Latest / Stories That Live In Us / Black-Market Adoptions to Broadway Stars (with Lisa Elzey) | Episode 132

Transcript

Black-Market Adoptions to Broadway Stars (with Lisa Elzey) | Episode 132 · Stories That Live In Us

• 0:00
  Crista Cowan: What do a black market adoption ring in 1950s Georgia and the Broadway cast of Anastasia have in common?
• 0:06
  Crista Cowan: More than you might think.
• 0:08
  Crista Cowan: And it points to a secret I've learned over decades doing family history.
• 0:13
  Crista Cowan: The fastest way to break through your own genealogy brick walls is to help someone else break through theirs.
• 0:19
  Crista Cowan: When you step away from your own family trees and work on a completely unfamiliar family, something magical happens.
• 0:27
  Crista Cowan: You drop your personal biases, learn to show your work, and build research muscles that help you come back to your own family tree with new skills and fresh views.
• 0:38
  Crista Cowan: Today, my dear friend, colleague, and podcast producer sits down with me to talk about how researching strangers' family trees, from secret adoptions to Broadway stars, transformed the way we find and tell family stories.
• 0:53
  Crista Cowan: Enjoy my conversation with Lisa Elsie.
• 0:56
  Crista Cowan: Hi, I'm Krista Kellen, and this is the podcast where telling your family stories can help create a deeply connected family.
• 1:05
  Crista Cowan: Welcome to Stories That Live In Us.
• 1:07
  Crista Cowan: So you and I spend almost all day, every day talking to each other.
• 1:15
  Crista Cowan: We do.
• 1:15
  Crista Cowan: It's my favorite.
• 1:16
  Crista Cowan: But uh I love sitting down with you in this environment because we get to share stories in a really intentional way.
• 1:23
  Crista Cowan: Uh and so the way I framed this up in our intro uh really has to do with the importance of researching other people's trees to gain new skills.
• 1:33
  Crista Cowan: And so I thought we could talk about some of the projects that you have worked on.
• 1:37
  Crista Cowan: Um, some we've worked on together.
• 1:39
  Crista Cowan: Um, let's start with the Hicks babies.
• 1:43
  Lisa Elzey: Oh my goodness, this is DNA 101 for me.
• 1:46
  Lisa Elzey: Yeah, that's what that was.
• 1:47
  Lisa Elzey: So you started it.
• 1:48
  Lisa Elzey: It was all you first.
• 1:49
  Lisa Elzey: It was.
• 1:50
  Lisa Elzey: Okay.
• 1:50
  Lisa Elzey: Um so I can give a little bit of background um about the story.
• 1:54
  Lisa Elzey: So um, gosh, this was back in 2013, 2014.
• 1:58
  Lisa Elzey: Yes, I'll say yes.
• 1:59
  Lisa Elzey: Oh gosh.
• 2:00
  Lisa Elzey: Okay.
• 2:00
  Lisa Elzey: So Ancestry started DNA testing in uh the spring of 2012.
• 2:05
  Lisa Elzey: And when we had about a million and a half, two million people in the database, uh, I had a DNA case that I had cut my teeth on, but then this case was brought to our attention.
• 2:16
  Lisa Elzey: And Dr.
• 2:17
  Lisa Elzey: Hicks was a doctor, rural doctor in Georgia, and he had a problem.
• 2:25
  Lisa Elzey: I'm trying to be kind.
• 2:27
  Lisa Elzey: Yes.
• 2:28
  Lisa Elzey: He just he decided things without consultation.
• 2:31
  Lisa Elzey: He decided to play God.
• 2:33
  Lisa Elzey: Oh, sure, yes, that's pretty much.
• 2:35
  Crista Cowan: Yeah.
• 2:35
  Crista Cowan: Um basically, he felt if a woman had too many children or if she was too poor to have a child, uh, when she would come into his clinic to give birth to a baby, he would tell her the baby died.
• 2:44
  Crista Cowan: And then he was handing those babies out the back door in an adoption ring that ran for years.
• 2:51
  Crista Cowan: Yeah.
• 2:52
  Crista Cowan: Um, and and so this group, they call themselves the Hicks babies, right?
• 2:57
  Crista Cowan: Because he was the doctor who delivered all of them.
• 2:59
  Crista Cowan: But uh over a course of years, they discovered their their own adoption stories, they discovered the identity of some of the other Hicks babies.
• 3:07
  Crista Cowan: There's actually been documentaries done about this story, but it was brought to us because now we could use DNA to help figure out who their biological parents really were.
• 3:17
  Crista Cowan: And there were some people who thought they might be Hicks babies who weren't sure.
• 3:21
  Crista Cowan: And there were some people who were in the Hicks family who had been adopted who weren't sure if they were also part of this adoption ring.
• 3:28
  Crista Cowan: And so there was a lot of sensitivities.
• 3:31
  Lisa Elzey: Yeah, it was it was a tough case.
• 3:33
  Lisa Elzey: And and we were so new to it.
• 3:36
  Lisa Elzey: You had learned essentially how to do DNA family history, like DNA, you know, working on uh a new product, like you said, uh with a previous case.
• 3:45
  Lisa Elzey: So you taught our team.
• 3:47
  Lisa Elzey: There was about four of us at the time, I think that you were kind of helping out, um, how to do this.
• 3:52
  Lisa Elzey: And it was so new, it's super mathematical.
• 3:55
  Lisa Elzey: I am not a math person.
• 3:57
  Lisa Elzey: You are, which I love.
• 3:58
  Lisa Elzey: Well, you're mostly a math person.
• 4:00
  Crista Cowan: I'd become a math person.
• 4:01
  Lisa Elzey: Your dad is a math person.
• 4:02
  Lisa Elzey: Yes.
• 4:02
  Lisa Elzey: And if anybody's listening and knows Krista's dad, he loves a good spreadsheet.
• 4:06
  Lisa Elzey: Uh, but because we had something that was real time to work on and something meaningful, I think that's the thing is that it was a legit thing.
• 4:15
  Lisa Elzey: They were really looking to connect people.
• 4:18
  Lisa Elzey: So it just meant more.
• 4:19
  Lisa Elzey: It wasn't just like an exercise or, you know, an assignment.
• 4:23
  Lisa Elzey: It there was a real person at the other end wanting real answers.
• 4:27
  Lisa Elzey: And this happened, what was it in the 40s and the 50s?
