Julie Taggart: 0:01

And I look into their eyes and I see something. I just see them and I don't know a lot of stories about them, but I can look at them and I feel them, and I feel them in my life because I know their faces. It's magical, really. It's really quite magical because you capture. I mean, most pictures are like 250th of a second, but it lasts forever.

Crista Cowan: 0:31

Stories that Live In Us is a podcast that inspires you to form deep connections with your family past, present and future. I'm rista 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. Today you are going to meet my friend, julie Taggart. She's not just my friend, she's also my cousin, which is something that you're going to hear about how we learned. The thing I want you to pay attention to is the way we learned it. Julie had a chart, not just on her computer or family tree in her brain, but up on her wall, and that sparked a connection for us. But it also, I think, continues to spark connections for Julie with her children, and I think she's looking forward to it doing the same with her grandchildren. She shares some really amazing stories about some of the family history journey that she's been on, but ultimately she leads right back to her family, her parents and her kids and those connections that they have and the stories that they share, and there is, in what she shares, a little bit of urgency that I hope you can feel as well as connect with.

Crista Cowan: 2:00

So here is my conversation with Julie Taggart. Well, I love you. Thank you for being here. So I am super interested to hear where you got started in family history. Was it a moment? Was there a spark? Was it a series of moments?

Julie Taggart: 2:16

I really feel like it was a series of moments. I don't remember a moment. Truth be known. I thought genealogy was for old people and maybe I'm an old person now because I like it. But no, it started when I was in my early 20s and my mom and dad loved it, and so it was easy to catch the vision. And it just started with looking on websites and trying to figure out where my family was, and I noticed there were quite a few mistakes. So I felt like that was my goal to fix the mistakes and to prove my genealogy and to show facts that would go in with it to prove that that was actually my great grandpa. So I just started there and I just started finding pictures of my dad serving in Vietnam and they were so cool and I wanted to digitize those. I wanted to make them more known. I wanted people to see them because they were just so cool.

Crista Cowan: 3:11

Yeah, so you start this kind of interest in your early 20s, but at the same time you're starting a family, a whole lot of kids.

Julie Taggart: 3:19

A big old family. Yes, we have six kids and so it was crazy, it was chaotic. There were times where I look back now and I think I was just in survival mode just trying to survive. But I would always find the scrapbooks and I would always find the pictures and I would just chisel out a couple of minutes a day and just work on that when the kids were taking naps or late at night. And I would just work on a little bit at a time. And why?

Crista Cowan: 3:45

was that important to you to do that? Why not just set it aside and come back to it when your kids are grown?

Julie Taggart: 3:53

I'm a photographer. I've I became interested in I mean, I've always been interested in photography. But when my third baby was born, I went to the mall and took pictures and I hated them. So I really wanted to capture more of their personalities and who they were. And so I went to the mall and took pictures and I hated them. So I really wanted to capture more of their personalities and who they were. And so I went and read every book at the library I could find and it was like reading Chinese.

Julie Taggart: 4:12

I didn't understand any of it, but I kept going and I kept practicing and for me pictures mean everything. Pictures mean everything because, you know, a couple hundred years ago they didn't have the pictures and so now we're so readily available, and this was pre-cell phone, so I didn't have a phone or a camera in my pocket. But I would just practice on my kids because I felt like when you look through a lens you can see their eyes, their eyes. Eyes are the soul, right, you can see into that person. And I started looking at pictures a little differently once. I started taking them myself. And I grew up in a family where my aunt told me one time for a family reunion, do not give anyone your pictures, and I thought why in the world, why would I not share? And she's like, no, they'll steal them, they'll never give them back to you and I. It was just such a weird experience for me, and so I digitized everything and I and I shared everything. I really want to make sure people trusted me with their pictures that I was going to share them with them.

Julie Taggart: 5:20

And I look at pictures of my great grandparents. They're the ones that intrigue me probably the most, because I see this beautiful, beautiful family. It was my dad's, dad's mom and dad and these pictures are so beautiful. I don't know how they made them because I think they were not rich, but they were very professional studio pictures and I look into their eyes and I see something. I just see them and I don't know a lot of stories about them, but I can look at them and I feel them, and I feel them in my life because I know their faces. It's magical, really. It's really quite magical because you capture. I mean, most pictures are like 250th of a second, but it lasts forever.

