The Genealogy Gems Podcast with Lisa Louise Cooke - Your Family History Show: Episode 215 (2024)

Mar 20, 2018

The Genealogy Gems Podcast
Episode #215
with Lisa Louise Cooke

In this “Blast from the Past” episode, Lisa gives voice to theera of silent films, in a unique approach to understanding hergreat-grandmother’s life. Her passion for this mostly-forgottenfilm genre comes through in her conversation with film archivistSam Gill of the Niles Essanay Silent Film Museum in Fremont,California.

Don’t miss these fun segments, too:

A listener writes in after discovering a birth mom’s story inpassport records (see what lengths he goes to in order to accessthe records!).

Just after RootsTech 2018, Your DNA Guide Diahan Southardreports on the latest DNA news you’ll want to know.

NEWS: ROOTSTECH 2018 DNA NEWS ROUNDUP FROM YOUR DNAGUIDE DIAHAN SOUTHARD

The Genealogy Gems Podcast with Lisa Louise Cooke - Your Family History Show: Episode 215 (1)

First up was MyHeritage, showing their support for the 7 millionadopted individuals in the United States with their new DNA Quest campaign. MyHeritage will provide 15,000 DNA testkits to eligible participants free of charge, in order to helpthese adoptees use DNA to reunite them with their biologicalfamilies. With this initiative they “hope to make this project ashining light for corporate philanthropy and an example to befollowed by other commercial companies in their own lines ofexpertise to make the world a better place.” MyHeritage hasassembled an advisory board of genetic genealogists and geneticcounselors to help drive this project and ensure it meets the needsof the community. If you or someone you know is interested inparticipating, you can head on over to the DNA Quest website(www.dnaquest.com) to fillout an application. But you better hurry, the application deadlineis April 30, 2018.

Next, addressing the biggest problem in genetic genealogy,namely the looming What Next? question facing millions of newlyswabbed participants, MyHeritage announced the Big Tree – a giantnetwork of genetic and genealogy results that will automate much ofthe match comparison and tree searching to replace yourhead-scratching with light-bulb moments. They have already madesignificant headway on this project, as reported in the journal Science, which MyHeritage’s own chiefscientific officer Yaniv Erlich collaborated on. The journalreports that the team of scientists successfully extracted publicfamily trees from Geni.com (a MyHeritage daughter company), andthen used a computer program to clean up and link the treestogether. It sounds like MyHeritage will be adding genetic data tothis kind of tree data in their Big Tree project.

MyHeritage isn’t the only company out to improve the DNAmatching experience. UK based LivingDNA announced that they plan to add DNA matching to theirpopular origins test by third quarter 2018. When they launched inOctober of 2016, LivingDNA was not offering cousin matching, butopted instead to focus all of their resources on providing verydetailed origins reports, including breaking down the UK in to 46categories. In the months since their launch, they have beenworking on a genetic matching system, called Family Networks, thatwill appeal to a wide range of users and will “reduce the risk ofhuman error and take away the tedious task of figuring out how eachperson on a user’s list are related to one another.” They arepromising an experience that provides “a level of relationshipprediction and specificity beyond anything currently on themarket.”

So it sounds like if you are currently struggling with turningyour DNA matches into genealogical discoveries, our testingcompanies want you to know you are not alone, and they are workinghard to provide solutions to these problems. Time will only tell ifthey can succeed.

Diahan also provides answers to questions asked about this blog post announcing updates to MyHeritage DNA matchingtechnology and its new chromosome browser.

MAILBOX: TOM’S PASSPORT SEARCH SUCCESS

The Genealogy Gems Podcast with Lisa Louise Cooke - Your Family History Show: Episode 215 (2)

Kathleen Head’s passportapplications

U.S. passport applications onAncestryandFamilySearchthrough 1925

National Archives articleonpassport applications

U.S. State Department passportapplication (since 1925) copy requests

Frequently asked Questions about the Freedom ofInformation Act

BONUS CONTENT for Genealogy Gems App Users

The Genealogy Gems Podcast with Lisa Louise Cooke - Your Family History Show: Episode 215 (3)

If you’re listening through the Genealogy Gems app, your bonuscontent for this episode is a marvelous soundtrack of silent filmmusic, played live (you’ll hear audience laughter occasionally inthe background) and supplied by Sam Gill at the Niles EssanaySilent Film Museum. TheGenealogy Gems app is FREE inGoogle Play and is only $2.99 for Windows, iPhone and iPad users.

The Genealogy Gems Podcast with Lisa Louise Cooke - Your Family History Show: Episode 215 (4)

Lisa Louise Cooke uses and recommends RootsMagic family history software. From withinRootsMagic, you can search historical records on FamilySearch.org,Findmypast.com and MyHeritage.com.

The Genealogy Gems Podcast with Lisa Louise Cooke - Your Family History Show: Episode 215 (5)

Keep your family history research, photos, tree software files,videos and all other computer files safely backed up withBackblaze, the official cloud-based computer backup system for LisaLouise Cooke’s Genealogy Gems. Learn more at https://www.backblaze.com/Lisa.

GEM: INTRODUCTION TO SILENT FILMS

The Genealogy Gems Podcast with Lisa Louise Cooke - Your Family History Show: Episode 215 (6)

(Image above: a page from Lisa's grandmother'sjournal)

Genealogy Gems Podcast Episode #2 about transcribing familyjournals and letters was remastered in Episode #134.

