Crista Cowan: 0:01

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 T he 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.

Crista Cowan: 0:23

Back in 2001, when I first decided to become a professional genealogist, I knew a lot about how to research my own family history. But, like all things, one of the things I didn't know was what I didn't know. When I started advertising to get clients, I did it in my aunt's store in Los Angeles. Two of my dad's sisters own a gift shop and it's in a predominantly Jewish neighborhood, and so one of the things that happened was I immediately started getting Jewish clients and I knew nothing about Jewish family history research. So I went out and found a mentor, I started reading books, I took a couple classes and now here, decades later, I am one of the specialists in Jewish immigration to America, and because of that specialty in how I research, I've been able to be involved with the International Association of Jewish Genealogical Societies for nearly two decades now, the last six years or so on the board of directors for the IAJGS. Now, every summer we hold a conference somewhere in the world, and this year the conference was in Philadelphia and as part of the conference, the conference committee asked me to come and present a live recording of my podcast in front of an audience. It's the first time I've ever done anything like that, so the video you're going to see if you watch this on video is going to be a little different than normal. We recorded it on my phone. But the story that I tell is a story that is probably one of the most impactful experiences I've had participating in this particular conference over the years, so I hope you enjoy.

Crista Cowan: 2:17

I had the opportunity several years ago, along with some of you, to attend the Jewish Genealogy Conference that was held in Paris. How many of you were there that year? Okay, that was a wonderful experience.

Crista Cowan: 2:32

I actually flew in four days early and, after flying on a red-eye all night long, picked up a rental car at 6.30 in the morning and headed for Geneva, Switzerland, by myself, without GPS, and as I got to Geneva, I'm a little bit of an impromptu person Any of you who have worked with me in any volunteer capacity know that about me. I didn't have any hotel reservations, I didn't have any plans at all. I just knew I had to be back in Paris in four days. And I got to Geneva with no GPS and pulled into a McDonald's parking lot so I could get Wi-Fi and started looking for a hotel. And there were no hotels and that was a little bit challenging. And so finally I walked into. I found a Marriott, went into the Marriott and asked them you know, like what is happening in town? Why is there not a hotel room to be found? And they told me there was some soccer tournament happening football tournament, whatever they call it and so it would be best if I drove around the lake and looked for some little like bed and breakfasts or inns, and that they might have some rooms.

Crista Cowan: 3:49

This was after about an hour of searching online and another hour of driving around the city. So I started driving around Lake Geneva and found a couple little inns and I'd pull in and I'd go in, and, sure enough, no rooms available, no rooms available, no rooms available. One of them finally said well, you know what? You might as well eat dinner here. It's eight o'clock at night and nine o'clock at night, we're going to close the restaurant soon, and so I had dinner and then set off again, and at about midnight now, keeping in mind I'd flown all night, driven all day, been apartment hunting.

Crista Cowan: 4:30

What I didn't tell you is that the night before I left I had taken two days to drive from Salt Lake City down to Los Angeles because I had to renew my passport. So I actually hadn't slept in three days and I was exhausted and a little bit hysterical, and so I just found like a rest stop, pulled my car into the rest stop. Now, if any of you have ever driven in Europe, you know the cars are tiny and I was going to sleep in the backseat the non-existent backseat and I am not a small woman. So I climbed into the backseat and curled up a little after midnight and managed to get some fitful sleep for about three or four hours when all of a sudden, a Volkswagen converted camper van full of drunk Germans pulled in next to me, being very loud and a little bit scary when you're a woman alone and a little disoriented, and all I could think about was I need to get out of the car and into the front, out of the back seat and into the front seat before they notice me, so that I can go somewhere else. And I managed to do that.