Julie Taggart: 6:12

And so for me, I just really wanted to know my ancestors. I wanted to know their stories and where they came from and what heartache they had to overcome and how that affected me. Cause I was right. I mean I was knee deep in diapers and if I wasn't pregnant I was nursing, and it was just I had six kids in 10 years. So yeah, I was knee deep in this and I. But I knew how important those pictures were and so I was trying to just do little bits at a time, just trying to digitize them, and I got out my old scanner. That was seriously like five minutes to take one scan, but I knew I had that picture and I saved it on my computer and I knew I could look into the eyes of my family.

Crista Cowan: 6:54

Yeah, that's amazing, and the fact that it was a priority to you at a time when you were having children and could have been diverted by so many other things that you intentionally carved that time out, I think that's lovely. What effect do you think that your dedication or commitment to that consistency had on your kids?

Julie Taggart: 7:14

I think how we spend our time tells our kids what's important, right? We spend time with them. We tell them they are important to us, and one of the things I really wanted to do was to create a very large canvas and it's, I think, five or six generations of pictures of my family. So there's my husband and I in the middle and our six kids underneath us and it goes back to my parents. I tried to find pictures of their wedding day. I wasn't always successful, but around that same age the early twenties, mid twenties and go back to this.

Julie Taggart: 7:49

They know their great grandparents. We've had that hanging up in our house now for years. But they know we go to the graves on Memorial Day. That's our tradition and they're like, oh, oh, I know this is the grandma that looks like a model. I'm like, yes, it is, or is this the grandpa that has the? It's a fedora hat, but he looks just like a model, like he's in Florida and he's got the palm trees and he looks so handsome. But they know they know that these are the people. Their love stories are what eventually made them, so they know that that's important to me. I have this room right now. That is my family history. Slash scrapbooking, slash everything room. It's horrible. It's right when you walk into our house and my husband and I are like we really should hide this horde that we've got going on. But the kids know that they can go in there and they can find scrapbooks that are 60 years old, pictures that are 100 years old, and they can look at those pictures and just know that that's their family.

Julie Taggart: 8:47

Yeah, that's so beautiful, Hopefully it's hopefully it's ringing true in their ears. Hopefully they see that it's important to everybody.

Crista Cowan: 8:55

Yeah, yeah for sure, and I love that idea of helping them be grounded in the continuity of generations. There's something very grounding for children, even for teenagers and young adults, in knowing who they are and where they come from and who they come from and having that. You can certainly learn those things older, like you did, or you start to connect with them a little bit older, but having that from childhood is a real gift that you've given them.

Julie Taggart: 9:23

I hope so. I hope they appreciate it. If not now, maybe later, right?

Crista Cowan: 9:27

So you and I were neighbors years ago and you called me one day because you knew I was into family history, because you had a little bit of a family history mystery in your family tree that you wanted solved. Tell me, I understand there was a box you got from your dad. I understand there was this and it's his dad's parents, correct? Tell us a little bit about that.

Julie Taggart: 9:51

Well, let's go back. So I called you because I had bought from a store a very, very large poster and I hung it up in our kitchen over all the other pictures.

Crista Cowan: 10:03

A blank family tree chart.

Julie Taggart: 10:04

Yes, and I started filling it in and that's when I discovered my brick wall, my Madeline. And it's so funny because I wanted to know the first people that came over from another country and I wanted to know all these, all this information about all these different people. And so I just started making notes on this chart and it was crazy busy. All different I mean I was no continuity to it at all just all these different colors and markers and pens. And if I could find a picture, I put it up there and my dad had so in our basement. It was an unfinished basement, was always a scary basement, and underneath the stairs, in the deep, dark abyss of this basement, my dad, we never went down there because it was way too scary, I mean, it was not finished, it was dark and damp. But my dad came out one day after going down into that deep, dark basement and brought forth a box that had seen better days and it was chock full of pictures and letters and bills, just random things.

Julie Taggart: 11:06

And that's when I first saw Madeline, my Madeline, this is my great grandma and I brought it all out, laid it all out and started looking at my chart on the wall, my big, very large chart. I mean, it was big and starting to put the pieces together. And that's when I called you. Do you remember? I do. So I asked Crista, come over and just help me, because I've got this. You know, Crista's like what? Crista's like this magical fairy that goes around and just knocks down walls where you, where yours, have been there for years. So I asked Crista over and I'll pass it to you. Now you tell the story.

Crista Cowan: 11:44

Oh, yeah, so I remember this so clearly because you and I had known each other for a few years at that point and I walked into your kitchen and you had taken that giant blank family tree chart off the wall and you had it laid out on your kitchen table and it overlapped the edges and you had laid it out to show me here's my brick wall so that you could explain to me the connection and my eyes were immediately drawn to the bottom part of the chart where I saw some familiar names oh, Cornelius, so, and that was where you and I discovered that we are what?

Crista Cowan: 12:19

Fourth cousins? I think so, yeah, fourth or fifth cousins, through a man named Cornelius Lott and his wife Permilia Darrow. They were from Pennsylvania and they made their way across the plains here to Utah and now have thousands of descendants, and so it's no surprise that we don't all know each other. But I already loved you and then, in that moment, when we realized that we were related and connected in an even more significant way than we had realized I I was already all in on helping you, but then I really wanted to help you

Julie Taggart: 12:52

And I suddenly felt like I got like the backstage pass to coolness, like, oh, you know, Crista, oh, she's my cousin.

Crista Cowan: 13:01

I love it. So, yeah, so I love that I'm related to you. Of course, years later, I also discovered then that, through a different line of my family tree, I'm also related to your husband.

Julie Taggart: 13:09

And then he thought he was cool too.

Crista Cowan: 13:11

We're both pretty cool, so now I am double related to your children, which is super fun. So we started down this path of helping to figure out who Madeline was and what her story was. Tell us about Madeline.

Julie Taggart: 13:28

Well, at that time they had her husband, Madeline's husband, married to a few different women which wasn't true and married to, like, his sister-in-law. The whole thing was just really mucky. It was mucky.

Crista Cowan: 13:43

You mean the information that other people have put together? Yes, because on FamilySearch.

Julie Taggart: 13:47

You share a tree and so people go in there with good intentions and, of course, mess it up. So I've seen these beautiful pictures. We'll have to post a picture because she's just so beautiful, she's just elegant. She had such a story to her life that I didn't know at the time, like she had lost a three-year-old little baby. She had lost another baby to being a stillborn and just had this really tough life. But I couldn't figure out for the life of me her mom and her dad, Because on her death certificate, which was in that box, it showed that she was from Live Oak, florida, and her mom and her dad's name, which was John Granger, can you get?

Julie Taggart: 14:24

I mean, john Smith Might as well just be John Smith and then Melba Harice, something along those lines, which was not common. But we could not find her at all and this is years ago. So I mean we've come a long way, but even all this way we've come. She's still a mystery to me. So you opened up that laptop of yours and those fingers started flying and I finally figured out the tab.

Crista Cowan: 14:52

Shift tab.

Julie Taggart: 14:52

I was like what is this magic she's doing? This is awesome. So you just went to town and we just watched it off and we found her on the.

Crista Cowan: 15:00

was it the 1900 census? Yep, okay, 1900 census.

Julie Taggart: 15:05

And the big discovery once we found her was that she was listed as adopted with the Redding family, but her siblings were listed as orphans. So we finally had a name of her adopted mom and her dad and that gave me something to go off of and we went from there and they're the couple that brought her to utah, right, yes, well, her step, her adopted mom, died shortly after that census record, just a couple of months, and he brought her so this the adopted dad brought madeline and all of her step half step adopted siblings.

Julie Taggart: 15:44

Goodness, it's getting hot in here messy family.

Julie Taggart: 15:46

Messy family to Utah and I never I have yet to figure out why, I don't know why, um, but in that box I found a postcard that was from my grandpa's or soon-to-be husband met right out to her, madeline, and it said Redding. But it was ripped and so that was the one connection. I thought this is proof right here that she was with her adopted father. Redding was his last name. So she's still my mystery. She's still my brick wall because we've yet to find parents. We've moved a little bit closer, but she's still still my brick wall.

Crista Cowan: 16:21

Yeah, so. So since we made that discovery of her in the 1900 census, adopted by this family orphaned what we believed were siblings living in the same town with other families. Now, since then, your dad's taken a DNA test and you found didn't you find an article or a letter or something, something that listed her brother's name, or you had a photo.

Julie Taggart: 16:47

I have a photo and I posted it, not knowing I had no idea which one of her brothers that were listed as orphans. But then I had a cousin I didn't know. She, through DNA, reached out to me and said I've been reading this obituary of my great granddaddy. She's from Georgia, so they call them great granddaddy, she's from Georgia, so they call them great granddaddies down there. And she says I have. I searched my great granddaddy and Madeline Sterling was listed in the obituary and she had not seen a picture of him younger and so she was able to download those pictures and print them and put them on her wall. And it's just special, it's just such a neat experience.

