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
Tracing Disease: How Epidemics Shaped Our Family Trees
Medical mysteries lurking in your family tree might hold the key to understanding sudden disappearances, unexplained relocations, or clusters of deaths among your ancestors. When traditional genealogy methods hit a wall, epidemic research could breakthrough those brick walls.
Ready to uncover the medical history hiding in your family tree? Email hittingthebricks@gmail.com to request one of our DNA test kit giveaways (Free pickup in Kansas City or $10 shipping elsewhere in the USA) and start building a more complete picture of your ancestors' lives and challenges.
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.
Ladies and gentlemen from the depths of flyover country in the heartland of America, the Kansas City on the other side of the mighty Moe, welcome to Hittin' the Bricks with Kathleen, the do-it-yourself genealogy podcast, with your questions and her answers. I am John, your humble hubby host, and today we'll be digging into the digital mailbag and answering all your germy questions about researching epidemics. There's a lot to cover, so let's start hitting the bricks. Hey, baby, you look absolutely. Yeah, that's it. Toss that hair, yeah.
Kathleen:Toss the hair, toss the hair. Toss the hair, are you done?
John:What a busy month it's been. A busy couple of weeks. A busy few weeks, wouldn't you done. What a busy month it's been. A busy couple of weeks, a busy few weeks, wouldn't you say?
Kathleen:Yes, it's 4th of July.
John:It's only the 9th day of the month.
Kathleen:Yes, but 4th of July took five days. It's in our neighborhood.
John:Yeah, it varies. The evening starting on the 30th of June Exactly, chewy has gone full gray at this point. He's so sick of the fireworks.
Kathleen:I was just going with PTSD, john, that was a poor baby. Probably needs therapy after this.
John:Somebody's gonna. This says thanks for the measles article on LinkedIn.
Kathleen:Yes, Remember, John. This podcast is a chance for us to answer questions that have been posted in the last three weeks.
John:You mean hitting the bricks with Kathleen or this specific podcast.
Kathleen:I meant the episode.
John:Okay, this episode, this podcast episode, john.
Kathleen:So this month I've been writing a lot about health, vision, health, different epidemics, diseases that were eradicated and have returned and have been in the news.
John:Oh, I'm hearing something coming about measles.
Kathleen:Yes, exactly One of the topics that we've worked on started with me being in the emergency room, but the good news is the issue was a vision problem, and that got me started on what did our ancestors?
John:do, okay. So I'm going to step in real quick and say the issue was a vision problem, which was the good news Because, as a public service announcement, we should say if you notice which is what put us in the emergency room if you notice blurred vision in one of your eyes that comes on quickly, then you should typically take yourself to an emergency room because it might not be an eye issue. You want to get that checked, and so that's what we did. You want to get that checked, and so that's what we did. Fortunately, all the really bad things that were like stroke or tumor were eliminated and you're left with an issue, an eye issue, which is preferred. If you're given a choice between a stroke, a tumor or an eye issue, I'm picking the eye issue, I guess, every day, right, I would Okay. So I know that after the emergency room eye incident, you wrote an article on LinkedIn, right?
Kathleen:I did. I wrote an article and it's entitled Our Ancestors Eye Health and Vision Loss, and that generated a lot of questions. How do you research why your ancestors were blind? How would you know? So yeah, those are the kind of questions we've been answering for the last few days.
John:Okay, and that's through LinkedIn.
Kathleen:That particular one is through LinkedIn. Okay, and we had some additional questions, so I answered those on our blog, but I thought we would touch on them a little bit here in this podcast episode, just for all those, all of our listeners now is that the stuff about, uh, the measles? I did write about the measles on the blog, as well as a little bit more on exactly where to go to research for epidemics oh, okay, that that must be really interesting I thought so are you trying to tell me you don't read my blog?
John:um, yeah, so, um, okay. So one of those questions that came in with about the measles article on linkedin was they. They had a more specific question about german measles and they asked if german measles and measles were, that they the same thing, and what did they call German measles? And I kind of liked it. I think I know the answer to that, but I'm not going to say anything.
