Inflection Point: Pause that Refreshes or End of a Fad?

It's Thursday, safely enough removed from the frenetic sales activity of the holiday weekend dubbed "the Turkey Five" to watch the sales numbers sort themselves out. By now, in the past two years, AncestryDNA press releases had trumpeted their annual triumph: November 28 of 2017 claiming they had "more than tripled" the number of kits sold in 2016, and November 28 of 2018 also reporting "record sales."

On November 28, 2019? No comment.

To be fair, in this marketing year of the too-late Thanksgiving feast, November 28 was, you know, actually the day, itself. However, on that very morning, Business Insider ran an article headlined, "The golden age of at-home genetic testing may be over." And in a report two days prior, they recalled chip producer Illumina's July earnings call mentioning "softness" in the market.

Still, earlier this year, those who watch had estimated rates of DNA kit purchases—not at Ancestry alone but across the board at four of the five major DNA companies—chugging along at just under forty three thousand kits sold per day. Bloomberg claimed "DNA-Test Industry Booms" and cited information from market research company Kalorama projecting sales to "reach $310 million by 2022."

The news, however, wasn't all that rosy, even back in the early months of this year. Less than three months after issuing that forty three thousand kits estimate, Leah Larkin, PhD—The DNA Geek—spotlighted the "chilling" of growth for direct-to-consumer DNA kit sales. My own biweekly tracking of match results for the tests I administer, though certainly not a scientifically-designed survey, has shown a gradual slowing over the past several months.

Of course, those who are in this testing arena as consumers who use our results to further our genealogical research hope this is a momentary lull in growth—but don't be too sure.

Yes, AncestryDNA can still issue what has become their glowing annual post-turkey statement tomorrow—or maybe even later today. But I won't hold my breath. After all, companies launched those tempting sales prices well before the Thanksgiving holiday this year—including MyHeritage with what is now the newest new low for prices, $39. Whether the lowered prices will be the shot in the arm this industry desperately needs is yet to be seen.

Off the Beaten Track: Being Open to New Sources

Finding some of the information about distant branches of my family tree in unorthodox locations—at least, as far as genealogy goes—was a reminder to me to broaden my horizons when it comes to research resources. There are many databases out there, especially in this age of instant access to information via the Internet, which can provide a different perspective on the history embedded in our family history.

Discovering my distant relationship to actress Judy Canova was a treat, especially since my brother was a lifelong student of classic comedy. He loved to tell the story of how, in his pre-teens, he devised a way to place a long distance phone call from his hometown in New York to reach the famed Stan Laurel in Los Angeles. Surely, with an interest in comedy like that, my brother would have been aware of Judy Canova's trailblazing efforts. Once I found that relationship between my own mother's family and Judy Canova, I would have loved to ask him his thoughts on her contributions to the profession.

But finding that connection to Judy Canova also showed me another fact: there are many, many databases out there which provide information on a person's life, including their family relationships. How many people think of Wikipedia when they think of genealogy? But many biographical entries in that online encyclopedia include genealogical information. Some, I've noticed, even include notes about conflicting reports of dates of birth, for instance, citing specifics which I realize, in my own research, came from the same documents I noticed did not support the others' information. Wikipedia may have been written by numerous fallible volunteers, but Wikipedia is large enough to provide a self-reviewing mechanism within their own venue.

Not to say there aren't many other resources we've overlooked as genealogists. Many of the employee newsletters of bygone generations included information pertinent to a family historian's search. If only someone were dedicated enough to scan and preserve such gold mines of personal history—and make them searchable—we'd have even more material to include in our ancestors' stories. The same would go for fraternal organizations, college alumni news, church memberships, and many more groups' private publications.

Being able to search electronically through stacks and stacks of information makes the task of boiling reams of paper down to a manageable read a snap. Sometimes, if one is fortunate, an aficionado of one particular publication of yore might be dedicated enough to scan and upload such instruments to Internet Archive and augment the Wayback Machine in a way we hadn't quite envisioned before. What a delight it is to stumble upon such a discovery, if it contains our own family members' information.

Of course, there are vast repositories we've yet to scour entirely. Just thinking about locating a manuscript or archival collection through established finding aids at NUCMC or OAC can be mind-boggling in its own right, if the right name pops up on a search mission. Ditto newspaper reports, given the right (and not-too-common) name.