Episode #8

Stanford Theatre, Palo Alto, CA (shows silentfilms)

Internet Movie Database (IMDB)

Niles Essanay Silent FilmMuseum: the website for this museum is packed with resources:links to Chaplin-Keaton-Lloyd film locations; the InternationalBuster Keaton Society; Classic Images Magazine; a timeline andearly history of film and more.

Films mentioned in this episode:

The Genealogy Gems Podcast with Lisa Louise Cooke - Your Family History Show: Episode 215 (7)

Diary of a Lost Girl starring Louise Brooks (watch trailer)

Safety Last starring Harold Lloyd (watch here)

The Mender of Nets with Mary Pickford (watch here)

The Blot directed by Lois Weber (watch here)

Don’t Park There with Will Rogers (watch here)

Flivvering by Victor Moore

Wife and Auto Trouble directed by Bill Henderson (watch here)

A Trip Down Market Street (watch here)

Wings (watch here)

All Quiet on the Western Front (watch here)

Destruction of San Francisco by Blackhawk Films (watch part here)

Four Sons (watch trailer)

INTERVIEW: SAM GILL, FILM HISTORIAN ANDARCHIVIST

The Genealogy Gems Podcast with Lisa Louise Cooke - Your Family History Show: Episode 215 (8)

Shown above: Sam Gill and Lisa Cooke at the Niles Essanay SilentFilm Museum on the day of this interview. Throughout theirconversation, you hear the sounds of excited theater patronsfilling the auditorium before a screening.

Sam Gill’s interest in silent film dates to 1966, when as acollege student he traveled to Hollywood to interview his agingheroes from the silent screen comedy era. For more than 20 years,he was Archivist of the Academy’s Margaret Herrick Library, wherehe established the Academy’s Special Collections and helped it growto its current status as the preeminent repository for the study ofAmerican cinema. He is currently a Board Member of the NilesEssanay Silent Film Museum. Over the years, he has consulted on orotherwise contributed his expertise to numerous film festivals,museum film programs and film history books.

Sam recently sent us these delightful photos (below) of himselfover the years:

  • (Image 1) 1966: His first trip to Hollywood
  • (Image 2) 1974: A news article about a research trip toFlorida
  • (Image 3) 2017: A birthday party for Diana Serra Cary (BabyPeggy), the last surviving star of the silent screen, held at theEdison Theater of the Niles Essanay Silent Film Museum; also shownis Rena Kiehn, the museum's publicity director and storemanager

The Genealogy Gems Podcast with Lisa Louise Cooke - Your Family History Show: Episode 215 (9)

The Genealogy Gems Podcast with Lisa Louise Cooke - Your Family History Show: Episode 215 (10)

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San Francisco Silent Film Festival

How to identify old cars inphotographs (a technique that adapts well to film!)

National Film Preservation Foundation (click here to see where to findfilms they have helped preserve, including Japanese internment campfootage)

Old Town Music Hall

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Start creating fabulous, irresistible videos about your familyhistory with Animoto.com. You don’t need special video-editingskills: just drag and drop your photos and videos, pick a layoutand music, add a little text and voila! You’ve got an awesomevideo! Try this out for yourself atAnimoto.com.

The Genealogy Gems Podcast with Lisa Louise Cooke - Your Family History Show: Episode 215 (13)

MyHeritage.comis the placeto make connections with relatives overseas, particularly withthose who may still live in your ancestral homeland.Click here to see what MyHeritagecan do for you: it’s free to get started.

GEM: HOW TO FIND SILENT FILMS

If you’re looking for a specific movie, start with a Googlesearch with the name in quotations (and, if you like, anything elseyou know about it, such as an actor or director’s name or theyear). You may find lots of results, including a Wikipedia page andfilm history write-ups, but if you want to WATCH it, limit yoursearch results to Video.

You can also turn to free curated collections online, suchas:

101 free silent films: the greatclassics (links to free film footage on YouTube, InternetArchive, etc.)

YouTube playlist of silent movies

Internet Archive Silent Filmscollection: feature and short silent films uploaded by InternetArchive users

Silentmovies.info: watch several classic silentfilms

Netflix.com: Netflix subscribers can access the service’slittle-known collection of silent films by entering the Netflixlink for browsing its film categories and then the categoryspecific to silent films, 53310:

http://www.netflix.com/browse/genre/53310

(Click here to read an articleabout this tip, along with Netflix’ full list of specific filmcategories.)

YouTube: watch for free, rent or buy, as shown here:

The Genealogy Gems Podcast with Lisa Louise Cooke - Your Family History Show: Episode 215 (14)

More places to explore for silent films:

Turner Classic Movies (TCM.com): under TCMDb, clickDatabase Home and search for a title you want to watch

Amazon.com: Search for titles in the Video section; or searchthe Classic Silent films category

Your local public library (search catalog: try searching for anactor’s name as author)

Ebay: May be the right place to purchase a hard-to-find title.Click here to view currentresults for a search on silent films, filtered to include onlymovie/film items.

PRODUCTION CREDITS

Lisa Louise Cooke, Host and Producer

Sunny Morton, Editor

Diahan Southard, Your DNA Guide, Content Contributor

Hannah Fullerton, Production Assistant

Lacey Cooke, Service Manager

Disclosure: This document contains affiliate links andGenealogy Gems will be compensated if you make a purchase afterclicking on these links (at no additional cost to you). