Josh Harman: 0:02

I'm literally the result of hundreds of generations of people striving and struggling and succeeding and failing and trying again and the further I look back at that, the scope and the scale of it is very humbling.

Crista Cowan: 0:21

Stories that Live In Us is a podcast that inspires you to form deep connections with your family past, present and future. I'm Crista Cowan, known online as The Barefoot Genealogist. I've spent my whole life discovering the power of family history and I know that sharing the stories that live in you can change everything. I think you know that I have worked at Ancestry for about 20 years now.

Crista Cowan: 0:49

One of the youngest employees to be employed by Ancestry was a kid named Josh Harman. He came to work there early, early in his career, and, like you know, you know teenagers and young adults and sometimes there's a lot of ego there, and Josh was one of those kids who just kind of rubbed me the wrong way for a really long time because he thought he knew so much. But over the you know 15 years or so that Josh and I worked together, not only did I get to watch him mature into this really lovely human being, but I watched the evolution of his love affair with the Ancestry customers and his really inspiring journey through his own family history and connecting to it in a way that helped him reframe the stories of his own life and his perspective on moving forward in the world. I'm really excited for you to hear this episode with Josh and to follow his journey. He takes us on a journey as he tells his story. Josh, thank you so much for being here.

Josh Harman: 2:04

I am so excited to be here.

Crista Cowan: 2:06

It's been a long time since we spent some time together.

Josh Harman: 2:08

Yeah, it has like two and a half years.

Crista Cowan: 2:11

Yeah, maybe, okay, so you used to work at Ancestry. That's how we know one another. I would love to hear a little bit about why you came to work for Ancestry in the beginning, and then a little bit about your experience there.

Josh Harman: 2:23

Yeah, I, I this is actually something surprising I'm actually pretty passionate about too is like how I came to Ancestry and why I stayed there is like I think in the beginning the idea of me working at a genealogy like tech company or website was like so absurd, like I just never could have seen that coming. But I had worked in Ancestry's call center for a little bit and made some contacts whatever, gone and done some other things and they moved over to the part of the company that does all of the scanning and digitization. They reached out to me and were like hey, josh, you're kind of nerdy, can you come help us with like nerdy problems? And I was like, yeah, as a nerd I can. And so for me I really initially it was just a job. It's like they're cool problems to solve, like I enjoyed that. We. I worked with our digital imaging group. I'm sure you definitely remember that.

Crista Cowan: 3:17

I think I was in that group at the time.

Josh Harman: 3:19

Yeah, and so we had just produced some like new remote software and I went to a conference just to kind of the term is to dog food it with. You know, eat your own dog food and so I spent like three or four days and if you've ever seen like the scanning of those conferences, it's brutal, it's like 10 hour days. But I just wanted to use the software and really feel it, so people could leave things with us and we could just give them a thumb drive or they could stay there and tell us the stories, which was like my least favorite.

Crista Cowan: 3:53

Listening to other people's family history stories. What a concept.

Josh Harman: 3:58

But there's a huge caveat here. So most of the time it's like I could move very, very fast. But if they were there they want to tell me about every photo and I'm like, ok, cool, you know, but I just focused on my job. You know, it wasn't negative towards the people, but anyway I'm going through and I get to this lady and she she tells me a story and I'm probably gonna get some details wrong. But her mother had been Jewish in Germany in the 1930s. Her family had fled and they made their way to Greece and her family there met this Russian family and her mother had this like kind of like a summer romance with this, like you know, jewish Russian boy. But his family ended up going to Israel. Her family came to the US, so she had known this. But after she died she found like a false bottom in a drawer and it was this collection of like platonic love letters between the two spanning their whole lives.

Crista Cowan: 4:56

Wow.

Josh Harman: 4:57

And, as far as she knew, they never saw each other again, but it was just they had this connection, whatever. But when you would look at it, there were he signed with his initials. There's no return address, there's nothing, and so you know whatever. She's told me this whole story and it's like cool. Anyway, I don't have a connection to it yet, but we're using these crazily powerful cameras, crank it all the way down and you would take photos of all sides, of everything, including what looked like blank envelopes. So as I'm doing that, I'm able to find on the flaps of one of the envelopes the full name and, I think, the return address. It had just been written in pencil and over the years it just rubbed off Right, and so, like I'm able to actually pull everything out of there.