Finding the connection to Judy Canova made me realize that there are countless other ways to find out about our family than we've ever imagined, especially if we have kept on the train tracks of FamilySearch.org or Ancestry.com. Hearing stories such as our Irish blogging friend Dara, at Black Raven Genealogy, who had to rely on a compilation of dog licenses to find more information on her brick wall ancestor, always inspires me to be willing to jump the track of the oft-relied-upon resources and go four-wheeling far and wide through the wilds of other online (and analog) collections.

Genealogy by IMDb

We may find ourselves going back to the usual websites for our never-ending quest to "finish" our family tree, but every once in a while, an unexpected resource becomes just the tool to glean more about our history. That was what happened this past week when I worked on my mother's Tison line from Georgia and Florida and stumbled upon an unexpected connection.

The root of this line was a colonial American man from Pitt County, North Carolina, by the name of Job Tison. His wife Sidnah, daughter of Revolutionary war patriot West Sheffield, settled with him in Glynn County, Georgia. My mother descends from their oldest daughter, named after her mother, who married a man who moved further south to Florida. The line I was working on this past weekend, though, was that of the younger Sidney's older brother, Aaron Tison.

Aaron married and moved to northern Florida, as well. He and his wife, Louisa Jane Dell, had a daughter whom he named after his mother. Her line eventually led to a granddaughter named Henrietta. What I didn't know about this Henrietta was that she apparently had a beautiful singing voice. What I did learn about Henrietta was that she married a cotton broker named Joe Canova who, after having at least six children, unfortunately contracted tuberculosis and died at the age of fifty two.

That was in 1926. Then came the Depression. Perhaps, realizing that some of her children inherited her vocal abilities, the widow Henrietta encouraged her children to try their luck and see whether their talents would make room for them. Or at least give them a chance to sing for their dinner.

Whatever the incentive, Henrietta's son Leon and daughter Anne joined with the baby of the family, Juliette, and took their family vaudeville act up to the Big Apple. They got their big break when band leader Rudy Vallée gave them a guest spot on his radio show in 1931. An offer from Warner Brothers redirected them from New York to California, where the family remained for decades.

It was actually a newspaper article about Henrietta's passing that alerted me to this hidden story about these Tison descendants. Though a Florida native, Henrietta died in California, not her home state. Her Find A Grave memorial includes a copy of that 1950 news article, headlined, "Judy Canova's Mother Dies."

Of course, that got me wondering, "Who is Judy Canova?" I had never heard of her. A quick perusal of an entry about Judy Canova at Wikipedia led me to her listing at the Internet Movie Database (IMDb), which included credits for her decades of work in film and radio. Though a singer—a yodeler, even—Judy Canova was listed as a comedienne. One biographical entry billed Judy Canova's radio program as "the forerunner to television series such as "The Beverly Hillbillies." One blogger, rediscovering her work just a decade ago, gave her "hillbilly humor" some serious accolades:

there's a quality to Judy Canova...that can be seen in the performances of comediennes who followed after her in the 1940s, '50s and beyond, from Minnie Pearl and Dorothy Shay, to Lucille Ball and Carol Burnett. 

That is entertainment, but I'm about genealogy. If this was a relative—a fourth cousin to my mother, though that aspiring actress never knew it—I wanted to get all the details correctly listed in my family tree. IMDb turned out to be quite helpful in the process, by listing not only the names of all four of the former Juliette Canova's husbands, but identifying her two daughters, as well. Now, my family tree includes the likes of actresses "Tweeny" Canova and her younger half-sister, Diana Canova. Who would have thought a resource like the Internet Movie Database would become my go-to source for genealogical information for my family tree?!       

A Feeling of Rootedness

What's at the root of this burgeoning fascination with our roots? I can't produce any definitive results of scientifically-designed surveys, but I suspect it partially involves a need to identify ourselves through the mosaic imprints gifted us by our ancestors.

For some, that drive to know is more pronounced. Adoptees, obviously, have a quest to identify the totally unknown. Recent immigrants, perhaps, wish to re-identify with the culture left by their parents or grandparents with the decision to uproot and move. And I, growing up with a surname not legally my own—nor even my father's, though he may have had a hazy remembrance from childhood of his true birth name—find a disconnect with the maiden name I long ago gave up.

All of us want to find a way to connect with our past—our "long past," as Scrooge inquired of Dickens' Ghost of Christmas Past—to see what, if any, echoes of that past have imprinted themselves on our reality today.

Perhaps because of such angst, my thoughts were turned to family this past holiday weekend—family long past, and perhaps those not so long passed. I often ponder traits and habits inherited from specific relatives I've known, but for some reason this was uppermost in my mind after having completed a visit down south, just before Thanksgiving. In the past, a visit to southern California often meant at least a stop to chat with my brother before heading back home—but not since his passing nineteen months ago.

