Want to understand more about your family and where you came from? I’m getting the scoop on the best way to do it with genealogist Dana Jones.   

Dana reflects on how working with her grandfather to follow the breadcrumbs of their family history fueled a life-long interest in genealogy. After 25 years working in communications, Dana pivoted to pursue her passion as a career and help others investigate their family legacies. Entering the field as a professional when she did enabled her to leverage both the traditional family-tree perspective and emerging science in DNA and heredity.   

With a keen interest in true crime and a love of puzzles, Dana plunges into the labyrinths of her clients’ lives, searching for clues about the origins of their families. From mistaken identities, murders, and dramatic secrets, Dana’s work as a genealogist could be mistaken for a juicy chapter in a novel, uncovering facts that are stranger than fiction. 

She also highlights the less salacious but profound emotional and historical ramifications of genealogy—revealing how understanding generational trauma, preserving family legacies, and documenting oral and written histories shape identity and belonging.  

Dana takes us inside the process and methods of genealogical research. She gives practical tips for leveraging DNA-testing, and how to maximize the resources available through Ancestry.com, 23andMe, and other services to get accurate information.  

Whether you're interested in learning about your ancestors, verifying family stories, building  records for future generations, or are just curious about genealogy, this episode will get you fired up to explore your family history.  

TESS’S TAKEAWAYS: 

• Preserving written and oral history enriches our understanding of ourselves. 
• Genealogy can reveal surprising family stories and secrets. 
• Legacy and identity are deeply intertwined in genealogy. 
• Genealogy is specialized and supported by a network of professionals. 
• Detailed preparation is key for effective genealogical research. 
• The process of genealogy requires patience and attention to detail. 
• Online platforms offer a wealth of resources as starting points for family research. 
• When sharing DNA information, it’s essential to under your privacy options and rights.  

ABOUT DANA JONES:  

As the only child of only children and mother to an only child, genealogist Dana Jones is passionate about helping others explore their family history and relationships.  

After graduating from Vanderbilt University, she had a 25-year career in marketing, consumer insights, and brand management at Disney, where her attention to detail prepared her for further work in research.  

An avid puzzle solver and reader of true crime, Dana spent considerable time, over 18 years,  working with her grandfather in hunting down their family history. Leaving her job, she turned that passion into a career, studied genealogical research at Boston University, and joined the Association of Professional Genealogists.  

As a member of lineage organizations such as the Daughters of the American Revolution, Dana is committed to preserving written and oral history.  

CONNECT WITH DANA: 

Website: www.generationjonesgenealogy.com 

FB: https://www.facebook.com/generationjonesgenealogy 

IG: https://instagram.com/generationjonesgenealogy/ 

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dana-goolsby-jones/ 

Meet Tess Masters:  

Tess Masters is an actor, presenter, health coach, cook, and author of The Blender Girl, The Blender Girl Smoothies, and The Perfect Blend, published by Penguin Random House. She is also the creator of The Decadent Detox® and Skinny60® health programs.     

Health tips and recipes by Tess have been featured in the LA Times, Washington Post, InStyle, Prevention, Shape, Glamour, Real Simple, Yoga Journal, Yahoo Health, Hallmark Channel, The Today Show, and many others.   

Tess’s magnetic personality, infectious enthusiasm, and down-to-earth approach have made her a go-to personality for people of all dietary stripes who share her conviction that healthy living can be easy and fun. Get delicious recipes at TheBlenderGirl.com.  

Connect With Tess: 

Website: https://tessmasters.com/  

Podcast Website: https://ithastobeme.com/   

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/theblendergirl/  

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/theblendergirl/  

Twitter: https://twitter.com/theblendergirl  

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/user/theblendergirl  

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tessmasters/  

Get Healthy With Tess 

Skinny60®: https://www.skinny60.com/  

Join the 60-Day Reset: https://www.skinny60.com/60-day-reset/ 

The Decadent Detox®: https://www.thedecadentdetox.com/  

Join the 14-Day Cleanse: https://www.thedecadentdetox.com/14-day-guided-cleanses/ 

The Blender Girl: https://www.theblendergirl.com/  

Thanks for listening!  

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So in episode one, I shared some stories about my family in particular, some of my favorite memories from my childhood in Adelaide with my mum and her extended family. My mum is from the most magical family. My grandfather was one of many children. He had beautiful brothers and sisters, and they just adored each other. Just wanted to have fun together. They're very musical, lots of singers and actors and lot of political discourse and spirit of lively conversation and just having fun together. My grandfather has long passed away, and so have all of his siblings but one, my auntie, Babe and she recently passed away, and her funeral was the most exquisite celebration of life. She was a beautiful woman, really beloved by our family, but they did such a beautiful job of honoring that entire generation that has now passed, and my mum and her siblings and cousins have decided to get together and record stories about that time with their parents, so that the legacy of that chapter lives on for all of us. And it got me thinking about genealogy and how important it is to understand our past

and how it informs our sense of identity and sense of belonging. And so, you know, a lot of us get get Christmas presents, you know, family trees, or a subscription, you know, to ancestry, or 23andme and all of these services. And it's about this time of year where we go, Oh, I got that. Oh, okay, what do I do with it? I should probably look into that, you know. And I don't know about you, but I find it a little bit overwhelming. You know, so much information online now, which is wonderful, but where do you start? How do you navigate it, and how do you then authenticate

any information that you might find? Because not all of it's accurate, because we can, you know, all upload things and and stuff like that. So a genealogist can really help you navigate that journey, so you can maximize your time, energy and resources. And so I contacted my friend Dana Jones, who's a genealogist out of Los Angeles, and oh my goodness, when she started telling me stories about her job, you could kind of mistaken her life for a chapter in in a novel, you know, some of the things that she uncovers when she's working with her clients. And I got some really great practical tips about how to use the full amount of resources on Ancestry in 23andme and and these resources, and how you then sift through things in order to make sense of it. So I just thought it'd be great for you to learn about it as well, because it's just so fascinating. You know, when you enter a portal into someone else's world, this microcosm of society, and you go, Oh, this is fascinating. How did I not know about this? You know? So, oh, I think you were just gonna dig what she has to say. So let's get the skinny from Dana Jones,