Crista Cowan: 17:21

So through DNA you've been able to connect that, yes, these children on the 1900 census were in fact her siblings, but the hunt for their parents still continues.

Julie Taggart: 17:31

It does Melba, melba, harice, somewhere out there, yep and John Granger.

Crista Cowan: 17:40

John Granger Yep, finding pieces of the story. Even though the brick wall itself may not feel like it's been broken through, you're still making connections with cousins. There's still, you know, new DNA discoveries being made all the time. But in the midst of all of this, now your kids are getting older. How old are your kids now?

Julie Taggart: 17:57

11 to 21. Okay my oldest just got married and yeah, we're just knee deep in teenagers.

Crista Cowan: 18:06

Yeah, and that's kind of how life goes right, like you go through these different transitions of life and the thing is is that it's always changing, like there's always a new phase of life to learn and it's always the first time you've been there and yet you still are making time for family history. But it looks a little different for you now. Tell us about what's going on with your mom and you can cry.

Julie Taggart: 18:29

I was just gonna say I will try not to cry my mom. She's always loved. Is it genealogy or genealogy? Genealogy? I don't know, it's spelled genealogy.

Crista Cowan: 18:41

Pronounces it different.

Julie Taggart: 18:42

Well, my mom's always my mom and dad have loved genealogy, but and my mom loves stories she's told me stories of her growing up her whole life. But a few years ago she fell and broke her hip and then she got better and then she fell and just kept breaking things and eventually she got put into a skilled nursing facility and the very first time I went to see her she was acting very strange. It was strange, but every time I'd go visit her it would get weirder and weirder and she eventually was diagnosed with dementia and it went from being weird to now it's been two years that she's been in that facility. She doesn't talk, she doesn't walk, she doesn't feed herself and she has no memories. I've printed up I found a bunch of pictures of her family growing up and her twin brother, terry, and her siblings and our family, and I printed them on paper and her whole wall is plastered with all of these pictures to help her remember, to help her remember a better time. I'm not sure, but I love them, she loves them, but she does not remember and it's hard.

Julie Taggart: 19:54

They say that when somebody has dementia or Alzheimer's you lose them twice the first time when they lose their memories and the second time when they pass away. And so we've all my dad, my sister, my nephew, all of my kids we've all gone through a process of mourning Every time we see her. There's times where we just leave, crying and like the ugly, cry Like whew, man, it's bad, because I miss her, I miss my mom, I miss her stories and that's why I feel like the stories that live in us, that's everything. You lose the memories, you're a shell of who you used to be and sharing those stories is everything. And unfortunately, when I was little I probably didn't care a whole lot. I think a lot of us are like, oh, those old people always telling stories, but they mean so much more when you can't hear them anymore. So I feel like we're all on a race. We're on a race of time to try to capture those stories.

Julie Taggart: 21:02

So for her 75th birthday, which was a year ago, I asked on social media, I asked siblings, I asked cousins, nephews, nieces. I said, please send me a memory of mom. I wanted 75 memories for her 75th birthday and I received beautiful, beautiful responses from people in her neighborhood and her nieces and nephews, and some that I had never heard about. But we didn't quite reach 75. So I've been on a mission to fill up those 75 memories and as I'm driving down the road, I'll remember a memory, and so I'll pull over and I'll text it to myself. Just today, I went and got a pedicure. It was to calm my nerves. That's what I told Todd my husband. I need a pedicure. I'm going to be on a podcast.

Julie Taggart: 22:03

My toes are all that matter. But I remember at a time when my sister and my mom and I went to get a pedicure and she was so ticklish and she just kept giggling and these cute little ladies were trying to do her feet and she's just, oh, please stop, Please stop. And then she eventually just abandoned the whole thing. She's like I can't do it, but I pulled over and I texted myself. I've gotten to write down that memory of getting a pedicure with my mom.

Julie Taggart: 22:23

It was the only one time.

Julie Taggart: 22:24

She never went back because it was so ticklish. But I, but I trying to fill in those 75 memories of things that I remember, and unfortunately it's only my perspective, but that's all I have right now.

Crista Cowan: 22:36

Yeah, so well, but you do have others right, because I know your sister has shared stories and your kids have stories of grandma, and your dad has stories and your nephew has stories like there's, like everybody has this perspective on her life and now that she can no longer share those stories of her life, um, you're all contributing and the number is a lovely gesture of 75. But ultimately, like you know, even if you have just one story, the, you know the, the scant stories you have of Madeline give you a sense of who she is and who she was. And of course, we always crave more. And so that's, I think, for me one of the reasons I'm always looking, even when I think, oh, I've filled in that spot on my pedigree chart. That place on the blank wall chart is filled in. That's just a name and a date and a place. But who they were?