Josh Harman: 5:41

And so for me, initially I'm like, hey, look at what I just did You're a magician and she starts bawling because her mother is, you know, recently passed away and you know she's struggling with this lack of connection and all of a sudden she's like I have this whole new chapter, I can go chase down all of these new things, I can learn about her, all of this connection, and she was like so excited. She's like I'm gonna, I'm gonna go call my husband, we're gonna hop on a plane, all of these things. And I was like it was the very first time in my life where something I had done professionally I, you know just took a step back. And it was I actually, like I actually impacted this person's life. She wrote such a nice letter to my boss, but it was. That was like really the moment where things translated for me from being I'm solving fun technical problems to this like really matters.

Josh Harman: 6:40

And it was. It wasn't even for years that I had my first personally meaningful experience. After that I was just purely motivated by like I want more of that.

Crista Cowan: 6:49

Yeah, yeah, and I can totally relate because I've been to enough of those genealogy conferences to know some people will drone on forever about their stories and we are patient because it does mean so much to them, but every once in a while a story they tell hits different and actually I mean so I was mentioning, like I I didn't have my first personally meaningful experience for years and I was fine with that, like it was enough for me.

Josh Harman: 7:14

It's like I just I want, like I guess the way I would actually put it is when we would launch something new. It's like, yeah, I would be looking at, okay, people using it, whatever. But the thing I was the most excited about is I would just watch social media and it wasn't interested in praise, I don't care. It was am I solving people's problems? Like is this better? Like are they excited? That was what really motivated me. But the first time I actually had that connection was my new. I had a new boss who had, who was just starting, and I was kind of walking him through all of our things. We owned newspaperscom and I'm not not necessarily like an overtly like emotional person and I was just walking him through newspapers and I was like you know, as an example, let me put in my dad's name, and the very first article that pops up is an article from.

Josh Harman: 8:09

The very first article that pops up is an article from, with my father in it, where he was. He used to work in archaeology and is preparing to go on an archaeology dig, and there's this picture of my father with his mentor, a man named LeGrand Davies. And so I'm just sitting here in this conference room with my boss and I can't stop crying and and you know, he's like are you okay? And I'm like, yeah, I've just never had this happen. He's like, what? And? And it was all of these stories I had grown up with. All of the sudden, in that moment it's not that I didn't believe them, but they went from this very abstract to very real and I once I had that it was. It was.

Josh Harman: 8:54

It's just such a powerful experience where I felt so much more connected to my father and I wanted more. It was I want to, I want to learn more. And I found the craziest things, Crista, Like I thought that I knew my family. No, I didn't Like. One of my favorites was discovering the newspaper article about my grandfather crash landing a plane with his whole family in it about Wait wait, wait, wait, wait.

Crista Cowan: 9:24

You had never heard that story before.

Josh Harman: 9:27

No, About five miles from where my house was at that time and I'm like what? There is, there's no way. Or I found my great grandfather. He was blind and you can imagine my surprise when I found him on the 1940 census as a truck driver.

Crista Cowan: 9:45

What so had he always been blind?

Josh Harman: 9:48

So he, he had an injury when he was a child and so he lost sight in one eye and then it gradually went to the other. So by the time he was in his 20s he's totally blind, you know. So I took a look at something like that and initially I'm like this can't be right. And so I go through and I was like no, this is his family, there's no way it's not him. And so I called my, my dad, and Then my grandma, and what they were explaining to me is like, yeah, it's 1940, you, it's the depression, yeah, you have to do what you have to do. Yeah, and so he, I, he, from what I understand, when he was in town he would have one of his sons with him and they would basically help him steer, you know, accelerate, slow down. If I remember correctly, it's like this old, old, old Model T, flatbed Anyway, and when they're outside of town his kids would just drive, because what else are you going to?

Crista Cowan: 10:47

do yeah, yeah, nobody's going to pull over a kid in the country.

Josh Harman: 10:52

No, no, and here's actually the thing I find so remarkable about all of this is, you know, I initially got into I really was only ever exposed to any of this because of what I did professionally, but it ended up providing so much more meaning to my life than I would have actually guessed. And so if I use this specific great grandfather of mine when I was growing up, the stick by which we were measured was is that something a Harman would do? And like that it was very effective on me.

Josh Harman: 11:26

He's like don't want to shame the family or whatever, but I really viewed it kind of as like a stick with which to beat me Right. It's like don't get a line. And I never really thought of it that consciously, but that's kind of how I thought of it. And this great grandfather of mine, the blind one. I found this human or human interest piece on him and it was another one where I'm like this is insane, this can't be true. So it was this article with him where he had had this farm and he had subdivided it and he was building houses on it to sell by himself as a blind man.