oh, Dana, I am so excited to be talking to you and diving into the world of genealogy today, because my family and I are just completely obsessed about who we are, where we came from, where other people came from, our ancestors. It is just such a fascinating field. So I want to start at the beginning. Well, so to speak, of this chapter where after graduating from Vanderbilt University with a degree in communications, and having this 25 year career in the corporate world in communications and brand management and consumer insights, you pivoted into going into your passion of genealogy. I know that's a passion in your family. You've been interested in it for many years, but just take me into that. It has to be me moment during the pandemic where you were on medical leave and you you just went, you know what? I'm doing? Something different, exactly, exactly. So, yes, I went off on medical leave right before, literally, a month and a half before the pandemic started. So that was a big shift, too. And what, what had happened to you medically, I was, I did not have great leaders who were supporting me as an executive, and I had been there for many years, and it was just really becoming something that was not a good brain space. Yeah. So it was, it was a stress related, correct condition, right? Wow, that. I mean that happens to so many people, and they don't actually listen to the has to be me to make a change. Like this is not a healthy place for me to be in. So you were listening to that. It has to be me. And kind of, it does not have to be me anymore. I'm going to make a change. So out of all the millions of things that you could be doing, why genealogy? What was that? It has to be me. I'm doing this. Well, as you mentioned, it was something that I had had a passion for, for many, many years, really, on both sides of my family, my mother's family, her maiden name is a journal.

Name. They came over in the 1740s and there were, I think, 11 of them.

And so I was able to learn about that family, meet some of her other relatives. You know that knew about the family that had, you know lots of information about them. We have this giant family book that's about this thick that I could use as a door stop if I need to. But it's also a lot of really amazing information about and that

had already been assembled for you and your family. Definitely, people in your family were into this, yes,

yes, yes. And then on my dad's side, my granddad, his father, was a huge genealogy fan, and once he was a retired human. He didn't really use a computer in his 70s and 80s and into his 90s, but he would call people, and he would pay people, and he would get people to do work. And he was a really great artist and writer, and he created these giant butcher block paper family trees of all sorts of different parts of my history. And so he, you know, gifted those to us, which we've now scanned and have available online, but I also still have the originals. So it was really something. And and I actually joined ancestry.com about 18 years ago to try to help him, because he had a brick wall, and that brick wall was his grandfather, and he never knew what happened to his grandfather. He knew where he moved after the grandmother had passed, but he did not know what had happened to him, and I still, sadly to this day, have not been able to solve that brick wall, but it's certainly still on my list.

Is that a source of frustration for you when you hit that brick wall? Because you talk about that in your work so you you help other people smash down or move through the brick wall? Yes. Oh, gosh. What's that? What's that like for you that you just have not been able to find that missing piece?

It's very frustrating. And there'll be moments where I'm not working on family stuff at all, my own family, and I'll just say, let me go look for this, or maybe it's here, or let me reach out to this person that's in the state that I think he was living in when he passed. And, you know, I don't know the year he passed, I know kind of the approximate time, I know the place that my granddad thought he passed, which was here in the US, but not in the state where they had lived, and so supposedly, he worked, you know, as a miner. And there were a lot of mining accidents and things, and a lot of them were in the newspaper, but I've just never been able to come to that,

yeah, and you know, it's gonna get easier. Or you tell me, maybe I'm wrong about this, because everything is digital and online, and we're able to search for things. Is it easier with later generations to smash through that brick wall and find the answers and put the pieces of the puzzle together with more online resources?

Yeah, I'll have to say it depends, because there's never going to be a moment where everything is online. There's never going to be a time, if you think about, and I know you're not always in the US, but just if I'm mentioning that, you know there's, if you think about every county in the United States of America that has its own courthouse, its own, yes, all of the things, it's its own records of births, marriages and deaths. It's records of things that happened in court, deeds and, you know, estates and all of that. There's a point where never is all of that going to be all online. Some of it is now. Some of it happens every single day. Gets added, but there's so much. And then, if you think about the rest of the world Family Search, which is run by the Church of Jesus Christ, of Latter Day Saints, and is pretty much the largest place to go do in person research. But they also digitize plenty and after all of the horror in in Europe recently, with some of the wars, they have started going in and doing even more digitizing, because there were literally churches that were being bombed, and therefore all of those records that were in that Church were were destroyed, yeah, and then they also go to places like, for instance, places in Africa, and they do oral histories with the folks that have learned things over time that they've just been told that there's never been anything in writing about. And so they're able to record that and then be able to put that out so that people can access it. But again, if you think about how many people, how many places, it's never going to all be online, it just

Yes, of course. So you talk about how you love puzzles, and you your The Container Store is your happy place, and you love organization. So do you have. To be extremely patient, to be a genealogist, to actually sift through information, keep searching, getting it. Is it? Is it like, a little bit like being in a maze? That's how I imagine it from the outside, where you think you're going to go down a path and you're going to find the answer, and then you hit a brick wall, and then you got to go down, you know, walk backwards, and then go down another path.

