Latest / Stories That Live In Us / A Phone Call From Heaven (with Jenny Ashcraft) | Episode 36

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A Phone Call From Heaven (with Jenny Ashcraft) | Episode 36 · Stories That Live In Us

• 0:03
  Jenny Ashcraft: I'm living proof that if you've been intimidated and you think this is not for you, you can do it.
• 0:08
  Jenny Ashcraft: If I can do it, you can do it and my family.
• 0:12
  Jenny Ashcraft: When my family gathers at Christmas, we love to do puzzles.
• 0:14
  Jenny Ashcraft: If you are a person that loves to do puzzles, there is no better puzzle than family history.
• 0:20
  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 everything as you listen to the podcast each week.
• 0:49
  Crista Cowan: You probably think that I'm a little bit obsessive about genealogy and certainly I am, and many of my guests have been as well but not everybody starts doing family history when they're a kid and makes it their career.
• 1:00
  Crista Cowan: My guest today is Jenny Ashcraft, and Jenny and I worked together at Ancestry, but she was not a genealogist.
• 1:09
  Crista Cowan: As a matter of fact, it wasn't until she was facing an empty nest and trying to deal with the imminent loss of her father that she even became remotely interested in family history the story she tells.
• 1:24
  Crista Cowan: I'm excited for you to hear it.
• 1:25
  Crista Cowan: It really is an example of what many of you probably recognize as a God wink, one of those moments where you're led to something that might seem like a coincidence, but if you follow it through, you discover something so meaningful on the other side of that, and Jenny is a beautiful example of that in her life and ultimately that became her family history journey.
• 1:52
  Crista Cowan: So I hope you enjoy my conversation with Jenny Ashcraft.
• 1:55
  Crista Cowan: So, jenny, thank you so much for being here.
• 1:58
  Crista Cowan: I'm so excited to have this conversation with you.
• 2:01
  Crista Cowan: You and I work together, but I don't know you very well.
• 2:04
  Crista Cowan: So I know you work on the newspaperscom side of the ancestry business, but I would love to hear a little bit about your journey to ancestry.
• 2:16
  Jenny Ashcraft: Sure, you know, I know you, rista started in this field at a very young age, at your, at your dad's feet.
• 2:23
  Jenny Ashcraft: But for me it was a little later.
• 2:26
  Jenny Ashcraft: My dad, about 15 years ago, was dying from cancer and I didn't know much about his family as much as I wanted to, and so I started asking him questions and I decided to record a life history.
• 2:43
  Jenny Ashcraft: And so over a series of weeks I asked him all about his family history.
• 2:49
  Jenny Ashcraft: His mother had died when he was rather young and there were so many unanswered questions that he didn't know, and I kind of started feeling this little stirring in my heart like I need to learn more about this.
• 3:04
  Jenny Ashcraft: But I didn't want to.
• 3:05
  Jenny Ashcraft: I fought it, I wasn't ready to jump into it and I joked with him one day and I said, dad, if you get to heaven and you find out that we need to do family history or there's something you want me to work on, you better take a cell phone and call me.
• 3:20
  Jenny Ashcraft: Because, otherwise I'm not going to do it.
• 3:23
  Jenny Ashcraft: And he laughed and said, okay.
• 3:24
  Jenny Ashcraft: And just a day or two after his funeral I went out to my mailbox and I had a big fat manila envelope from Heber City, which is a little city about 30 minutes from me, and I didn't recognize the name or the return address and I opened it up and out falls all of these pedigree charts and family history records and genealogies and I didn't know what this was all about.
• 3:51
  Jenny Ashcraft: But it was from my dad's side of the family.
• 3:53
  Jenny Ashcraft: So I found a cover letter and he just said I thought you might enjoy learning more about your dad's family history.
• 4:01
  Jenny Ashcraft: So I thought, well, is this a friend of my dad?
• 4:03
  Jenny Ashcraft: So I searched for him on Google, I found his contact information and I called him and I thought, well, is this a friend of my dad?
• 4:06
  Jenny Ashcraft: So I searched for him on Google, I found his contact information and I called him and I said were you a friend of my dad's or why did you send me this packet?
• 4:14
  Jenny Ashcraft: And he said no, I actually didn't know your dad, but I was looking through the obituaries in the paper the other day and your dad's caught my eye and I started reading it.
