- Good evening, my name's Deborah Holt Noel, I'm the host and senior producer of Black Issues Forum, and host of the North Carolina weekend program on PBS, North Carolina.

I am so excited to be here representing your statewide public broadcasting network.

And we are proud to present this evening's, a sneak peek of the eighth season, season eight of Finding Your Roots with Henry Louis Gates Jr.

Fan favorite and a critically acclaimed PBS series.

Lots of people love Dr. Henry Louis Gates including myself.

And I'm even more excited to give you the opportunity to engage with us and engage with our esteemed panel that we had invited this evening as a group of knowledgeable and fascinating local experts on genealogy and more.

But first a few housekeeping tips, a special thank you to our then partner, the North Carolina Genealogical Society who has graciously donated two prize packages.

Two lucky attendees of this particular event will receive a one-year digital membership to the North Carolina Genealogical Society, and a copy of their North Carolina Research Genealogy and History Reference Guide.

It's a retail value of $95.

So that's nothing to sneeze at.

And all you have to do is send an email to events@pbsnc.org and put roots in the subject line, anytime before 10 o'clock tonight.

Just do that and you're entered.

This information can also be found in the chat feature at the right of your screen and will be listed in the chat throughout the evening.

So thank you again to the North Carolina genealogical, I'm sorry, the North Carolina Genealogy Society for their partnership and generosity.

Also, please take a moment to complete the survey, the audience survey, there's gonna be a link in the chat, and the survey link will also be in the post event email that you're gonna receive next week, along with resources and a link to the recording of tonight's discussion.

So now without further ado, I want to introduce you to tonight's panel, let's meet them.

So joining us are Dr. Valerie Johnson, Dean of Shaw University and coordinator of the Wake County Enslaved Persons Project.

We also have Tammy Brunner, the Wake County Registrar Of Deeds.

Richard Cox, Chair of the advisory board for the UNC Greensboro People Not Property, Slave Deeds Project.

We also have Renate Yarbrough Sanders, a genealogy educator and speaker and host of the Let's Talk podcast.

She does all kinds of things, but we're very excited to have her here.

And Ann M Woodford, genealogy speaker and author.

Critically acclaimed award-winning author.

And her latest book is "When All God's Children Get Together: A celebration of the lives and music of African-American people in Western North Carolina."

Thanks to each of you for being here.

Really appreciate it.

Let's get started with you Richard, to share with us how you got started on the People, Not Property Slave Deeds Project, and how the project that UNC Greensboro has grown and developed.

- Sure, we really started the project about between three and five years ago, applying for a grant and being fortunate to receive a grant from the National Archives.

It's an new piece of a larger project that I run called the Digital Library in American Slavery.

It brings together online and available to the public, public records that in different ways, detailed, alive, and particularly look at the names of the enslaved.

The Deeds Project, People Not Property was an effort to look at the registered deeds, and deed records from across the state, and identify any that involve or in particular name, enslaved people.

And get those online and document those as well.

We completed our grant work as of this past October, it was a three-year grant.

And during that period, we covered 13 different counties, and we found over 10,000 documents and over 50,000 named individuals and doing that work.

The work is still ongoing, just, you know, without the grant backing us right now.

So we are also currently working with several other counties, including Wake County.

And we have a couple of other grants, including one with UNC Pembroke, East Carolina, and North Carolina, central, all of whom are doing research in their local communities and tying it back into the work that we're doing as well.

- Fascinating.

Thank you so much, Richard.

- Thank you.

- And Tammy of being the Registrar Of Deeds for Wake County, you have a huge responsibility, documenting and preserving thousands of documents.

How far do the documents go back?

And how did the Wake County Enslaved Persons Project get started?

And how far along in the processes are you?

I know that's a lot of questions, but just tell us kind of how far back does it go in your connection with Richard's project?

Let's see, Tammy, I think we might need to unmute.

- Of course.

- There you go.

- The records in Wake County, of course go back to 1700, go back to when Wake County was established, but I've been working with Richard since even before I became the Registrar Of Deeds, I heard about his project.

And so then we started it in Wake County as soon as I got into the office, and started working with Shaw University to do it.

We have over 360 volunteers that are doing this work every day.

Let me clarify.

