Ever wondered how deeply your family roots go and what secrets they might hold?

In this fascinating episode of Family Twist, we sit down with Nick Sheedy, a seasoned genealogist from the popular PBS show "Finding Your Roots." With over two decades of experience in uncovering the past, Nick shares how genealogy is not just about tracing lineage but discovering the stories that shape us.

Finding Your Roots with Nick Sheedy

Listeners will gain invaluable insights into:

• The profound impact of understanding one's heritage and the unexpected emotional journey it can bring.
• Techniques and stories from a top genealogist on solving family mysteries that bridge the past with the present.
• The transformative power of DNA testing in genealogy, providing a window into ancestral ties that paper trails alone could never reveal.

Dive into this episode to see how exploring your family history could reveal more than just your ancestry—it might just change how you see yourself. Tune in now for a journey through time with Nick Sheedy.

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Welcome to Family Twist, a podcast about relatively unusual stories of long lost families, adoption, and lots of drama. I'm Corey. And I'm Kendall, and we've been partners for over 16 years. Thanks for joining us again. Today's guest is Nick Schiede, the lead genealogist for the popular PBS show, Finding Your Roots.

Now, Nick has more than 25 years of research experience and has been a professional genealogist for more than a decade. Thanks for joining us today, Nick. It's my pleasure to be here. Thank you so much, Cory. So if we could just go back a little bit. You've been doing research for a long time. Where did your interest in genealogy begin? I was really blessed growing up. I had all four grandparents.

Yeah, three of them in my hometown of John Day, Oregon. I also had a number of great grandparents living. And my last great -grandparent, my great -grandfather, George Sand, died when he was two weeks shy of 100. Wow. And I was just almost 27 years old. And I was real fortunate to see him almost every day for the last few years of his life. And so I grew up with family. And as a kid, a young kid, it was weekends would be one grandparent or the other.

or both, and lots of aunts and uncles and cousins. And so I grew up with extended family around, lots of family stories being told on all sides of the family. And even my grandpa Ham, Thomas Hamilton, who was from his hometown in Shelby, Ohio, would come out to visit or we'd go back there. And he had lots of stories going back to Revolutionary War era. And my mother's hometown of Shelby, Ohio was...

Then I was documenting the family tree like genealogists do. And it was really around 2000 when both my great grandfather, George Sand, died. And then my grandpa Ham passed away a few months later that I was given the opportunity to do some research because I went back to Ohio and started poking around the libraries and the county courthouses and wow, this is cool. And these records exist. While I had gathered stories up to that point, that's really about the time when I started documenting the family.

and putting a family tree together. And so for the past 22 years, I've been, been doing this personally and developed certain skills that led me to hang out my shingle one day. And I was very fortunate to hang out my shingle by reaching out to Johnny Cerny, who was one of the, the, the leading genealogists in the United States. Yes. And I didn't know that at the time. I just threw my resume around and she took me in.

And Johnny was a friend and a mentor to me. And from there, I really broadened and deepened my experience in genealogy research. So I'm glad you brought up Johnny because I was going to ask about her. What kind of things, what kind of tactics, skills did you pick up from Johnny? Johnny was an amazing person. She was very generous with her time and her expertise. And one thing that a lot of people may not imagine is that.

Although Johnny was one of the most accomplished genealogists in the world, she did not know who her biological father was. She was born during World War II. Over the years, she had a number of leads and her aunt told her one name and then another, and her mother was tight lipped about it and wouldn't say anything. But finally, I can't remember exactly what year it was, but one year before her birthday, I said, Johnny, let me...

help you with this for your birthday present. That year, after waiting years, she had tested DNA. And after waiting several years, she finally got two matches who were second cousins. And before that, all of her DNA matches were a little more distant and we just couldn't make heads or tails of it. And I'd help poke around a little bit. But with these two second cousin matches, she and I together looked at how they fit together.

And we identified Johnny's great grandparents. And I said, one of their grandsons has to be your biological father. We profiled that family and there were 17 sons or 17 grandsons. So we had 17 people to start with and we started scratching off ones that might've been too young and then prioritizing which ones had proximity or not proximity to where she was born in Kansas City. We just went down the list.

And during the course of that, we reached out to a second cousin to test DNA, one of several, and discovered that her father was not her biological father. We found another mystery that we helped solve, because you can't just leave somebody hanging. It took several months of sleuthing and reaching out to people and additional DNA tests that we finally identified her biological father.