• 4:30
  Crista Cowan: Is it wait or did it start in the 30s?
• 4:32
  Crista Cowan: No, it was the 40s and 50s and a little bit into the 60s.
• 4:34
  Crista Cowan: Okay.
• 4:35
  Crista Cowan: Yeah.
• 4:35
  Crista Cowan: I mean, he literally did this for years.
• 4:37
  Lisa Elzey: Yeah.
• 4:37
  Lisa Elzey: And he it was a black market.
• 4:39
  Lisa Elzey: And I mean, I think he got money a lot of times.
• 4:41
  Lisa Elzey: Um, and I think there were some unwed mothers that would actually come to him as well and saying, I don't want my child.
• 4:47
  Lisa Elzey: And he was like, Oh, well, and he would take care of the of the unwed mother, right?
• 4:52
  Lisa Elzey: They would um have them in their home and he then he would take the baby and sell the baby.
• 4:55
  Lisa Elzey: So this whole thing, it was really just disturbing, um, but real.
• 5:00
  Lisa Elzey: Yeah.
• 5:00
  Lisa Elzey: Because there were people that were wanting answers.
• 5:02
  Crista Cowan: Yeah, absolutely.
• 5:03
  Crista Cowan: Now, the interesting thing was, so, like you said, some of those girls came from away.
• 5:08
  Crista Cowan: They were sent to him because uh they knew that he would take care of the whole situation.
• 5:15
  Crista Cowan: Um, but a lot of those women we discovered were local to that particular area of rural northern Georgia, right on the North Carolina border, not far from Tennessee.
• 5:27
  Crista Cowan: I mean, like there's this whole confluence of Appalachia there in the mountains, in the Blue Ridge Mountains.
• 5:34
  Crista Cowan: And so as we started digging into the DNA matches, we had to get really good at untangling the families of that region.
• 5:42
  Crista Cowan: And so it was the first time I have ever done a large-scale deep dive into all of the families of a particular region so that we be we we became familiar with them.
• 5:53
  Lisa Elzey: It was it was strange.
• 5:54
  Lisa Elzey: It was knowing, oh, that's the such and such family.
• 5:57
  Lisa Elzey: Oh, I've got one of those over here.
• 5:58
  Lisa Elzey: Well, they must have married in and trying to sort out which of the which of the matches was a DNA match and which was like married in double cousin over here.
• 6:08
  Lisa Elzey: And oh, it was such a messy, small, endogamous area because I think you had visited, you went later and you got to go.
• 6:17
  Lisa Elzey: And I remember you saying how like isolated it was.
• 6:22
  Crista Cowan: I had been in Atlanta for business, and it's about three hours north of Atlanta.
• 6:26
  Crista Cowan: Yes.
• 6:27
  Crista Cowan: And so I had driven up there, driven into like you go up this up this mountain road into this little town, and literally I pulled into town, and it was one of those moments like in an old-timey movie where somebody walks into the saloon and everybody stops talking and turn the piano player stops playing.
• 6:45
  Crista Cowan: I just think of what is it, darling?
• 6:47
  Crista Cowan: We're gonna have to shut you down.
• 6:49
  Crista Cowan: What is that?
• 6:50
  Crista Cowan: Pace, pace picante.
• 6:52
  Crista Cowan: So I had walked into like the it was like a gas station with like a subway shop or something.
• 6:57
  Crista Cowan: I had walked in to get some directions and to maybe ask some questions and to get a couple snacks, maybe refill my car, and literally the whole place stopped and looked at me.
• 7:06
  Crista Cowan: Yeah.
• 7:06
  Crista Cowan: And I was like, what have I walked into?
• 7:08
  Crista Cowan: And then I went to the cemetery and visited some of the graves of some of the families that we had been researching.
• 7:15
  Crista Cowan: And then I went up into the main street where the main street is literally the dividing line between the two states where he would bounce back and forth across the state line.
• 7:26
  Crista Cowan: And we we had read that in the research we had done.
• 7:29
  Crista Cowan: And I like to see it literally is just the main street of the town is the state line.
• 7:34
  Lisa Elzey: Yeah, where there's one law in one state and one law in another.
• 7:37
  Crista Cowan: Isn't that why he his clinic was on one side of the street and his house was on the other side of Main Street.
• 7:42
  Lisa Elzey: Yeah.
• 7:42
  Lisa Elzey: Yeah.
• 7:43
  Lisa Elzey: Yeah.
• 7:43
  Lisa Elzey: I I just remember you talking about how I can see how you said you could see how these regions were so endogamous with people marrying into the same kind of families over time because they were so isolated by the mountains.
• 7:56
  Lisa Elzey: Yes.
• 7:56
  Lisa Elzey: And uh so we just saw a lot of the same names, we saw a lot of overlap, but we had to sort it all out.
• 8:02
  Lisa Elzey: And we had a little bit of a hint because we knew some of the people had proven things already.
• 8:06
  Lisa Elzey: I think there were a few people that had to be.
• 8:08
  Crista Cowan: A couple of people had already figured out who their biological.
• 8:11
  Lisa Elzey: So they were kind of like little like keystones or foundational stones for us to kind of look to.
• 8:16
  Lisa Elzey: But this was the first time I had ever I done my own DNA with Ancestry.
• 8:20
  Lisa Elzey: And again, this was brand new, brand spinkin' new.
• 8:24
  Lisa Elzey: And I had started in 2012 of that year, so just a few months after it got released.
• 8:29
  Lisa Elzey: And I didn't know anything about how to do that.
• 8:32
  Lisa Elzey: And I just so appreciate your patience and the questions that you helped us to ask.
• 8:39
  Lisa Elzey: And I think it was fun because you didn't come already knowing.
• 8:42
  Lisa Elzey: You came with your brain, with your magical brain and your math brain and helped us ask the right questions so that we could come to the connections and then do the math.
• 8:53
  Lisa Elzey: It's always in my head, Krista Cowan saying, do the math, do the tree, do the math.
• 8:58
  Lisa Elzey: Because we needed to make sure that all the steps between shared sentiment organs was correct.
• 9:03
  Lisa Elzey: And I think we solved, I don't remember how many cases, just like.
• 9:06
  Crista Cowan: I don't know, like 12 or 13 of them.
• 9:08
  Crista Cowan: Yeah.