We have 360 folks that have signed up to do the work, and there are about 60 of them that literally do this work every day.

And they've identified 1800 records so far.

We are in the process of going, we have identified them, indexed them, and now we are on the second run of checking that work, because we'll do it three times to make sure that we pulled out the correct information, and then go through and capture the actual image of the documents so that we can give all of that information to Richard so that he can put it in his big library so that we can really start to trace the enslaved people where they went.

They weren't just here in Wake County, where did they go after they left Wake County?

Did they go to Ashe County?

Did they go to Guilford County?

So the purpose of this is not only about doing it for Wake County, but to do it nationwide.

- And it sounds like really to begin to develop the stories that are similar to the stories that so many people love on Dr. Gates show.

I mean, people actually get to learn about their people.

And a lot of folks are from North Carolina and stay in North Carolina.

- That's right.

And in these records you find stories.

There are stories that are told of enslaved people, getting their freedom and coming back and buying their family members.

And then what happened, why they had to leave North Carolina, because now they're free people, and North Carolina wasn't having that.

And so then you find them in other parts of the country, and what they did to then come back and free other people.

- Well, people can have their own finding your roots, right?

I saw the chat in the preview and people were asking, hey, maybe, you know, there's a possibility of doing our own research.

Well, absolutely, definitely.

That is what is available right now.

People can find their own roots right here in North Carolina.

But we'll hopefully talk a little bit more about that, but let me move to you, Renate, you present a lot of workshops, some about DNA, and we saw in the clip.

Sometimes you've got to go the DNA route to try to get that information.

Is the best or easiest way to get started with learning about a family's history by submitting DNA, to one of the, like over the counter kits.

What do you say about that?

And how about people not feeling safe and secure with their DNA traveling through these kits?

- Right.

Well, that's a great question.

Beginning, your genealogy research really needs to begin with documenting who your family is on paper and going back as far as you already know, documenting that, and then doing a little bit of work to see if you can take your family a little bit further back.

The DNA work is important to genealogy these days.

I say that genealogy without DNA is not complete anymore, because DNA is bringing things to light that we may not have known about our family.

So if you want to have an accurate look at who your family members or ancestors were, I would include DNA work.

And I don't know about the over the counter kind of thing, but- I think maybe we need like the ancestry.com.

- Yeah.

Yes, ancestry.com, 23andMe, FTDNA and MyHeritage as well as Living DNA are the most reliable companies for doing DNA work for genealogy.

But it's more to it than just getting those ethnicity estimates that you hear about on the commercials all the time.

It's really the secret of your ancestry really lies in who your matches are.

And so you do need to kind of educate yourself a little bit and know how to work with those matches to help it to inform your genealogy work.

- Thank you.

Ann let me move to you.

You've been recognized for your genealogy work here in North Carolina, particularly in Western North Carolina by the Western North Carolina Historical Association.

And one of your presentations is called making the invisible visible.

What's that about?

Can you share a little bit about that?

- Yes.

Our area has only about 1.4% African-Americans.

And so when people travel through, they don't see us.

And so it was very important for me to know that we have helped to build this community, even if they don't see us.

Most of the people in the area have jobs or going to school.

And so they're not out visible where everybody can see them.

So my goal has been to write and to paint our stories as as much I possibly can to make sure that our people are not forgotten in this region.

And this region is from Haywood County back to Cherokee County, far, Western North Carolina.

- That's so critical because a lot of times people don't think about that part of our state having a rich African-American presence.

And so the work that you're doing is indeed bringing visibility to that population.

- Thank you.

- I wanna talk some more about the Enslaved projects, the Enslaved Persons project with you, Dr. Johnson, you're involved in that project.

I mean, how did you start working on the project and how do you feel being part of such an important work?

- So let me start with the fact that I am excited about this being important work.

And I think that the best way to put it is when Tammy came to Shaw and said, "Are you interested in a little project we're trying to put together with our deeds?"

And she started to explain what it entailed, I said, "Oh man, this is great."

And I could just see all the different ways in which our students could become involved, how it would help us in life and our history program, how it taps into all these areas that we are trying to teach students about.

And one of the things, and Tammy is being modest about that kind of shepherding the volunteers, you have to train folks, and Richard knows as well, how to read these documents and use especially script.

So we're not so used to reading hand writing.