And it turned out that her biological father had worked with her aunt and uncle at one time. And Johnny would have been conceived around his birthday, around just before, a few months before he shipped off to World War II. Pieces fit together and Johnny's mother had been gone for a few years at that point.

but it allowed Johnny to fill in half of her that she didn't have before. And it turns out she descended from Roger Williams, founder of Rhode Island. And she had all of these New England ancestors that she never knew she had, but many of those families she had researched over her long career. And she was already familiar with some of those families. And so it was really amazing to her. And then also her grandmother was adopted on her mom's side. She on her own nailed down who both parents were.

in that instance as well, within a couple years of when she passed away in early 2020. Working with Johnny, the things I learned in genealogy, besides the nuts and bolts and how do you go about this and lots of little tricks of the trade, was you have to keep an open mind and you don't draw firm conclusions till all of the evidence is laid out in front of you. And also reaching out to people, be kind and ask politely and people are

usually more than willing to help. And I find that with Finding Your Roots, I'm usually the guy that's reaching out to people out of the blue and saying, hey, we have a guest for Finding Your Roots. We, the short of it, ends up being, you know, we'd like somebody to test DNA to help solve a mystery. But we've had a very high success rate. There's only been two people that I can think of that just turned us down and said, no, I don't want to do it. And there's been some other people who weren't interested. They dragged their feet. We ended up finding somebody else who was more...

willing because we're not going to demand anything from anyone. But also for private clients, I've done that as well. In my own family, I've done that. Reach out to somebody who may or may not even be interested in family history and you have to butter them up and tell them why this is important to you or to someone. And also the DNA that they carry might be the only DNA in the whole world that will help solve this mystery. And we did have an instance where we had researched the family for a guest.

who had one son. And I reached out to, I believe, a great -grandson and the only living descendant, actually the only descendant. I reached out to that one man, and he was one of the few that he didn't even want to talk to me. I reached out to some cousins first to put me in touch with him. And they said, no, this is legitimate. This is like a real deal.

He was one of the few that just turned us down completely, didn't want anything to do with it. And didn't even give a reason, just said no. And of course we're not going to press the issue. But we did reach out to some distant cousins. We had descendants of his brother that we could test and it turned out they didn't match. And it's just one of those things you do where you run down possibilities and they don't pan out and then you move on. And you asked what I learned from Johnny Cerny is you never give up because this is something that for Johnny's...

whole life since she was a young girl. She wanted to know who her grandmother's parents were for her grandmother's sake. And then growing up, she suspected for many years that her, the man that raised her was not her biological father. I think she was 70 years old when she discovered who that man was. More than 50 years of wondering and looking into it and sometimes seriously looking into it. And so never give up. The answers may.

elude you for many years, but there's always a possibility that you're going to find some key record or a key DNA match that's going to help solve that mystery. And for finding your roots for private clients, for my own family tree, I don't think I could ever say that we've been truly exhaustive because there's always going to be something out there that you may not have looked for. You may not know exists some key that will help you solve either a mystery that you know about or.

maybe a mystery you didn't even know existed. We've seen this quite a bit where somebody tests DNA and all of a sudden, boom, they realize that part of their family tree is not, they're not biological relatives. And we see that all the time with a Facebook group called DNA Detectives that was started by my colleague, C .C. Moore. And people almost on a daily basis say, hey, I took a DNA test for fun or just out of curiosity and discovered that my dad was not my biological father.

And we have that all the time happen. So you can't take the pedigree that you may have grown up with knowing you can't take that for granted. And then also if there is a mystery, don't give up. Sure. Sure. Because the answer may be waiting for you out there. That leads me to ask about the advent of the home DNA test over the last decade or so where it's opened a lot of doors for a lot of people. But how has that impacted the world of professional genealogy?

Oh, it's been an amazing development. DNA is just absolutely essential, I think, for every professional genealogist to have that tool in their tool bag. When I was taking private clients, we would very strongly encourage our private clients to take a DNA test, even if they weren't particularly interested in it or there were no known big family mysteries. But occasionally...

The DNA will reveal a family mystery that nobody knew existed, but the DNA can also just help steer the genealogy research. And I'll give you an example there. My own family, on my father's side, my grandpa Carl's mother was a Phillips. My grandfather's last first cousin, Glenn Phillips, just passed away two summers ago. He still lived on the old Phillips Ranch, north of Spokane, Washington, which my great -grandparents homesteaded more than 120 years ago.

in neighboring Rhode Island. And we just didn't know. And there was a lot of speculation over the years. And there was more than one Elijah Phillips around. So we had tested autosomal DNA. But also I reached out to cousin Glenn Phillips and said, hey, would you test Y DNA? He didn't know what it was. He said, sure. And lo and behold, Glenn's Y DNA matched a couple dozen other men named Phillips. And almost all of them could trace.