It's very much like that you really have to be, you know, detail oriented. Think about the different places that you could go to look for something. And, you know, certainly starting online usually happens just because that's the easiest starting point. But a lot of times what you're finding online is where you need to then, you know, write to someone and ask them to tell you what they have or to order something from someone. You know, even when I'm needing things here in California and I need somebody's birth certificate, I usually have to write off and wait several months for it to come back to me from, you know, from the state. And you know, it depends, again, it

depends on everything. Depends on what the mission is, so to speak, exactly,

exactly, but knowing kind of what you found, where you found it, where you still need to look some more. That's all very

important. Yes. So it's a real exercise impatience on your part and the part of your client, where it can take months and months and months, sometimes years, to uncover the information. So the scope of your work would vary dramatically depending on the scope of the mission. Impossible. So, so let's just start from the same point of reference, so that dear listener, we are, we're all understanding exactly what Dana does. So how would you describe genealogy, the process of genealogy,

sure. So you know, in in the easiest, I guess, of terms, it's, it's looking at both who you come from, who your ancestors were, where they came from. You know how long they had been, wherever you are now. You know your family. And also, many cases, I'm working with people who are looking for current relatives and may not know who their current relatives are. And so not every client is like that, but genealogy can go either way. It can be ancestors, or it can be current or more recent family members. And you know,

talk me through the process when someone comes to hire you, what information do you have to provide? I mean, I imagine it's, you know, dependent on the scope of the mission, but and the goal of what you want to figure out. But what are some of the things that you would need to have available in order to start following those breadcrumbs? So absolutely.

So, you know, at the very bare minimum, if somebody's, for instance, wanting to know about a grandfather or a great grandfather having or great grandmother having that information about their birth, their death, hopefully, where those two things happened are really the basic starting point, because I don't ever want to research someone that I Think I'm researching the right grandfather, but it's actually the name is right, but it's not the right person. Because if you think about, you know, I'm married to Jones, there's plenty of,

oh, gosh, how many Joneses are there in the world? Wow. So when

I think about even researching my husband's family, I have to be really careful that I'm getting the right Joneses. Um, even if I'm looking in the right part of Kentucky where they lived.

Gosh, that gives, that gives new meaning to keep up with the Joneses, doesn't it? Which Joneses are you talking about?

Just really making sure that you've got the right people is really the key starting point.

Yeah. So you talk in your history about how you were an only child, and now you have an only child, a son when you were growing up, even though both sides of your family were interested in their history and interested in the past and how that related to the present. How did that affect your sense of belonging and wanting to make sense of who you were and how you fit into the world when you didn't have a sibling to play with or relate to or bounce off of, and you know you were constantly dealing with people of a different generation within your family. What did that feel like for you? Did that sort of inform your further interest in this? Or how did that work?

Yeah, I think it did. I mean, both of all of my grandparents had siblings, and had siblings that lived nearby, and so there were always family members that we would visit. We wouldn't necessarily see them all the time, but we would see them a lot. And when we would see them, everybody talked about family, and everybody talked about past family that was no longer with us. And you know, my my dad's mother, my grandmother, was one of 11 children. Most of them only had one, oddly enough, when they were one of 11, um, but one of the one of her siblings, was killed or died, not was killed, died and were. War Two. And so that was something that was often talked about in the family. There were things on his sister's wall that reminded her of him, that were had come from the President. And you know, there were moments like that. And I remember I interviewed my grandmother, that same grandmother, one year for school, and we were supposed to talk about the depression. And so I was supposed to ask her about the Great Depression. And she said, Well, honey, you probably should have talked to your granddad, because it was a bigger deal for them. We were just poor people, and it was poor regardless, right? Um, you know. So there were always a lot of things that, you know, would come up, either as a school project or just something that family members continue to talk about.

And what, what are some of the things that you've uncovered about your own family? Yeah, because, gosh, you've got some interesting stories about that. I

do. I think the biggest, most shocking thing that I discovered, and this was before I became a professional, I was doing some research on the side about my grandmother, that grandmother I was just speaking of, and her 11, her 11 siblings, but also her father's siblings. And, yeah, her dad lived next door to his brother, and his brother had a whole bunch of children too, and I found this document that said he had been killed by his ex wife one night in his bed while he was sleeping with some of his small children, maybe sleeping next to him. And I called my mom, and I said, Hey, have you ever heard about this? My dad didn't have a smartphone, so I couldn't text him or call him easily at the time. And so she said, Well, no, I've never heard of it, but I'll check with him. And the next response I got was he has no idea what you're talking about. My grandmother had been 14 years old, living next door to this uncle and his family, of many children. He was divorced. She knew he was divorced. This woman came back, literally at like midnight one night and shot him dead. And my her father, my great grandfather, was the constable in the town, and so he ended up having to help get this woman into jail to wait for her to have. You know, they had to move her trial to another part at another county, because there was so much this man was a very beloved person, her her uncle, who had been killed, and she ended up having a very scary, sad life too, which I was able to learn about, and she seemed to have a lot of mental health issues. And so that's one of those things that it would be very interesting if there were a way to go, and I'm sure there's not given how medical information can be known, but even now, to be able to know more about what had caused her to maybe act the way she did. She was never put in prison, other than just jail. When she was originally arrested, she did not have to go to prison later for that, and moved off and married someone else, and ultimately was, you know, put in a in a home where she had to live the rest of her life. So there was definitely some mental illness and so understanding that never came up in my family. So it was, certainly wasn't something we talked about at the dinner table. Of, you

know, yeah, now I can sort of understand why you're interested in true crime. I mean, it's, it's sort of this whole thing of factors stranger than fiction. I mean, it, it is really interesting though, to look at this generational trauma and how understanding what has happened in previous generations in your family can absolutely shed light on why you may be struggling, or your parents or grandparents are the way that they Are, and the value of knowing your history. So what are some of the main reasons, the most common reasons why somebody would engage your services and be interested in their genealogy? Yeah,