And the thing of handwriting from the 1700 and 1800, you don't always involve what you see, so when you go through the records, one time you'd have to go through them again, and you have to go through them again.

And that's where our students get to become involved.

And they get to think about the idea.

And this is why I'm so excited about this, the idea of property that people were relegated to property status, and that how we're finding people's families is by the designation of them as a thing.

But what we get to do is to make help them become not a thing anymore in the records, but really a part of a living, breathing human story.

And that's what is happening as we investigate and uncover all of these records.

And that's why I get enthusiastic about this and excited about it, that it's important for us to not leave the enslaved persons in slavery, but to help see what happened next.

Where were they?

How did you free yourselves?

How were you connected to families, not just in your local area, but elsewhere.

And that movement that Tammy and Richard talk about, people going into an area location and coming back, that's family in those transfer records, those deed.

Because we didn't always show up, black people didn't always show up in terms of marriage certificates or birth certificates, but you might show up, and so a person who was weld to another person, and then so to another person for you have those meticulous decamp financial records.

So that's why I think of this project as so very important, critical for our historical understanding for all of us.

- Let me pull you back in Richard.

You're obviously uncovering a lot of new information, but along with those facts that you uncover have to be, I would imagine some stories and just even more, is there anything that you can recall in the research that you're doing in association with this project that's really struck you or thought was really interesting or something that can really tie our viewers, help them to connect with, I guess the fascinating aspect of this work?

- Sure.

First it's difficult to follow what Dr. Johnson said, because she said so much of what I always say about people and families that are involved in this, and how deeds are, if Tammy will forgive me, deeds are often thought of as these dry property documents.

And you're absolutely right, that there are actually their stories in here.

And very different stories.

There's stories of families and there are stories, people buying their families out of enslavement.

I've been doing this work honestly since about 2004, 2005 and the larger Digital Library, American Slavery.

So to be honest, there's not much I haven't seen in these different types of records.

But to think about the deeds there, a few things that come out of it for me, or this won't surprise anyone, and the tried area, the involvement of the Quakers, and so far is working with the underground railroad that shows up in the deeds.

And there's some very specific names mentioned the Coffin family.

There's, I've found at least one instance of, to talk about some of the other side of some this, I've seen instances of enslave people being sold into piracy on the revenge.

That's we have that in there, evidence of a colonial governor who is a part of the slave trade.

On a somewhat more uplifting story is a story I like to tell 'cause it's the person I've been personally researching in these deeds, his name is Africa Parker.

I've sort of traced him back to 1776, but by 1798, he was freed, and he was in Orange County, and I've worked with the Orange County Registrar Of Deeds on this, and he's done some research as well.

This gentleman was freed and pretty well immediately set up a business.

He was a distiller and a brewer in Orange County where his business partner, this gets even better, his business partner is the grandson of someone who at one point had enslaved him.

And he was the, as far as Orange County Registrar Of Deeds confined is probably the first African-American to own land in Orange County and the first businessman in Orange County.

And he could read and write, and always signed his name 'Africa Parker, a freed man, by 1800' So there are stories in these that run the gamut.

I like telling those sorts of stories because they are very much, there are a lot of hard, hard stories in there, because you are really talking about people as property as Dr. Johnson mentioned.

But there is a variety of things that you can really pull out of these once you really start looking at them.

It's pretty amazing.

- Yeah, it sounds so, and I think what people will find amazing is that Dr. Henry Louis Gates, isn't the only one, they don't have to go to him in order to dig into their roots and get these discoveries.

They really, really can just start where they are, the names that they have go to the local library, and start there.

And you're right, Dr. Johnson, just the training it takes to learn how to read these documents.

I got frustrated enough just dealing with ancestry.com and create my little tree, but, you just kind of have to stick with it, I think as there's so many roots.

Renata, when you're talking with people in your program, I imagine you get a chance to interview a lot of people, and a lot of different topics come up.

What are some of the things that continue to be themes that come up for topics people can't seem to get enough of?

- Wow.

There's so much because there's so much involved with doing this work.

The law is one of the main topics that you will encounter quite often.

You must know the laws for the period, and the laws for the location, and laws that are about, or that regulate the lives of the type of people that you are researching.

So, in other words, you got to know the law.