Crista Cowan: 5:45

And then I thought, well, I might as well just keep driving. And what I knew was I wasn't very far from Zermatt, because in Zermatt is this mountain called Matterhorn. Yeah right, and I grew up in Southern California and love me some Disney. So I thought I'm going to go see this mountain. So I went around the rest of the lake and took the left turn to go up the valley and it was beautiful, the sun was rising and it was just gorgeous. And then I followed this little bakery truck up the turn, up the little mountain road. At one point we were driving on boards over creeks. I just thought I'm going the right way. I didn't have GPS, but I looked at a map and I have a pretty good memory.

Crista Cowan: 6:32

Ended up in this little town and all of a sudden I have people yelling at my car Because what I didn't know is that you're not supposed to drive there. The only people allowed to drive into that little village are people who are delivery drivers. You're supposed to park at the bottom of the mountain and take the tram up and so they were yelling at me to turn around. I took a picture and left and then I thought, okay, maybe I want to go to Italy. So I drove to Italy, went to Milan and then up to Lake Como and ended up spending the rest of my time in Lake Como and it was delightful. I want to go back with people. I was by myself, drove back along the French Riviera. It was lovely. I took wrong turn turn in Marseille on Bastille Day. Got stuck in traffic. It was not great.

Crista Cowan: 7:32

Finally figured out my way, made my way to Lyon because I had to get back to Paris, because the conference was started on Sunday and I was speaking at 9am and I pulled off the mountain into Lyon just as the Bastille Day fireworks went off over the castle. Like it was a moment. And in that moment here's what I realized Sometimes the spontaneous adventures are worth it. No matter how tired you are, no matter how frustrated you may have been, there are moments that are just it. Just brilliant. The moment that I was on the ferry going from my hotel on Lake Como. That was a moment. The moment I pulled off that mountain and saw the fireworks go off over the castle in Lyon. That was a moment.

Crista Cowan: 8:27

And I think that that's a lot like life that sometimes we think, oh, we're just so in it and things are hard and hard, things happen and life is messy and families are messy. I talked to somebody today I think she's in here who said she has a daughter-in-law who doesn't talk to her but gratefully she lets her talk to her grandchild. I have another dear friend who, I just learned, lost her vision or is losing her vision and all the hard things you have to deal through, go through with that. We just came through COVID and all of the ensuing pandemic messiness that really kind of harmed some of us in different ways. And yet there are moments that are beautiful and brilliant and we just have to, I think, appreciate those moments for what they are. That's what I learned in that moment.

Crista Cowan: 9:27

I made my way the rest of the way to Paris. I rolled into the hotel at about 2, 2.30 in the morning. I walked up to check into the Marriott and the lady at the desk said you're Miss Cowan and I said yes. She said people are looking for you, okay, and she said no, people have been looking for you, okay. And I said, well, I told people that I was not arriving until Saturday evening, but I'm only a few hours late, like why the panic? And she said you're speaking in the morning and I said yes, but I'm here Still, like seven hours away. Anyway, I got up the next morning and presented what I was presenting and then for the remainder of the conference I think I had one more presentation. I sat at a table in the exhibit hall, much like I'm doing here this week.

Crista Cowan: 10:20

Ancestry shows up in a really big way at RootsTech but at all the other conferences, like they send me and sometimes I speak and sometimes I don't, but almost always I'm sitting at a table and I love being there because I get to see so many of you and you come up to me and you share your stories and you ask your questions and some of you yell at me. I don't love that so much. No, I get that you're frustrated in life, like there is frustration, and you're frustrated because you care. You're frustrated because you're passionate, you're frustrated because you want it to work. You're frustrated because you are the story keeper and you take that role seriously and I appreciate that. And so I sit at a table and I answer your questions and I listen to your stories, and sometimes I'm hungry and sometimes I haven't been able to go to the bathroom for three hours and sometimes I need to just like take a minute because I am, believe it or not, an introvert. I know that shocks some of you. I love people, but it's draining to me, and so I just need a quiet moment to just regroup and re-energize. And so I sit at the table because that's where I want to be and that's what I did in Paris. I came and I sat at the table and, interestingly enough, in Paris, even as many of you as were there, there were a lot of people there who did not speak English really well and they would come up and ask me questions and I would try to help, and I got frustrated sometimes and they got frustrated sometimes, but we muddled our way through.