Crista Cowan: 12:07

Okay, I feel like I need to know this man better, right.

Josh Harman: 12:11

Well, and so this is actually getting to the whole point, right is? I was like what, who is this guy? And I've heard all of these stories about him, but I've never heard anything like this. And as I read through the piece, he's talking about how you know, in his words he's like I don't want my children to think of me as some, basically like useless, old, blind man, and he said so. He then went on to explain he's like I can do virtually anything I could do before I lost my sight.

Josh Harman: 12:41

You know some other things I've had to do and I found out more stories he didn't do I think he didn't do the plumbing himself and I think the ceilings, but everything else. And then you know, you go through this entire thing and then you get to his last statement, as he's talking to the reporter and he says and if there's anyone else in the area who's blind, I'm more than happy to help you figure out how to be self-sufficient and not have to take government support. And he goes through all of these things and I remember calling my dad once again kind of tearfully and talking about it. And just remember what I said to my dad was I had never known until now that I could love someone so much that I've never met. And on top of that, it redefined for me what it meant to be a Harman and what my father had always been trying to communicate by that it was not that we're prideful.

Josh Harman: 13:41

It's like no, we're humble and as you would go through. It's like and we work hard and you know, we refuse to be victims and we are cheerful and then we help others and that's what we do. And it switched from this stick with which to beat me to this very aspirational thing, which became the question that I asked myself is. It's like am I, am I a worthy heir of this man's legacy? And you know, I don't always know that the answer is yes, but like it's something to strive for. And it's so weird to me that I went so long in my life without, I guess, understanding what I understand now, if that makes sense.

Crista Cowan: 14:19

Yeah, it was always there. That's the thing, right. Your dad knew that story, some of those stories probably. You know his father had some of those stories and so clearly a relationship with that man and yet you didn't have the full perspective enough of that story that was in you in order to fully live into it in the way that you now now do.

Josh Harman: 14:40

That's exactly it, and this is actually something that this is like a long story for how I even came to this understanding, or I started to put it this way, but I spent so long at Ancestry, working on onboarding, which is helping people that are new to the product get involved, understand, move into it, and so, after years of doing that and I couldn't even tell you how many hundreds of people or thousands I spoke to you started to understand or started to see that there were a few common components, that it wasn't different from someone who would become very, very avid in genealogy or not, but it was something that would happen to someone that would switch them to very, and what it ultimately was is they would have some personally meaningful connection, something, whatever it is.

Josh Harman: 15:36

And then what you know essentially amounts to like it seems like a little insane on the surface, where it's like I'm going through like archaic spreadsheets, looking for little pieces of data, like I used to jokingly call it, and I'm like, yeah, it's like familial Sudoku, so you're filling out a pedigree chart, but it translates from that to so impactful and personally meaningful, and I eventually got to the point where I would have included myself in a group of people saying, well, it's not really that big of a deal to me, but after I've talked to so many different people in so many different walks of life, and including people that would start off by saying, you know, I don't really care about my family or whatever I literally have never met anyone where I had those discussions where I walked away saying no, I don't care, like everyone does yes, and they don't actually frequently understand how much they do care until that moment.

Crista Cowan: 16:33

Right, and that moment is so interesting to me because I've seen it happen Like you've seen it happen. I've seen it happen. It's the moment that you get a leaf hint and it's a picture a high school picture of your grandfather in a yearbook. Or it's the moment that you see your great uncle's signature on a draft card. Or it's the moment that you open the newspaper and there's an article that contains a story that you've heard your whole life and you're like, oh my gosh, he was telling the truth, exactly, yeah. And so I love that that people have those moments and that for so much of your career at Ancestry, you got to help facilitate those moments. But as an observer, I loved watching you take this journey from I'm a problem solver, I'm figuring out how to do things, I'm using my skills, I'm kind of nerdy, super nerdy and to that moment of you became a true family historian during your journey at Ancestry.

Josh Harman: 17:26

I, I, I really did. It's like I just I became so passionate about it. And there's this quote I'm going to paraphrase from a book Ender's Game. That it's a little funny to use it in this scenario, but it always resonated with me and my paraphrase quote here was in order to perfectly, or in order to defeat an enemy, truly you need to perfectly understand them, and in and to perfectly understand someone is to love them, and so for me, a lot of what started out is just kind of utilitarian.