• 9:08
  Crista Cowan: Um, and that was one of my favorite things was being able to then reach out to these individuals who had taken these DNA tests and put this trust in us and to be able to say, hey, you know what?
• 9:19
  Crista Cowan: Not only did we find your family, we found who your biological mother is, we found who your biological father is, but this other adoptee over here is your second cousin.
• 9:29
  Crista Cowan: Because of that intermarriage in those communities, they had built a familial type relationship with each other because of what they'd gone through and because of the discoveries that they'd made.
• 9:38
  Crista Cowan: But we were able to tell some of them then that they were actually family as well.
• 9:42
  Lisa Elzey: Yeah, and that that they already had these relationships, like you said, and then to know, I know I'm adopted, or maybe some of them didn't know they were adopted.
• 9:49
  Lisa Elzey: Some you said found out that was what was so shocking too is some had no idea because he would doctor the birth records and put that they were born in this town to those parents.
• 10:00
  Lisa Elzey: So the parents are in on it.
• 10:02
  Lisa Elzey: And I'm sure that that was I know that that was hard for some of the people that were searching that their parents knew.
• 10:09
  Crista Cowan: The parents that adopted them.
• 10:10
  Lisa Elzey: Yeah, the parents that adopted them knew that this was not above board.
• 10:14
  Lisa Elzey: Yeah, that I bought you.
• 10:16
  Lisa Elzey: Yeah, I paid for you.
• 10:17
  Lisa Elzey: And I mean, adoptions cost money anyway, but I paid for you out of the back of a clinic versus the parents, and and I think there's something beautifully heartbreaking because those parents wanted to be parents so badly.
• 10:32
  Lisa Elzey: Yeah, and they wanted that child and loved that child so incredibly, you know, uh fiercely at the same time, maybe they just didn't ask questions about how that baby came into their arms.
• 10:44
  Lisa Elzey: So there was just a lot of emotion around it.
• 10:47
  Lisa Elzey: And to have someone to cling to like a second cousin, I think probably helped them through the whole thing.
• 10:53
  Crista Cowan: Yeah.
• 10:53
  Crista Cowan: It was also really interesting because um we started this project with, I don't know, 20 or 30 people who had taken the DNA test.
• 11:01
  Crista Cowan: There were probably another 10 or 20 who took the DNA test later when they learned that we were doing this project.
• 11:06
  Crista Cowan: And one of the things that I found fascinating was we could always tell as soon as someone took a test, we could we got to a point where we could tell instantly if they were a member of that community or not.
• 11:16
  Lisa Elzey: Yes.
• 11:16
  Crista Cowan: Like because we became so familiar with the families in that area.
• 11:21
  Lisa Elzey: And um I since then, I think this is the first time I had done that too, where it was a geographic area where I was researching versus a family here or a family over there or my own family tree.
• 11:32
  Lisa Elzey: And and you get to know these families and you're like, oh, she's a so-and-so that I bet she's from this line.
• 11:38
  Lisa Elzey: And like you get to know, oh, that's from the second wife, or it's just it's like a strange kinship that you have, a temporary kinship of sorts.
• 11:47
  Lisa Elzey: Uh, and you almost feel like you're a specialist of that area.
• 11:50
  Lisa Elzey: And that has since happened multiple times uh since I worked at Ancestry, where if someone brings up a specific county, I'm like, oh, are you one of these people or one of those?
• 11:59
  Lisa Elzey: And they're like, How do you know the surnames?
• 12:01
  Lisa Elzey: And like, have a seat, we'll discuss, you know.
• 12:04
  Lisa Elzey: Uh, but it's kind of lovely.
• 12:06
  Crista Cowan: It is, yeah.
• 12:07
  Crista Cowan: Well, Fannon County, Georgia, and I got to know each other well.
• 12:10
  Lisa Elzey: Yes, yes.
• 12:11
  Lisa Elzey: And I feel uh I feel like a little kinship to the that county as well because it taught me how to do genetic genealogy.
• 12:18
  Lisa Elzey: And I'm again, that was my 101.
• 12:22
  Lisa Elzey: I had to do many cases since then to get better.
• 12:25
  Lisa Elzey: Every case is different.
• 12:27
  Lisa Elzey: Every case has a different amount of evidence.
• 12:29
  Lisa Elzey: It's like a puzzle when you get a puzzle out, you know, and it's some of it has a picture and you know what you're searching for.
• 12:35
  Lisa Elzey: And some of it you're like, here's some pieces.
• 12:37
  Lisa Elzey: You're missing half the puzzle, but start, you know, it's just every one of them's different.
• 12:43
  Lisa Elzey: And uh I'll always remember that project because it meant something and it helped put me on a really great path.
• 12:50
  Crista Cowan: And this particular project was done before you made your own DNA discovery.
• 12:55
  Lisa Elzey: It was done, yes.
• 12:56
  Lisa Elzey: And because I knew the questions that you had taught us that we all kind of learned together, I was able to ask those questions in my own DNA.
• 13:06
  Lisa Elzey: However, I really learned that bias is a thing.
• 13:10
  Lisa Elzey: Uh and I mean we that's an obvious statement, but but when you're looking for an answer to something in your own DNA and it just isn't measuring up, sometimes you're not looking straight at the thing, you're looking past it because it doesn't, it can't be straight.
• 13:26
  Lisa Elzey: It can't be a straight line, it can't be right there.
• 13:29
  Lisa Elzey: It has to be way over here to be the answer.
• 13:31
  Lisa Elzey: And that was again your clarity when I talked to you as my friend, going, what's happening with this DNA?
• 13:37
  Lisa Elzey: Um, I was able to say, What is happening?
• 13:39
  Lisa Elzey: And you said, look at the straight line.
• 13:41
  Lisa Elzey: This is it's here.
• 13:42
  Lisa Elzey: And so sometimes it's right in front of us.
• 13:45
  Lisa Elzey: Other times we've got to really dig deep.
• 13:47
  Lisa Elzey: Like Hicks was a a web of families and and data we didn't have.
• 13:52
  Lisa Elzey: But because I did Hicks, because I learned and I kept learning and I kept doing other cases.
• 13:57
  Lisa Elzey: In fact, it became so funny.
• 13:59
  Lisa Elzey: It became a joke with my husband because when people like in my neighborhood were like, Oh, you know how to do DNA.