Crista Cowan: 23:29

And sometimes it's not the big sweeping grand stories of you know whatever, sometimes it is the little things, like the time we went to get a pedicure. Those are the stories that I think I crave knowing the most about my ancestors. They're the things I remember about my own grandparents. That I want to make sure my nephews and my niece know about them is those little everyday things that made them who they were, because to me, that, I think, teaches us how to continue to move in the world and it also teaches us how to stay connected as a family.

Crista Cowan: 24:08

And so you know, as you think, about what you're going through with your mom and how hard it is. And I and you know, I you're so generous with what you share on social media and I don't know if you share that for your own benefit or if it's therapy or, but I'm I've so appreciated being able to watch you through that window, walk through this journey a little bit, and to know a little bit of your heart. I can read into that and see how important it is to you to stay connected to her, even though she doesn't have those memories anymore, and how important it is for you to continue to bring your children to stay connected to her. And so, from their perspective, what do you think is the benefit If she's not there anymore? What is the benefit to them to continue that relationship, that connection?

Julie Taggart: 24:57

You know I heard a quote one time. A man was visiting his wife and someone asked him why do you visit your wife? She doesn't remember and he said but I do and it doesn't matter to her but it does to me and I often I cringe going to the facility because I hate seeing my mom like that and it hurts. So almost every time I just white knuckle it there. But I know I get to see my mom and our kids don't go as often. We do it on a Sunday afternoon and they just like to wheel around in the wheelchair and run around the building.

Julie Taggart: 25:33

But they know my mom's important to me and I pray that if I'm ever in that situation they'll still come visit me. They know that family is everything and I just hope that they can feel that and know that their mom loves them so much, no matter what they do. I love them so much and family matters I mean, I know it's a cliche, right, family matters, but so does and to go there. We plan now our Thanksgiving or Easter dinner. We all bring food and we eat there at the facility. Or we do Christmas at the facility and all the workers look at us like what are they doing? And when they're loud, my kids play music and dance and people just keep walking by. Kids play music and dance and people just keep walking by.

Julie Taggart: 26:27

But when we gather as a family, it's those traditions, right. We get together, we do Easter baskets. I still make them look for Easter eggs in the facility. They're so embarrassed but I do not care. It's my job to embarrass my kids. But they know that those traditions are important. I know you talk with your sister-in-law about traditions and there's a lot that we do. We, you know. We get together for Christmas, we get together for Thanksgiving. It just looks a little bit different now, but family matters.

Crista Cowan: 26:54

It does. So your oldest just got married. You've got a household full of teenagers. Within a few very short years, you are probably going to be a grandmother for the first time, of course, hoping for it, as you think about your kids getting older and moving into that phase of life where they're starting their own families. What do you hope for the future for them as it relates to all of this?

Julie Taggart: 27:17

Yes, I hope they keep the traditions alive, like there's stability, there's a grounding, like you were saying, in doing the things that you've always done, but doing them with your kids, changing them a little bit. You can change the tradition, you can do that. I hope they always have pictures on their walls like we do. You know these, this great, great grandma. You might not know that lady, but but she matters because because of her we're all here and I go. I hope they have lots of kids. I want to be a grandma of lots of kids. So right, I don't know how they feel about that, but I want family gatherings. I want big, loud Sunday dinners and crazy kids screaming and crying and, you know, easter egg hunts, even if it's at a facility.

Crista Cowan: 28:08

In your retirement home.

Julie Taggart: 28:09

That's right In my retirement home.

Crista Cowan: 28:11

I love that. Well, thank you so much for being here. I do love you so much and I am so grateful to you and Todd for the family you've created and the example you are and the light you are in the world, and for taking our family pictures every few years when our family gets together. I love it, appreciate you. I hope you enjoyed this episode with my friend Julie. You know you heard her talk about that giant blank chart she put on her wall and it just so happens that I have a deal for you If you would like to get your own blank chart. I have several different designs available for you that you can order and we will ship them to you. And if you're a listener of the podcast, you'll get a special deal if you use the free shipping code of CristaF ree, so I will put a link in the show notes for you so that you can order your very own blank chart and maybe you'll make some discoveries, just like Julie did.