• 4:25
  Jenny Ashcraft: I had such a strong feeling that this family really has some family history work to do and I read through the descendants and I came to your name and I knew I had to send it to you.
• 4:36
  Jenny Ashcraft: So I figured this is my little cell phone call from heaven and I better start jumping in and figuring out what to do.
• 4:51
  Crista Cowan: That's amazing.
• 4:52
  Crista Cowan: So that was your kind of interest or entrance into family history?
• 4:55
  Crista Cowan: Did you pick it?
• 4:57
  Jenny Ashcraft: up right away.
• 4:57
  Jenny Ashcraft: And then how did you end up at Ancestry in the middle of all of that?
• 4:59
  Jenny Ashcraft: So I didn't know much.
• 4:59
  Jenny Ashcraft: I did not know much and in fact it was a little bit like a foreign language to me.
• 5:02
  Jenny Ashcraft: So I started taking classes and studying and just diving in.
• 5:07
  Jenny Ashcraft: I built my first ancestry tree and I thought it was super easy, it was intuitive to me.
• 5:14
  Jenny Ashcraft: I just added one person at a time.
• 5:18
  Jenny Ashcraft: I didn't want to bring a tree over from anywhere.
• 5:20
  Jenny Ashcraft: I wanted to start fresh and I started building a tree and I realized, as I attached these records, these census records, and I could look and I could see my dad as a little boy and then I could see him as a teenager, and then I went back another generation and I started to fall in love and I just loved it so much and I loved learning about these things that even he didn't know about, and so often I would find something.
• 5:48
  Jenny Ashcraft: I think, oh, I wish I could call my dad and tell him what I just found, but I just really realized that it's addictive and I loved it so much.
• 5:57
  Crista Cowan: It is a little bit addictive.
• 6:00
  Crista Cowan: Did you have children at home at the time Like how much were you devoting a lot of time to this?
• 6:04
  Crista Cowan: A little bit of time Did you?
• 6:05
  Jenny Ashcraft: have children at home at the time, like, how much, like, were you devoting a lot of time to this, a little bit of time?
• 6:07
  Jenny Ashcraft: So I have four daughters and they were.
• 6:08
  Jenny Ashcraft: A couple of them were gone, but I still had a couple of daughters at home.
• 6:12
  Jenny Ashcraft: My youngest are twins and they were.
• 6:15
  Jenny Ashcraft: It was about their senior year and I would work on this all the time when they were at school and they would come home and they would joke mom, we need you among the living now.
• 6:24
  Jenny Ashcraft: So I would close my computer and focus on them.
• 6:28
  Jenny Ashcraft: But I started realizing I've got to figure out what my next step is in my life.
• 6:33
  Jenny Ashcraft: These girls are going to be leaving for college, and what does my life look like next year?
• 6:39
  Jenny Ashcraft: What am I going to do?
• 6:40
  Jenny Ashcraft: How am I going to fill my time?
• 6:41
  Jenny Ashcraft: What's the most important, most meaningful thing that I could do?
• 6:45
  Jenny Ashcraft: And I kept thinking, boy, the dream for me would be to work at Ancestry, because I had become such a fan of the product and it was something I interacted with every day and I'd gotten very comfortable with it and found it so easy to use.
• 7:00
  Jenny Ashcraft: And I thought, boy, if I could do anything, I would want to work at Ancestry but I thought really, who's going to hire me?
• 7:08
  Jenny Ashcraft: I have been a stay-at-home mom for 25 years.
• 7:10
  Jenny Ashcraft: I mean, I had my education, but then I was focusing on motherhood and I thought there was no chance in the world that I would ever get hired.
• 7:20
  Jenny Ashcraft: But I came across a job listing one day.
• 7:22
  Jenny Ashcraft: But I came across a job listing one day, took a chance and sent in a resume.
• 7:28
  Jenny Ashcraft: I got an interview and then a couple of interviews and for some crazy reason they hired me.
• 7:35
  Crista Cowan: And that's how I'm here.
• 7:36
  Crista Cowan: Well, there you go, and we have been very lucky to have you.
• 7:39
  Crista Cowan: You've been with us about seven years now, yeah, and you run the social media account for newspaperscom?
• 7:47
  Jenny Ashcraft: Do you also run the one for Find a Grave?