Crista Cowan: 12:02

Well, after my second presentation, which was all about how to use Ancestry, a line formed at my table. People were willing to wait for me and I thought okay, here we go. So the line formed at the table and there was this elderly woman who got in the line. I would guess that she was maybe 70, 75. I was to be fair, I was like 35 or 40 at the time. It felt elderly at the time. It's getting younger every day, believe me. And I watched her out of the corner of my eye because there was an interesting thing happening. Every time somebody else would come, get in line, she would step behind them. So she was at the end of the line and this happened like probably for a half an hour. She would step to the end of the line and she probably ended up stepping behind about 10 people ultimately.

Crista Cowan: 13:10

And I sat at that table and answered questions for those people in that line for a good two hours and she stood in that line and waited for me and finally nobody else came and she was getting closer and closer and my curiosity was getting higher and higher because I'm thinking what is happening here? Finally, she was the last one in line and I had a chair across the table from me and she just plopped down into the chair and I thought no kidding lady, I keep standing here for two hours and I said hi, I'm Crista. And she introduced herself to me and I won't use her name because I did not get her permission to share this story and so I want to keep it a little bit anonymized. And she introduced herself to me in broken English and then she asked me in French if I spoke French and I replied in broken French that no, I did not. And she kind of sighed a little bit and then said okay, I'll try in English. And she proceeded to tell me a story and I have become the keeper of this story and now I try to tell it as often as I can. And I'm so grateful now that I have this platform to tell it, because, while she didn't tell me I could share the details of her identity. She said I need people to know this story and I need you to help me understand this story. And I said okay. So here's the story.

Crista Cowan: 15:00

Her family was from Poland and her parents had both been born and raised there, and she and her younger sister had both been born there. And when she and her sister were about three and six years old, her parents had the foresight to get them out of Poland and move them to the south of France, and they moved to the south of France, and while they did suffer some during World War II, they were spared During the whole decade that they lived in France, and then, through the war, her mother would write letters back home to Poland trying to keep in touch with her family, but also trying to not let them know exactly where they were. And so that was tricky. It sometimes involved like relaying letters into other places that then could get mailed from there into Germany, because her parents, just for whatever reason, had this like even you know, through the late 1930s, this heightened sense of security that they wanted to keep their daughter safe.

Crista Cowan: 16:11

And so she told me this. And then she said my mother's entire family perished At some point. Like the letters just stopped coming. And she said and I have spent the last part of my life trying to find out what happened to every single one of them, and that's why she was at the conference. She wanted to make sure that everyone was named and everyone was accounted for. And then she just started rattling off in French and I kind of looked at her and then she realized she was speaking in French and she goes oh, pardon, pardon, I have two uncles and she goes oh, pardon, pardon, I have two uncles. And I said okay, and she said my mother's two uncles. Okay, they went to America. Yeah, they went to America sometime in the 1910s and then they came back to Poland and they perished with the rest of the family.

Crista Cowan: 17:32

And I am so angry, I want to know why. Can you help me? How do you respond? I mean, I can find a record, maybe, but does the record tell the story? Sometimes I can find a record, maybe, but does the record tell the story? Sometimes? Sometimes enough of the records tell the story, but can you answer a question like that? They came back. I am so angry and I want to know why. I don't know if I can answer that question.