• 14:05
  Lisa Elzey: Well, I was adopted.
• 14:06
  Lisa Elzey: And my husband would go, Oh no, don't tell she's gonna be up now all night.
• 14:10
  Lisa Elzey: She's gonna be up all night and she's gonna have an answer for you in about 24 hours.
• 14:13
  Lisa Elzey: And they're like, What?
• 14:14
  Lisa Elzey: And it was so true though, because it was like you you have something I can solve.
• 14:18
  Lisa Elzey: You have a puzzle?
• 14:19
  Lisa Elzey: I can help you.
• 14:21
  Lisa Elzey: And so they would share their DNA with me, and then I'd sit with them and I'd show them what I'm doing.
• 14:25
  Lisa Elzey: And it got me better and better because I was going outside of what I knew and learning uh from their tree.
• 14:32
  Crista Cowan: Yeah, absolutely.
• 14:33
  Crista Cowan: Oh, it's so crazy.
• 14:35
  Crista Cowan: Um, and so sometimes you can solve it now in 24 hours.
• 14:40
  Crista Cowan: Yeah.
• 14:40
  Crista Cowan: Because you've gained the skills, you've done the work on lots of different people's DNA, lots of people, different people's family trees.
• 14:47
  Crista Cowan: Sometimes it takes a little bit longer than 24 hours.
• 14:51
  Lisa Elzey: It does for some.
• 14:52
  Lisa Elzey: And I mean, think about Hicks though.
• 14:54
  Lisa Elzey: How many million?
• 14:55
  Lisa Elzey: We only had how many in the database.
• 14:57
  Crista Cowan: Probably less than two million.
• 14:58
  Lisa Elzey: Less than two million.
• 14:59
  Lisa Elzey: And now we're well over 34.
• 15:02
  Crista Cowan: Over 30 for sure.
• 15:03
  Lisa Elzey: Yeah.
• 15:03
  Lisa Elzey: And I I I I don't even know.
• 15:06
  Lisa Elzey: I would be curious to see if we just put one of those matches in now.
• 15:10
  Lisa Elzey: What it I actually am grateful that it wasn't as many because we had to work harder.
• 15:16
  Lisa Elzey: Yeah.
• 15:16
  Lisa Elzey: And I think about that with my own like family history story too.
• 15:20
  Lisa Elzey: I was there doing the microfilm with the no index, you know, real to real and the sound X, and I did all that.
• 15:27
  Lisa Elzey: So I appreciate Ancestry serving something up to me so quickly, or I appreciate the match list that's going to surface.
• 15:35
  Lisa Elzey: Um, but I learned how to do the thing.
• 15:38
  Lisa Elzey: It's always again back to math.
• 15:40
  Lisa Elzey: I don't know this math thing, but it's showing your work.
• 15:43
  Lisa Elzey: Yeah.
• 15:44
  Lisa Elzey: I I hated that in school.
• 15:45
  Lisa Elzey: It's like you have to show your work.
• 15:47
  Crista Cowan: I'm like, uh, but if you figure out how to do it, how it works, then when you use the automated tools to do it, yeah, you know if it's right or wrong.
• 15:55
  Crista Cowan: Yeah, it's like AI now.
• 15:57
  Lisa Elzey: That's exactly right.
• 15:58
  Lisa Elzey: With AI, like I my husband and I were having this conversation about how do you know if you know enough about a thing?
• 16:03
  Lisa Elzey: How do you know if you have knowledge about something?
• 16:05
  Lisa Elzey: And I said, a good test would be ask AI about it.
• 16:09
  Lisa Elzey: Can you see when it's hallucinating?
• 16:11
  Crista Cowan: Yeah.
• 16:11
  Lisa Elzey: Can you see when something's not quite right?
• 16:14
  Lisa Elzey: Like I could say, oh, I know all about the Titanic and ask AI to tell me something.
• 16:18
  Lisa Elzey: And I'm like, uh, that's I don't think that that's real.
• 16:20
  Lisa Elzey: I don't think that's true.
• 16:22
  Lisa Elzey: And then of course, right now, when we're recording this, you'll tell AI, uh, I think that's not true.
• 16:27
  Lisa Elzey: And I'll be like, oh, you're right.
• 16:29
  Lisa Elzey: Funny me.
• 16:30
  Lisa Elzey: I was making things up.
• 16:31
  Lisa Elzey: So I think knowledge, you have to get that knowledge to be able to suss it out and find the thing.
• 16:38
  Lisa Elzey: Uh, I'm sure there'll be a day long after we air this podcast where things will get served up to us much more quickly.
• 16:44
  Lisa Elzey: Probably.
• 16:45
  Lisa Elzey: But I still think our critical thinking and knowledge is gonna be invaluable.
• 16:50
  Crista Cowan: Yeah, absolutely.
• 16:50
  Crista Cowan: And sometimes that hard slog, right?
• 16:52
  Crista Cowan: Like the hard slog through those Georgia records, the hard slog through those early limited number of DNA matches and no tools.
• 16:59
  Crista Cowan: Back then we had no custom groups, we had no shared matches.
• 17:03
  Crista Cowan: We had like we were doing it the hard way.
• 17:05
  Crista Cowan: We had colored pens uh-huh and whiteboards.
• 17:08
  Lisa Elzey: Okay, can we just talk?
• 17:09
  Lisa Elzey: We're just gonna nerd out a minute.
• 17:11
  Lisa Elzey: We love colored pens, and this is why, because we use those colored pens to be like, okay, this is the green group, and we'd do a colored pen on a piece of paper and we draw an arrow over here, and this is the purple group.
• 17:21
  Lisa Elzey: And then we'd had all these colored pens.
• 17:23
  Lisa Elzey: I remember when we got those because we just needed something to differentiate because we didn't have tools, and we'd make colored stars in all the things.
• 17:31
  Lisa Elzey: In fact, just so that listeners know, those groups are largely part of our team saying we need colored groups because we were just putting colored stars in things and needed a way to group it.
• 17:41
  Lisa Elzey: And but gosh, it was fun.
• 17:43
  Lisa Elzey: It was fun, yeah.
• 17:45
  Crista Cowan: And you and I have spent uh the last several years working on another DNA project that we're not gonna tell the story of right now.
• 17:51
  Crista Cowan: But at the time of this recording, we think we may have solved it.
• 17:55
  Lisa Elzey: I know, and you know what we need to solve it for sure is DNA.