Sometimes I feel like I should have a law degree now.

You also just have to really familiarize yourself with the types of records that are available for a given population.

For instance, many people fail to realize that not all of our ancestors of color were in slave before 1865.

Almost 11% in the 1860 census, almost 11% of African ancestor people in this country were free.

And there are particular records that are unique to that set of people.

And those records will vary by location.

So you have to just really work to familiarize yourself with what's available.

And I saw in the chat during the program, people saying, oh, I wish Dr. Gates would do this for me and do that for me.

But you have access to everything that the researchers from finding your roots are using to get this information.

Dr. Gates is wonderful, but he's the host of the show.

There are genealogists just like me who work for the show, who are doing the research and you have that same access.

Or if you're unable to get to the record yourself, you can hire any researcher to do that work for you, but you must nail things down so that you know what kinds of records to look for.

And also post demands the patient, you will want to look at Freedman's Bureau records, which have just been, they've been out online for a while, but they've just been fully indexed on ancestry.com and are available for free, whether you have an Ancestry account or not.

They've also been on Family Search, which is a free site familysearch.org for many years, and you can read through the records.

And if I could just say one last thing, because I love The People Not Property project, and deeds are absolutely where you are going to find many of our enslaved ancestors in many different ways.

But in my case, the ancestral lines that I have had success on that were enslaved were never sold, that I've been able to find, but instead I've been able to find them in wills, and in probate records and records of estate files where they're being divided after someone dies, and then left to other family members, or distributed to other family members.

So make sure that you're also using wills, and estate records to look for your ancestors.

- And we thank you.

And we've got lots of questions, I'm gonna try to get to as many of them as possible.

Someone's wanting to know when we work on our family trees if we encounter wills or other records with enslaved people, is there a way to share that information with the project?

That might be a question for you, Richard?

- Sure.

The simplest answer is going to be contact me directly and we can talk about what works best.

'Cause to an extent it depends on the kind of records they are, how readily we can work with them.

The best way to contact me will be either by my email address, which is rlcox@uncg.edu or via the digital library on American Slavery website, which has all my contact information, which is dls.uncg.edu.

- Terrific, terrific.

Thank you.

And here's another question, "I can trace my family on one side back to my great, great grandmother, and there's talk about my fifth great grandmothers was part of native American.

How can I research my family history beyond that?

Who wants to take that one on?

Is that Tammy or?

- I don't have an answer to that, I know that there is one Registrar Of Deeds that I know about in Buncombe County that is working on, like Cherokee records.

But is the only register that I know in the state right now that is focusing on that.

So I'm happy to try to find out more information for this person if they wanna get in touch with me at the Wake County Registrar Of Deeds.

- The other thing I would suggest is having a chat or talk to persons who work in our state archives.

That's a underutilized resource and it's free on my state library system have people who can help at least give some guidance, they may be part of networks.

Also the North Carolina African-American Heritage Commission, and we just have American-Indian, Native-American Heritage Commission that has just been instituted where these narratives and resources are being gathered so that you can have a conversation with those state people, and they can help give you guidance on who to ask what questions to even ask.

Sometimes it's a matter of just figuring out what is it that I should ask to get the question answered that I'm looking for?

- Well, and this is also a time when DNA can be helpful.

If you, you know, many of us have the native-American myth as I call it.

And that's blacks and whites who have that in our family lore.

But in many cases, if you can go ahead and do an autosomal DNA test, you can see if there's native American ancestry within a certain number of generations of your heritage.

You may find out that what someone was referring to as, or an ancestor who was being referred to as native American was actually had European descent.

Or if you are Caucasian, you might find out that that person had African blood in them.

So this is a place where DNA can be helpful.

- When I took my DNA, I found out that the Cherokee blood that we had been told we had was not there, but it was south American Indian.

So that made a lot of difference in my research for my family.

- That's interesting because it still is, would that still be considered indigenous, north American people?

- Yes, it is.

But Cherokee was what we were told and we believe that for many years.

And when I researched that, I found that it was south American.

I had the African and the Eastern European blood, and I'm just, I'm really excited about getting with Renee here, Renee is that?

- Renate.

- Renate, I'm sorry Renate, to learn more about that.

And Dean Johnson from that project, I need to work with you more on that because it is true reading those names.