Perhaps that was the reason that led me, one day after arriving back home again, to Google his name. Though a lesser-known actor, he was, after all, in show business. Such names do show up in media. I had started on that search, actually, by looking up my own father's name. My dad, a professional musician in New York, merited several "mentions" in city newspapers of the 1930s and 1940s, usually concerning where his dance band was playing, or which company was using his musical arrangements. What was interesting to find, though, was that his name also came up in more recent articles, long after his passing in the 1970s. Why? Because in his own interviews, my brother would always acknowledge how he got his start through my dad's backstage connections as a musician.

In my quest to know more about my own family—especially those who are no longer with us—of course I read every article and interview I could find. It was not just edifying but comforting to read about the every step my brother took on his own journey to become what he needed to become. But it was also uplifting to see my brother feel the need to acknowledge those who came before him, in recounting his own path. We come from those who became our roots.

In tracing those roots, we also become sensitized to other paths which lead back to those same beginnings. In researching a collateral line this past weekend, I stumbled upon another story of a family member who felt the call of the stage—and who eventually gifted that as a legacy to her two daughters. Though she was a fifth cousin to me—certainly someone I never knew of from my own immediate family—her story resonated with me, as I read through her biography.

Funny, but I wish my brother were here to tell him of this. I wonder if he ever knew her. A feeling like this—of seeking for connectedness—reminds me that the search for our roots surely is related to a corollary: a quest to identify with and belong to others.

Fortnightly Findings

Today is the first day of the last month of 2019. Time flies—especially so in the last two weeks. Here I thought I didn't find enough time to work on my own family trees—after all, the fortnight included a trip to southern California for a family vacation, plus a holiday weekend on top of it all. Hardly enough time for those document-by-document verifications which prove the ticket to being added to the family tree.

I had to triple check my math when I saw I had added an unbelievable 504 individuals to my mother's tree in the past two weeks. Yes, I know I'm trying to kick in the afterburners in a rush to flesh out the Virginia side of her tree in preparation for my class at SLIG next January. But that number surprised even me—and I was the one doing all the grunt work. Her tree now includes documentation for 20,060 individuals, including a surprise that I can't wait to write about.

As I expected, focusing on my mother's tree on account of my upcoming class about researching colonial Virginia families meant that next to nothing was accomplished on the other three trees I've been researching. Zero progress on my mother-in-law's tree, which has stood still at 17,194 since the beginning of November. Ditto for my dad's tree (at 654) and my father-in-law's tree (stuck at 1,563).

Another interesting aspect to watch on my biweekly check in has been the variations in match counts for our DNA tests at the major testing companies. In general, over this past year, the increase in match count has slowed to a dribble. For both my husband's tests and my own, most companies barely bring us more than a handful of matches every two weeks. In one case (23andMe), that match count can go in reverse, if a customer decides to opt out of participating in the match process. The only exception to that "handful" count is at MyHeritage, where my husband received thirty nine new matches in the past two weeks, and I, forty two. Getting past the holiday season will certainly tell the tale if interest in DNA testing is waning.

There have been a number of benefits of keeping track of my research progress in such small units of time as this biweekly review. For one thing, the spreadsheet I keep allows me to see how well I've applied myself in such a limited amount of time. But it also gives me the bigger picture view, as well. I can, at a glance, see how far I've come, by each family's tree, in a year's time. Seeing the cumulative picture is indeed encouraging.

My personal spreadsheet approach may also have echoed a general slowing of enthusiasm for participation in DNA testing across the country—and possibly, around the world. I realize I administer a very small number of tests—certainly no yardstick for judging an entire nascent market—but the rumblings I read elsewhere seem to be echoed in my own experience. I hope that turns out to be a temporary dip in an overarching trend, but that remains to be seen. What happened over this holiday shopping weekend will either provide confirmation of a downward trend, or surprise us with a welcome uptick in sales—the latter, I hope.

Despite the ups and downs of the numbers on my spreadsheet, I realize there are inputs which are beyond my control. While my slow-and-steady theory of genealogical research does strengthen my quantitative results, I've noticed that, given one family or the other, numbers rocket upward when I am researching families who had many children—and, in particular, children who, unlike their counterparts in those previous centuries, actually lived to adulthood and to the point of giving their parents grandchildren...many grandchildren.

In retrospect, that is likely what happened to my count in this past two week period. I can't fathom what else might have contributed to such an increase in my mother's tree. No matter how hard a researcher works, one document—say, a census record—with many names added to the same family is an easier add to the evidence collection than many documents added to the profile of one individual whose life produced many accolades but few descendants.