• 17:58
  Lisa Elzey: Yeah.
• 17:58
  Lisa Elzey: So just everyone manifests that we'll get someone to take the test.
• 18:03
  Crista Cowan: So that was another thing that I learned though with the Hicks family was sometimes you get really close to the answer and you don't quite know.
• 18:10
  Crista Cowan: You're like, your dad could be this guy or it could be this guy, or it could be this cousin or this cousin, and you have to target test people.
• 18:18
  Crista Cowan: And we were able to get that community to rally around and say, hey, we know people in the community who are willing to help us.
• 18:24
  Crista Cowan: They will go out and kind of deal with some of those, you know, stop talking in the saloon people.
• 18:30
  Crista Cowan: And right because we're going into this isolated community who's in some cases trying to protect itself for sure, especially from the media frenzy that kind of erupted when these stories started breaking.
• 18:40
  Crista Cowan: And there were people in the community who are willing to help and go into those homes and into those families and say, hey, we need you to DNA test because your DNA is going to help us solve this lifelong need of this person to know who they are and where they come from.
• 18:56
  Crista Cowan: And so many of the people so graciously agreed to do that.
• 18:59
  Lisa Elzey: Yes.
• 18:59
  Lisa Elzey: And I think that's really a great call out because it really takes a village to be able to solve the things.
• 19:06
  Lisa Elzey: That's why when you have so many people in the Ancestry DNA database, so many customers there, it's so much easier and so much better.
• 19:14
  Lisa Elzey: And again, knowing that your thing can help someone else solve their thing, I don't know.
• 19:19
  Lisa Elzey: There's just some like humanitarian thing.
• 19:21
  Lisa Elzey: And I didn't do anything.
• 19:22
  Lisa Elzey: All I did was spit in a tube, and somehow maybe my DNA can help someone.
• 19:26
  Lisa Elzey: I love that.
• 19:27
  Crista Cowan: Yeah, I do too.
• 19:28
  Crista Cowan: Well, we learn that through DNA, through that particular project, that when we work on problems outside of our own family trees, it kind of broadens our horizons, it teaches us new skills.
• 19:40
  Crista Cowan: Uh, that is not just true of DNA, that is also true of the work that you get to do every day.
• 19:45
  Crista Cowan: You work on dozens of different kinds of trees at any one moment in time.
• 19:51
  Crista Cowan: I do.
• 19:51
  Crista Cowan: Um, but there was a particular project you worked on back in about 2017, 2016.
• 19:57
  Crista Cowan: 2017, yeah.
• 19:58
  Crista Cowan: Um, that that gave you a whole lot of experience with a lot of different things.
• 20:02
  Lisa Elzey: It did.
• 20:03
  Lisa Elzey: It was really a favorite project of mine.
• 20:06
  Lisa Elzey: So for those that don't know, that haven't watched or listened to the podcast, my background is in theater.
• 20:12
  Lisa Elzey: That's what my degree was in in college.
• 20:14
  Lisa Elzey: I have a Bachelor of Arts in acting emphasis, theater, and then an English minor in creative writing.
• 20:20
  Lisa Elzey: So everything's very artsy, very humanities, very all of that.
• 20:24
  Lisa Elzey: Um, but I have been a professional production stage manager outside of college until my time here at um Ancestry, the last 14 plus years.
• 20:32
  Lisa Elzey: So uh my kids are all in theater, all four of them, professionally.
• 20:38
  Lisa Elzey: They're getting their degrees in it, teaching it, all of those things.
• 20:42
  Lisa Elzey: And so I always kid around, like, oh, we're all gonna be poor when we're in our 80s, but that's fine.
• 20:46
  Lisa Elzey: Um, but they're fantastic, they're very, very good at it.
• 20:48
  Lisa Elzey: I know I'm their mom, but I'm also an I am not their mom.
• 20:52
  Crista Cowan: They are very talented.
• 20:53
  Lisa Elzey: They are very talented, and that's why I don't feel like we're one of those people that's like choose your thing, go all in, we support you, right?
• 20:59
  Lisa Elzey: So uh so anyway, this project that came to Ancestry's doorstep had to do with the Broadway production of Anastasia, uh the musical.
• 21:10
  Lisa Elzey: And so a little just a little note on the Anastasia musical.
• 21:14
  Lisa Elzey: My oldest, Trevor, is uh in theater.
• 21:18
  Lisa Elzey: He works at Disney, he's an actor, uh, you know, he's a singer or performer.
• 21:22
  Lisa Elzey: And he loved the cartoon Anastasia.
• 21:27
  Lisa Elzey: Loved it.
• 21:28
  Lisa Elzey: I don't know.
• 21:29
  Lisa Elzey: I mean, I loved it too, but I just remember as a child, he knew all the songs.
• 21:34
  Lisa Elzey: He uh he's like, Ma, this needs to be a show.
• 21:38
  Lisa Elzey: This should be a show.
• 21:39
  Lisa Elzey: And I'm like, I know, right?
• 21:40
  Lisa Elzey: It really should.
• 21:41
  Lisa Elzey: And the music was lovely, and it was just this most beautiful thing.
• 21:44
  Lisa Elzey: I will never forget when we found out Anastasia was going to be a musical.
• 21:48
  Lisa Elzey: He's like, I called it, I called it when I was a kid.
• 21:51
  Lisa Elzey: I was like, I'm sure you and thousands of other people, obviously, but he was so excited.
• 21:56
  Lisa Elzey: And so this particular show had a little bit more meaning to me because it was so close to my family and what they loved.
• 22:01
  Lisa Elzey: So Anastasia, for those of you that don't know the story, it's a cartoon film that came out first, but it's the story of Anastasia Romanoff, who they, you know, they never found her because the Romanovs were all killed and, you know, the whole, the whole Bolshevik, all that thing, the takeover, and but they never found Anastasia.
• 22:21
  Lisa Elzey: So there's always this idea of like maybe she survived.
• 22:24
  Lisa Elzey: And so the cartoon is about this young girl who can't remember her past and she's an adult.
• 22:30
  Lisa Elzey: So she gets kicked out of the orphanage and like okay, go out on your own.
• 22:33
  Lisa Elzey: And then these two kind of roof rough guys see this opportunity to like use her to get out of Russia and all this idea to say, oh no, no, she's she's Anya, Anya is Anastasia.