so there's, there's a lot of variety, you know, within that world, um, some people are very interested in joining societies that their ancestors kind of give them credit for being part of. So if Tell me about that, if you think about the US, it would be like the Daughters of the American Revolution. So if you have, yes, a male or female relative who either served with or gave things to help, you know those who were fighting for the you know, American, British war. You know you can join. You just have to have the proof. So I've definitely done that for clients. I've done it for myself. You know, there's other things, like the Mayflower, who, if you can prove that your ancestors came to America on the Mayflower. That's a separate organization. Even from where I'm from, in Tennessee, there are there's one I've got on my list of the people, the first people who moved to Tennessee, before it was even really Tennessee. There's a whole separate organization you can join if you can prove that there's. Farmers organizations, if you can prove that your family were farmers, you know. So there's all sorts of different things. So a lot of times, people just want that. They want to be able to check that off, or have the certificate, or have the the pin, or whatever it is, and just, you know, that be a part of their life. There's also people who want to know, you know, for instance, let's say a grandfather had not been a very good human and and my, you know, my client's daughter then wanted to learn things about the father that was not great so that she could know more about him, because she, you know, didn't feel good about her relationship. And so her earlier point about understanding kind of the trauma and what happens that then creates things, I think that can be really key to understand. If somebody wasn't a great human being, there could have been a really good reason why, and there might not have been right, there could have been there could have been trauma that they had incurred, you know, encountered, or situations that they went through. Um, I have one client who I've worked with a lot, who is her father's Japanese American, and both of his family, both of his parents, were incarcerated during World War Two here in the US. That's not a really great thing to be able to, you know, research, but at the same time, it's so helpful to understand and for him, for her dad, to then understand why some of the things that happened in his family happened. Because, yes,

I mean, I imagine this happens a lot with Holocaust survivors, and then Jewish families and and people in Africa that have been through war torn districts. And, you know, I mean, there's so many examples of this. So what's that like for you as as a professional, when you are immersing yourself in the puzzle of that world, in the maze of that world, and you're investigating a really trauma filled chapter? So how do you deal with that on a personal level? And then I want to know how you communicate that sensitive information to the

client, right, right? It's definitely a great question. You know, from on a personal level, I think it's back where that puzzle kind of comes in for me, because I'm thinking about it of how I can put the puzzle together, and so knowing, knowing, before the puzzle gets put together, that it may not be a perfect puzzle that you are thrilled to have put together. And so that's usually where I'm coming from, is just really to be as helpful and straightforward as I can be,

well, your degree in communications probably comes in handy there, right in your 25 years of analytics and brand management. I mean, you know, it's interesting in life, how all of our skills come together if we allow our super powers to flourish and come to the fore, right?

Definitely, definitely. And then when I really think about helping, you know what I'm going to tell the folks, you know, if it's somebody who comes to me and doesn't come and say, Oh, I think I had kind of a not so great human being relative that I want to know more about, but if they come to me and say, Hey, I just want to research my family and I find something when they're not expecting the horror Exactly. So there's got to be some kind of back and forth between me and them to say, Do you want to know this,

right? So do you go to them and say, Look, I've uncovered some things that you may not be expecting. Do you want to know about this? Do you want me to keep exploring it further? Is that sort of the is that the dialog, yes, 100 well, you renegotiate the parameters of the mission

Exactly, exactly, because I never want to tell somebody something I've discovered that they don't want to know about. And you know that can happen with families if I'm working with people's DNA as well, but it can also happen if I'm just, you know, looking at the records and looking at what people did in their lives, and who you know, who ended up in prison, or who you know ended up killing their husband, you know, like my great, great uncle, or whatever that you know situation was, you just don't always know what you're going to find until you find it. And so then really making sure that a client wants to know, I'm not going to tell this they want to know.

Oh, so this, this your passion for true crime and your love of puzzles. You're just living inside a puzzle every day, and potentially a true crime novel,

exactly.

Oh, so it does this, just this fascinating journey that's different every single day so, oh, gosh, I could just dive into that all day long. This is just so juicy. I mean, everyone's got a fascinating history, don't they? You know, there is this, this concept that, oh, if I'm not a celebrity, if I'm not famous, if one of my relatives wasn't famous in history, that I don't have an interesting story. Yeah. And everybody has an interesting story.

Definitely, definitely, there's always something there.

Yeah, so you've been talking about America, obviously, because you live in America, I am half American too. I spent half my year in America. Lived in America for decades. What happens? Because we will. We all come from somewhere else, you know? I mean, America was founded based on immigrants, right? So what do you do when

you're researching someone's family tree and you start going back generations, and all of a sudden you're having to deal with the archives and public records of other countries and other languages? Yeah? So how does that work for you, it can be interesting. Um, you know, I'm lucky in in my own work, in the sense that my family, pretty much, and my husband's family were all early adopters of the American experience, and they were all here really early. So I am not really dealing with a lot of super recent things that would be in German or French, or whatever it is, however, then, of course, I've had a lot of clients that, you know, we don't have to go very far back to be in the country where their ancestors were from. So sometimes it's a matter of me hiring someone who can help translate things for me and provide me with details that I might not know if I had not been from that country. So

much gets lost in translation.

Absolutely, absolutely. And the good news is there's so many professional genealogists now. We have quite a few who live in other countries, and so I am able to find someone through our network that is a genealogist and is in the country I'm trying to research, which is, Oh, of course, yes, you know, and, and so that's helpful. Sometimes it's also the need to have someone in a country, you know, be able to find something for me that I can't find online because it's not online. And, you know, I had one client one time who needed something in August. And guess what? July is when everybody in that country goes on vacation. So trying to get what I needed to get from that from that country, was definitely a hard one. We were able to make it work, but, but, yeah, it's really about making sure each of the, you know, each of the projects, has the right help. You know that I need because, you know, I don't speak all the languages, and I

you don't Dana,

Southern, that's about all I can offer you.