A lot of people had said we were connected with them different times. One particular grandson of George Phillips moved to Preston, Connecticut, Jonathan Phillips. And so I could say pretty confidently that Jonathan Phillips was my Elijah Phillips great grandfather through his son, Jonathan, because now I can use autosomal DNA to look at, do I match DNA with the families of the wives of these men?

as you start triangulating and putting pieces together, very distant DNA matches. We descend from one of the sons of the younger Jonathan Phillips and his wife, Esther Ayers. And then it was a question, which son then through paper trail sleuthing. And up to that point, we had both DNA and paper trail working together to narrow down the possibilities. But they had a son named Daniel.

And his father was always a mystery. We had a name W .J. Steinhoff, William James, we believe. And it does look like his mother was with a William James Steinhoff at one time. But anyway, long story short there, I had one of my Steinhoff cousins, my cousin Alton, who happens to live here in Montana, where I do. I said, hey, Alton, will you test Y DNA for me and autosomal DNA as well? His Y DNA did not match.

any descendants of the John Steinhoff family that I thought we were related to. There's only one Steinhoff family in this part of Canada. John Steinhoff was a loyalist from New Jersey who fled to Canada with his 13 children in 1783. We have Steinhoff's, not a very common name in Ontario, Canada. We always assumed that we were connected to that family somehow, but Alton's YDNA matched a whole bunch of men named Ribble. And so...

And my ancestor is, my grandma's grandfather was William C. Steinhardt. And so we have a top candidate. But in my own sleuthing, those are two instances where I have used DNA to solve a mystery that could never have been solved with paper trail alone. Even five or 10 years ago, we might not have been able to solve that because we didn't even have enough testers in the database that some key matches didn't show up.

14 years to get a Y DNA match that's closer than 25 markers. And I'm now upgraded to the big Y. And I do have one match at the big Y level that does not show up on the lower levels. Sometimes you have to take the initiative to get people to test if you don't find those key matches in the databases just from people testing on their own. That involves a lot more work for sure. But what I've done is I've used autosomal DNA.

This is for genealogical purposes way back when. Who do I match autosomal DNA with that have people named Scheid or Scheid in their family tree? And when I see, oh, I matched these key people or, you know, these people, I've matched quite a bit of DNA. I don't see where we might be related otherwise. But I've collaborated with other people who are doing something similar. And I have a family in my mom's side of the family. It goes up my mother's mother's side. The name is UC.

And so he reached out to me asking if I could track down a living male -line descendant of the UC family. Well, I have some relatives in Ohio. And in the meantime, Wolfgang traveled to Switzerland and found a living UC relative in our little home town, Iushibi Spitz, along Lake Thune in the Canton of Bern. And he had this distant cousin, a UC male, test YDNA.

who are hopefully just as interested as you, some of them even more so maybe, but you connect with other people, you share information, and you're happy to share. You can also celebrate triumphs as well or commiserate when there's difficult problems that go unresolved. And in this case, the guy wasn't even related to me, but he shares a passion for family history. And because I was willing to help and did help, he...

you know, shared something with me that I would probably never get around to in my lifetime. Your family tree is unique to you. You know, you have two parents, four grandparents, eight great grandparents. The only people that share that exact pedigree would be full siblings. And if you only have half siblings, no one else in the world, if you only have half siblings, no full siblings, nobody else in the world shares your exact pedigree. But at the same time, you do share parts of your pedigree with other people.

Half of your pedigree is shared with each parent or half siblings. A quarter of your pedigree is shared with each grandparent, aunts and uncles, first cousins. And an eighth of your pedigree is shared with more distant relatives. And as you go back, you share parts of your pedigree with more distant and collateral relatives to the point where everyone on earth is related at some point. And so genealogy on the one hand is very unique and personal to you.

But at the same time, it connects us. It brings us all together and shows us how closely connected we all are. Absolutely. Absolutely. So you mentioned the DNA Detectives Facebook group. That's one of the many of the groups that I've joined once we started going into Kendall's journey. And I see that unknown parentage is probably the most prominent thing talked about in a lot of these groups. In working with private clients, I'm just curious when you've been able to help somebody track down that parent and the...

discovered that they're still alive. Are they looking to you for that emotional support as well, just because you were the one that made that discovery? Oh, a little bit. You know, as far as the emotional and the psychological support, I'm not a therapist, but my wife is. And I've filled that role a little bit. But for the most part, as a professional genealogist or just a friend, and I've done this for some friends or relatives that have been

you know, found themselves in this situation. Because I've done this a number of times, I have an idea how we go about it. And also reaching out to potential relatives and potentially close relatives, a parent, a half sibling. Sometimes it's good to have third party who's not closely tied into it reach out to someone for you. It removes the personal connection from the scenario a little bit.