• 22:45
  Lisa Elzey: It's this whole thing.
• 22:45
  Lisa Elzey: So uh it's about journeying to the past and what is your identity and who is your family and remembering your family and finding your family.
• 22:56
  Lisa Elzey: And so they came to us Anastasia their production company came to Ancestry to see if we wanted to do something with them and and kind of combine the Ancestry element with the Anastasia element.
• 23:09
  Lisa Elzey: They had the entire ensemble take DNA tests.
• 23:13
  Lisa Elzey: So everyone they all they could opt in if they wanted to which I think all of them did because they're like yeah yes please so yeah so all of them took DNA tests and then we could tell you know we served that back to them so they could see all of that.
• 23:24
  Lisa Elzey: But then we had all of the main characters in the show as well as the two writers of the book and the lyrics as well as the writer of the music and then we had the producer all that filled out Family Tree forms.
• 23:40
  Lisa Elzey: So I don't think I don't think y'all know who's in the cast but in case you don't and you ever seen Savannah Bananas?
• 23:47
  Lisa Elzey: Yep.
• 23:47
  Lisa Elzey: You know my Anastasia friend Derek Clenna he's kind of the star of Savannah Bananas right now.
• 23:52
  Crista Cowan: He also just sung their new theme song that was just written they just had a theme song written for them and he sings the theme song.
• 23:58
  Lisa Elzey: Yes he did a whole fanta thing I think he's just the songbird now of Savannah Bananas and it was so funny because he was a big athlete in school I think people that know that people that watch that know.
• 24:08
  Lisa Elzey: But he played Dimitri and Dimitri's like the love interest the main guy and uh so I got to do his family treat.
• 24:15
  Lisa Elzey: Christy Altamar played Anastasia she was fantastic.
• 24:19
  Lisa Elzey: She played it for so long on Broadway.
• 24:21
  Lisa Elzey: She's such a good performer.
• 24:22
  Lisa Elzey: Mary Beth Peel.
• 24:24
  Lisa Elzey: Mary Beth Peel can we just talk okay Dawson's Creek can just Dawson Creek Glam.
• 24:29
  Lisa Elzey: Graham and anybody that's watched Dawson's Creek she was Graham.
• 24:33
  Lisa Elzey: So and I can't can I just I don't want to get there yet we'll go there in a second.
• 24:37
  Lisa Elzey: So then we've got John Bolton total fantastic personality an amazing person so kind has been on Broadway forever.
• 24:47
  Lisa Elzey: He played Vlad and then we have Carolyn O'Connor come on Carolyn O'Connor you ever seen Mulan Rouge?
• 24:55
  Lisa Elzey: You know Roxanne the tango the rock the the incredible film Boslerman's film she's the one doing the tango and then Ramin Karamlu as uh you know the bad guy the baddie just as powerhouse cast so those were the people that I got to speak to on camera and also we got to speak with Tom Curtihy who is the producer.
• 25:19
  Lisa Elzey: So Tom I adore him if you've seen I don't know Hades Town or if you've seen you know all these big musicals that win Broadway win Tony Awards he just produced Hades Town uh the the pro shot of that he's an incredible producer multi-tony winning producer and he was married to the person that wrote the book the legendary Terrence McNally Terrence McNally wrote the book for Ragtime he's written People the surprise winning plays he's he's a force in theater and he has since passed but I got to sit next to him and speak to him about his family tree.
• 25:59
  Lisa Elzey: And then Stephen Flaherty and Lynn Ahrens who wrote the music and the lyrics you ever heard of a thing called schoolhouse rock?
• 26:06
  Lisa Elzey: Yeah Lynn Aarons that was she did that so I I can't explain obviously I you're probably seeing it in my body and my voice I'm just like all of my worlds converged all of them so I here I am researching family trees at these Broadway performers who also have moments in my life that they've touched it somehow uh whether it be in theater or television or or you know schoolhouse rock and then I get to go to New York and tell them about it and make these little snippets that are on YouTube.
• 26:38
  Lisa Elzey: So think about that we have Ramin Kreml he's from Iran his family fled Iran when the Shah was removed because his dad Ramin's dad was in the military and so they left they fled and went to Italy first and then they landed for they went from there they finally landed in Canada is kind of where the family landed.
• 27:04
  Lisa Elzey: Charming charming charming person he had DNA that I got to learn and talk about his DNA uh you know from Iran and then with John Bolton I got to talk to him about his family tree the kind of a love story little mystery and he was the most interested of all the people he was like will you call me later or can I give you my email I just wanted this my I love this this is so great.
• 27:27
  Lisa Elzey: In fact this is the thing I will forever be grateful to John so I kept I kept up uh touch with John and then when my son Trevor went to New York he got to go see Anastasia I don't want to get teary but he got to go see Anastasia and I told John I'm like John I'm so excited my son finally gets to see your show he's like what your son's coming tell him to come stage door tell him to come and ask for me okay so Trevor was with a friend and Trevor went to the stage door and asked to see you know John Bolton put your name on a list and is like oh they're like yeah come on in John got him gave him a tour around stage had him meet all the people took photos with all the people so my kid is like young in his early 20s like mom I just met all these people and I maybe someday I'll be on that stage.
• 28:18
  Lisa Elzey: Like it was just the most magical thing that somehow my job my weird job and awesome job got to bleed into that a little bit and that was all because of my family history connection with John telling him about his story.
• 28:31
  Lisa Elzey: So I got to tell Christy Altamar about her ancestor from Italy.
• 28:35
  Lisa Elzey: Her great grandfather was the original Carlo on Carlos of Cake Boss.
• 28:39
  Lisa Elzey: Like he's that's his name on the the marquee that and then he sold it and she's like yes I know about that but then she got to see how they came to New York.
• 28:47
  Lisa Elzey: Most of these families what's so great about all these family trees that I got to do from all over the world a lot of them that were immigrants came through New York.
• 28:56
  Lisa Elzey: And so to have this kind of magical moment of connecting their story here I am on Broadway, you know, on this show Anastasia because my ancestor came through New York to this country and I have an opportunity to do this.
• 29:11
  Lisa Elzey: They they all made those little connections and uh it was just magical and top it off Anastasia was in the Broadhurst theater I believe and right across the street from that theater is Sardis Sardis is an icon.
