Latest / Stories That Live In Us / Sometimes You Don't Like the Answer (with Lisa Elzey) | Episode 35

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Sometimes You Don't Like the Answer (with Lisa Elzey) | Episode 35 · Stories That Live In Us

• 0:01
  Lisa Elzey: I was so thrilled, I could not contain my excitement, because I know they have like Plymouth Rock is there and they have Mayflower too, and then they have the.
• 0:10
  Lisa Elzey: I was, I was so excited and I know that's the nerdiest thing, but hopefully this audience gets that.
• 0:14
  Lisa Elzey: But but again, to walk in the places your ancestors walked, it's there's just nothing like it.
• 0:21
  Crista Cowan: Stories that Live In Us is a podcast that inspires you to form deep connections with your family, past, present and future.
• 0:29
  Crista Cowan: I'm Crista Cowan, known online as the Barefoot Genealogist.
• 0:33
  Crista Cowan: I've spent my whole life discovering the power of family history and I know that sharing the stories that live in you can change everything.
• 0:41
  Crista Cowan: Change everything.
• 0:43
  Crista Cowan: Well, happy Thanksgiving.
• 0:45
  Crista Cowan: At least it is here in the United States on the day this episode airs, and I've got a special Thanksgiving episode for you.
• 0:57
  Crista Cowan: Growing up here in the United States, I heard a lot about the Mayflower, of course, around Thanksgiving time, and one of the things that's always fascinated me about family history is the way that it connects us, sometimes in surprising ways.
• 1:11
  Crista Cowan: There are, of course, the relatives that gather around the Thanksgiving table, but every once in a while, we gather friends around that table as well, and it's always fun when you can find a connection.
• 1:24
  Crista Cowan: So in today's episode, I've invited my producer, Lisa Elzey, to join me to tell a story about our connection, not just to Thanksgiving, but to each other.
• 1:35
  Crista Cowan: Where do we begin, Lisa?
• 1:37
  Lisa Elzey: You know, begin at the beginning.
• 1:39
  Crista Cowan: Okay.
• 1:39
  Lisa Elzey: My beginning, your beginning?
• 1:40
  Lisa Elzey: I don't know.
• 1:41
  Crista Cowan: Well, we've told a lot of my origin story.
• 1:43
  Crista Cowan: Let's start with your origin story into family history.
• 1:45
  Crista Cowan: I don't think we've shared that before.
• 1:47
  Lisa Elzey: We haven't.
• 1:47
  Lisa Elzey: It's one of those I learned at the knees of my mother my mother's knee kind of thing.
• 1:54
  Lisa Elzey: Back in the 70s my mom was really into family history.
• 1:58
  Lisa Elzey: I think there was kind of a boom roots.
• 2:00
  Lisa Elzey: The miniseries had come out and it kind of invigorated a lot of people in America to, you know, discover their roots.
• 2:07
  Lisa Elzey: And this is like 1978, 1980 ish, and I'm about eight years old, nine years old, and my mom would sit at the dining room table with all of her papers and she had a suitcase, one of those old kind that had the little click, click, click, click.
• 2:26
  Crista Cowan: Yeah, where they were going.
• 2:27
  Lisa Elzey: You know like kind of flip up when you opened it and it was a hard case.
• 2:30
  Lisa Elzey: That's where she kept all of her genealogy and so we actually still have that suitcase because it just means so much to me.
• 2:37
  Lisa Elzey: It's kind of silly, but that's where I can remember the suitcase being open on the table and all the big, the long pedigree, legal size, you know, charts, family group sheets, things like that.
• 2:48
  Lisa Elzey: And I remember scooching up.
• 2:49
  Lisa Elzey: I was eight years old.
• 2:50
  Lisa Elzey: I'm like Mom, I want to help, I want to, can I do something?
• 2:53
  Lisa Elzey: And so she gave me a family group sheet to fill out A blank one.
• 2:57
  Lisa Elzey: A blank one, yeah, to fill out.
• 2:59
  Lisa Elzey: And so I knew the names of my parents and I knew you know my siblings and stuff.