Kathleen:Are you sure you don't want to take a guess at it?
John:I'm not going to play spoiler, no, so I think I know, because I remember certain letters that were put together when I got vaccinations, but you explain it. Remember certain letters that were put together when I got vaccinations, and so I'm not, but you explain it.
Kathleen:So the measles and German measles are not the same. The measles was an epidemic from the what? 1657 timeframe. The German measles is really rubella. It's named that because the scientists who did a lot of work on it were from Germany, and so the three initials you remember are probably MMR, is that?
John:correct. That's it. That's the one.
Kathleen:It stands for measles mumps and rubella, and that particular vaccine was introduced in about 1971.
John:Really, I thought it was earlier than that.
Kathleen:No, not when they were all three put together.
John:Oh, interesting. I thought we would have had those done as kids in the 60s.
Kathleen:Well, in 71, you would have been nine, so I could see that I guess, so, I guess so. Right, right, great, I have not had the measles mumps, nor rubella ever. I have not had the measles mumps nor rubella ever. I have not either.
John:Although I would say I guess I'm at greater risk of having it now because there's more people with the measles now for some reason.
Kathleen:So the measles again is different than the German measles Two different viruses and illnesses and it was a different time frame. So our regular measles. We had lots of epidemics between 1657 and about 1963. We had a lot of issues with the measles, like we did tuberculosis or all of those others. There's about 11 diseases that we can actually consider epidemics in our history and TB is one of them, also along with scarlet fever and meningitis and so forth, and all of those are tracked by the government.
John:Still Still.
Kathleen:Well, I don't know if that department got defunded recently.
John:Okay, so this is an interesting question. If our descendants will say that COVID was an epidemic, is that going to be something that's trackable, because you had mentioned that blindness was at one point marked on the census. Were other diseases notated in the census? Eleven?
Kathleen:diseases are notated in different ways In census records. In the historical census record If they died of COVID, it may be a in the death certificate as COVID but it may be as a symptom and that's one of the ways genealogists have to check, not only now for recent but also for our ancestors. A lot of times it was because of the symptoms and they just put the symptoms in. So you have to figure out in that community was there an issue with smallpox at that point? Or was there an issue with the influenza of 1918 in that community? And then it might be written down as a symptom, not as the actual disease itself.
John:Right and that kind of puts me in mind of, like my dad's death certificate. I think he had CLL, that was why he was in the hospital, but his cause of death, the CLL, that was why he was in the hospital, but his cause of death CLL being. Chronic lymphocytic leukemia, and that's why he was in the hospital, because he'd physically taken a turn for the worse. But his cause of death is listed as pneumonia.
Kathleen:Right and we find that with a lot of things. We find that with AIDS, during the AIDS epidemic, which sometimes you're not going to see the word epidemic even in the news, you might even see pandemic, like you did with COVID. You might see outbreak, and outbreak would be just for a community. It hasn't grown out of that community, which would have been what originally happened in COVID or any one of these diseases.
John:Well, okay, since we're on, since we hit on death certificates, what if it's not on the death certificate? For instance, it has pneumonia on there, but you suspect that an ancestor either died of AIDS or died of COVID or died of any other disease, but it's not listed there. The symptom or direct cause of death is on the death certificate. Or maybe you don't have a death certificate, so you're right.
Kathleen:I mean death certificates didn't occur until more recently, so beforehand there were not death certificates, there were notices in newspapers. The federal census also noted mortality rates for some of these diseases. There are certain census that recorded blindness or typhoid. So I have a great article on the A3 genealogy blog post that tells you where exactly to go to if you're looking for epidemic at a certain time. Like what other sources Is that the research resources from?
John:1657 to 1963? Yes, that is correct. Okay, it's deaths from measles, colon research resources 1657 to 1963. And that was put on the A3 genealogy blog.
Kathleen:Yes, it's not limited to measles. There are quite a few on there that will report all or any of those 11 diseases that is mentioned also in that article.
John:So it's worthwhile to go through that blog is that if you're wanting to find some extra sources with somebody who fits this bill, then you're going to find that, whether they died of measles or perhaps something else, that is correct.