My grand mom, my maternal grandmother name was Chavis, C-H-A-V-I-S, but they have her listed as Shaver, S-H-A-V-E-R. And so there are so many misspellings that it's very tough sometimes to trace the roots that we want to find of our ancestors.

- Yeah, all of that comes into play.

And I would love to hear a little bit more about how your family came to North Carolina, Ann?

- Oh my goodness.

My grandfather is the founder of this community where I live here in Andrew's in Cherokee County.

In 1912, there was an ethnic cleansing and coming Georgia of Forsyth County, where the white caps came in, they were the precursors of Ku Klux Klan, they came in and they removed all the black people.

They wanted to be the whitest county in the United States.

And so all of the black people had to move out, and relatives of mine now live in Asheville, but my grandfather was working for the railroad and he had to, he was forced as we, when they were told, when a black man was told he had to do something, he had to do it.

He had to travel through these sundown towns to get up into Cherokee County, to deliver goods from the railroad.

And when he came up to Cherokee County, he couldn't believe that the difference in the treatment he received from north Georgia to Western North Carolina.

And so he asked a white man, if he, he said, he really, it was tough to ask this question, but he asked him it was their property itself 'cause there were laws against white people selling property to black people.

And the man said yes, and brought him up to Andrews.

And grandpa built the first house.

Grandpa Pliv, his name was William Pliv Miller.

He built the first house in Happy Top.

Then he encouraged his cousin to come up, and his cousin came up and he's the one that having had these gatherings of the black men that were around the different areas and coming in, they began to have a lot of fun.

So he named the community for the black people in Andrew's Happy Top.

And now the Happy Top was just a little black community at first, and now it goes all the way down to the edge of downtown Andrews and into Andrews where everybody's white and everybody is so happy to be from the place called Happy Top.

- Oh, that's an inspiring story, a happy story.

And with that, there's so much that that doesn't get shared in the histories and in the stories, it almost seems like when I survey the stories, and the dramas and the movies that, they just keep on recirculating the same story over and over, but I think that there would be greater understanding and appreciation for all peoples if more of the real stories got out there, somehow.

It depends on who's telling the stories, who's funding the stories, and that becomes another conversation.

But I do have another question from our participants.

Someone wants to know, "Does Wake County or UNCG partner with other genealogy organizations to assist families in their research?"

And I think we can maybe combine that together with, where do you get started?

That might be a question for you, Tammy, someone's interested, how do they get started?

Will it extend beyond Wake County if they begin researching with you?

- Well, so on our website, all of our records, everything we have is electronic.

You can find anything just by going to our website.

So you can trace back through births and deaths, and marriages very easily via our website.

And if you know, the people that own the property, then you can search by that as well.

We don't at the Registrar Of Deeds work very much with genealogist, we have genealogists they come into our public vault and spend hours every day, but they don't ask us questions because they know far better than we do.

So I'm gonna defer a little bit to Renate on this, about like, if you were going to my website, how would you tell this person that's asking the question to follow and build their tree?

- Oh, I am not a Wake County researcher, but I am a big time Franklin County researcher, as well as several other counties, but Franklin County is where it all started for me.

And I was one of those people who did spend hours in the registrar of the office, looking at the books for marriages, for deaths, for land ownership and land transactions and everything.

I would just say to each, so now everything is online from these Registrar Of Deeds offices.

It wasn't at the time that I was doing it.

So you use the names that you already know, your parents, your grandparents, maybe if you are lucky enough to already know your great-grandparents, but you also will get, each record will give you new information.

So for instance, in North Carolina, marriage records will tell you the name of the parents of the groom, the name of the parents of the bride, often tell you where they live or where they were born.

Death records will tell you the parents' names and where they were born.

Now, death records are a little different because someone else is giving that information for the deceased person.

So it's not always correct, but at least it gives you somewhere to start.

But the marriage records you presumably the bride, and the prospective bride and groom are standing there, gifting that information.

And so you can count on it a little bit more.

So you may have gone into the Registrar Of Deeds office not knowing the names of your grandparents, parents, but then that record will give you that.

And so now you have four new names hopefully to work with.

So one record leads to another record.

Also wanted to say something about the discussion earlier about spelling.

The first rule of genealogy research is that spelling doesn't count.