• 3:03
  Lisa Elzey: But I'm like Mom, what is your birthday, you know?
• 3:06
  Lisa Elzey: And I think this is the first time I really remember learning the birthday of my mother, like the date, not just, oh, it's mom's birthday, but the date of her birthday.
• 3:14
  Lisa Elzey: And then what's dad's birthday?
• 3:16
  Lisa Elzey: And my sister and all of those things.
• 3:18
  Lisa Elzey: And then my brother my mom was married before she married my dad, so my brother's my half brother, although my dad raised him, and so I just he was always just my brother, I didn't understand the concept of a half sibling.
• 3:31
  Crista Cowan: And I had a different father.
• 3:32
  Crista Cowan: Yes, and.
• 3:33
  Lisa Elzey: I didn't, and I always knew his name.
• 3:34
  Lisa Elzey: His last name was different but I never knew why and I think that was the first time that I understood what half brothers were.
• 3:41
  Lisa Elzey: It was just really strange.
• 3:42
  Lisa Elzey: It was all this flooding of information for this eight-year-old brain to process and I remember writing it all down and being so proud that I had done it.
• 3:52
  Lisa Elzey: And I remember my mom getting letters in the mail and being so excited and she'd be like it's here, it's here and I'm like what, what?
• 4:00
  Lisa Elzey: And she'd waited for months to get answers back from archives or people she had messaged and hoped my mom this is her favorite thing to tell she sent a letter to the postmaster of a town in Minnesota trying to find information about her family, saying if you know anyone with this surname, would you please give them this letter.
• 4:22
  Lisa Elzey: And he did, the postmaster did, and she got an answer back.
• 4:26
  Lisa Elzey: So all of those exciting things, this puzzle solving, kind of started with my mom and then storytelling kind of went from there as well.
• 4:34
  Crista Cowan: Well, there you go, and so your career then became one of storytelling, first in theater and now in family history.
• 4:43
  Crista Cowan: First in theater and now in family history.
• 4:45
  Crista Cowan: And that original family group sheet you have it hanging on the wall of your desk.
• 4:50
  Crista Cowan: I do.
• 4:51
  Lisa Elzey: I do.
• 4:51
  Lisa Elzey: It's sitting on the wall of my little cubicle area.
• 4:55
  Lisa Elzey: I have it posted there, in my view, when I do family history and it reminds me of my roots, but it also reminds me of the excitement of my job and the excitement of family history and story.
• 5:07
  Lisa Elzey: And so those days when I'm down or those days when I'm like, am I doing?
• 5:11
  Lisa Elzey: Am I making a difference?
• 5:12
  Lisa Elzey: Am I doing this right?
• 5:13
  Lisa Elzey: I just look at that little girl who was really excited to learn and I always want to learn more because I really don't know a lot about family history.
• 5:22
  Lisa Elzey: I think I do and then all of a sudden I'm very humbled.
• 5:28
  Crista Cowan: So I'm always willing to learn, so, yeah, I have that on my wall.
• 5:29
  Crista Cowan: One of the things about family history that always amazes me is that I mean, I've been doing this since I was 12.
• 5:34
  Crista Cowan: And professionally since I was in my 20s, and yet every single day I still learn something new, because there is you can never know everything there is to know about history, about the different time periods and places that our ancestors may have lived, about what records exist or don't exist, Like.
• 5:51
  Crista Cowan: There is always something new to learn, and I think that's one of the things.
• 5:55
  Crista Cowan: It's not just the puzzle solving for me, it's also the attraction of that constant learning.
• 6:00
  Lisa Elzey: Yeah, and the learning and the story.
• 6:02
  Lisa Elzey: That's why my very favorite is this story and when I went to college I kind of took a break from the family history thing in my teens.
• 6:09
  Lisa Elzey: I don't know there are some people that really are into it, but my teens was busy with other things.
• 6:13
  Lisa Elzey: Me in Provo, utah, and there is a large family history library on campus and then of course there's the big library in Salt Lake City, which is the largest in the world, and I remember saying to my mom I'm from California and I remember saying Mom, you've got to send me some stuff.
