if you want to stop sharing you guys we are nearing the end and i think that i think it's important to note um we at family search we have this opportunity to work with a lot of amazing people and we have this you know brotherhood and sisterhood and um i've appreciated learning about your ancestors and as i've been watching the comments we have some of our our colleagues um rachel and sarah and angelica and yuvia and amy and lauren and i hope i'm not forgiving anybody and i just think like it's just a wonderful opportunity when you share these stories of it doesn't have to be just female but stories of connection and hardship it connects us together as a family and we get to experience that at family search and um i would encourage everyone who's watching it doesn't have to be a female ancestor it can just be any story that you have found strength from share it with somebody send a text message send a photo you know record yourself talking about them just like these three women just did because i find it very edifying and connecting and they all everyone's experienced hardship right and so i just want to like give a virtual hug to the amazing um friendships and colleagues and people that we get to work with every day and as you guys bravely shared these stories i think it's just a beautiful tribute to as mia helped us understand not just what came behind but what's in front and really i think we're surrounded you know i loved your description and and i just love that we get to share this um together and it's like we have this sisterhood so everyone is you know we're here for each other as we wrap up i would love for you to each kind of share a message and it can be a story or it can be just encouragement or it can be a last-minute tip but as we wrap up this i would say commemorative live stream with you three ladies what sort of final message would you like to leave and i'll start with courtney because you're right there in the corner i remembered i forgot to share an important aspect of the story about my ancestor ella lorraine bishop fury beth speaking of our awesome family search family all these people we get to work with and interact with every day beth actually found my ancestor in the voting registration she sent it to me last night and i was so excited so she found ella she registered your vote as soon as she was able to and then it shows that she voted every time after that um so that was just so inspiring to me that that meant so much to her and it makes me appreciate my rights and opportunities more yeah so i just had to share that little aspect of that story that beth is so awesome and found that for me um so yeah last thoughts i just keep thinking about how grateful i am for the women in my life and my ancestors my amazing female ancestors and the examples they are to me and i'm grateful i have those ancestors i can connect with but i feel like get me um and inspire and empower me and i truly believe we all have those stories in our family tree whether they're the females or the males in our family tree there's these people that um just like mia said like they came before us and i love that analogy that they are the future um that help us guide we can learn from them and the history so yeah i invite everyone to try and find those stories and they can inspire and empower you just like they have for me awesome thank you courtney and um i also wanted to say something else about our family search sisterhood i'm just going to call it that and we remember fantastic brothers too but um every week we have a handful of people who come on and help answer comments as family search and debbie and anne are two that are and christy are here all the time so it's like we're all working together just as courtney described beth helping her like to help each other so join us and be a part of us okay let's go to beth what final message would you like to share um i i think you know working at the family history library we get a lot of people who come in and they're so focused on their mail line fathers to fathers to fathers and that's the only thing they seem to care about and i feel like they've lost something by doing that there's so much value in in learning about the women in our ancestries whether it's your fourth great grandfather's wife or on your father's side or your mother's side or you're following the your matrilineal line there's so much you know that those people did and the hardships they endured and even if there's no records of those people that you can still get to kind of you can research social history and figure out what the world was like in their town or their community i mean all of our ancestors lived through so much um you know we talked about 100 years ago and the you know women that starting on that path to the having the right to vote but there's so much else they live through there's um the wars and there's famines and there's pandemics but there's also good times and and there's so much there there's so many stories there and they do involve our ancestors both the female and the male and so you know reaching out and and connecting with them and figuring out who them they are don't leave those female ancestors behind they are as part of your story as as your male ancestors are i love that don't leave don't leave them behind and mia what would you like to share with us as we wrap up yes okay so um you know as i was in preparation for this live event which i'm so happy to be here for and it's been wonderful to hear stories and share them as well my thoughts did turn to a group of people who may feel like they may might be a little marginalized by these things that we've shared and um i'm specifically talking about um families that have histories of women who may not have been the best role models where women and even men we know that too there's this is not a gender issue it comes from either men or women right where there's imperfections in families and there's trauma and shame and as a disclaimer some of this might be a little triggering to talk about and and i'm not a professional psychologist or anything like that i i bring this up because i research families and no family is perfect every family has its own problems and issues and trauma that comes with it but i want to be a voice to those who may feel like um they struggle with celebrating some of the women and their family i want to let you know that you're not alone that you are at least to me i'm aware that this is a legitimate thing and that you know when it comes to having pride in your family sometimes it's hard to have that with these difficult circumstances so what can you do what should you do when it comes to trauma in your family either that was caused by women or that the women in your family experience i would highly recommend if these are things that are really bothering you and if you're struggling with it and living through it i recommend go seeing a professional go talk to someone who knows what is up with this and who can walk you through this process give you the tools and abilities and skills that you need to cope as well as to heal i think the most important thing in family history is that this is a work of healing and we can't heal if we don't recognize what the problems are or what the trauma is in our families so as we take the time to face them um we can truly be that one chain in the link of our entire ancestry and generations before us and in front of us to stop cycles from continuing and we can be the ones to prevent these things from happening again so i would just voice that as encouragement and as love as well that if you feel like your family history is hard to face and deal with you're not alone and there is so much hope and power that is within you to make the changes necessary to heal and to fix what needs to be fixed so with that i i i that's a work that i'm doing myself too and so again you're not alone and your ancestors they are to their cheering for you to help you fix and make whole what they couldn't do themselves and they look to us for hope they really do and as i grow older too and as i as i have my son i look to him for hope as well because we can't do this work alone we're all meant to do this together just yeah just walking in so much love to everybody around the world who are on this journey we are here to encourage you and we love you and we're so happy and so grateful that you're here with us so thank you thank you for that um recognition because i think it's extremely um you know i think everyone has some some form of that whether it's faced or living family right there's a lot hardship and trauma and so i really really appreciate you bringing that up and sharing um and there's lots of ways to seek help and i like the recommendation for you know professional there's some books out there there's some really great um people who are in that space and i don't think that being quiet is necessarily you know like we don't need to do that right there is and i know for me as we end one of my favorite female ancestors or maybe i shouldn't say female but one of the ones that i really connect with um she came over from denmark and came to utah and um for you know religious reasons and as i've read a lot about her she had multiple marriages in in her life and she even went through a divorce and that's something that you know that's a hardship for her right and sometimes you maybe you'd be like you don't want to talk about that but as someone who's gone through that that's a place to connect right is through the shared hardship and i think of what and i you know what i wish she would have left you know for me um i think that's that's what i can do um for those that come after me as i can say if it's my instagram account if it's my journals i can say you can do this right we can we can rise together so i think finding out the hardship and healing through it not only helps break the generational um you know trauma bonds but it helps you heal through your own experience so anyway you guys this was such a delightful and emotional discussion and i just want to say to everyone who joined us we hope that you found some encouragement and some recommendations to learn more about all of your ancestors right and talk to your living family find out stories that you can and share the hardship and see what you can do um there's help out there for you um for so many of us who have you know trauma and um you're not alone i love how you said that so thank you and you know we'll see as we're wrapping up and people are still watching next week we are going to be live streaming on tuesday instead of wednesday because we are with the roots tech team it's going to be a totally different conversation but they are going to share some fun news with us so join us next week for rootstech and courtney beth mia i loved sharing this with you and to our family search sisterhood who supports us and all of us who are connecting through each ot to each other whatever way whatever gender you know let's let's lift each other so thank you everybody

Channel: FamilySearch

Views: 1,877

Rating: 4.8666668 out of 5

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Id: -vjCBFpNHQI

Length: 59min 4sec (3544 seconds)

Published: Wed Aug 26 2020