• 29:25
  Lisa Elzey: It's a restaurant in New York it's an icon and just a little again this is me telling all my little stories but my mom when I was growing up had this magical cookbook it was by Vincent Price.
• 29:37
  Lisa Elzey: What he was a food connoisseur and would go all over the world with his wife and they would eat at the most fabulous restaurants and he would get copies of the menus and find the key recipes and the chefs would give them to him and it's this very old cookbook that is like out of print.
• 29:57
  Lisa Elzey: But my mom had it and it had all these places it would say France and it had all these really old 1950s and 60s menus with you know snails escargot or whatever these weird things but I just remember being like oh my gosh this is so cool and I remember my mom made a dinner once out of that cookbook and she made the Sardes recipe that was in it.
• 30:18
  Lisa Elzey: And I remember saying I want to go to Sardis someday.
• 30:21
  Lisa Elzey: I want to go there and I finally got to go and here I am sitting next to these icons in theater these beautiful professionals telling them about their family tree.
• 30:32
  Lisa Elzey: So it was combining the two things I love most in this world aside from my family and friends of course is family history and theater.
• 30:41
  Lisa Elzey: And it just smooshed them together so incredibly beautifully and I just could not have asked for anything more.
• 30:48
  Lisa Elzey: And then the last thing they invited us all to come to opening night so we got to come back to New York that those of us you know that were involved with the project and I went to Anastasia's opening night had the worst seat in the house that was great.
• 31:03
  Lisa Elzey: Actually second worst seat I was on the second row the very very last seat on the the the house right side sitting next to the choreographer who I had also told her family history too with her DNA and she was so upset.
• 31:16
  Lisa Elzey: She was like oh I can't believe they put you in this seat.
• 31:18
  Lisa Elzey: This is the worst seat in the house she's like I'm gonna tell you what's going on because it was such a sharp angle I couldn't see the stage left side ever.
• 31:26
  Lisa Elzey: But so she'd lean over and she'd go Ramin's getting off the desk he's crossing over so I had this fantastic little whispered commentary and she has since passed beautiful lady and um I heard like whispering and telling me the things I was missing because of my bad seat.
• 31:43
  Lisa Elzey: But it didn't matter if I couldn't see anything at all.
• 31:46
  Lisa Elzey: I just was in the space with all these magical creative artistic people and they all love telling stories and they love family history too.
• 31:54
  Lisa Elzey: And it just ah it just reaffirmed that storytelling happens everywhere and my job the weird it may be I am here because of those stories that theater background because I love storytelling.
• 32:09
  Lisa Elzey: I love sharing and uh gosh it was just the most kismet magical serendipitous whatever word you want to use moment and I'll never forget it.
• 32:19
  Crista Cowan: Oh I love it.
• 32:20
  Crista Cowan: I love it so much.
• 32:20
  Crista Cowan: And I love that like you get to not just research all the family trees and get all of those skills but then to actually be able to be in those spaces and tell those stories.
• 32:30
  Crista Cowan: And I think that's one of the things that I just wish for everybody like every every ancestry customer every listener of this podcast is to just find ways to tell the stories because I love the connection you made with New York.
• 32:44
  Crista Cowan: They're all working there on stage in New York together they had family members ancestors who had come through New York like this the way that that city connected them places can be connections historical events can be connections occupations military service like there's a million things about our stories that connect us but they don't connect us unless we share them.
• 33:06
  Lisa Elzey: Yes we have and we have to discover them too right like discover them and then share them and some people are really great at discovery and some people are really great at sharing but maybe some are good at both but sometimes all you have to do is share that thing and then that person turns into then now they're the advocate for the story, right?
• 33:23
  Lisa Elzey: I know I know you for your family how many times have they been like oh yeah like that one story with so and so and such and such and tell that story again Krista like they remember and they bank it.
• 33:32
  Lisa Elzey: They may not be the one finding it but they definitely bank it and they're gonna tell it to their kids and their families.
• 33:38
  Lisa Elzey: And I hope that maybe that day when I was able to share what I've discovered and I had help by the way it wasn't only just me just doing the the research but I'm hoping that maybe they shared that with some of their loved ones.
• 33:51
  Lisa Elzey: I this is long before Derek Klenna was married.
• 33:54
  Lisa Elzey: I think maybe he was dating at the time his wife but now he has two kids and I was like okay I wonder because he wanted to know about the Klena name where'd that come from and it's from Slovakia and so it was exciting to be able to say this is where it came from and here are these records and this is how it was pronounced and here's the town like this big I couldn't pronounce the town well and but he has that now and he can now give that to his children.
• 34:20
  Lisa Elzey: And I wonder I sometimes wonder you know does he know that does he think about that maybe not now because he's in the thick of it you know he has he has Savannah bananas to sing about but maybe someday he'll share that with his kids.
• 34:32
  Lisa Elzey: But then there's Mary Beth who was you know in the later years of her life and she was so present and so like I think you could probably just see that from the kind of actress she is but she got it she just felt it she just understood why this is so important.
• 34:51
  Lisa Elzey: She we talked about people she never knew and we talked about finding her family in Wurttemberg Germany.
• 34:57
  Lisa Elzey: She immediately was like well let's learn about Wurttemberg like she wanted to know she understood why it meant something and then Tom Curthy we his didn't air we uh we filmed them for them but uh they didn't air on YouTube.
• 35:09
  Lisa Elzey: But what I loved about Tom is it was about his grandpa coming from Syria and coming to the to New York and then he was just tear filled and he just started saying I remember my my grandfather and he just started telling these beautiful stories about his grandfather and I didn't tell him much that day.
• 35:28
  Lisa Elzey: He told you he told me but I sparked that and I said here's the ship he came on and here's when he landed and here's when he became a citizen of the United States and that's what just he lost it.
• 35:41
  Lisa Elzey: He saw that naturalization record and he's like this is where it started this where all we can like and now he's this so successful producer of theater in New York and part of that story is because of that grandfather and I don't have a reason to look in Syria for my family tree.
• 35:58
  Lisa Elzey: I don't have a reason to look in Italy or or Slovakia or or Virginberg Germany and because I'm helping these people and because it mattered I think that's the other thing we can always do an exercise right we can always do something to learn something anytime you can go to an institute in fact I encourage it go.
• 36:16
  Lisa Elzey: You're going to learn skills.
