In this episode I am here with my good friend and colleague Shelley Murphy and we recently attended an event at Poplar Forest, the “other” home of Thomas Jefferson. We were there for African American Family History Day!
On Saturday September 22, we both presented there, and we talked about numerous issues at Poplar forest including looking at documents and we discussed methods of analyzing documents to tell the family story. Shelley was able to get the class to move beyond simply having a document, but to analyzing it and asking her favorite question—“So What?”
And I enjoyed the opportunity to get to share the story of how I was able to extract a story from a Civil War record, by telling the story that I found from one of my favorite ancestors—Uncle Sephus Bass! There was much interest in not only the story of Uncle Sephus and the 4 ancestors who were captured and who later escaped from Nathan B. Forrest but also of the US Colored Troops. Truly that was a wonderful day with much discussion about our job to find the story from the records.
The following day, Shelley and I sat down to reflect and our conversation evolved into one of our responsibility as family historians—which these days is enhanced so much more by DNA and its impact on genealogy
As we spoke, we asked questions— What do we do with sensitive information? What is our responsibility? Especially this arises when it comes to DNA. What do we do when find out that family members are not closely related to us? What is our role? Do we share it–and how do we handle it?
Listen to this lively discussion between Shelley and myself about our responsibility as researchers. I hope you enjoy our dialogue. Thanks for listening and remember to keep researching, keep documenting and always keep sharing what you find.