Kathleen:So, one of the fun things about that and the person who wrote it was actually asking about an African-American family, and they said but in slavery you're going back into the 1600s, but in slavery we don't even know. They weren't even given names on the census records. However, john, in the medical census records the slave names were given. Oh, interesting so it's a great way to also follow an enslaved person.
John:So if I'm researching a family member or somebody who was enslaved, even if I don't know the name, if I have, let's say, an outbreak that's medically documented in an area, I may find their name in the medical assessment that is correct.
Kathleen:It's a supplement to the census records and we see those a lot. Like I said, it might just have a first name. Sometimes it has a first name and it says enslaved by or slave of. I think is what it means.
Kathleen:That might be a treasure trove, it really is, and I'm going to write a little bit more about that at a later date. So yes, that's a fun part about the census records. Some of the census records themselves will have a checkmark for, let's say, blind, but then you have to go to the blind supplement which is part of that year's census records. But it's also not just federal, it's also for different states not all the states, but some of the states.
John:So, while we're here and talking about epidemics and this research, which types of records are the most useful?
Kathleen:if this is your path on your research, I go to the census first and then cross reference that to the medical supplements of the mortality supplements.
John:Because, if I remember correctly, you always have to verify everything that you read on a census.
Kathleen:Census are secondary resources, some people will even say tertiary, but the census records we don't know really who's given the information.
John:People with big words in their vocabulary would say tertiary, but not me.
Kathleen:I'm sorry. So there are ways to double check because if they have a check mark for one of the federal or state census that says blind, there's more information normally on them. Also on the mortality records, for I think it's everything from 1830 up and I have examples in that blog post. In those records you may also have information that tells you exactly what disease and what caused it.
John:There's a question here that asks how would measles epidemics like measles or scarlet fever, the 1918 flu, impact families? And at first it seems a little bit self-evident, but now I'm thinking about it. It could have a wide ranging effect.
Kathleen:It really did. So a couple of things. One is at the beginning of epidemics, people might have thought it was just their community and they moved quickly overnight, forgot about even selling their land and left. That is one of the ways of knowing that you're already learning that there is an epidemic during this time period and all of a sudden your family shows up in another county, another town or they disappear. The other one is we can see children or family members who die very close in time frame with each other, multiple deaths within a family. We also see very quick new marriages. We don't have a record of the death of a spouse, but the women might have had three children and a man might've been left with two and they married quickly during this same time frame. So those are kind of things we're looking for when we don't have a death certificate. Also is these symptoms of family disruptions.
John:That's a really interesting way to approach. Research is looking for the anomalies, so that probably leads perfectly to the next question of what would somebody look for in newspapers or community histories?
Kathleen:In Comanche County in Coldwater, kansas. My family is. That's where my family came out from in the 1880s. So when they came somewhere there was an epidemic at the end of that century and everybody was just disappearing. They were all trying to leave that area and in the newspaper they would talk about it All of the people who had died. They missed a lot and there were a lot of mass graves. So they just dug a trench for graves because they're trying to prevent this epidemic from getting loose. You would see these men in the newspaper would describe the men carrying just bodies all day long to the mass graves, carrying just bodies all day long to the mass graves. So you don't necessarily know what happened to your ancestor, but if they disappeared from that community and you can't find them, that could be it. And again, the newspaper might have mentioned their names. But a couple of times it was, say, 12 people were injured into the mass grave and not named the 12 people 12 people were injured into the mass grave and not named the 12 people.
John:I think a lot of times there's the issue of public health, especially in epidemics, where the spread of disease is the primary concern. In 2025, you think there's this level of time that people are able to access the bodies and process and do this and do this and you don't get backed up. Well, we saw something different actually in COVID, so it should be very much understandable that in the 1800s or even the 1950s, how far behind people could have fallen with the resources that they had. You're not going to identify everybody, but you're going to have a list of names.
