Latest / In Focus with Carolyn Hutcheson / Family Historian - TPR's In Focus - July 30, 2026

Transcript

Family Historian - TPR's In Focus - July 30, 2026 · In Focus with Carolyn Hutcheson

• 0:00
  Support comes from Troy University's Trojan Cafe, offering handcrafted
• 0:04
  Starbucks beverages and a wide assortment of meal and snack options,
• 0:08
  located on Troy University's Montgomery campus across from the
• 0:12
  Rosa Parks Library and Museum.
• 0:17
  From Troy Public Radio, this is In Focus,
• 0:21
  and I'm Carolyn Hutcheson. Suzanna Rawlins is
• 0:24
  the research chair for the Alabama Genealogical Society.
• 0:28
  She is her family's historian and storyteller,
• 0:33
  and she shares tips on how you can become your family storyteller
• 0:42
  She joins us for our Genealogy in Your Genes— that's
• 0:46
  spelled G-E-N-E-S— series.
• 0:49
  Susanna, welcome to Troy Public Radio.
• 0:53
  Thank you. It is a pleasure to be here with you today. You will
• 0:56
  be participating in the fall seminar August
• 0:59
  8th at Monte Vallo So what's
• 1:03
  on the agenda? I'm going to be talking about the difference between,
• 1:07
  in essence, being a genealogist and then being your family historian,
• 1:11
  because there is a huge difference between the two. I like
• 1:14
  to think it's where genealogy becomes an art. You know, you've got your birth date
• 1:18
  and your death date, but you're going beyond that. We're going
• 1:22
  to find out names, dates, locations, etc., and you're building out
• 1:26
  the branches of your family tree. Kind of generic. There's nothing there. You've just got
• 1:30
  your names and your dates, but then you build on that, and this is where
• 1:34
  the art comes in and you're fleshing out not just who was born,
• 1:38
  when and where and to whom, but you're taking that hard data
• 1:42
  and you're looking for the story. The data will tell
• 1:45
  you a story if you delve deeper, and that's what I'm going to talk to
• 1:49
  the, to the attendees about in my program. So how did
• 1:53
  you go from being a genealogist to your own family
• 1:56
  historian? I think it's my innate sense of curiosity
• 2:00
  and looking at the documents. I am an analyst by profession and
• 2:05
  a data analyst at that, and part of my job is to take the data
• 2:08
  that we have and look at the story that the data tells you. You just
• 2:12
  look at documents a little bit differently. And then think, oh,
• 2:15
  now I see where that correlation is. And you can begin to flesh out a
• 2:19
  story. The title of your speech is Congratulations, You're the Family
• 2:23
  Historian. Now What? So give your listeners some tips
• 2:27
  on fleshing out that genealogy that you're talking about.
• 2:31
  Oh, I'm happy to do that. So I inherited a couple of boxes of photographs.
• 2:35
  That were from my grandfather. You know, they were from World War II.
• 2:38
  I had then another box of family photos. There's some names
• 2:42
  you were trying to connect. Didn't know what to really do with it. And so
• 2:46
  I started with the box of family members first because that was a little bit
• 2:49
  easier. I could track my grandfather's service in World War II because he
• 2:53
  was at Okinawa. But I began with that family, and you look at the photographs,
• 2:56
  you begin to look at names, you notice locations. What does that
• 3:00
  photograph tell you? There's usually in a corner the photography area,
• 3:03
  you know, the photographer that took the picture. You begin by making the notes.
• 3:07
  Begin with what you know or what you think you know and ask those questions.
• 3:11
  And that helps you build out the tree because what's important
• 3:15
  is in your genealogy connecting your ancestors
• 3:19
  and their time frames that they lived and the locations,
• 3:22
  and then you're connecting that back to the history of the
• 3:26
  community and then even at the broader level of, I'm going to say for the
• 3:29
  United States because a lot of what I've done is just back to those that
• 3:32
  came over. Most of my ancestors were here in the 16th and 17th 17th centuries.
• 3:35
  So that is taking that initial— maybe you've got scrapbooks,
• 3:39
  I don't know, whatever you were given— and how do you begin to organize that
• 3:43
  and come up with a game plan to figure out who are these people to
• 3:47
  me and who are these people to my family story?
• 3:50
  And that's what I'm going to try to help them with on Saturday. In thinking
• 3:54
  of your own family stories, did you come across any surprises?
• 4:00
  I've got some unanswered questions and some stories of things that I don't have them
• 4:04
  fully fleshed out yet. I've learned some things about some ancestors where
• 4:07
  maybe I made some assumptions about what kind of individuals they were,
• 4:11
  and then data told me a little bit different. But it'll point to the stories
• 4:15
  and you can kind of piece things together. So I did have an ancestor who
• 4:18
  was murdered, and I was able to get my hands on the coroner's report.
• 4:21
  And you read what other people said about your ancestor and you begin to
• 4:25
  build the story out. And there were some surprising things in there that, you know,
• 4:28
  you had to sit for a minute and think, I wonder what it was like
• 4:30
  to be around him. Every time they come up with a new ancestor,
• 4:35
