Generations Cafe

Generations Cafe is a genealogy show about the working habits behind sound family history research, presented by Amy Johnson Crow in a friendly, conversational register. It is practical above all. Most episodes pick a single problem and take it apart point by point. Caution runs through nearly everything. In 'Genealogy Mistakes that Everyone Makes (and How to Avoid Them)', she starts with family stories, noting that the more fantastic the tale, or the longer ago it supposedly happened, the less it should be taken at face value. The same episode uses a record for a John Johnson born in Sweden in 1883 to show how easily a stranger with the right name slips into the wrong tree. It also sends newer researchers to relatives, obituaries, photos, postcards, scrapbooks and yearbooks before they spend all their time on Ancestry. Experienced researchers get their own nudge: go back and reread the notes already gathered. '5 Things to Know About DNA Testing for Genealogy' points out that plenty of people test only to see the ethnicity pie chart, then explains why that estimate may not match paper research. Her own example is disarming. Her first test put her at 19 percent Scandinavian, and she has yet to find a Swedish, Danish or Norwegian ancestor. There is a joke, too, about not having to root for Sweden a fifth of the time at the Winter Olympics. '067 - How to Find Your Civil War Ancestor' is methodical in a different way. Before any military records, the question is whether an ancestor served at all, and birth years help; most soldiers, she says, were born between 1820 and 1845. When more than one man with the same name served, the regiment tells them apart. Because many companies were raised locally, county histories, Google Books, DPLA, FamilySearch and county genealogy society websites help narrow the field. 'Is Ancestry Missing Your Ancestors?' is narrated almost click by click. Hunting for Missouri death records from 1964, she finds one collection covering 1910 to 1962 and another covering 1968 to 2015, and the lesson is that knowing what a website leaves out matters as much as knowing what it holds. 'What Kind of Online Family Tree Is Right for You?' weighs trees on sites like Ancestry and MyHeritage, a tree on a personal website with its hosting and software costs, and collaborative projects such as the FamilySearch Family Tree and WikiTree, where everyone's data merges into one large tree. Not everything is technique. In 'Remembering the Wilmington Coup of 1898', she talks with a guest working to keep that event from being forgotten, including a soil collection ceremony connected to the Equal Justice Initiative. Part of that conversation is about what a genealogist adds that a surface account misses: siblings, extended family, who stayed. Some episodes close by pointing to show notes, a free online search strategy guide, or a membership with monthly classes, workshops and live Q&As. A newcomer could start with the mistakes episode, and anyone puzzling over a DNA pie chart has an obvious alternative.