• 7:48
  Jenny Ashcraft: I do for Fold3.
• 7:49
  Jenny Ashcraft: And my colleague does for newspapers, and then I write blogs for the newspaperscom and for Fold3.
• 7:55
  Crista Cowan: Okay, and I just delight in the stories that come out of your little team.
• 8:01
  Crista Cowan: I think it's amazing that you take those little bits of information and you really figure out what the story is behind it, Because really that's what family history is about.
• 8:09
  Jenny Ashcraft: That's and it's what we love, right, it's those stories that bring our ancestors to life that just are the hook where we want to know more and we, and they're so inspiring, right, you, you realize that you stand on the shoulders of grit and determination and sacrifice and you learn from mistakes they've made and you feel connection.
• 8:31
  Jenny Ashcraft: And I mean, what a gift to give to our children and our grandchildren to help them feel the connection that comes from those that have gone before.
• 8:40
  Jenny Ashcraft: We truly stand on their shoulders.
• 8:43
  Crista Cowan: Yeah Well, so through your work you have the opportunity to share all kinds of stories, but personally, as you've been going through your own family history, is there a favorite story or a favorite experience with family history that just really has cemented this for you?
• 8:58
  Jenny Ashcraft: I have so many.
• 8:59
  Jenny Ashcraft: I have so many.
• 9:00
  Jenny Ashcraft: But a more recent one.
• 9:03
  Jenny Ashcraft: I have a lot of ancestors in Indiana County, pennsylvania, and I really wanted to get back there.
• 9:12
  Jenny Ashcraft: I had kind of exhausted what I could find and I knew I needed to get to the cemetery, I needed to get to the genealogical society there, I needed to do some digging and so my sister and I, just like you, work on this with your dad.
• 9:27
  Jenny Ashcraft: My sister and I love to work on this together and so we decided to plan a trip and we had things we wanted to see and do.
• 9:35
  Jenny Ashcraft: But I really had two main goals for this trip.
• 9:38
  Jenny Ashcraft: My ancestors had attended a little church in a young Township and it was called West Union Presbyterian Church and there was a little church and a little graveyard and the church was long gone.
• 9:52
  Jenny Ashcraft: It had been torn down many years ago.
• 9:54
  Jenny Ashcraft: The graveyard was still there and I wanted to find records, because it was almost a family graveyard and a family church, because everybody was kind of interconnected and I wanted to find those cemetery records and those church records and that was my goal and I had been looking for years.
• 10:13
  Jenny Ashcraft: I had reached out to every source that might have an idea and had just been told they had probably been destroyed and that they probably weren't available.
• 10:24
  Jenny Ashcraft: So we were going to head out there and see what we could find.
• 10:29
  Jenny Ashcraft: And I was sitting in the airport waiting to board the plane and I had my laptop open and almost simultaneously I got two messages.
• 10:38
  Jenny Ashcraft: And the first one the subject line, said West Union Presbyterian Church Records.
• 10:44
  Jenny Ashcraft: And I thought what?
• 10:45
  Jenny Ashcraft: And I clicked on it and it was a woman from the Western Pennsylvania Genealogical Society and they had been closed for two years for COVID.
• 10:56
  Jenny Ashcraft: They are located at the Carnegie Library in Pittsburgh and they had been closed and were still closed.
• 11:01
  Jenny Ashcraft: But somehow a message that I had left probably two years ago, had made its way to her and she was calling to say we actually have those church records, but we have never.
• 11:14
  Jenny Ashcraft: They are not digitized, they're not available online.
• 11:17
  Jenny Ashcraft: And I said oh my goodness, I am sitting at the gate ready to board a plane.
• 11:24
  Jenny Ashcraft: I'm going to be in Pittsburgh tonight.
• 11:25
  Jenny Ashcraft: And she said well, I will meet you at the library tomorrow and unlock it and you can see them.
• 11:31
  Jenny Ashcraft: So we were just beside ourselves, excited.
• 11:35
  Jenny Ashcraft: And then the second message that came in was from a colleague at Find a Grave and he said I know you don't usually write blogs for us, but we are in a bit of a bind.
• 11:45
  Jenny Ashcraft: Could you maybe write a find a grave blog?
