Hittin' the Bricks with Kathleen
A "brick-wall" DIY genealogy podcast that features your questions and Kathleen Brandt's answers. She wants your stories, questions, and “brick walls”. But be ready to add to your "to-do" list. As Kathleen always says, this is a Do it yourself (DIY) genealogy podcast. “I'll show you where the shovel is, but I'm not digging up your family.”
Maybe, you have no idea where to start searching for an ancestor. Or, perhaps you want to know more about your family folklore. Host Kathleen has 20 years in the industry and is the founder of a3genealogy. She's able to dispense genealogy research advice and encouragement in understandable terms that won't get you lost in genealogy jargon. Along with her husband and co-host, John, she helps you accomplish "do-it-yourself" research goals, learn some history, and have a bit of fun along the way. Light-hearted and full of detailed info, Hittin' the Bricks is your solution for your brick-wall research problems.
Hittin' the Bricks with Kathleen
Genealogy Connections: Continuing Stories of Ancestors
The echoes of the past resonate as we delve into the beauty of names, the intricacies of genealogy, and the wistful memories of grandparents, aunts, and uncles. Now, imagine discovering a whole new branch of your family tree. So, tune in and join us in this captivating episode about names, genealogy, and the timeless traditions of our families.
Be sure to bookmark linktr.ee/hittinthebricks for your one stop access to Kathleen Brandt, the host of Hittin' the Bricks with Kathleen. And, visit us on YouTube: Off the Wall with Kathleen John and Chewey video recorded specials.
Hittin' the Bricks is produced through the not-for-profit, 501c3 TracingAncestors.org.
Thanks to MyHeritage for their generous support to Hittin' the Bricks with Kathleen! Follow us on social media and subscribe to HTB with Kathleen in order to enter your name in our monthly MyHeritage Complete Package giveaway starting Jan 2024!
Ladies and gentlemen from the depths of flyover country in the heartland of America, the Kansas City on the other side of the mighty MO. W elcome to season three of Hittin' the Bricks with Kathleen, the genealogy podcast that has your questions and her answers. I am John, your Humble Hubby Host. We have a special episode, a Tripped North, and while Kathleen is presenting for the Iowa Genealogical Society, I'll be well doing whatever it is I do. So let's start Hittin' the Bricks. It's overcast today in Des Moines, Iowa. The drizzle has stopped and the trees are showing the beginnings of fall color. The reds stand out especially against the rain, dark and green. It's cool, but not anything a respectable mid-westerner or would call cold.
Speaker 1:I'm standing outside the state capitol, a modified renaissance style building capped with a central dome covered in thin sheets of 23 karat gold, or so say my recent Google searches. Cannons from various wars are displayed outside the capitol and point toward downtown, and if you look in their direction, past the bronze statue called the pioneers of the territory, down East Locust Street, the squat 19th century looking brick structure slowly rise into the modern glass, concrete and steel buildings of downtown Des Moines. If I can trust my Google searches, Des Moines gets his name from the French River of Monks. The French were trading fur and exploring, even when the territory was still under Spanish jurisdiction. But long before the French and Spanish made their way to this land, as far as the eye can see, was occupied by the Oceti Sakowin, or seven council fires. Each of the fires stood for a nation, stood for a people, and while so much has changed, the 99 counties in Iowa are peppered with the names of those people and tribes the Alamaki, Apanus, Back Hawk, Cherokee, Chickasaw, Keokuk, Potawatomi. The state itself took its name from the indigenous peoples. Names are interesting, that way they connect us to the past.
Speaker 1:And today I'm here in Iowa with Kathleen at the Iowa Genealogical Society. She's presenting to a large group of researchers looking for connections to family names. We were getting ready to head out from the hotel this morning when Kathleen's phone rang. She takes the call, but we need to get started. She likes to arrive early to make sure things are set up, so we get in the car and we make the short drive to IGS from the hotel.
Speaker 1:Kathleen and I both share the compulsion to be extra early instead of a minute late to anything except for walking the dog Chewey and I seem to always be waiting at the door for Kathleen before we can get started. Not a complaint, it's just an observation. I think genealogy is often thought of as a pastime for the elderly. The room where Kathleen will present is nearly full and, yes, there's a fair amount of gray hair represented, but the people here are far from going anywhere gently. Joe Solom is the president of IGS and I got a chance to sit down with him in a somewhat quiet corner of the adjoining library to the presentation room. He has a head full of white hair, he's wearing jeans and a maroon sweater and carries himself like someone much younger than his age, which is somewhere in the upper 70s. In fact, he's a volunteer fireman.
Speaker 2:This is the library section, where we're at right here and where the research is done. We've got microfilm, we've got newspapers, cabinet after cabinet of information, as well as a row after row of books to do research with.
Speaker 1:What did you do before doing this?
Speaker 2:I spent a career in information technology. However, once I retired, I said I don't want anything to do with it anymore. So my thing today is I just want to turn on a computer that works. I don't want to have to troubleshoot etc. After one of the things I did after I retired, I have to become a volunteer firefighter. So that's where my true passion is. A nd, it's been a challenge sometimes and I try to lean on the folks that are here. When I took over I said I'm not here to micromanage, but there is an outstanding group of volunteers in this organization and great committees and I am not here to change that boat. It's going in the right direction.