  I've got my fire and brimstone preachers. I have a fossor. I have
• 4:39
  a pirate. It's just amazing, and I love the challenge.
• 4:42
  But when I learned about the pirate, my brothers in Kansas, and they just want
• 4:46
  to know, like, who are we connected to? What did our ancestors do now?
• 4:49
  And I'm the family storyteller, so they'll say, well, what did you discover next?
• 4:53
  Well, guess what? This time I found one that did so-and-so, and they are fascinated.
• 4:56
  And I probably need to put it like in book form, and I think that's
• 5:00
  maybe the next thing for them. But they always— my nieces and nephew
• 5:04
  think it's fascinating, and it makes history come alive for a generation
• 5:08
  that's not into history. When you realize your family's part of it,
• 5:12
  you enjoy it more. Well, on the website of the
• 5:16
  Alabama Genealogical Society is the AGS database,
• 5:20
  600 surnames listed in the surname directory for
• 5:24
  Alabama ancestors. Then you also have the First Families
• 5:29
  of Alabama, those who settled here, and the Loose
• 5:32
  Records Project. These are assembled from courthouse
• 5:37
  records. So we're talking about a huge help in
• 5:40
  becoming a family historian. And on
• 5:43
  August 8th, there will be a seminar of
• 5:47
  the Alabama Genealogical Society in Montevallo at
• 5:51
  American Village. Can you give us a preview?
• 5:54
  We will be discussing not only the program that I'm giving
• 5:58
  on, you know, you're the family historian, but there'll be a speaker that
• 6:01
  talks about genealogy and forensics, the counter spies
• 6:05
  in the Revolution, funeral practices within
• 6:09
  African American communities. It's a myriad of topics
• 6:13
  that we're going to cover. And hopefully there'll be something that tickles your fancy.
• 6:17
  As you recounted becoming the family historian
• 6:21
  or storyteller, I can't think of anything more interesting
• 6:25
  to do during this 250th anniversary
• 6:29
  year of America's founding than to learn
• 6:33
  how to do this? I totally agree.
• 6:36
  If you think about it, all of our families are part of the
• 6:40
  woven fabric of this country. We all contributed, and it's just
• 6:44
  kind of neat to see where in that tapestry of
• 6:48
  the history of the United States, where did we fit in? What did our ancestors
• 6:52
  take part of? And that, that's the part that's fascinating to me.
• 6:55
  So I love when I start building out the tree and going back backwards at
• 6:58
  time. I will think about documenting their birth and their death dates
• 7:02
  and think about the historical events that went on. Like my grandmother,
• 7:05
  for example, was born in 1904. So I think about what she
• 7:09
  saw before she died in 1990— the automobile, the airplane,
• 7:13
  we went to the moon, we have microwaves— all of these things that
• 7:18
  are part of Americana that, that she saw in her lifetime. And it just fascinates
• 7:22
  me. Give your listeners some advice where to start.
• 7:26
  It could seem overwhelming, but you make
• 7:30
  seem doable. It is, it is.
• 7:33
  Start with what you know. So make your list of questions. So you
• 7:37
  probably know your information, your parents, your grandparents. Start with
• 7:41
  what you know, flesh that out, ask your older
• 7:45
  generation family members, let them help you fill in the blanks. And once you have
• 7:49
  that, you can go— I would suggest for a free site,
• 7:52
  FamilySearch, for, you know, overall bigger picture outside of Alabama,
• 7:57
  familysearch.org, because it's free. And then you
• 8:00
  can start looking at different records and start with the easy ones.
• 8:03
  Census records back to 1850 are pretty easy because you know locations,
• 8:08
  you have names, and you have dates, and so you can go backwards
• 8:12
  in time very easily. And then from those, you can
• 8:16
  look at somebody's— maybe an evolution of someone as they change
• 8:19
  through professions because their professions are listed. Or where did they
• 8:23
  move? Why did they move? Or who were they with? Because the
• 8:27
  communities often stayed together and they intermarried, and it will unlock
• 8:31
  additional family lines that you maybe didn't know with. So it almost— it's like
• 8:36
  peeling away the layers of an onion, and then you'll connect dots,
• 8:39
  and then stories start coming together. It's your personal story,
• 8:43
  isn't it? Exactly. And you've got those documents right there,
• 8:46
  and you're piecing together what that information is telling you.
• 8:50
  And then with a little bit of imagination and study of history,
• 8:53
  and then now you've got a story, and you know where you, your family,
• 8:57
  fit into the founding of our nation. Susannah,
• 9:01
  thank you for a fascinating visit today. Well,
• 9:05
  thank you. Thank you for having me. I enjoyed talking to you today. That was
• 9:08
  Susannah Rawlins, Research Chair for the Alabama Genealogical
• 9:13
  Society. Their fall seminar is August 8th at American
• 9:17
  Village in Montevallo, and more information is at the
• 9:21
  algensoc.org website.
• 9:26
  Thanks for joining us today for the Genealogy in Your Genes series
• 9:30
  on In Focus. Which is a podcast wherever you get your podcasts.
• 9:35
  Feel free to get in touch at infocus@troy.edu.
• 9:39
  I'm Carolyn Hutcheson, and this is listener-supported
• 9:43
  Troy Public Radio.