• 11:48
  Jenny Ashcraft: And I said, well, I'm just heading out on a family history vacation for a week, but let me just see if anything inspires me on this trip and let's talk when I get back.
• 11:58
  Jenny Ashcraft: And he said, okay.
• 11:59
  Jenny Ashcraft: So we were giddy, excited about the church records.
• 12:03
  Jenny Ashcraft: We headed to Pittsburgh the next day, arrived at this closed, locked up Carnegie Library in 2021.
• 12:12
  Jenny Ashcraft: And she opened it up and there are these church records that I have been searching for for five years.
• 12:18
  Jenny Ashcraft: And you know what a thrill that is.
• 12:20
  Jenny Ashcraft: It's so exciting.
• 12:22
  Jenny Ashcraft: So we're taking pictures with our phone of every page and just can't wait to get back to the hotel and start to to go through this information.
• 12:30
  Jenny Ashcraft: And we spent the next you know days just just soaking it in and going to every location and taking notes and looking at resources that weren't available online.
• 12:41
  Jenny Ashcraft: And, as I asked around, quite a few people said when I asked about the cemetery records because I'd found the church records, but when I asked about the cemetery records, they said you ought to talk to Jerry and I thought I don't really know who Jerry is.
• 12:59
  Jenny Ashcraft: And let me back up a little bit.
• 13:03
  Jenny Ashcraft: About a month before our trip.
• 13:04
  Jenny Ashcraft: I got a message on Ancestry one day from another customer and he had been looking at my tree and had realized that we had a distant mutual ancestor.
• 13:15
  Jenny Ashcraft: And he reached out and he said I see, we're connected.
• 13:18
  Jenny Ashcraft: And I said, well, yeah, and he explained how we were connected.
• 13:20
  Jenny Ashcraft: I could see that.
• 13:21
  Jenny Ashcraft: And he said, well, yeah, and he explained how we were connected.
• 13:23
  Jenny Ashcraft: I could see that.
• 13:24
  Jenny Ashcraft: And he said, you know, I live in Philadelphia.
• 13:27
  Jenny Ashcraft: Now I'm older, I have a terminal illness, I'm dying, and I suddenly am interested in my roots and he said I wanted to know.
• 13:37
  Jenny Ashcraft: If he said I'm not so much interested in those, my ancestors, but I want to know, do I have any living relatives?
• 13:44
  Jenny Ashcraft: And I decided I wanted to help him.
• 13:48
  Jenny Ashcraft: So I built a tree and I filled out this tree the best I could with living relatives, and that's a little different, you know, than than going back, but I did it the best I could send it to him and kind of forgot about it.
• 14:01
  Jenny Ashcraft: So fast forward, a month later and we're after.
• 14:04
  Jenny Ashcraft: Like the third person said, you should talk to Jerry and see if he has cemetery records.
• 14:09
  Jenny Ashcraft: And I said, who is Jerry?
• 14:11
  Jenny Ashcraft: And they said, well, he's an older man but he pays to have the lawn mowed at your family cemetery.
• 14:16
  Jenny Ashcraft: So I was able to get some contact information.
• 14:20
  Jenny Ashcraft: I called and Jerry, who I think is still alive he's about 87, lived in an assisted living center in Indiana.
• 14:29
  Jenny Ashcraft: And I called and I said I hear you may have some cemetery records and he said, oh, I don't have any records.
• 14:37
  Jenny Ashcraft: And I said, oh, okay, but he said tell me who your ancestors are.
• 14:43
  Jenny Ashcraft: And I said, well, my maiden name is Miller, it's the Miller family.
• 14:47
  Jenny Ashcraft: And I hear papers flipping and he goes oh yeah, I see here Robert Miller.
• 14:53
  Jenny Ashcraft: And I said, well, can I ask you, what papers are you looking at?
• 14:57
  Jenny Ashcraft: What have you got?
• 14:59
  Jenny Ashcraft: And he goes well, these aren't the records, these are just some papers.
• 15:02
  Jenny Ashcraft: Because I kind of mow the lawn and I have some papers.
• 15:05
  Jenny Ashcraft: And I said would it be OK if we possibly came and looked at your papers?
• 15:10
  Jenny Ashcraft: And he was a little hesitant we're still coming out of COVID, he's older.
• 15:15
  Jenny Ashcraft: So he agreed, a little bit reluctantly, but he agreed to let us come the next day.