Crista Cowan: 18:15

She said if they had just stayed in America, I would not be all alone in the world. And in that moment my heart broke for her as she like just tumbled out more words about how her sister had married but never had children, and she had never married and her sister had died a few years earlier and she felt like she was completely alone in the world because they had no other family. And I thought how do I help this woman? Like I'm just a genealogist. And so I thought, okay, like let's at least find something out about them. And I said, tell me again. When they went to America. And she started rifling through her bag and pulled out this folder and started rifling through some papers and she said I have this letter where one of my mom's cousins talked about the uncles, and when they had come back, and I said, okay, what year did they come back? Okay, what year did they come back? Let's start there. And they had gone back in 1933. What? Okay, let's dig into this. That means they were probably in America in 1930. So we went to the 1930 census and we found them and there they were, living in Chicago, and they were both still single. One was, I think, in his late 20s, one was in his early 30s. Two bachelor men living together in Chicago. Okay, but the 1930 census tells us what the year of immigration and the naturalization status. They were both still listed as alien citizens, but it listed their year of immigration and they had actually been in the United States for over a decade. Okay, let's find them in the 1920 census.

Crista Cowan: 20:31

1920 census is a little trickier. Anybody experience that, that 1920 census? Right, the world had just come out of World War. I I think there was. I don't know what the chaos was. I still have a set of great-grandparents I have not found in the 1920 census and I have done.

Crista Cowan: 20:47

If anybody knows how to find people in the census, it is me. I pride myself on that. I have used every trick I know and I am convinced that they were just not enumerated. And I don't say that lightly because I think a lot of people give up early and say, oh, they just weren't enumerated, oh, the census taker just skipped them. No, their name was just probably spelled wrong or they're not living where you think they should be living or something. But I thought, okay, here we go into the 1920 census in Chicago.

Crista Cowan: 21:15

And it took a little doing to find them. And she sat there patiently just watching my fingers fly and didn't say a word and just kind of leaned in and I was looking and I'm talking to myself and she did not interrupt me, she did not try to tell me more stories, she was all in on this experience, just watching, and it took me. As a matter of fact, I think the exhibit hall officially closed while we were sitting there and I didn't care, I was not moving from that seat, finally found them and they were living in a boarding house they had. They were new, new in the country they had come in just like at the end of 1919. And so it made sense that they were living in this household. And I'm looking, of course, through every other name in that household Are they living with? And I asked her, I showed it to her Do you know any of these other names? Like, did these two men just came by themselves? Yep, okay, but the immigration year was consistent, and so we went and started going through passenger lists. Y'all know about trolling through passenger lists and at one point one of the conference organizers was like we need to close. And I was like just leave the door open, we're not moving. This woman stood in line waiting for me for two hours. I am not telling her to come back tomorrow. Okay, they did. And so we started looking through passenger lists and we found them.

Crista Cowan: 23:01

Now on the passenger list. You know this, it lists who you're coming to, and it said that they were coming to their brother-in-law, said that they were coming to their brother-in-law. Two unmarried men who are brothers to one another are coming to their brother-in-law. That means they have a sister, if it's correct, because sometimes people say, oh, I'm coming to a relative and they make up the relationship because that's how they're getting into the country. And I thought I said to her I said, did they have a sister? And she said I don't know of any sister. And I said, okay, well, let's see if we can find her. Let's see if we can find this brother-in-law.

Crista Cowan: 23:51

So we pull up the 1920 census and we look for the brother-in-law. So we pull up the 1920 census and we look for the brother-in-law and he lives in the neighborhood and he has a wife and they have two children. And I said do you know this name? And she said no. And I said I think it might be their sister. And she said are you sure? And I said no, no, I'm not. And she said are you sure? And I said no, no, I'm not. And she and I are both weeping and I said I don't know, let's see what we can find. And so I pull up the 1930 census and there's the brother-in-law with those same two children and four more children and a whole new wife, hold on. And I said let's see if we can find her.

Crista Cowan: 24:38

And so we started looking for death records and we found out she had died, but the index that I had available to me online in that moment did not list her maiden name. Okay, let's go back to that census. Is there any clue here about when she immigrated? Yes, is there any clue here about when they may have gotten married? Yes, turns out, the husband and wife. Their immigration years were different and, if I timelined it out, they probably got married after they got here.