So don't get hung up on how a name is spelled in a document, go by what it sounds like.

So if it's Chavis and they wrote Shavers, but you know, that sounds almost like Chavis, and it sounds like the first names match your family, that's probably your family because often the people who are writing the records are not as literate as you would believe them to be in this day and time.

People wrote things by the way, they sounded.

So- - Thank you so much for Renate.

I think we wanted to pull Richard in there, did you want to talk about the partnerships or anything else?

- Absolutely.

There is an organization that I worked very closely with the Afro-American Historical and Genealogical Society.

They're a national organization that also has a North Carolina chapter, and the North Carolina chapter has various regional chapters throughout North Carolina.

So they're gonna be a great, great resource and they're wonderful people.

One other- - Am in it.

- There you go.

One other place I would recommend is actually at the High Point Library here in Guilford County, and that's the Heritage Research Center.

And they do a lot of work with genealogists, African-American genealogy.

So as an organization and a location there, I'd highly recommend as well as the State Archives.

The state archives are amazing, and they really enjoy working with people.

- [indistinct] to have all of these resources here.

We have another question here, and this was, I think is for you Dr. Johnson, "The Shaw University have historical documents about its history and their staff.

My great grandfather, Dr. Nelson Harris chaired the department of education for decades starting in the 1930s.

And this individual would love to visit the campus one day."

- Okay.

And I was just going to add that our institutions, especially for African Americans are HBCU, are places that have enormous information.

And what it takes though, is a little bit of patience.

In many ways, you have to have established relationship with the library staff, our librarian, we have a new library director, Dr. Miller McCullough, and she is revamping our archives, and finding incredible material that goes back beyond just the sixties and seventies.

But she's been able to locate things, materials, or resources that go back to the beginning of the institution.

And that's 18 for Shaw University to 1865.

So if you think about doing this work, this genealogical work there are different phases that you will find yourself in depending on what material you're uncovering.

And you go with that phase for a little while.

So it may put you with the Wake County or a Registrar Of Deeds, but it also could put you in some archives at an institution.

So my suggestion is to actually build those relationships, you can do email back and forth as campuses open up because we are, I have to mention this in the midst of a pandemic.

So you may not be able to visit right away, but we are digitizing so many resources so that you will be able to get access by just establishing that relationship with the library services, and say, well, here's my family name, or especially this case.

I had a family member who was faculty for so long.

And the other piece to all of this and building context.

And that's what you're doing with these different resources.

You're creating context.

So for me, the historical context could be a book of recipes.

That there could be on your shelves, handwritten notes that give you clues about who your family has been.

And so I would suggest that you talk to family members and start doing what both of our genealogists say, start with the story and get as much as you can, so you can focus and narrow your research.

And I would also think about military records, discharge papers.

There are so many ways in which you can find the kind of information that will lead you to the next step and then the next step, and you'll get more and more names as Renate has told us.

So that's what I was suggest doing.

And yes, contact those local institutions like Shaw University, and also our Center for Racial Social Justice is engaged in this process because a lot of this has to do with justice work.

- Absolutely.

Dr. Johnson, thank you so much.

We are nearing the end of our time here, and I'm just gonna give each of you maybe 30 seconds each to wrap up and share with us either what other work you would, or resources you would recommend to people or why it is that you're excited about the work that you do?

Let me start with you, Tammy.

- I didn't realize how excited I was gonna be about the work at the Registrar Of Deeds office as I am.

And the clips that we a few minutes ago show you how important all of these records are, that these folks are able to find this history because of offices like the Registrar Of Deeds.

So what I'd really like to say is that everybody get familiar with your Registrar Of Deeds office, because it is the most important office.

It runs through everything that you do in your life.

And it also in connection with the show will help you find your family.

- Get familiar with the Registrar Of Deeds.

Richard, what would you share?

Why do you care about this work?

- The short answer to that is one of the, I get asked that question a lot, the people in the documents I often say and talking about my project, it's a documentation project.

Our real concern is what are these documents and who is in them.

And so often talk about my allegiance in this project is to the people and the documents and getting their stories out.

And without the, in my opinion, this sort of work and the work people like Tammy, these genealogists are doing, these names and these people could be lost the time, honestly.