• 15:30
  Jenny Ashcraft: So we set up an appointment and we went to his little apartment and we put on our masks and we knocked on the door and we stood way back.
• 15:33
  Jenny Ashcraft: We wanted to make him as comfortable as we could.
• 15:34
  Jenny Ashcraft: And he came to the door and we started chatting at a distance and he was telling us a little bit about his life.
• 15:44
  Jenny Ashcraft: But I noticed behind him a large oval picture, an old-fashioned picture, and I said that is the neatest picture.
• 15:53
  Jenny Ashcraft: Who is that?
• 15:55
  Jenny Ashcraft: And he said well, this is Maria Teresa Calhoun.
• 15:57
  Jenny Ashcraft: She's my grandmother.
• 15:58
  Jenny Ashcraft: And he said that and something in me just paused.
• 16:03
  Jenny Ashcraft: I'm like wait, I know that name.
• 16:05
  Jenny Ashcraft: Why do I know that name?
• 16:06
  Jenny Ashcraft: And I sat down my bag, I pulled out my laptop, I pulled up my tree and Marie Tree's Calhoun is in my tree that I had just created for this gentleman, like a month before.
• 16:19
  Jenny Ashcraft: And as I worked my way down, I'm like there's Jerry right there in my tree.
• 16:25
  Jenny Ashcraft: I have Jerry in my tree.
• 16:27
  Jenny Ashcraft: I said Jerry, we're related.
• 16:29
  Jenny Ashcraft: And I turned my computer around and I showed him here's your grandmother, here's you, we're related.
• 16:36
  Jenny Ashcraft: And he's like get in, here, come in, come in.
• 16:40
  Jenny Ashcraft: So we spent the next hour chatting with Jerry and he went to the back and he retrieved a manila file that was about three inches thick, of historic cemetery censuses and records of burials, and in his mind those weren't the cemetery records, but it was exactly what I was looking for weren't the cemetery records, but it was exactly what I was looking for.
• 17:09
  Crista Cowan: That is the most amazing story.
• 17:10
  Crista Cowan: Those kinds of serendipitous opportunities.
• 17:10
  Crista Cowan: They happen more and more as you get involved in family history, and so I love that you had that experience.
• 17:14
  Crista Cowan: But you also were making the effort.
• 17:16
  Crista Cowan: You were making the awkward phone call to the total stranger and showing up and doing the legwork.
• 17:22
  Crista Cowan: I think that's a really beautiful example of that.
• 17:24
  Crista Cowan: So in the midst of all of this in Indiana County, pennsylvania, did you find the cemetery?
• 17:30
  Jenny Ashcraft: Well, I found the cemetery and in my chatting with people around the county I heard a story and I heard that an adjacent cemetery in a small little town nearby called Salzburg.
• 17:39
  Jenny Ashcraft: They said have you heard that?
• 17:40
  Jenny Ashcraft: An adjacent cemetery in a small little town nearby called Salzburg?
• 17:44
  Jenny Ashcraft: They said have you heard about what's going on in Salzburg?
• 17:47
  Jenny Ashcraft: And I said what's going on in Salzburg?
• 17:50
  Jenny Ashcraft: And they said well, there's an old, old cemetery there that a local man is restoring.
• 17:56
  Jenny Ashcraft: And I said what do you mean restoring?
• 17:58
  Jenny Ashcraft: And they said well, it was just covered with poison ivy and trees and the headstones were all turned on their sides or buried underground.
• 18:09
  Jenny Ashcraft: And a man decided somebody's got to do something about this, and why can't it be me?
• 18:14
  Jenny Ashcraft: And he started one grave at a time trying to restore the cemetery.
• 18:20
  Jenny Ashcraft: And I remembered the message I'd gotten back about you know if something inspires you for Find a Grave and I thought I need to meet this man and interview him because this is such an amazing gift that he's given people and I would love to hear more about it.
• 18:36
  Jenny Ashcraft: So I made arrangements to chat with a man named Chuck and went to this old Salzburg cemetery and it's just incredible.
• 18:47
  Jenny Ashcraft: Part of it's restored and part of it is still just in shambles.
• 18:51
  Jenny Ashcraft: And a lot of the headstones were illegible and he was one at a time cleaning them, resetting them.
• 19:01
  Jenny Ashcraft: In his work as an engineer he's familiar with ground penetrating radar and he was finding headstones and unburying them and resetting them all just out of the kindness of his heart.
• 19:12
  Jenny Ashcraft: And I was so inspired by him and I chatted with him and I said tell me a couple stories of what's inspired you.
• 19:21
  Jenny Ashcraft: Tell me something that you found that's awesome.
• 19:25
  Jenny Ashcraft: And he said well, here's an awesome story.
• 19:28
  Jenny Ashcraft: I found a headstone lying on its back covered in debris and leaves, and as I brushed it off, it was just lichen.
• 19:37
  Jenny Ashcraft: I couldn't even read it and I started to restore it and I started to see beautiful engravings and carvings.
• 19:45
  Jenny Ashcraft: And then I saw the name was revealed and it was a woman named Maria Hawkins and he said I've done a little checking and her maiden name was Elric.
• 19:54
  Jenny Ashcraft: And I said wait, maria Elric, that's my ancestor.
• 20:00
  Jenny Ashcraft: Stop it.
• 20:02
  Crista Cowan: She's my ancestor.
• 20:04
  Jenny Ashcraft: She is one of nine children of my fourth great grandparents.
• 20:08
  Jenny Ashcraft: And I just was speechless.
• 20:10
  Jenny Ashcraft: And he said well, that's not the whole story.
• 20:14
  Jenny Ashcraft: And I had Maria in my tree.
• 20:16
  Jenny Ashcraft: I knew she had died, approximately when she had died, but I didn't know where she was buried.
• 20:21
  Jenny Ashcraft: And he said well, as I was trying to reset her headstone, I was digging into the dirt and my shovel hit some stone and I started digging out and under several feet of dirt was another small headstone of Maria's baby and they both died the same year.
• 20:39
  Jenny Ashcraft: We assume probably complications of childbirth, but I didn't even know about that little girl.
• 20:45
  Jenny Ashcraft: And so here, here is this wonderful man doing this service, and I didn't even know it, but I was the recipient of his kindness.
• 20:54
  Jenny Ashcraft: Wow, that's amazing.
• 20:56
  Crista Cowan: Okay, now I'm crying.
• 20:59
  Crista Cowan: The only reason that works, though, is because you already had started exploring your family history.
• 21:06
  Crista Cowan: You could have been interviewing him for that blog post and had that conversation and never known he was talking about your family member, if you hadn't already had that somewhere in your brain.
• 21:16
  Jenny Ashcraft: Yes, yes, that is so true.
• 21:18
  Jenny Ashcraft: And I think that sometimes just our little efforts are magnified and we take those records and we put you know, we assemble what we can.
• 21:29
  Jenny Ashcraft: We take those.
• 21:30
  Jenny Ashcraft: I remember when I first started I would look at a census record and I would see okay, here's the family in 1840 and here they are in 1850.
• 21:41
  Jenny Ashcraft: But then, as I became a little more comfortable in the records, you would go a little step deeper.
• 21:47
  Jenny Ashcraft: You'd say, well, who's next to them in 1840?
• 21:50
  Jenny Ashcraft: Families weren't moving around a ton.
• 21:53
  Jenny Ashcraft: And maybe I'm at newspaperscom which has been a huge help for me in piecing together my family tree and I find an obituary and it says that the daughters came and Mrs Henry came as a daughter.
• 22:08
  Jenny Ashcraft: And all of a sudden, there I have this is the Henry family that was next door to them in the 1840 census.
• 22:14
  Jenny Ashcraft: This is their daughter living next door.
• 22:17
  Jenny Ashcraft: And you start to look a little deeper in those records and you make connections and things just come together and I think our little efforts are magnified to become this beautiful story and picture.
• 22:29
  Crista Cowan: Yeah, it really is, and that's one of the things that I love about family history.
• 22:33
  Crista Cowan: But I also love about just this process of piecing together the lives of our ancestors.
• 22:38
  Crista Cowan: Their lives were super interconnected because of the way that they lived and you know, you think about rural Pennsylvania.
• 22:46
  Crista Cowan: When did this family live there?
• 22:48
  Crista Cowan: 1800s, okay, yeah, so rural Pennsylvania in the 1800s, and they're reliant on each other for survival and hard things happened, you know losing, losing a child, dying in childbirth.
• 23:01
  Crista Cowan: Now you've got a husband with children who has to raise them, like there's so much wrapped up in their lives and their stories and as we start to uncover them, sometimes our lives feel very disconnected from that experience.
• 23:14
  Crista Cowan: But there are threads of connection that can give us inspiration and that can give us resilience and I just I love the whole process of it.
• 23:24
  Crista Cowan: And so to hear your story about these serendipitous connections, like that's a real thing and that really happens in family history way more often than I think in any other avenue of life.
• 23:35
  Jenny Ashcraft: I completely agree and I love that you use the word resilience, because I feel that resilience and I'm trying to teach that to my children and my grandchildren.
• 23:46
  Jenny Ashcraft: I want them to understand that they came from people who did hard things and managed to rise above it.
• 23:54
  Jenny Ashcraft: And hard things happen to everybody all the time, but we just take those hard things and we just keep going and we just keep doing our best.
• 24:04
  Jenny Ashcraft: I love that.
• 24:05
  Crista Cowan: So, before we wrap up, one of the questions that I ask all my guests is what do you hope for the future, whether it's the future of your own family history journey, or a discovery that you have yet to make, or something about your family?
• 24:19
  Jenny Ashcraft: Well, I am so excited about what's happening right now with handwriting and AI.
• 24:27
  Jenny Ashcraft: I love pension records, I love wills and you look at these manuscripts written with quill and ink and they're amazing.
• 24:39
  Jenny Ashcraft: And you look at newspapers that are being digitized that you can search them in seconds and the resources that are opening up.
• 24:50
  Jenny Ashcraft: I was looking at a sixth great-grandfather's Revolutionary War pension and these are amazing records.
• 24:59
  Jenny Ashcraft: They're on Fold3 at Ancestry and you can go into them and he's listing all of his children and who they're intermarried with.
• 25:07
  Jenny Ashcraft: And remember these census records.
• 25:10
  Jenny Ashcraft: At this time they just have the head of household and tally marks and so you have no idea really who some of these children are and it's right there in a manuscript, but some of them are very difficult to read handwriting and read through newspapers and extract those things that make them searchable that I think it's just going to blow open the doors for discovery.
• 25:43
  Crista Cowan: Yeah, absolutely.
• 25:44
  Crista Cowan: I remember when I was probably in my late 20s so I was just my first career was not in family history because it never occurred to me this could be a job, and so I was kind of at the dissatisfaction point of my first career and really like starting to consider getting into family history professionally.
• 26:02
  Crista Cowan: And I came across a quote that said that if there is a record to be found anywhere about one of your ancestors like, if you'll make the effort, you'll find it- I know this quote it's it is.
• 26:14
  Jenny Ashcraft: it's my anthem.
• 26:15
  Jenny Ashcraft: I love this quote.
• 26:17
  Crista Cowan: Clearly that is the experience that you have had, and sometimes I think it just takes patience, but with that you're right.
• 26:23
  Crista Cowan: With the explosion of technology that is available, that is helping make more and more records available, there are records that are going to come to light for people from all over the world that were never available before or readily available before, because not everybody can take a trip to Indiana County, pennsylvania, and meet with a Jerry who's spent time and effort collecting records and so anywhere that those records can be made more readily available to people I think is just such a really exciting it's an exciting time.
• 26:52
  Jenny Ashcraft: It is an exciting time and I'm living proof that.
• 26:56
  Jenny Ashcraft: If you've been intimidated and you think this is not for you, you can do it.
• 27:00
  Jenny Ashcraft: If I can do it, you can do it.
• 27:02
  Jenny Ashcraft: And my family.
• 27:04
  Jenny Ashcraft: When my family gathers at Christmas, we love to do puzzles.
• 27:06
  Jenny Ashcraft: If you are a person that loves to do puzzles, there is no better puzzle than family history.
• 27:11
  Jenny Ashcraft: It is so fun to put that those pieces together and what emerges is this beautiful family story.
• 27:18
  Crista Cowan: Yeah Well, thank you so much for being here.
• 27:21
  Crista Cowan: It's been delightful to get to know you a little bit better and to hear your stories.
• 27:25
  Jenny Ashcraft: Thanks for inviting me, Crista.