Oh, my goodness. So how many genealogists are there in the world? An estimated amount. Oh gosh,

in the world, that's a good question. I think we have about three to 400 who are professionals, from the Association of Professional genealogists, of which I'm a member. And so that's typically where I look for people if I need help, either going it's not that many. It's not but then I would say there's probably more. Yeah, it's just hard to know beyond that, like, how many there would be? Yes,

so I mean, it is, I mean, I would classify that as a very specialized field. Then, yeah, so is it a very supportive, tight knit community, you know, in this association where you really do support each other, and absolutely, yeah, absolutely, well, because, I mean, I would imagine and correct me if I'm wrong, that it, as you said before, it would attract high information gatherers, people that are patient, people that are sensitive, people that want to go down the rabbit hole and into the maze and figure out puzzles and things like that.

Absolutely,

absolutely, yeah, and, and it is. It's quite a solitary endeavor. I would imagine it can't be.

It can be. It can be, you know, some clients want to be more involved with what you're doing than others. Some people just want you to send them a report. And some people want to be more like, let's have a call every couple weeks and hear what you found. And you know, it kind of depends on the client. So it

can look a lot of different ways you can absolutely participate in this process, you know, because I would imagine, dear listener, you might be one of the people that would absolutely geek out on that and absolutely love this. So do you get people who want to come and and figure this out as a gift for somebody? I would imagine that would be a beautiful gift for somebody. Yes,

I have done that several times for clients, and it's so fulfilling for me, because I'm doing the work for whoever's giving the gift, but at the same time that I'm also doing it for the person getting the gift. So

take me inside of that a little bit more. What what's fulfilling about it for you doing this work, I

think that just helping people understand where they came from and why things happened that happened. I mean, to our earlier conversation about, you know, trauma and understanding why certain things happen that you might not have wanted to happen. You know, there's a lot of times that you can learn that when you're researching the family, you're not just looking at birth certificates and death certificates, marriage certificate. It's, you're looking at court records, and you're looking at, you know, deeds and things, and really understanding, you know, why people did and how people did what they did. You know, which ship they were on when they moved here, and how long it took them to get here, and how many people were on the ship that lived when they got here versus those that passed on their way. You know, there's so many different things about a family experience, depending on what you're looking at, you know, if you're talking about somebody who may have come to Ellis Island in, you know, the 1800s um, versus, you know, my people who were on some ship in 1748 and get here, so, you know, and there's no records, really, about that ship they were on. So, you know, it really can be fulfilling to be able to bring kind of the full circle, the full information about why a family is the way they are now because of what's happened, and either they've known about it or they haven't known about

it, yeah, like threading the needle, and you just keep threading the needle, and the thread never ends. I mean, you know, literally. So what is the typical starting point? I want to ask you about ancestry.com that's just become this global phenomenon and a brand that everybody knows and recognizes. What is ancestry.com good for and what are the limitations of it?

Okay? And, and, you know, I spend many hours a day, every day, on ancestry.com for many Yeah,

tell me about that. So first

of all, they do have a really large amount of digitized records from the world, not just the US, yep. And so that's a great starting point. They also have people's family trees that can be made public. I don't make my own clients trees public. When I'm creating them on ancestry, they're completely private. And then if I, you know, give it if the person wants it when I'm finished, then if they want to make it private, they can once it's their tree, yep. But the public trees you can also use to research, because sometimes it might be that you haven't been able to find the right person of with this name, but you're able to find them in somebody else's tree and then see what they've found, you know. So there's sort of some work that way. And then when you think about DNA, ancestry is the number one group or company that has people who have taken DNA tests, and so they have, gosh, I can't even remember the number. I'm sure, more than 20 million at this point people, and that's people around the world, although a lot of countries have different rules about taking DNA tests, and so not, not every country can, you know, be part of ancestry. And about once a year, they were able to update with all the new information. And so everybody's ethnicity changes a little bit once a year, because that's when it all gets re evaluated, which always is going to be based on how many people are in the group? So, yeah, I've been having a ton, like 30% Scottish lately. And I do not have 30% of my ancestors. It just has gone back down, and I've gotten all my Germans back. So what I know about so you know that's been and I have 3% Native American, which, I have no idea where that came from. Oh, okay, so, yeah. So it's interesting. There's about four other companies that you can use, and there's one that definitely does a lot with Europe, and so that's usually one that if somebody's needing really recent or even current relatives in Europe, that that's maybe where they need to go. But it's a lot smaller group.

What? What what are some of those other resources that you're talking about? Oh,

so the second below ancestry is called 23andme Oh, yes, yes, that's a very famous one. Yes, because they have trees and they don't really do records, so you're going to not really find birth certificates, death certificates, all that through 23andme what you can find out is, you know, if you eat asparagus, do you smell funny? Or, you know, they have and they do serious things too, about breast cancer and other things. So that's one reason that people like to go there. Um, the there's one called my heritage, and that is the one that has more of the European folks. And then family. Let me think, make sure I'm giving you the right name, Family Tree DNA. They have the only they're the only site that has not just what all the other companies have, which is what ancestry has, which is autosomal DNA, which is what you have in every cell of your body, yeah, and you get them, and they kind of merge, depending from mom and dad. And you know, there's also this one company that has your mother's DNA, which is always going to be the same. It goes from every mother to every child. And yes, and you're able to go back millions of years, sometimes with how far back, wow, this goes. And it's not always great to find, like your close relatives, because it's been so long, but it can be a very interesting thing. I've had my mother, you know, do hers. And then there's the all male one, the Y DNA, that can give you a lot more information about more recent people, and also will give you many, many, many, million years back. So there's a reason that some people go there. Sometimes there's a lot of specific groups that want to be together, that have all of that name in their family, and want to try to figure out how they're all related to each other, or where they came from in Africa originally. And, you know, there's a lot of longer term things that people would do there. Ancestry is really the only one that has DNA that you can also really do the research there. But

it's okay. So is that a recommended starting point is to get to get your DNA tested in both of those ways, upload it, and then you can see who you are potentially related to in

the world. Definitely, if you have any feeling that you don't know who your ancestors would be, right,

which is a lot of adopted people, depending on whether their adoption is open or closed, or, I mean, so many people get lost through the fostering system, or just don't know who you know much about their history