Josh Harman: 18:01

you know, I'm just doing my job. Got to learn about the customers. We've got to empathize. The inevitable result is the customers we've got to empathize. The inevitable result is the more that you learn, and especially for something so emotional and personal and generally positive, you can't help but start to love them, and I can honestly say that by the end is not even by the end, as long before the end is that my primary motivation was I really love these people.

Josh Harman: 18:29

Like that's is that my primary motivation? Was I really love these people, like that's, that's why I went to work, that's what. Like yeah, I know you saw how passionate I would get about things, and that was the motivation is it was literally like I just I want to help people. I want more people to find that connection. I want them to find this more meaningfully. I want this to be a little less tedious. I want this to be easier. I want to get people past the stage where it's just a bunch of disparate data that I don't know what to do with, to where the story is obvious.

Crista Cowan: 19:10

The concept of finding the stories and connecting with those stories has resonated with me this whole time and continues to do so, which is why I started this podcast, because there are endless amounts of stories and I think there are things that we can learn from those stories that impact us, like you've so beautifully explained. But also in sharing those stories, even with unrelated people, there's inspiration to be had, there is motivation, there is hope for the future, and that's why I keep doing what I'm doing.

Josh Harman: 19:38

Yeah, I know, I completely agree, and I think one of the things that it did for me more than anything was establish this sense of really intense gratitude towards my ancestors. I'm literally the result of hundreds of generations of people striving and struggling and succeeding and failing and trying again, and the further I look back at that, the scope and the scale of it is, it's like it's very humbling. And then to realize that now you're a link in this chain is, for anyone that comes after you, that now I'm part of their story, I'm part of their foundation, and the more that I learned about it too, the idea that I could understand myself who I was, where I came from and what that even actually meant, without understanding the people that came before me became actually absurd. It's like I don't exist in a vacuum, as much as I think we might want to pretend that we do.

Crista Cowan: 20:38

Yeah, and you're not just a harman. No, that connection, that moment of connection, is, I think, maybe the part of that threshold. Um, at least that I've found that when you all of a sudden realize this is who they are to me, yes, and this is why their story matters to me. Yes, and this is why this story matters, like to my family, and why I want to make sure I share it with my family as well, yeah, exactly right.

Josh Harman: 21:02

The more that I have learned about a lot of people in my in my life, even closer to me, the more context that I have, the easier it is for me to see them as very complex, very well rounded people and whatever narrative I've maintained in my own head is like ends up having to be thrown out because I have to face and accept it's not a bad thing, actually it's a good thing but I have to look at them as like no, you're very complex people.

Crista Cowan: 21:29

Yeah, that's. I think one of the gifts or one of the powers of family history is that as we come to know our ancestors, they become less one dimensional. But then, yeah, we start to look at the people in our lives, around us, immediately as less one dimensional as well.

Josh Harman: 21:45

I remember, as we would have new executives coming in trying to help people understand it, and it was, I think, very counterintuitive, is it was? You know? There were questions like well, like in an ideal world, someone could just, you know, pay us some lump sum and we just give them their family tree, like no, that's like a, that's actually like a nonsensical thing. It's like it's. I know it sounds very good on the surface, it sounds like isn't that what people want?

Crista Cowan: 22:14

no, they don't just want names and dates and places on a pedigree chart.

Josh Harman: 22:18

Yeah, it doesn't mean anything to them. That's actually. It's like once again, it's like an archaic spreadsheet it's you know, what you're giving them is a filled out Sudoku sheet, and not to say that it's necessarily a puzzle. But there's this process, as you're going through this, as you're making these decisions of yeah, I think this is them versus no, this is not where it's your history, it's your story, it's your identity that you're actually starting to pull together.

Crista Cowan: 22:49

I love that, Josh. I could talk to you forever. I love this. I love hearing your stories, I love your perspective. Here's what I'm hearing you say and maybe this is something we can just leave the listeners with is this idea that family history is so personal but also so universal? Yes, and that in the process of discovering for you what it means to be a Harman, you also discovered what it means to be Josh Harman? Yes, because you discover yourself in the process. And so, while everyone can go on a family history journey oftentimes in families, it's one person, and I think it needs to be more people I think everybody needs to go on that journey of discovery for themselves, because it means something different to everyone and because we figure out who we are in the process of figuring out who our ancestors were.