You know, as a professional genealogist, I can introduce myself and assure them that I'm not a Nigerian pirate and I'm not never pushy, but I just explain the situation. I'm working for a private client or I'm helping a cousin. We just go from there and you have to feel someone out whether they might be warm to the idea that they have a close relative that they didn't know about before. And inevitably there is some emotion involved here. I remember I had a client.

private client whose mother was half black, half African American. And they had a family story that my client's grandfather was a white man that worked at a local mill. They had this, the mother knew who he was. She would meet him at the fence. He gave her candy and a little spending money. And when she was an adult, she went down to introduce him to her children when they were very young. My client did not remember that.

white cousins, like second cousin level, and they'd already zeroed in on a particular family. It was probably one of several brothers. And I solved the mystery and it turned out that the grandfather fathered a child with my client's grandmother, who happened to be his brother's next door neighbor. The brother who was the next door neighbor to my client's grandmother was the top candidate. And we reached out to some of that man's grandchildren.

And it was inconclusive whether he was or not. So we started reaching out to other relatives. The man that ended up being the grandfather of my client had a bunch of kids and some of his children were still living. And so I believe it was two half aunts and one half uncle were living. And I reached out to them and they were all interested. And these are white people in South Carolina. And I said, my client's family is black. That didn't faze them. They didn't even bat an eye. But when it came down to it,

Here an 80 -year -old woman agreed to test DNA, and it comes back close enough, she is my client's half aunt. And as promised, I told the woman that agreed to test for us to help confirm, I gave her a report. My client said she'd love to provide a documentation for what we did and how we're.

they're connected and my client had no expectations and I often caution people. You cannot be disappointed if you have no expectations. Yes, we hope that people will be accepting. We hope we might develop some sort of a relationship with people. Maybe it's never going to be a tight, close -knit relationship like you would have with siblings that you grew up with, but you know, you might hope that you have a relationship, but if you don't anticipate that, you can't be disappointed. So go into it with an open mind. You don't know where this is going to lead. And my client,

lived in Arizona. And these people are in South Carolina. And it's not like they're just around the corner, which is sometimes the case. But when it came down to it, my client was happy to finally put together the pieces and know this quarter of her pedigree. I've documented these families and traced them back generations in my report. But the woman who tested DNA for us did the math and realized.

that her father was married with several children at home when he had an affair with his brother's neighbor who was also married with children at home. And although he was a bit of a wild man in his youth, he became a hard -boiled Baptist minister. And so the younger generation who's still living,

and their children and grandchildren remember him as a very straight -laced Baptist minister. And this 80 -year -old woman who was gracious enough to share her DNA to help solve this mystery was very upset that, in her words, her father broke one of the Big Ten. And the fact that he committed adultery not only with his wife, but with...

his neighbors, his brother's neighbors, you know, was married as well. He committed adultery twofold through this act that was extremely upsetting to her. And she called me, she was very polite and very rational about it. But at the end of the day, almost her exact words were she wished that she had died before I told her this news.

because it totally changed how she thought about her father. She had to take his photo off the wall. Oh, wow. And that she was going to burn the report that I sent her because she did not want her siblings or the next generation to know this. Wow. It was simply the fact that this man that they knew as a very straight -laced, hard -boiled Baptist minister had an affair while he was married.

And while the other woman was married, that flipped their world upside down. I had to apologize profusely that we didn't anticipate this. And she understood completely where my client was coming from that she wanted to know. But it was very upsetting to learn that their dad had a side to him that they didn't know about. Reaching out to people and trying to get them to test DNA, that's a delicate matter in and of itself.

You still have to approach it delicately and ask nicely and be polite and plead with people a little bit because their DNA, it is, it's possible that their DNA is the only DNA in the whole world that's going to help solve this mystery. But you also have to be sensitive to the fact that, you know, they didn't ask for this and the results might not be what they're expecting or what they wanted. While it's maybe life -changing for you in a positive way, it could be life -changing for somebody else in an upsetting way.