And so I really, what I think about when I do this work and I keep doing this work is those people that are in these documents and, not to be dramatic, but, give them an outlet and a voice in a way.

- Absolutely, I love that Dr. Johnson, what excites you the most?

- Aside from everything it is learning the secrets, and the discovery and uncovering different people's stories.

I think that this is one of the most exciting things that we do, and I'm an anthropologist by training.

So it's a kind of an archeology.

And it's an archeology of our society.

And so every time you go down a little trail of information, you're discovering new things.

And so it is, can be tedious, but there's always enormous payoff at the end of a particular root.

So that's why I like to do that.

- Wonderful.

Ann Woodford.

- I think the most exciting thing for me is listening to the stories directly from people, the older people.

Oral history makes a lot of difference, and you can start there, and that's how I started, 'cause my dad had a fantastic memory, and he would tell me stories, and then I would go to ancestry or other places and do the research after he told me the stories.

So we shouldn't make sure, and I try to encourage everybody to go to your oldest person in the family that can tell you these stories and write them down and then follow up on those.

And you're gonna find a lot of there.

So it excites me that I am a visual artist, and it excites me that I can actually do artwork that tells some of these stories.

And I can talk about my artwork based on the stories that I am looking at in writing.

So it's, my life is very exciting right now.

And Tom flies on us so we need to get these stories written down before it's too late for us.

- Well, Renate, I'm gonna give you the last word, we can see and hear your excitement, but maybe you can just share with people how they can connect with you on your podcast and your blog.

- Okay.

Well, I put the link in the chat.

It's been a while it's flown by, so I'm not sure if people can still get to it, but you can just Google or go on YouTube, and look for Let's Talk North Carolina Genealogy, and that will connect you to myself and my co-host to Tania, and you can get to us in all other kinds of ways if you go there.

I also wanted to just mention that people who are just getting started, you are at a real advantage because so much is available online that didn't use to be, but please know that at some point your research will have to switch over to in person on site research.

And the one place that I have to mention for North Carolina, really outside of North Carolina too, but definitely North Carolina is the Southern Historical Collection at the UNC Wilson Library.

Is just a goldmine of resources for anybody doing this work.

So I had to throw that out there, but thank you for allowing me to join this evening.

I saw somebody in the chat say, "They have so much more to teach us," then, yes, we couldn't do it in these few minutes, but it's been wonderful to be a part of this this evening thing, thank you.

- Absolutely, I wanna thank each of you, you've been wonderful.

This has been so rich, and I'm sorry that we don't have more time, but I just wanna say thank you to all of our wonderful hosts for joining us this evening, and sharing their important work with us.

I'm sure that many of us are gonna go out, I think I'm gonna do that for sure, and either start their family Heritage Journey or pick up where they left off.

So thank you for logging on each of you who participated in this OB, special screening and conversation, and for participating in the conversation.

And a very special thank you once again, to our event partner, the North Carolina Genealogy Society.

As a special treat for your participation in this evening, Finding Your Roots event, and so you can find your roots.

The North Carolina Genealogy Society generously donated two prize packaged, each one containing a one-year digital membership to the North Carolina Genealogy Society and a North Carolina history and reference guide.

So to enter for a chance to win, please send an email to events@pbsnc.org, and put roots in the subject line.

Two winners will be selected randomly, and winners will be notified via email.

So check your emails.

This information is also located in the chat at the right of your screen.

And new episodes of Finding Your Roots with Henry Louis Gates Jr. air on Tuesdays at 8:00 p.m. on PBS NC, and are available to stream at any time on the PBS Video app.

Thanks again for joining us.

And I wanna take a point of privilege to invite you to watch Black Issues Forum every Friday night at seven and North Carolina Weekend Thursday nights at nine on PBS NC, and also the PBS Video app.

So thanks again, and to ensure that PBS North Carolina continues to bring your popular PBS shows, riveting documentaries, informative how-to programs, fun lifestyle shows, Rudel our 24 hour kids channel, and free informative screening events like this.

I hope that you are inspired to make a tax deductible donation to PBS, North Carolina, safely and securely on our line at pbsnc.org.

Of course you can become a member of PBS NC as well.

And if you're already a member, we really appreciate you.

And thank you so much for your support.

Everyone stay safe and have a wonderful evening.