• 6:33
  Lisa Elzey: I can find stuff here Now.
• 6:35
  Lisa Elzey: You have to remember this is back in the days of having the sound decks and no indexing and having to scroll, scroll, scroll through things, and so it took a lot of time.
• 6:45
  Crista Cowan: Microfilm and microfiche and books.
• 6:53
  Lisa Elzey: Books oh, my gosh books and so many of those things.
• 6:54
  Lisa Elzey: And so I'm like Mom, I have access to it here, because we didn't really have a lot of access in California.
• 6:57
  Lisa Elzey: So she sent me everything.
• 6:58
  Lisa Elzey: She sent me the suitcase, the suitcase that I loved seeing on that table.
• 7:03
  Lisa Elzey: She sent it to me and that was so much trust for my mom to do that, because that was her life's work, you know, of finding all this information and finding our beginnings.
• 7:14
  Lisa Elzey: And she sent me the suitcase, so I that's why I treasure it, because it really was a moment of trust for my mom, but also the moment where my story kind of began.
• 7:23
  Crista Cowan: Yeah, wow, that connection between generations, and I think something all genealogists long for is who is the person to pass the torch to, because I've been the story keeper.
• 7:34
  Crista Cowan: Who then is going to carry that on?
• 7:36
  Crista Cowan: And you have done that so beautifully and expanded on it.
• 7:40
  Crista Cowan: So you and I have worked together for 11 years now and we had an interesting connection that we made early on in our friendship and work together.
• 7:51
  Crista Cowan: And tell us a little bit about how you discovered that you were a Mayflower descendant.
• 7:57
  Lisa Elzey: Yes, mayflower descendant.
• 7:58
  Lisa Elzey: Well, my mom again loves to tell stories and she was collecting the stories, right, she's an only child, so it was really important to her to kind of get those stories on paper and she had heard that she was a Mayflower descendant from her mother and that was like a point of pride for her.
• 8:16
  Lisa Elzey: And I remember inquiring who is this person and she went to her big old pedigree charts you know, flipped through the pages and she showed me the name of the person.
• 8:25
  Lisa Elzey: It was Stephen Hopkins, and I'm like I want to know more about this person.
• 8:29
  Lisa Elzey: And again, nothing.
• 8:31
  Lisa Elzey: There's no internet, right.
• 8:32
  Lisa Elzey: This is books, this is book time.
• 8:34
  Lisa Elzey: So, going to the library, and there weren't a lot of things about specific Mayflower passengers back then.
• 8:42
  Lisa Elzey: There were about, like, william Bradford, because he was the mayor, all those kind of things, but not a lot about him.
• 8:52
  Lisa Elzey: But there was this one book and my mom got it from the library in another town and she kept it for so long that the book made the library made her pay for the book, she kept it so long and so she essentially bought the book from the library but it told the life story of this man, stephen Hopkins.
• 9:06
  Lisa Elzey: And what a life.
• 9:07
  Lisa Elzey: Wow, I mean talk about somebody that has had a lot of living.
• 9:12
  Lisa Elzey: He first came to Jamestown to be one of the settlers there and he came on the ship, the ill-fated ship about the Sea Venture.
• 9:22
  Lisa Elzey: They, on the way to Jamestown, shipwrecked in Bermuda, and this is about 1609.
• 9:28
  Lisa Elzey: And so they were shipwrecked and there was a big mutiny.
• 9:32
  Lisa Elzey: That happened because the captain of the ship had tried to influence his will on the group that was, you know, and they kind of were saying hey, you were the captain of the ship, but you're not the mayor of Bermuda, you know this island.
• 9:43
  Lisa Elzey: You were the captain of the ship, but you're not the mayor of Bermuda, you know this island.
• 9:45
  Lisa Elzey: So anyway, stephen Hopkins was charged with mutiny and he was going to be hung and he begged for his life, and there's just this saga of craziness that happened and his wife and his children were back in England at the time, and so finally they were able to sail to Jamestown and then they went back to England and then his wife died.
• 10:06
  Lisa Elzey: His wife Mary died my 11th great-grandmother.
• 10:08
  Lisa Elzey: But he had two kids.
• 10:10
  Lisa Elzey: He had Constance and Giles with his first wife, mary, and so he remarried, and then that's when he and his new wife and his two children got on the Mayflower and sailed to Plymouth.
• 10:24
  Lisa Elzey: And so Stephen did not come as a Puritan.
• 10:27
  Lisa Elzey: That was the thing.
• 10:28
  Lisa Elzey: As a kid I was thinking, oh, is he one of the Puritans that was fleeing religious persecution?
• 10:32
  Lisa Elzey: No, he was an opportunist and he saw an opportunity for a different life, a better life, a new land.
• 10:39
  Lisa Elzey: He was a character.
• 10:42
  Lisa Elzey: He had often been cited in Plymouth for having too loud of parties and drinking at the house and all of those kinds of things, and he was one of the representatives of the community that would often go talk with other neighboring indigenous tribes and Jamestown and all of those things.
• 11:00
  Lisa Elzey: So really a character learned a lot about him.
• 11:04
  Lisa Elzey: He and his wife had the only child that was birthed on the Mayflower during the voyage.
• 11:10
  Lisa Elzey: His name was Oceanus and that was their son, and so so many things I got to learn and I was excited about it and have then since carried down those stories to my own family about it and have then since carried down those stories to my own family.
• 11:22
  Crista Cowan: Yeah, so it's interesting because Mayflower Society is this organization that represents what is it?
• 11:27
  Crista Cowan: 162 passengers or something?
• 11:30
  Lisa Elzey: I think it's 101, 102 passengers.
• 11:33
  Crista Cowan: I can never remember that number.
• 11:34
  Crista Cowan: Yeah, I think it's 101, 102.
• 11:36
  Crista Cowan: But the estimation is from the Mayflower Society, that from those you know just over 100, 102 passengers, that there are nearly 10 million people in the United States today that descend from them.
• 11:49
  Crista Cowan: And so it's interesting that it's such a point of pride and yet it kind of is a common thing, it seems like yeah, I think so.
• 11:55
  Lisa Elzey: But I think it's one of those things where you hear a story, kind of like the stories like oh yeah, I heard we have Cherokee in our background or oh yeah, we have a scoundrel or or whatever.
• 12:04
  Lisa Elzey: You don't really know if it's true.
• 12:06
  Lisa Elzey: And so, for me, my mom had told me this story, but I really wanted to make sure it was accurate.
• 12:11
  Lisa Elzey: So I started going to sources and over the years it's become more easy with more you know, more possible with digitization, and so I was able to prove genealogically yes, this is our 11th great grandfather of mine, and that was exciting.
• 12:27
  Lisa Elzey: So it wasn't just a story anymore, it was fact and it, it, it was interesting I.
• 12:32
  Lisa Elzey: And then you find out other people that are connected to the Mayflower and you're excited.
• 12:36
  Lisa Elzey: You're like, hey, our people were on the same ship coming over to, you know, to the colonies, or wasn't even that at the time.
• 12:43
  Lisa Elzey: But I mean, we did a who Do you Think you Are about it?
• 12:46
  Lisa Elzey: Allison Janney whole episode is about Stephen Hopkins, and so I'm like I'm cousins with, I've met her.
• 12:52
  Lisa Elzey: I met her in the HBO gift lounge that we worked at with Ancestry, and so that was kind of fun to think that, yes, there are so many people out there that are connected, but I don't think they know they're connected.
• 13:04
  Crista Cowan: Yeah Well, and you bring up a really interesting point, which is it's not just that, oh, we're all Stephen Hopkins descendants, or we're all William Bradford descendants, or we're all Edward Doty descendants, and that makes us cousins because we descend from the same Mayflower passenger.
• 13:19
  Crista Cowan: I think there's also something significant about finding those points of connections between your ancestors, Our ancestors.
• 13:26
  Crista Cowan: We may not be related, but they came on the ship together.
• 13:29
  Crista Cowan: Or we may not be related, but they signed the Declaration of Independence together, or we might not be related, but they served in the same military battalion.
• 13:37
  Crista Cowan: That idea that there are these networks of people that existed in relationships with each other that weren't related, but now, generations later, two, 10, 20 generations later, we can make those connections with each other.
• 13:52
  Crista Cowan: Now.
• 13:53
  Lisa Elzey: For sure, because I think about my own kids and their story and when they talk about growing up, they always mentioned the neighbors.
• 13:59
  Lisa Elzey: They mentioned oh yeah, I remember when we'd go over with these guys and do this thing, and there's always that.
• 14:04
  Lisa Elzey: And I think about my own childhood.
• 14:06
  Lisa Elzey: Again, I always mention the neighbors, or my community or my church community or whatever, and these are people that we grow up with that influence our lives for good or for ill, and so, yeah, to have that connection, that's a non-fam familial right.
• 14:20
  Lisa Elzey: They were not related necessarily, but my people and your people lived in the same town or there's just.
• 14:27
  Lisa Elzey: There's so, like you said, battalion, things like that and there's power in that, there's power in sharing that story, because you might have a part of the story I don't have.
• 14:36
  Lisa Elzey: Yeah, and it's great to share that together.
• 14:37
  Crista Cowan: Yeah, so you and I thought we had a connection at one point.
• 14:40
  Lisa Elzey: Yes, we were so excited.
• 14:42
  Lisa Elzey: I shared with you that I had a Mayflower descendant and you promptly shared with me that that I also had a Mayflower descendant.
• 14:50
  Lisa Elzey: Yes, so we had that little like they were on the same ship together.
• 14:54
  Crista Cowan: So this story had been passed down to me in my family.
• 14:57
  Crista Cowan: You know, you've you've all met my dad and heard his stories, of stories, of stories, and his mother's family was very into family reunions and family history and through her family tree that had been passed down to me I had a direct connection to Edward Doty and I was so excited about that and so excited to share that connection with you.
• 15:20
  Crista Cowan: And at about that same time we were taking a business trip to Boston.
• 15:25
  Lisa Elzey: We were.
• 15:25
  Lisa Elzey: And it was kind of fun because I looked up Edward Doty because I didn't know who he was and this was the best part, you guys, this is so great.
• 15:31
  Lisa Elzey: So Stephen Hopkins, edward Doty, was an indentured servant to Stephen Hopkins.
• 15:37
  Lisa Elzey: So it was like you know, rista is our corporate genealogist, she's the barefoot genealogist.
• 15:43
  Lisa Elzey: But I was like, but hey, my 11th great grandfather was in charge of your ancestor.
• 15:47
  Lisa Elzey: It was kind of a joke, but yeah.
• 15:49
  Lisa Elzey: So we were going to Massachusetts, to Boston.
• 15:52
  Lisa Elzey: I had never been to Boston.
• 15:53
  Lisa Elzey: It was for IAJGS conference.
• 15:56
  Lisa Elzey: It was my first big conference attending as an employee of Ancestry to help people at the conference.
• 16:02
  Lisa Elzey: I was so excited Going to Boston.
• 16:04
  Lisa Elzey: It's a week-long conference, it's very long, yeah.
• 16:06
  Lisa Elzey: So I was excited that we got to be in this place.
• 16:09
  Lisa Elzey: Here I am.
• 16:09
  Lisa Elzey: I'd never been to Massachusetts.
• 16:10
  Lisa Elzey: Very, very cool Boston, favorite town now, very awesome town.
• 16:15
  Lisa Elzey: But you had told me you were planning on doing a couple of, you know, excursions after the conference was over, because we had a whole day before we had to fly home and you invited me to come along.
• 16:27
  Crista Cowan: I did.
• 16:27
  Crista Cowan: We had an entire day and we planned to attend a Maroon 5 concert.
• 16:32
  Lisa Elzey: We did, with a little Kelly Clarkson on the side.
• 16:35
  Lisa Elzey: It was a fantastic concert.
• 16:36
  Lisa Elzey: It was so good.
• 16:37
  Crista Cowan: The concert didn't start until later that evening, and it was outside of the city, and so we decided to go and spend the day at Plymouth Plantation.
• 16:45
  Lisa Elzey: We did.
• 16:45
  Lisa Elzey: I was so thrilled.
• 16:47
  Lisa Elzey: I could not contain my excitement because I know they have like Plymouth Rock is there and they have Mayflower too, and then they have the.
• 16:54
  Lisa Elzey: I was so excited and I know that's the nerdiest thing, but hopefully this audience gets that.
• 17:00
  Lisa Elzey: But but again, to walk in the places your ancestors walked, it's there's just nothing like it and I was able.
• 17:05
  Lisa Elzey: I already thought being in Boston was close enough to where they had walked, but here I am going to the actual place that they built their community.
• 17:13
  Lisa Elzey: It was fantastic, yeah.
• 17:15
  Lisa Elzey: It was a lovely day, a little muddy, it was rainy right, and we all had sandals on because it was hot and so the water, our feet were wet, but I think we just embraced it, with our friend Eliz as well, and I think we just embraced it and got to see all the places.
• 17:30
  Lisa Elzey: One of my favorite things, though, is they have on the plantation, on the Plymouth Plantation, they have houses that are reconstruction, of the kinds of little homes that they had, and then they have people who are dressed up as actual Mayflower passengers, reenactors Reenactors, yeah, and one of them was Stephen Hopkins, and so I was so excited to talk to this man, who really is not my ancestor, of course, I know that, but I just wanted to, and I come from a theater background.
• 17:58
  Lisa Elzey: I get it, but I have never engaged with a reenactor before.
• 18:00
  Lisa Elzey: And I come from a theater background, I get it, but I have never engaged with a reenactor before, and I was like this is really strange, but I'm just going to go with it.
• 18:05
  Lisa Elzey: So I'm talking to him and saying well, hi, and he's, like you know, speaking in old English and how are thou?
• 18:11
  Lisa Elzey: And all this, and I said I am your 11th great granddaughter, and he said that is not possible.
• 18:17
  Lisa Elzey: My daughter, constance, is not yet born a child, or something like this.
• 18:26
  Lisa Elzey: And I was just laughing going, okay, that's right, I descend from his daughter, constance, and technically she wasn't married yet and all of that.
• 18:29
  Lisa Elzey: So we played along.
• 18:29
  Lisa Elzey: But it was really fun to see, like their meeting house area to see how they carved wood, and if you're ever in that area, even if you don't have a Mayflower passenger, I mean it's part of our history of the United States, it's part of the history of England, it's.
• 18:43
  Lisa Elzey: There's a lot going on there.
• 18:44
  Crista Cowan: It's really great.
• 18:45
  Crista Cowan: One of my favorite things about Plymouth plantation is the reenactment.
• 18:49
  Crista Cowan: Well, not just the reenactment but also the um recreation of some of the indigenous culture there the, the living conditions, the way that they did um, you know, like the handwork and the, the customs and cultures, and then the people that are actually still descendants of that tribe, that are the ones there facilitating that experience for people.
• 19:11
  Crista Cowan: It was just really moving for me to have that kind of a cultural experience in that space as well.
• 19:17
  Lisa Elzey: Yeah, I remember going into their, their like dwelling, dwelling.
• 19:22
  Lisa Elzey: It was very large and they had a fire going in the middle and like there was a hole to top so the smoke could escape.
• 19:27
  Lisa Elzey: But it was just kind of the smoky, musty place and there was a young man who was a descendant of the same tribes that were there when the pilgrims came and he was telling stories of his ancestors and it was really amazing and fascinating and riveting like the way he was telling them and there was a small like drum in the background of their ancestral music and it was really, really cool.
• 19:54
  Lisa Elzey: It took me out of my place and it threw me back in time and, yeah, really fascinating.
• 20:00
  Crista Cowan: Yeah.
• 20:00
  Crista Cowan: So to have that experience with you, knowing we were both Mayflower descendants, was meaningful.
• 20:07
  Crista Cowan: And then I got home and I had this like I don't know.
• 20:11
  Crista Cowan: There was this moment where I was just like I just inherited this information and I accepted it.
• 20:16
  Crista Cowan: You inherited this information and you actually went through the process of verifying it and proving that it was accurate, and I had not undertaken that exercise on this particular branch of my family tree, and so I decided I wanted to make sure that that was right, and so, as I started working my way back, generation by generation, in the family tree, I got to a young woman who was a dodie and supposedly he was her great grandfather, and what I uncovered was that we had assigned the wrong set of parents to her.
• 20:50
  Crista Cowan: It was a big blah blah.
• 20:53
  Lisa Elzey: I know, I remember that day I think I came into the office and you were like I have some news.
• 20:58
  Lisa Elzey: I was like oh my goodness, what happened?
• 21:00
  Lisa Elzey: And you're like I am not a Mayflower descendant.
• 21:03
  Lisa Elzey: And then you told me the story and I was so sad because we'd had this experience together.
• 21:09
  Lisa Elzey: But I was so impressed that you took the time to go and verify that Because I will say, getting back past 1800, that's hard work.
• 21:19
  Lisa Elzey: So those genealogists out there know records are less frequent Massachusetts, even though they have fantastic records back in those days.
• 21:27
  Lisa Elzey: Still hard.
• 21:28
  Lisa Elzey: There's a lot of Sarah Browns and John Cooks.
• 21:30
  Crista Cowan: And Edward Dodies apparently.
• 21:32
  Lisa Elzey: Yeah, apparently, and so it's hard to make sure that your person is that person, and so it takes some doing.
• 21:37
  Lisa Elzey: It's not for the faint of heart, and so I was so impressed that you took the time to do that.
• 21:42
  Lisa Elzey: But yeah, it was kind of a want want, yeah.
• 21:45
  Crista Cowan: So one of the things that the Mayflower Society has put out is what are called the silver books, and they have become kind of the definitive standard of research, because so many people descend from the Mayflower.
• 21:56
  Crista Cowan: They have done a fantastic job of documenting not just all of the Mayflower passengers but all of their children and grandchildren, down almost five full generations.
• 22:06
  Lisa Elzey: Yeah, with the silver books I was able to get to my sixth great grandfather, you know they proved down to my sixth, so I needed to make sure I shored up from sixth great grandfather down, which is really only about four or five generations four generations that were really difficult, you know.
• 22:22
  Lisa Elzey: And then by that time my great grandfather and I know all of that.
• 22:25
  Lisa Elzey: So, yeah, they have those, and they also have the pink books, which are kind of the updated.
• 22:29
  Lisa Elzey: They're updating more lineages that are coming in and being proven, and so there's two different kinds of books.
• 22:34
  Lisa Elzey: With a society that you can.
• 22:35
  Lisa Elzey: You can be a member of your local society.
• 22:38
  Lisa Elzey: I am not, so I'm not pitching this as though you should join, but it is a wonderful resource.
• 22:43
  Lisa Elzey: Again, they have the silver books in the library, genealogical libraries, they have them online, I believe.
• 22:48
  Lisa Elzey: If you're one of the members of the society, I think there's more access to different things.
• 22:53
  Lisa Elzey: Not quite sure, but it's a really great resource and that helped me shore up my connection.
• 22:58
  Crista Cowan: Yeah, and that was actually the place where I discovered I was not connected was as we looked at this family tree and realized I had this research all proven back to this woman.
• 23:09
  Crista Cowan: We had assigned the wrong parents.
• 23:11
  Crista Cowan: I found the right parents and then double checked the silver books and they were not in there.
• 23:15
  Crista Cowan: I found the right parents and then double checked the silver books and they were not in there.
• 23:17
  Crista Cowan: And then, since then, I've been able to trace back to the immigrant on that particular line.
• 23:24
  Crista Cowan: And here's the interesting thing right, we talk about this connection with the Mayflower, but those connections don't just have to happen with a singular event or a singular you know place or time vent or a singular you know place or time.
• 23:40
  Crista Cowan: Those networks of people, the way that people interacted historically in very small populations, there was a lot of, there was a lot of interaction, and so people were immigrating to this country repeatedly through the 1600s from England after the Mayflower and her ancestors came on one of those subsequent ships.
• 23:58
  Crista Cowan: It just happened to be about 15 years later than the Mayflower, but they're still there in that Massachusetts Bay Colony.
• 24:04
  Crista Cowan: They're still interacting with people in those communities.
• 24:07
  Crista Cowan: So it is still very possible that your ancestors and mine crossed paths.
• 24:11
  Lisa Elzey: Oh, I'm certain of that.
• 24:12
  Lisa Elzey: I mean, it's that it wasn't a very big area, but I think what's amazing is, okay, we hear about the Mayflower, we learn about it in school, and, you know, I told my kids about it, and that was their favorite thing to talk about at Thanksgiving when they were little.
• 24:26
  Lisa Elzey: Like we have a 12th grade grandpa that was on the Mayflower, like yes, so it made Thanksgiving a little more meaningful, but, at the same time, there are stories on those ships that your ancestors came over that are probably just as interesting and have hundreds of other people that they came over with, so there's a whole network of people to tap into there, and then, of course, those families all married into other families, and there's a lot going on there.
• 24:51
  Lisa Elzey: But I think the most important part, though, is to ask the questions, to find the answers, to find the story, and that's what I did, that's what you did, even though that sometimes you don't like the answer to the question.
• 25:05
  Crista Cowan: Yeah, sometimes those family stories turn out to not be entirely true and some people want to cling to those stories because they've built a family identity around them, and for me personally and for my family, we'd rather know the truth, and so I think that's why I keep digging and keep trying to set some of those little records straight of some of the stories that have been passed down.
• 25:25
  Crista Cowan: And ultimately, now when I've been back to Boston since that original trip that we took, that place still holds meaning for me, because now I know the actual places where my ancestors lived and the actual places where they walked, and there's something powerful about having those experiences and connecting not just with those places but also with the people that connect us with those places.
• 25:51
  Lisa Elzey: I love that.
• 25:52
  Lisa Elzey: That's so true.
• 25:53
  Lisa Elzey: And you know, story is what drives us.
• 25:55
  Lisa Elzey: Story can inspire us.
• 25:57
  Lisa Elzey: I learned that Stephen Hopkins supposedly again another story was supposedly he's a contemporary of William Shakespeare and he lived in the same area as William Shakespeare did and he is supposedly the inspiration behind Stefano in the Tempest, where they're stranded on the island, and all of that because the sea venture, that whole story, was a big deal in England.
• 26:20
  Lisa Elzey: So Stefano, stephen Hawkins I don't know if it's true, I like to think it's true.
• 26:24
  Lisa Elzey: My little theater heart makes me.
• 26:25
  Lisa Elzey: Yes, I'm somehow connected in a network with William Shakespeare.
• 26:29
  Lisa Elzey: But yeah, story is what drives us.
• 26:32
  Lisa Elzey: But the truth, the truth is important.
• 26:34
  Lisa Elzey: The truth is really important because then we know what story to pass down to help inspire our family and, like I said, my kids love the story, I love learning about it and I want to know more of my cousins.
• 26:45
  Lisa Elzey: I need to know more of those Stephen Hopkins cousins.
• 26:49
  Lisa Elzey: I'm sure they're out there.
• 26:50
  Crista Cowan: Well, I'm sure we could create a whole network around that.
• 26:52
  Lisa Elzey: I'm sure we could.
• 26:53
  Lisa Elzey: It would be large.
• 26:54
  Lisa Elzey: I have a feeling.
• 26:56
  Crista Cowan: Okay, well, lisa, thank you for being here.
• 26:58
  Lisa Elzey: Thank you.