And so you have to be, you just have to be careful when you approach that. We've certainly experienced that with Kendall's journey. And it's tough when you're a person in a position when you have a lead or you have what you think is like a connection. And it was really difficult for him to not immediately reach out to all these people. And so he did. And as I said, it's, it was, it's been mostly fantastic, but there are a couple of situations that have not.

play that well, or have open, have revealed other secrets and things like that, that's just, as you said, you don't know how it's going to affect the other side. Yeah. And you have to be sympathetic to another person's situation. And often, even people who are lukewarm about either testing DNA or providing information or just putting me in touch with their cousins, maybe they're not interested in genealogy. If you can...

Find a way to connect with them so that they can sympathize with your position or your client. In my case, it's been a client's position or maybe a guest for the TV show. Say, hey, we're trying to solve this mystery. It would mean the world to us if you would test your DNA. And sometimes I'll have to explain it that you're either a first cousin or half sibling. We don't know which. And you throw it out there. Initially, you don't want to, we don't bait somebody and then drop some bombshell on them.

And in my own family, I've had people reach out to me. They match DNA with me. I had a relatively close cousin, I say relatively close, reached out to me and said, hey, my father, this is on my mom's side of the family, they matched my mother and a number of other relatives. They said, hey, our father was from Shelby, Ohio. He never really was close to his biological father. He was a dentist in town. And his mom had an affair with this dentist. And...

this new DNA cousin's dad was still living at the time, knew the dentist took him out for ice cream and gave him spending money. And he had a relationship with this dentist, even though it was, they understood that there was a father son relationship there. They asked how I was related to this dentist. And I went, well, that's my mom's hometown. My mom's family's been there forever. And all of a sudden I thought maybe I had a misattributed paternity somewhere on the family tree. Cause I...

mapped out this dentist's family and my family tree and they don't connect anywhere. It turns out that dentist was not the father of my new DNA cousin's dad. And that was very upsetting to him because his mother lied to him, said that that dentist that she had worked for was his dad and he knew that growing up. Even though they didn't have a close relationship, he had that story told to him.

And it was etched in stone as far as he was concerned. And so it was upsetting to him not to learn that he was related instead to Uncle Walter, my grandfather's uncle, but DNA was conclusive there and we had him test Y DNA. So there was just no question. And I had to map it out and autosomal DNA matched my mom's second cousin and to the point where there's just no question. But for this newfound cousin,

It was upsetting to him because his mom lied to him and he was raised by a stepfather who was very good to him and became a very successful pharmacist and business owner and had a good life. But at the same time, it took him a while to wrap his head around the idea that his mother told him a story that was not factual. And that's probably pretty common. Yeah, very common. Certainly, it's either either somebody has lied about it or just kept.

children a complete secret, thinking that if nobody knows, it's never going to come out. Not thinking that one day there's going to be this technology where it does come out. It's certainly been the way that Kendall's mother's birth mother's side of the family that only a couple of people knew about that he even existed. You know, how it's then he blew those doors wide open. Yeah, and it's always interesting to how some people might have a little more open attitude to it and other people, they just they remain in denial.

And even if, even if they're no longer in denial and they accepted as fact, they still don't want anything to do with it. And you can't force anybody. But you mentioned the DNA detectives Facebook group that C .C. Moore started. I joined that years ago when they were, I want to say I was like the 20th thousandth member of the group. I was like, wow, 20 ,000. And now it's up to 180 ,000 members. There's a number of other groups like that on Facebook where.

You know, people who are in a similar situation can join a group. It's, it is a bit of a support network. People can talk about their own experiences, realize for better or worse, they're not alone in this world. Other people have experienced something very similar. Oh, I took a DNA test for fun and discovered my dad is not my biological father. So many people find themselves in that position or they're adoptees and they're going about this and making a diligent effort for the first time.

and you get the newbies asking the same questions over and over again. And everybody is so gracious to answer those questions for them. And then of course you have search angels who put in their own time and blood, sweat and tears to help solve that mystery. And so it's really, it is an amazing community that social media has allowed us to develop that might not exist otherwise.

technological advancements, whether it's DNA testing or social media and the internet have really changed the playing field when it comes to this aspect of family history research, especially for adoptees and people who may or may not have known, but or discover that they have family out there they didn't grow up with or didn't even know about. It's just totally changed the game, but changed it for the better. It's amazing. It really is amazing how it's changed the playing field for the better. For sure. And that, that.

take back to the show, Finding Your Roots. I think my favorite moments have to be when Henry Louis Gates Jr. is presenting someone with a photograph or something that they didn't know because that real emotion that you see on the face, and I've seen that firsthand with Kendall and his family. This is a revelation that folks never thought they would have. Like when Quest...