Crista Cowan: 25:19

And so I went digging for a marriage record and I found it and the maiden name matched. And I told her, I said your mom had an aunt. And when we did the math we realized this aunt immigrated to the United States when she was 16 years old and it was long before the letter writing started. It was long before the family communication started and somehow this aunt got lost and they didn't even know she existed. And I'm running through all the connections in my head, I'm connecting the dots and I'm wondering if she is, because she's just sitting there weeping. And I said she had two children and all of a sudden, the reason why the uncles went back didn't matter so much anymore. The uncles went back didn't matter so much anymore, even though that was her original story she was seeking. All of a sudden she had this realization and she just started hugging me and she said I'm not alone.

Crista Cowan: 26:26

How do I find them? Okay, y'all, I think I sat there until about 9 o'clock at night and we went through subsequent census records and we traced those children. Of course, at the time the 1950 census wasn't out yet. That would have been super helpful, but we managed to find them in city directories. I did a few internet searches. We found death records for both of those children and in one case we found an obituary that listed their children.

Crista Cowan: 27:04

And she said how do I find them? Well, it just so happens I have a subscription to this little site called PeopleSearch. Here is their current phone number and address. And let's look on Facebook. And we managed to find two of them on Facebook and we managed to find current phone numbers and addresses. And she said can we call right now? I said you know what? It might be better if you sleep on it a little bit and then write them a letter and then call them after you've sent the letter and given it enough time to arrive, because some of this, like sometimes when we barge into people's lives. We've been looking for them for a really long time and we feel like we know them and they have no clue who we are. So it's always a good idea to give them a minute to kind of process the information.

Crista Cowan: 27:56

And she and I talked through that and she hugged me and she cried. And she hugged me and she cried and she rattled off some more in French and it didn't matter that I didn't know exactly what she was saying, because I knew what she meant and I went to bed and the next day she came and sought me out again. She didn't have to wait in a two-hour line this time. I actually asked her about that and she said I was embarrassed of my English and I didn't know if you could help me and I didn't want other people waiting on me. He said I get it, it's okay.

Crista Cowan: 28:39

And she said you said sleep on it. I slept on it. Can we call them today? And I said if that's what you want to do, you go right ahead. I said you just need what you want to do. You go right ahead. I said you just need to know there's a time difference and so maybe wait a few more hours. But she said I also want to write a letter. And I said okay, and she said, will you help me? Of course I will help you, and so I had the opportunity to help her write that letter. And then we just we wrote it to the family and then we just copied it and sent it to the addresses that we had.

Crista Cowan: 29:28

Now here's the sad thing I have no idea what happened next. Now, here's the sad thing. I have no idea what happened next. Here's what I do know. She told me she came back on the last day of the conference, which was, I think, the very next day, and she said I'm going to Chicago. And I went, did you call them? And she goes, not yet. Okay, I said have you ever been to the United States? Nope, but I'm going to Chicago. Right, that's exactly exactly what I thought.

Crista Cowan: 30:06

I thought you know what, what you don't know, ladies, at the beginning of this week I just hopped in a car at the Paris airport and spent four days driving all over creation.

Crista Cowan: 30:23

I understand having no plan and sometimes, when you have no plan, there is still frustration and exhaustion, there are still hard things that happen, but there are moments of really beautiful things, and she was so determined that, even though I did not keep in touch with her, I have no doubt she made it to Chicago and I hope that family embraced her and I hope that they became the recipients of all of the work that she had done about their family, because she thought she had no one left in the world. And it turns out that she did. As we share our family stories, that is what we are cultivating. We are cultivating an environment that lets people know that they are not alone in the world. We are cultivating an environment that lets people know that they are not alone in the world, and I hope we're also cultivating interest in the next generation and the one after that that they will become the next generation of story keepers and storytellers. Thank you.