Speaker 2:One of the things we were very fortunate, through a couple connections, that there was a company in Duane that was getting rid of one of their buildings and they had a lot of office furniture to get rid of. And we reached out to them and we hauled several truckloads of chairs and desks and etc. What can we do with all this? What's the future vision? And so we decided okay, we're going to turn this into a conference center that not only IGS can use but we can open it up to surrounding entities in the community. We're currently working on being able to put our book collection, our library resources, up online so people can go online, do some research and say, IGS has the information I'm looking for. We've come a long ways providing research material conference center, speakers, conferences and we're going to continue to build on that success.
Speaker 1:John Back on stage. Joe finishes introducing Kathleen to the packed room. She's wearing a really bright cyan jacket that jumps from the silver background of her slides projected behind her. She takes the mic and the applause fades to murmurs and then to near silence.
Speaker 1:Since she's busy, let me tell you a bit about me. See, I grew up in a small family. Mostly it seemed there was just five of us. I'm the child of older parents. My dad was 53 when I was born and my mom was 40. I know right. When I was born we were in California, and so were my grandparents on my dad's side. Now my mom's parents were in Texas, and when I was about three we moved to Virginia. So my memories of grandparents, aunts and uncles are spotty at best. Now. My mom was 13 years younger than my dad and her youngest brother, heodore, was 11 years younger than her, and because of those two age gaps we got to know our ncle Ted and our cousins pretty well. At least, when we were young. my two brothers and I were close in age to ncle Ted's three children, and so, on the rare opportunities for visits, the six of us would pair off and find what trouble we could get into with our .
Speaker 1:Now, Kathleen often says that cousins are your first real friends. I know that's especially true for her. In fact in the last few months since I retired I've grown used to hearing her on the phone, mostly once, but sometimes two a athree times a cShelly and Wichita. See, unlike the th distance family had, kathleen grew up in Kansas City and Shelly was in Wichita., in Midwest driving terms. That's nearly neighbors, and there was lots of back and forth over the years to visit her aunts and uncles and cousins. And if Kathleen is laughing from the other room, I don't usually have to ask who she's on the phone with. But they talk about things whatever first friends talk about. I don't think I want to know any specifics. There's a break in the presentations and I sneak a couple of questions in on Kathleen. I ask if she thinks it's important that people are named for ancestors.
Speaker 3:I was named after both my grandmothers, Kathleen Luella and Alberta Ruth. My name is Kathleen Ruth. It was a family tradition in my family that we had names that carried on, especially on my grandmother's side. S o it meant a lot because I'll say I'm named after my grandmother Kathleen, where, as my mother's first cousin was named after her grandmother, and I think it's part of our tradition, especially for the women. We don't see it in the men so much. Every once in a while you see someone named after their father, but not necessarily a junior. To tell you the truth, I think it's more important to the parents naming someone after their mothers than it is for me. It was very important for my mother and my father to have both their mothers in my name.
Speaker 1:So, talking about names, I always thought my name was more like a placeholder, John. A bit of background. My name, until the moment I was born was Mary. Surprise! And so it happened that on my birthday the Second Vatican Council was convened by Pope John XXIII. I always had this image of my naming. Mom and Dad in a hospital room, a folded newspaper on a chair. Fran, says my dad, we could still call him Mary. Al, we can't do that, jites my mother. Well, what are we going to name him, dad asks. Mom looks around the room, points to an article in the newspaper about Pope John. That'll do, she says, and they snapped the only photo that was ever taken of me and took me home to disappoint my older brothers.
Speaker 1:The end! H ere's the thing. That might be true. Mom did tell me I was named after Pope John and maybe she didn't know and, for that matter, maybe Dad didn't know that there have been John Brandts in the family for generations. My great-great-grandfather had a brother named John. I think that makes him my great-great-granduncle. It's just a name, but it's a connection I didn't know was there. Why do you like to in genealogy presentations?
Speaker 3:When I'm with my clients it's just one-on-one, but I could take that same knowledge, write a blog about it - not about the client themselves but about how I research, the process and researching and I could share it for those who want to do themselves. The reason I think people want to do it themselves, to me, that's where the joy comes in genealogy that you actually are finding your own ancestors. I want you to work out that first time, that excitement of the first time you see your ancestors' names in documents and kind of create that story in relationship to your own family stories. So I think that's important - that people really do their own research. So I've dedicated time to teach it, whether it's to a blog, the podcast or presentations.
Speaker 1:So Kathleen's right. It's a lot of fun being the one that finds out family information, and here's what's happened to my little family of five. My dad had a younger brother, 16 years younger. Now I know I'm at him, but I'm pretty sure only once he had six kids. My dad's younger sister by nine years had three kids. I found nine living first cousins that I did not know I had. So my little family isn't so little. We just haven't had much connection. I sit in on Kathleen's last presentation and seriously she's so much fun to listen to and watch the information she keeps available in her brain. I'd have to forget the last five years to make room for half of it, and the responses to the surveys about the presentations have been great. Of course Kathleen is more interested in any negative comments. It's the only way I get better. She says it's her all over.
Speaker 1:In fact, back in 2008, when Kathleen barely had her blog up and running, she wrote a post on customer service surveys and how important it is that you get feedback from your client. She's held to that, as far as I know, since then. Fortunately, after 26 years of marriage, I no longer have to complete the online portion of the survey after every meal she makes. She says if I say thank you and I can still walk, then she'll call it a win.
Speaker 1:The week following the presentation at IGS was a train wreck of catching up on everything we hadn't had time to do before we left for Iowa. Even if it's for two days, it seems like the world saves up four days of work to catch up on. But eventually, after getting the bugs off the front end of my car and putting Kathleen's car into the shop and making a trip to Wichita, there was finally a morning that Kathleen and I were sitting on the couch relaxing with Chewy and he was looking out the window at all the squirrels he was going to terrorize. Just as soon as he finished his nap, I asked Kathleen a rather pointed question has genealogy research had an impact on how you view life and death? I asked the question because of that phone call the morning of the presentation. That call was from Kathleen's first cousin once removed, Her cousin Shelly's daughter. Sometime between three and five that morning Shelly had passed.
Speaker 3:Well, I don't know if it has or has not, but I can say that it gives me a different viewpoint on what the descendants should be doing with an ancestors life or death. They leave a legacy and I think it's up to us to carry that legacy, either through their story or through our actions, or both. My first question now probably is how do they contribute to the universal consciousness Like, what is it that they've added when they were on earth? What did they do that was special? A lot of people think, oh, they were just farmers. But they were never just farmers. They were mothers, they were church people, they were community givers or they were black sheep. Whatever they were, don't forget them and their stories share it. I think that we accept to us to keep who they were, authentic, and that's the most important thing to me.
Speaker 1:I've been putting a lot of data in a genealogy tree of my little expanding family Birth, marriage where they live during a particular census and more often than not, for each person I've added in my tree, I've added a date of birth and a date of death and that second date seems so final. There's a start and there's an end. Maybe in part it is true that family history and genealogy tend to attract those of us who have a few more birthdays under our belt than others do. I've noticed in myself the older I get, the more I tend to look back. It would seem at a certain age there's more time behind us than there is in front of us.
Speaker 1:But at her memorial, shelley's son spoke of how his mother was a conduit of the love she got from her grandparents, how she spoke of their love, and that he now, with his son, saw this extraordinary gift that's been quietly passed down generation to generation. Now he was entrusted to pass that gift onto his family, so they would pass his mother's love to their families. As I listened I thought there really is nothing final about Shelley's second date. Our connection is as strong as ever. Her story continues. Kathleen said it's up to us to carry our ancestors' legacy. So now I'm thinking there's a lot more time in front of us than behind us. Everybody's story continues.
Speaker 1:I said names connect us to our past, like indigenous names that still lay claim to so much of the land we walk on. But I'm not sure that connection to our past is what genealogists are looking for. Seriously, if you want to see a genealogist's eyes get big, find a common ancestor surname between you that's even close to the same, and all of a sudden you're a sixth cousin, once removed from your grandfather's step-aunt that lived in Alsace Lorraine, about the same time as Napoleon was asking their great-great-grandfather's fourth cousin, thrice removed, to paint the ballroom in Versailles Periwinkle. Of course there's researching and verification and documentation, but genealogy is not just about the past. Kathleen keeps telling me to stop reaching back on my research and support what I have with documentation, but that's hard for a hobbyist like me. I'd love for her to take over, but I can't afford a rate. I'm retired after all. But I will tell you this I believe I found my fourth great-grandfather on my dad's side, Hans Brandt. He was born in 1745. I don't have any more information on him, there's just a dash following his date of birth, and for now that seems totally appropriate. I'm here, so is Hans.
Speaker 1:I'm beginning to think this genealogy stuff is about something totally different than connecting with the past. How many times have you described a friend by saying well, they're like family. How many sisters from other misters and brothers from other mothers do you have? I've got a lot. And if you ask mitochondrial Eve and Y-chromosomal Adam, they might be totally confused about the concept of more than one family on the entire planet. Explaining discrete family lines to them would be like telling your parents you and your siblings aren't related because you live in different houses. So genealogy is not so much about connecting to our past. Maybe it's more about connecting to each other, and we don't really need a common surname to do that.
Speaker 1:Well, you've made it to the end of another episode. Thanks so much for staying. Thanks to the Iowa Genealogical Society and, of course, joe Solom for his time. Thanks to Chewy Chewbacca Brandt, our part time couch potato and full time fudgy boy, for his unwavering lack of interest in anything we're doing. The theme song to Hit in the Bricks was written and performed by Tony Fisknuckle and the Amoebas Watch for their next performance at the Heaven and Earth Grocery Store. We'd love to know what you think about the podcast. So stop by our Facebook page at Hit in the Bricks with Kathleen and let us know.