And it says born in Africa. And for those who listening who may not be familiar, Questlove's ancestors lived out of Mobile, Alabama, and they were formerly enslaved people. And here are the 1870, 1880 censuses, first two censuses where they are listed by name, says they're born in Africa. And the 1880 census says parents born in Africa. And if you see that once, you think, oh, it could be a fluke. And then you see it twice. And maybe there's something to this.

in Africa. And then it was literally like the old Tom and Jerry cartoons where the light bulb goes off over your head. And I went, oh, Mobile, Alabama. There's an African town just north of Mobile and something about the last slave ship and the name of the ship alluded me at the moment I had to Google it, the Clotilde. And I thought, oh,

My goodness, we have a story. And in the course of that, and here's, I guess it's a good lesson. How do you prove that? We have this amazing circumstantial case where they and everyone else in that community are, say they're born in Africa long after the slave trades abolished. We reached out to people in that community, some distant relatives of Questlove, some of whom had photographs that we could show Questlove.

a photograph of his ancestor, Charles Lewis. And boy, you look at Questlove's eyes and Charles Lewis's eyes, where he got it from. That's just amazing. And very emotional for him. But for us doing the research too, it was exciting. How do you nail this down? And they had stories, family stories, and that's good enough. With this circumstantial evidence and you have family stories and it all hangs together. We have no doubt that they were on that ship. But the thing, the one record that

I think we did, we did feature it in the show, but it didn't make as big a splash as it did in my brain when I realized we found it. The city of Mobile, one of our interns or researchers, they reach out and try to comb any record we can to help support a story. When they reached out to the Mobile Public Library and told them we were interested in researching the library says, oh yeah, we have Captain Mears' diary here.

And somebody found it and they copied a few pages and they uploaded it to our, the team drive that we use. And it was alerted. It wasn't something that genealogical value didn't prove any relationships, didn't prove birth dates or death dates. So it's not on my radar. But then when I realized we had it and the producers knew what we had, this was a, was not a daily diary. It was more of a journal. It was not a ship's log. And it was, it was not day to day, but the captain of the Clotilda.

So he did this on a boast and a bet. And there's no way he made money on the deal. I mean, he lost money on the deal, but it was just a stupid pride. Wow. That did this. Captain, he hired Captain Mears, kept this journal and he describes how they outfitted the ship, how they made the ship look like it was transporting lumber. And they sailed to Africa. They pull in the port. They negotiate with the Grand Pupa and the right hand man who's handling the slaves.

And, you know, it's just a firsthand account of how the journey went down, how the negotiations went down. And he described being led down to a warehouse. And here in the warehouse, there's thousands of naked people in chains. And he was allowed to just pick out the 100 that he or however many it was, 130 some people that he wanted to transport back to Alabama. And one thing that stuck with me,

in that journal was that at some point the person in Africa facilitating the sale offered to brand the slaves for Captain Mears and Captain Mears recoils in disgust. How in the world could I brand these people? And so it underscores the foreign mentality that we, it's foreign to me today, but this mentality that this guy has no qualms.

purchasing another human being, transporting them halfway around the world to be held in slavery for life. He has no moral qualms with that, but he recoils in disgust at the thought of branding them. But the more I thought about it, what really struck me there was the question was that standard practice. And because we have so few firsthand accounts of how this happened,

If the idea that these slaves at the time they were purchased and put on board in Africa, if those slaves were branded, literally branded with a hot iron, you'd have all of the angst and dread and just terrible pain of being ripped from your homeland and your family and put on a ship to go who knows where. You'd have all of that mental anguish and trauma.

But on top of it, it's entirely possible that as a matter of practice, you had also been branded with a hot iron and anybody who's suffered a severe burn knows how much it hurts. And you're put on board a ship surrounded by salt water and salty air. And I can only imagine that as much as a recent burn is gonna sting, you have salt air and maybe salt water.

adding to that discomfort, you have physical pain on top of that. And you can just imagine how traumatic, truly traumatic that experience would have been for anybody in that situation. And I mean, you can imagine without knowing these details, but then knowing these details, and that's one thing we do with Finding Your Roots is we fair out these records and.

and narratives that allow us to tell stories with details that really put a personal face on this history. Yeah, it's entirely possible that as a matter of standard practice, enslaved people put on the slave boat to be transported across the Atlantic were branded, branded with a hot iron at the time they left. And it really hammers home how amazingly traumatic that would have been, just unfathomably.

traumatic that would have been if you want to, you know, try to wrap your head around it. But yeah, you show these records to a guest on the show. We look for those things. We look for stories that the guests might not be familiar with to get these reactions. It makes for good TV. But also, we hope that inspires people to learn more about their own family and how we got to where we are. If you study history and you understand where you came from or you watch this show and you understand how...

other people and their families got to where they are, you would hope that it elicits some empathy and some understanding. And really, what do you do with that knowledge and with your own family tree? Why do you want to know where you came from? People are interested in their stories. If it's your own parents that you didn't know who they were and you want to know, that's very personal. But ultimately, what do you do with this knowledge? For me, I hope people take it in and try to internalize it a little bit.