Kathleen:That's exactly what happened. So we do have coroner records, we have asylum records. Remember, there are these asylums also all over the nation for blindness, whether it's a TB asylum or some other asylum, and those were also very important. So just because your ancestor was blind, they might've been blind due to tuberculosis. So the question is, which asylum records are you going to use? Both? If they lived, they're still going to be in the blindness, but if they passed away, it probably would be in the tuberculosis. And again, a lot of this is on the census records, on the ones after 1830.
John:So after 1830, a lot of them had tick marks and indications of illness.
Kathleen:So sometimes it would use a word like scrofula, which is a strange way of saying you had tuberculosis. It caused blindness and what it actually affected was the lymph node. I had to look this up when I was writing because I saw so many cases of this. But it caused blindness and we see that in those census records this was the cause was scrofula and that's why they were blind.
John:So okay. So now I think this is actually interesting because this is obviously somebody who writes at least about these subjects. And they say I always think I'm being sensationalist when I talk about epidemics. How can I respectfully incorporate epidemic stories into my family narratives without sensationalizing loss?
Kathleen:and that's a great question, I think I thought so too, and since I also am a overdramatic person about all things, I understood.
John:Everything's sensational Exactly what she was saying.
Kathleen:So one of the things is, when we're talking about it and you want to share your ancestry with your family or with an audience and in her case it was both she's a presenter my thing is give the facts, give the resources and talk about the impact of the family, just kind of stay on track with the story. But our medical history is our family history, so we don't want to leave it out and we want to be as specific as we can. I mean, we've learned from our ancestors even how did they handle these things? How did they handle these epidemics? I just think that it's important that you don't consider and judge yourself of being overly sensational. But if you can stick with the facts, the death certificates, the resources, where else can we find? How did it impact the family? I thought that was the best last question, because it kind of summarizes everything we just talked about.
John:Yeah, absolutely, let's see. Do we want to flog anything before we go?
Kathleen:So, yes, I would like to get rid of DNA kits. Times are hard. I'm sure people need DNA kits. I have ancestry and my heritage.
John:It's the first thing I've always thought about when I found myself coming into hard times was where can I get a DNA kit?
Kathleen:Well, I had a person who called a couple weeks ago and they wanted a DNA kit to prove they were related to this extremely wealthy person and they were part of the airship.
John:And I wanted a DNA test specifically for that. Yes, like I would like to, can I please order my DNA test that shows I'm related to LeBron James?
Kathleen:You can, if you wish.
John:Can I order that? Do you provide those?
Kathleen:I do not. But, john, I do want to give away DNA kits. I don't know a good way. Maybe our listeners can tell us a good way, or they can just ask for one and I'll give them out until I run out. I don't know what to do.
John:This is the most uncontested contest we've ever had, and here's how you become eligible for a DNA test from Hitting the Bricks with Kathleen. First you listen to this podcast where we talk about getting a DNA kit, and then you send email to hittingthebricksatgmailcom and say, hey, I want a DNA kit, and the first 10 people who send emails will get a DNA kit.
Kathleen:But the cost is $10 because that's how much it will cost us to ship it, the cost of the shipping you have to pay shipping so if you're in kansas city you can meet me at a library if okay, so keep that in mind.
John:It's free for people in kansas city.
Kathleen:If you need it mailed, then it will cost you ten dollars, $99 Ancestrycom ones and the 39 of MyHeritage and I think I only have one left of the MyHeritage.
John:Okay, it's been a pleasure catching up and chit-chatting with you.
Kathleen:I really enjoy it, though, john, when people write in, especially after a blog post or a podcast episode, because I know that they're interested. They have specific questions, and this gives us a chance to answer those questions, so keep them coming.
John:Absolutely Make her work. Folks Make her work Well. Congratulations. You made it to the end of another episode. Thanks so much for staying. Thanks to Chewy Chewbacca Brandt, our full-time hater of all things that go boom, for his unwavering lack of interest in anything we're doing. The theme song for Hittin' the Bricks was written and performed by Tony Fistknuckle and the Scruffulas Watch for the next appearance in the 1890 Senses. Do you have a genealogical question for Kathleen? Drop us a line at hittinthebricks at gmailcom and let us know.