Exactly. You know, I've had clients before who found out that their biological parent wasn't their biological they thought their biological parent wasn't their

biological parent. I mean, that's the thing. People lie all the time to protect whatever right. That happens all the time. I know several friends of mine where they're, you know, family story has been a bit

skewed, yeah. So, I mean, for me, it was interesting for me to have everybody take their DNA, even though I knew we were all related to each other, yeah. And so, you know, I had my parents, I had my son, I had my husband, I had his mother. Like, we've got a lot of that. And then, you know, but there's nothing that it's telling me that's, like, shocking at this point. Yes, work I've done with it, but I've had several clients who it has been shocking. It's found the biological father. It's found, you know, the biological relatives, and even how this person came into the family he thought he was a part of, you know, or sheep. So I think it's important for people to take it a if they're just interested, which is kind of where I was just to see, like, what, what ethnicity, ethnicity is it giving me? And, you know, how much DNA does my kid have of mine versus my husband's, and how much of my ethnicity does he have versus my husband's? And, yes, um, those kinds of things were just interesting. But then, if you really are concerned that you have relatives that you don't know who they are, then that's 100% a reason you know to take it if you want to know. I mean, so are

there any drawbacks to having your DNA tests and uploading them to ancestry or any of these other services? Are there any drawbacks to doing that?

It depends on how much privacy you put on them. Okay,

so you can, you can choose correct private and how public your DNA information is.

So mine, for instance, is always my tree has always been public, and my DNA, therefore has been public when I did that. And so I've had people reach out to me that either were my husband's relatives or my relatives that want to know more about the research I've done on their family, not that they're saying like, Oh, I didn't know I was related to you, but just yeah, they're far enough out that they want to know more about what I've researched.

So when you make it public, you need to be prepared that other people are going to find you and want to know and be connected to you, which some people would find amazing, and other people would find completely, you know, invasive, correct? And

so that's why I never make any of my clients ancestry, either trees or DNA, either one public. That's their choice down the road when I'm finished, but I'm doing the work, and I don't need random other people, you know, contacting me wanting to know how they're related to someone that's just not what I'm I'm doing the work for

Yeah, um, how ethically complicated does it get In a situation, for example, where somebody needed to know if they were related to anyone that might be a match for a kidney or something. I mean, I'm trying to think of other situations where knowing who you're related to can literally be life saving.

Yeah. So that particular example, there are other ways to do that that are medical and have nothing to do with your ancestry, so to speak, like you can go, it used to call be called Be The Match here in the US, I think it's changed its name, but I know I went and gave them my blood for whatever that would come to me, then if somebody needed a kidney that I could give them. Yeah. So it's a little bit of a different. It's more of a medical thing,

but I know that's a really extreme example. It was just one that came into my mind. You know, where I went. Oh, what about I think this is another really extreme example that's coming into my mind. But I'm just so interested by this. You know, there are so many sperm donors now that have donated so much sperm, and they have fathered many, many, many children. And is that something that's really going to be coming into the fore in in the coming decades where, you know, I know somebody where they were at a school with somebody that they they and their child was related to somebody else in the class, you know, I mean this, this happens now. Yeah, it's already

happening. And, you know, there's some people are thrilled with that, and some people are not, because they thought they were always going to be unknown. And I think the same is true with the medical piece, because I back to what you were asking. I think a lot of people that do want to do their DNA for a medical reason, are people that don't have any idea what their medical history is. And so if they do their DNA, they can also, then if at like 23andme where they also will look at cancer and other things beyond whether you're being asparagus is stinky, and they will, you know, provide you with that information. And so it's a way that you can learn more about your background, even if you're never going to know who the person was that was that biological parent, at least, you can find out what kind of medical information they had. And so that same goes true for sperm donors. Um, you know, there's been so many I've, I've listened to several books on audible about different people who have kind of gone through that they thought they were 100% you know, Jewish, and found out they were 50% Jewish when they randomly did their DNA for Christmas one year, and all of a sudden they're not related to who they thought they were related to, and it was a sperm donor. So, you know, it'll be interesting to see how that changes things, you know, moving forward, yeah,

donating and so, okay, let's say I want to hire you to maximize my time with you. What of my own research could I be doing so that when I come to you with the mission, should you choose to accept it, I'm as prepared as I can possibly be. So would it be opening an ancestry account and having my DNA done and looking at my family tree and getting having my birth certificates? You know what? What information could I have just as a baseline about me that would help you fulfill any mission that I would present you with.

That's a great question, and you're 100% right with everything you said. The more folks can give me that they have that allows me to then not have to go find it, but to just confirm that it's all correct. And so yes, people things aren't correct. Um, you know, usually it's not always you know who your mother was, although it can be, um,

whoa. So wait, let me just dive into that for a second. How often is the information on Ancestry or some of these other sites incorrect in your experience,

relatively often, um, I have everything ancestry gives me, and they have these cute little green leaves that come up. And I don't call those green leaves, I call them bread crumbs. And they're really just, yeah, leading me to look at something that may or may not be true. Um, the same goes for there's a it's now owned by ancestry. It's called Find A Grave and find people's graves. And people love doing this. It's like a whole separate little group where people go take pictures of lots of gravestones. But Oh yeah, I have one that just came up for a client, that the parents listed for the person who died or not the right people, and they're listed on Find a Grave. So at some point I, at soon, I need to go in and send a note to the person who created this and say, These are the right people. And I've, I've had to do that before, for other for some of my relatives, if maybe they were said that they were in the wrong place, like the wrong cemetery or the wrong you know time like the dates wrong

because so if this is important to you really knowing the truth about your history and who you are and where you came from, hiring a genealogist like you to verify the accuracy and authenticity of The information that you think you have is a very, very well use of time and

resources. It is, it is, and you know, it again, keeps me from having to find people if they already know who someone is, then I don't have to find who they think it is. I just now can see who they think it is and make sure that that is who it is. And then I can keep going. So maybe we can get farther back. Because you've gotten birth certificates or you've got this bar book like my mom gave me, that's this giant door stop that then I can go through and look at these names and dates and things and say, okay, are these really the right ones? And then if they are, great, let's keep going.