I've said this before on some of the interviews, history is not some detached set of facts that exists in a vacuum. History is connected to the present day, just like events that are going to happen in our future are connected to what we do today. And so really, I hope it helps people make better decisions.

today that affect our future and future generations because it is, it's all connected. Little decisions that our ancestors made have had an enormous impact. We wouldn't exist otherwise. And as we go about our daily lives, decisions that we make great and small are going to affect the next generation and the world around us. Even if we don't have children, you're going to affect your environment.

you're gonna affect your community and maybe your whole country and maybe the world in some way. I think that puts a little more weight on, for me at least, we have no idea what the future holds for the next generations. It still holds that decisions that we make today are going to affect what opportunities the next generations have. And to understand how that happens, all you have to do is research your own family tree and realize the decisions great and small have.

had an enormous impact on where we are today. Whether it's just what you do for work or where you live or the state of our environment, how our communities are structured, how our government's structured, how society works, just the nuts and bolts of everyday life and getting philosophical about it. I think genealogy helps put that into perspective when you talk about family history and it gives people, it really does put a personal face on history, but it gives people some context.

about how do you fit into the historical narrative? Because everybody knows the Civil War happened, the Holocaust happened, the Revolutionary War happened. For African -American guests, their families lived through Jim Crow and slavery. But then to know the details, to understand the circumstances and how it affected your particular ancestors, I think that really strikes a chord. And really, that's true.

regardless where your people came from or how many generations back, when you can make those personal connections, I think that it helps you internalize those facts and understand better how you connect the dots, not just connecting the dots with the relationships unrelated to these people, but then what made them tick and what motivated them to move from one place to another and make these decisions that lead to our present day.

You hit the nail on the head right there. That's our adventure right now. Yeah. Can you share the status of the next season of the show? Is it are you still working on it or is it complete? Season eight aired earlier this year, and we're just wrapping up production for season nine. The guests, I don't believe for season nine, I don't believe the guests have been made public yet. So I can't say who's going to be on the show, but definitely season nine is going to be another great.

season. We have some great guests to show and I'm not positive when it airs, PBS decides on the scheduling, but probably late this fall, winter, over the winter and then into 2023 is when season nine will air. But we've already ramped up and we're starting season 10. And the way it works sometimes is we've researched some guests over the years that for whatever reason, the interviews couldn't be scheduled. We already have a few guests that are in various stages of research for season 10.

But we're looking forward to season 10 and production. It's just fantastic that it's been so popular. And I think it's popular for a reason. People are interested in family stories, even watching Finding Your Roots, it's family stories about somebody you may or may not be connected with. But we have fans of the show, viewers reach out to us occasionally and say, hey, wow, it was amazing that you mentioned somebody that is a common ancestor to them.

And what I'll say is, doing this research, it's been interesting to me that I'm related to a number of our guests, especially white guests that have deep colonial roots in New England. It's much easier to document. I'd say at least a dozen of our guests since I've started working on the show. I have common ancestors with these people, Billie Jean King and Ted Danson and John Waters. John Waters has related my grandma Betty on both his mom's and dad's side and both my grandma Betty's mom's and dad's side.

And it's just these crazy connections that pop up. And it really underscored to me how the world is a really small place. If you went back far enough and really you start looking at your DNA matches and you match 20 ,000, 50 ,000 people, tens of thousands of people sometimes at Ancestry, it's changed since they narrowed their thresholds a little bit. But you can upload your DNA to GEDmatch and lower the thresholds and you're going to match tens of thousands, maybe a hundred thousand people.

These are all your distant cousins. You go back so far, you're related to everybody on earth. With Finding Your Roots, I think that those connections and those stories, while they're unique to our guests, I think that a lot of people can relate to those types of stories because many people's ancestors experienced something very similar. I think that it does help enlighten our guests about what their ancestors may have experienced, even if the details we're presenting are not.

unique to their families, but it also inspires our viewers to learn more about their own family trees. And like I said before, then maybe you take this information, you internalize it, you generalize it, and you think a little more about what decisions we make today and how it will affect future generations. Absolutely. Congratulations on the success of the show. And thank you so much for the really remarkable insight today on this episode. It's been fantastic.