Of course, I want to keep track of collateral lines in all the branches of my family tree, but I also need to capture all the stories, as well. I find that "fast" often ends up with boring results, while the most fascinating of my ancestors tend to slow down my research progress. The one may be great for the fortnightly accounting posts, but it's the other which makes for the more interesting blog posts.

Off the Shelf: A Rebel Came Home

Well, some books just fly off the shelf, once I decide to read them, even if they sat on said shelf awaiting that moment for years since purchase. But this time, we witness the total opposite: I will read this book for sure, but there is one limiting factor standing between me and this good read: I haven't gotten the book yet.

A Rebel Came Home, the collection of journal entries and letters written by Floride Clemson, has been on my to-do list, ever since I discovered that some of my Pendleton, South Carolina, kin were mentioned in various published diaries and letters. I obtained a copy of three out-of-print books for that specific purpose: to see what might have been mentioned by the peers of my ancestors. That was what first inspired me to get a copy of The Diary of Clarissa Adger Bowen, and then move on to A Faithful Heart and Far, Far From Home.

Once I finished all those books, the next volume on my list was to be Floride Clemson's diary. Besides the hometown connection shared with my Broyles and Taliaferro lines, Floride Clemson had one more link to my family—although one which she would never live to witness.

It was Floride's father, Thomas Green Clemson, who, after his children's death, willed his property for the establishment of an agricultural college in South Carolina. It was Richard Wright Simpson, the brother of Tally Simpson whose letters home during the Civil War were featured in Far, Far From Home, who served as legal counsel in devising that Clemson will—and who defended it, all the way to the United States Supreme Court against a Clemson relative by marriage who wanted to contest it.

While the Clemson home was about five miles distance from the Pendleton location of my own ancestors, Floride likely was familiar with many of the families in that nearby town—and hopefully mentioned some of my distant family members in her journal entries, once she returned to South Carolina. Even if there is no mention of these family members specifically by name, reading her journal will give me a bigger picture of the life and times of my ancestors who lived in that same region.

There is only one problem with this reading plan: the book of Floride Clemson's journal entries and letters, ranging from 1863 to 1866, was edited and eventually published in 1989. My best hope for obtaining a copy now is to find a gently-used version, hopefully in hardcover. Of course, my meaning to do so in the past apparently translated into thinking I did what it turns out I did not do, and I am still casting about for the best way to obtain a copy. Given the date, I am convinced this might be an excellent Christmas gift idea for someone I know who claims I am the most difficult person to buy for.

Hint.

Hint.

Black Friday v. White Christmas

With the Thanksgiving holiday safely buttoned up for another year, it seems there's not a moment to lose in racing toward the next holiday on the wintertime list. And that means today is Black Friday.

Not a single child of this generation—except, perhaps, the precocious teenaged genealogist-in-the-making—is aware that, for multiple generations before them, the Friday after Thanksgiving used to be called...the Friday after Thanksgiving. There even was a time when—gasp!—people returned to work on the day after Thanksgiving (and not simply because they worked for a heartless 24/7 entity).

We can probably chalk it up to conniving marketers that we now speak of Black Friday as if it were a holiday designation of its own. But then, we could say the same thing about the whole idea of a white Christmas—only possible in the upper reaches of the northern hemisphere, but romanticized far and wide in song and nostalgic film settings—or the image of Santa Claus, himself. To reach back to family members' memories beyond those traditional images of the holiday season would require sitting down to chat with ancestors we never could have met face to face, in our own lifetime.

People who know me know I stay as far away as I can from the madness of Black Friday. No waking up at midnight, after putting in an earnest day's work in the kitchen, to hit the road into town in the wee hours this morning to snag the best door-buster prices on anything—for gifts for others or for myself. I've learned to develop traditions of my own. A peppermint mocha, some traditional Christmas hymns, and a box of artful Christmas cards to address to family and friends will occupy my attempt at avoiding all places commercial for the remainder of the day.

Well...and maybe a few peaceful hours crafting the finishing touches to some far reaches of my extended family tree. That should keep me away from the crowds, now, wouldn't it?!

Above: Image of Santa Claus by American cartoonist Thomas Nast, published in Harper's Weekly in 1881. Though development of the red and white costume has been attributed to marketers for the Coca Cola Company, this depiction long pre-dating the Coke advertisements is said to be the first representation of the character in what is now considered the standard red Santa suit. Image, courtesy Wikipedia, now in the public domain.