Yeah, I want to go back to this idea of the brick wall, okay? Of coming up against these brick walls. So can you give me some other examples, like you talked about your own personal brick wall, you know, with your family? What are some of the other brick walls that you might encounter where you've got to back up in the maze and go down a different path? I'm

thinking right off the top of my head on a couple of projects I've done that were DNA specific, where either there was no understanding at all of who a biological relative was, and that was the brick wall of like we have no clue, we just need to know. We'd love to know, and being able to actually find a first cousin that had done DNA, and therefore we now know who this is. And it was a brick wall. But it didn't take a long time. Also having a client who came to me saying, either this person or this person was the grandfather. Which one was it? I got to show up and say it was actually the third person that you didn't know about. Whoa, yeah, and, you know, that's a brick wall too. So, you know, those are both DNA specific, but often it can be same name, you know, or there were people back in the 1800s 70, who knows, far back, that would disappear and change their name and just do different things. And so a lot of those. I have not done a ton of research in that regard, but I've been to several presentations by other genealogists who have, who have, you know, had to figure out those brick walls with same named individuals. You know, is this person really the right person, or did he change the name and move and, you know, all of that. So there can be lots of brick walls.

Yeah. So if you go down this path, you meaning a client, not you as the genealogist, you've got to be open, yeah, you've got to want to know, and you've got to be open to being shocked, being pleasantly surprised, and everything in between, right? Or being validated, I mean, and everything, and that it's going to be a mixed bag, because you really don't know what you're going to find. And so I imagine that there's courage involved in that quest for information. So what's it like for you when you come up against resistance, where someone thinks that they want to know when they've actually sought out your services and your help, and really think they want to go down this path, and it suddenly takes a turn, and you've renegotiated the space, you know, by saying, Hey, do you want me to and they say yes, and then when you actually present them with the information, oh, gosh, what's that like for you When, when there is a little bit of resistance about the truth of it or the

validity of it. I mean, luckily, I haven't had a ton of that, but I have had some, and often, you know, the hardest part is me figuring out how to call them or email them or, you know, bet we need to change order, you know, change course

on that communications degree. Again, exactly, exactly.

Yeah, that's usually me kind of saying, like, I know I'm right, but I don't know that they're gonna think I'm right, you know. And kind of thinking through the best way

to approach that, this whole I know I'm right, thing, I want to ask you about this though. Like, how right do you have to be before you present the information? Do you know what I mean? Like, how do you validate the authenticity of the information that you think you've uncovered?

Yeah, so, um, as genealogists, we have um, kind of rules about what you've researched and how you've researched it researched and how you know, is it a document that was an original document that you're reviewing, or if it's a document that somebody you know rewrote five times and put it in a book somewhere, and it might be wrong, nothing is ever going to be perfect with that, and never is a client. Most likely, I mean, I would this would be like, you know, the amazing client. I've never had to say. I always want every single detail about every single person that you could possibly ever find, so that this is 100% accurate. That's usually not the case. And so it's more about me knowing through all the education I've had since the summer of 2020 to understand, have I found the most likely appropriate, correct documents? Have I found everything that you know will help me be able to then say to this person, I think that this is 100% true. I. Um, it's just part of what we've learned in our in our work, and, you know, just really have to be careful. And I always have a paragraph at the end of a client report that says, you know, there's likely more work we could do, you know, because most of them aren't hiring me to do every possible thing, as I said, Yeah. And so a lot of times I will put things that have come up for me as next steps. As you know, what? If you know, if you wanted more research, here's like five things that we should look for, able to, you know, get a little closer to knowing that we have the truth.

Who? I mean, gosh, that I feel like that's a Pandora's box. I mean, I don't know if I would be able to stop, I have to be honest. Like, I just love finding out about stuff, you know, and once I uncovered one thing, I'd need to know that. And, oh, tell me about that. Tell me about that. I mean, I'm addicted to those shows. You know, who do you think you cut? You know, where do you think you came from? And you know, where they they present. You know, people with their history and you know, you sort of cobbled together this story. And, I mean, I just love those shows. They're just so fascinating. Yeah, so, wow. Okay, what's your favorite bit of genealogy that you just really, really love investigating.

Oh, gosh. I think having, at least in my own family, some of the things that I have been able to find that no one else had really ever had, or at least had shared with me, if they did have them, were, you know, people's information, either their wills and who they left things to, and maybe they're even in, you know, have their signature still like that. This is still the right version that has their official signature on it, maybe from the 1800s or possibly 1700s and, you know, seeing what they gave to each child. And sometimes there were, you know, things said that maybe the child had disappeared, and, you know, this child will be given this money if they're found within this amount of time, and if they're not, then this money is going to the other siblings. And so learning some of those kinds of things, which, you know, again, it's not something people sit around at, you know, the dinner table talking about necessarily, um, it can be really interesting, and give you, give you some extra information that's better or not better. It's just, it's more than just knowing, well, this person died on this date, well, but then this is how he left things to his family, and what he left, he left the family, you know, gun, or he left the farm, or he left, there was one he said, I don't want anybody to ever take down the trees in my in my like, he was a, you know, early environmentalist. He wanted to keep all those trees, you know. Yeah, you talking about legacy,

yes, yes, yeah, yes. I mean, this idea of identity just constantly fascinates me, and how we understand ourselves and where we fit into the world, and how we form our identity, how we reform it, or re look at it with a fresh perspective. And you know, with the work that you do, it is an opportunity to look at things in a different way, to look at yourself and your family in a different way, and I would certainly welcome that opportunity. I mean, it's, it's what a beautiful alternate lens, or it just gives you more choices. I think, I think this is such important work, and I thank you for doing it so you can connect with Dana at generation Jones genealogy.com What an amazing website. I love that. So Dana, I always end every episode with the same question, and as we're constellating around identity, right? You know, and our sense of identity and who we are and what we're capable of or what we deserve. You know, very much determines how we embrace our it has to be me moments and go after what we want and listen to our intuition and give ourselves permission to dream big or go beyond what our family members have done, etc, for somebody who's listening, who has a dream in their heart, which is everybody listening, really, isn't it? And they don't feel like they have what it takes to make it happen. What would you say to them?