Cory, it's been my pleasure. I appreciate you reaching out to me because it's fun for me to talk about. And so much of my day is researching people who have been long dead and records that are sitting there. Other people may look at the records, but so much of my day doing genealogy research is in a little bit of a vacuum. And so it's always fun to reach out and chat about the work I do.

and this type of research. It's fascinating to me and I wish I had more time to work on my own family tree because there's always mysteries out there. The topic of your show, it does strike home with me. Like I've said, a number of relatives DNA matches have reached out to me over the years. There is a possibility that I could have a half sister that I never knew about. You know, a relative mentioned to me a couple of years ago that, hey, your dad was dating this girl. And she came to me at one point and mentioned she was pregnant. And...

She thought this baby was my dad's biological child. This was just a couple years ago, not even a year and a half ago. And so I called my dad and I said, hey, dad, and I knew he dated this woman. I said, hey, dad, I just got this information. And I said, do you think that your old girlfriend's daughter might be your child? And his response was, well, yeah, you know, I always wondered. I want.

What? How can you say that so nonchalantly? So I talked to her at the time and she told me that the baby wasn't mine and she was gonna marry this other guy. I was a young kid and I dodged a bullet there and give me another beer. And my dad was very nonchalant about this and I said, dad, I said, if you had to give me odds, what do you think the chances are? He goes, oh, I'd say there's by me a 30 % chance she's my daughter. And I'm like, but those are.

I'd probably put money on that if I was in Vegas. And yeah, there's this possibility out there. And my dad had kept in touch with this old high school girlfriend off and on. We know who she is and where she lives. And I stalked her a little bit. I called and left messages a couple of times. And she's never returned my call.

And she does have a daughter, and I profiled the daughter a little bit. She's on Facebook, and I can look her up. I have phone numbers for her. I have not reached out yet. But to be quite honest, looking at photos of her, I don't see family resemblance. And can you judge a book by its cover? No. But I look at her photos, high school annual photos, and I look at yearbook photos for her dad, the man that the old girlfriend married, and I see some resemblance there.

And so the man that she grew up with, the thinking that it was her dad, and in fact, the old girlfriend and her, the man she married got divorced very soon. So this girl grew up without her father in the household. And so it's a situation where she knows who the guy is and she may or may not have a close relationship with him. But yeah, so in my own family tree, there was this possibility cropped up. And at this point, it looks doubtful. But at the same time,

Is there a possibility? Right. I have a half sister out there and my desk is yeah. And the only way we're going to know for sure is if I do reach out at some point and ask this potential half sister, my older sister to test DNA. Would it rock my world? No. Would it change my world? Yes, it may rock her world. I don't know. But what's curious to me is the old girlfriend has not returned to my calls.

And I called and I said, I'm doing some family history research, introduce myself, you know, who I am. And there's no doubt she knows who I am. The fact that she has not called me back makes me a little curious to dig into this deeper, but at the same time also tells me that I need to be cautious because it may not be well received. As soon as you said that, I thought, oh, you can certainly speculate the reason why she's not calling you back. Yeah. At the same time, I guess you've got to heed your own advice.

It seems rather doubtful in my own mind, but at the same time, you don't know for sure until somebody tests DNA. Right. So, yeah, at some point, I will probably reach out to the prospective half sister and just see what she says. We'll see how receptive she might be to it. And yeah, you just have to proceed cautiously. And like I say, if you don't have expectations, you can't be disappointed. You know, you can hope and.

and pray that it goes one way, but you don't know what the facts are. I appreciate the opportunity to chat about this, Corey, and I wish you well. And I'm sure to your listeners, I hope that something I've said today hopefully is helpful. It's been very inspirational. Part of the goal of doing this is we're sharing Kendall's journey, but also we want to be able to help others with their journeys and just hearing these stories and hearing that.

background about genealogy, I think is helpful for a lot of people. And you never know, you could be back here as a guest with your half sister someday. Hey, you never know. Like I said, I'd rather doubt it, but there's this little doubt. I say I doubt it, but I also doubt my doubtingness. You've given us a lot to think about. So thank you so much, Nick. This has been a real pleasure.

This is the Family Twist podcast hosted by Kendall and Corey Stulz with original music by Cosmic Afterthoughts and produced by Outpost Productions and presented by Savoir Faire Marketing Communications. Have a story you want to share? Visit Family Twist Podcast dot com. All our social media links are there as well.