• 36:18
  Lisa Elzey: Join pajamas and pedigree yes but that part um but you can always get education yeah but it means a little bit more when you know on the other side someone's waiting to hear what you have to say.
• 36:34
  Lisa Elzey: And it made me work just a little harder.
• 36:38
  Lisa Elzey: It made me want to find those story bits a little more interesting.
• 36:42
  Lisa Elzey: It wasn't just names dates and places it became their storytellers I need to tell them a story.
• 36:49
  Lisa Elzey: Yeah and honestly that was one of the projects early in my career at Ancestry that helped me learn how to take my storytelling prowess that I gained from my education and my experience in production and turning that into family history and how we do that.
• 37:06
  Lisa Elzey: And I I have many people to thank for helping me learn more and more to do that and I'm always learning still and uh my gosh what an incredible journey journey of the past little pun.
• 37:19
  Lisa Elzey: Uh incredible journey and I will never forget that moment and I was forever grateful that they were willing to be vulnerable to learn those stories and I learned so much learned so much.
• 37:31
  Crista Cowan: Whoa so fun I love that you had that opportunity.
• 37:34
  Crista Cowan: Well thank you for sharing um before you go you know the you know the rules I do I'm so nervous with one word one story okay a little improv exercise for you oh back to my theater today's one word one story is crayons crayons what uncatalogued memory does that bring to mind goodness okay now I know the pressure I'm so sorry everyone that is on this podcast this is a little bit of pressure okay crayons first I remember the smell of crayon box right the brand new crayon box like and how magical it was when I got the 64 crayola box did you have the one with the little sharpener on the back and then taking them out and learning all the names of the different colors of them see foam.
• 38:30
  Lisa Elzey: And whose job is that I know I think it's the same people that do the nail polish now or at least their descendants.
• 38:35
  Lisa Elzey: So that first of all just the memory like the the smell memory because smells bring memories right so I think just the smell memory of getting new crayons and how sad I was when they'd break and how I'm like it's ruined the whole box is you know dramatically so the whole box is ruined and how much I love that.
• 38:53
  Lisa Elzey: But I think the one that I really remember about crayons is when you go to a restaurant as a kid and they had crayons for you to color on the placemat.
• 39:04
  Lisa Elzey: On the placemat and I remember I think Ferrell's had that Ferrell's ice cream shop uh in California maybe I'm remembering wrong but that was I think as a child that was one of my favorite things is to go to a place where they had something for me.
• 39:19
  Lisa Elzey: Yeah it made I remember it made me feel like I had an identity and I wasn't just the kid it wasn't just a kid menu.
• 39:26
  Lisa Elzey: It was like here's your experience right and so that's I think one of my favorites and so as a mom I always had crayons in the kids bag.
• 39:36
  Lisa Elzey: This is pre-iPad pink sure very my kids were pre-iPad.
• 39:40
  Lisa Elzey: We always had crayons and I always had paper or coloring books because I remember being in a restaurant that it gave me something to do and I felt like I could participate because I was you know with my crayons and that smell and that fun memory of art and coloring and carried over into what it meant to me and then as a mother it with my kids having that.
• 40:01
  Crista Cowan: So that's my crayons memory.
• 40:04
  Crista Cowan: Okay so I also remember the smell and the 64 color box with the pencil sharpener or the crayon sharpener.
• 40:10
  Crista Cowan: But I am the oldest of five children and uh I always like to keep my crayons in the box.
• 40:18
  Crista Cowan: I like to keep them in in an or color order.
• 40:22
  Crista Cowan: Okay.
• 40:22
  Crista Cowan: Um I'm an I'm an oldest daughter at their place.
• 40:25
  Crista Cowan: Uh-huh yeah but my younger siblings did not have that same sensibility so they're wanting to like eat the crayons rip the paper off the crayons oh my gosh the paper break the crayons like and it just was so frustrating to me.
• 40:37
  Crista Cowan: And so my mom started buying like those big pencil boxes to just put the broken pieces of torn papered crayons in and that it was just chaos and it really bothered me.
• 40:46
  Crista Cowan: But so I always asked for a new box of crayons and I almost always got one every year for like Christmas or my birthday and a new coloring book or two.
• 40:57
  Crista Cowan: And I was not a great color I'm still not particularly like aesthetically creative but um but there are days when I still love to color.
• 41:07
  Crista Cowan: Like it's just the adult coloring books?
• 41:10
  Crista Cowan: I actually don't use adult coloring books.
• 41:12
  Crista Cowan: I know but like I like the kid coloring books.
• 41:14
  Lisa Elzey: Just the kid the kid those are way better like the adult Kirby or oh yes the Muppets yeah did you ever outline like you know like you would take a like a darker color press harder press harder and then you do like and shade it.
• 41:26
  Crista Cowan: Yeah no I'd I think I still I think I did that on a few dates once in my 20s too.
• 41:30
  Crista Cowan: That's really creative.
• 41:31
  Crista Cowan: So there you go.
• 41:32
  Crista Cowan: Okay well that is today's one word one story I would love to hear what your crayon story is leave it here in the comments if you're watching on YouTube.
• 41:40
  Crista Cowan: If you're listening on a podcast app post it to your Instagram your Facebook tag me but the most important thing of course is to share your stories with your family well Lisa thank you for being here I love being here I'm always here you are I love being here too you're usually off camera I know I know well before we go I just also want to share like so my Anastasia memory uh because Ancestry sponsored that show uh we had some on-call tickets available to us at different times throughout that first season and I take the nibblings on a 13th birthday trip and my oldest nephew is also a theater kid and he decided he wanted to go to New York City for his trip and Anastasia had just opened we had those tickets available and so I got to take him to see that as one of his first Broadway shows.
• 42:33
  Lisa Elzey: I love that and you weren't sitting in the second row on the end.
• 42:36
  Lisa Elzey: We were not which I think is fantastic.
• 42:39
  Lisa Elzey: I love that and you know if anything if anyone learns anything from this go and ask if people need help on their family tree or their DNA.
• 42:49
  Lisa Elzey: If you're like I want to do that too I promise if you ask someone there are people they're gonna take you up on it.
• 42:55
  Lisa Elzey: And then you're gonna probably regret it or your spouse or partner will regret it.
• 42:59
  Lisa Elzey: But um you'll just learn so much.
• 43:01
  Lisa Elzey: Nothing like being up all night studio sponsored by Ancestry