Gosh, you know, dream big. And think about how you know, if you're wanting to start something new, like become a genealogist your whole life, but you've never done it as a job, but just knowing what it's going to help you understand about yourself and about where you come from, regardless of what it is. So if it's a job, if it's a passion that you want to try. Whatever it is, just knowing that it's giving you what you need to know about you, but it's also really giving you that ancestry information, and sometimes knowing what might have been difficult for your ancestors, what might have been positive, and sort of how that all has come to you to give you what you need to make that happen.

Oh, yeah, you know, I'm just thinking about, well, everything that we've been talking about, and how knowing your history and where you came from is a really big part of the puzzle. It is.

It really is, yeah, of,

of, if we're, you know, really embracing the theme of this show, it has to be me, and really listening to your intuition, having the courage to of the consequences of your intuition and listening to it and going after what you want. You do need that solid foundation of understanding who you are and where you came from, which was, you know, one of the big reasons why I wanted to talk to you, because I do think that often, you know, so many of us just don't have a lot of the pieces of the puzzle, of our of our familial history, and as I'm sitting here listening to you kind of going, I want to know more about it. Fortunately for me, I came from a family where we're really interested in history, particularly my mother's side of the family. And my mother then became very interested in my father's side of the family. She was just constantly asking questions, you know, of of my dad's elderly relatives and sitting around, you know, and I think my mom knows more about my dad's family than my dad does, right? But we're all really, really interested in it, but unless you document it and have it available, as you were talking about with the with the, you know, communities in Africa, or oral traditions around the world, where ancestors are telling stories and not necessarily writing them down. It's an oral history. The the value of writing down stories, or these days with multimedia, getting on Zoom and interviewing a relative, you know, a grandparent or a great grandparent, or, you know, listening to their stories, even if it's not a family tree necessarily, or I'm related to this person or that person. But tell me your story. Tell me about what happened in your childhood, what you were interested in what you did as a kid, what mattered back then. What was it like to live through that war? What was it like to you know? I, I think that we often underestimate the value of listening to the stories of people in your family and friends and community, you know. So I Oh, I just, I just think it's a beautiful thing. I mean, I just love story. So you being inside of these stories all the time. You know? It just must be. It must be like a choose your own adventure story every day, right?

It can be. And I think one of the key things too, is for people, as they're hearing these stories or learning things about you know, their ancestry is really not having judgment and making sure that what you're hearing it was a different place. It may not be what you would have done, it may not be what somebody else at that time period may have done, but it's what happened. And so just understanding why it happened, how it happened, what happened, and kind of owning that and not being judgmental of that. I think when I'm able to give that to clients, and they're willing to receive that and not be a little like, oh, I don't want to know, it just gives them so much more to know about themselves and understand how they became what they are.

Oh, that's a beautiful place to end for today, isn't it? Of just looking at yourselves and others and your stories without judgment, yes, and seeing things for what they are and what you can learn from them, that's definitely just beautiful. Oh, thank you so much. What a lovely conversation.

I've enjoyed it. Thank you so much.

Oh, I am even more fired up to learn about my family history, because knowing about our ancestors And our family members really informs our sense of identity and belonging. And I really appreciated what Dana was saying about looking at any information that you get without judgment, that it may be from a different time and place, or even if relatives are living they may be from a different culture across the world, or been brought up differently, and any of the information can help you come to a better understanding about who you are and why your family system is the way that it is. I found it fascinating what she was saying about generational trauma and how genealogy can uncover that and can also be very helpful in coming to a greater awareness about ourselves. I loved all the practical tips about navigating ancestry.com, and 23andme and my heritage for European. Family Tree, DNA, and, you know, there's just so many amazing resources. I liked hearing about the the pros and cons of things, and the pitfalls that you can get into and the benefits learning about DNA testing, how you can keep it public or private and and thinking about how you can hire a genealogist to help navigate the journey to maximize your time and resources learning about what we need, just the basic information that can help get us started having the name and the birth and death dates and as much information as possible to help a genealogist uncover the truth. I did appreciate what she was saying about the accuracy that because information is changing and there's limits on information that we do and are able to get access to that it's impossible to determine that something is 100% accurate and that most clients are just looking to get closer to the truth about their family. I really loved what she was saying about patients. She was referring to genealogy. You know that it takes patience to follow the clues and breadcrumbs and right away for birth certificates and more information. But I think that that basic principle can be applied to anything outside of genealogy. When we're working towards our it has to be me or or putting the puzzle together, that it just takes patience and tenacity, and you just got to put one foot in front of the other and keep putting the pieces in place to get the full picture. I loved what she said about following your passion do things that help you understand more about yourself. Ah, yes, yes to that. So if you want to hire a genealogist, Dana is amazing. She's in California. You can connect with her at generation Jones genealogy.com We've got all of her links in the show notes, and let me know in the Facebook group if you're hiring a genealogist or what you've uncovered on some of these platforms. I just find this area just so fascinating. So yeah, can't wait to hear your stories. You.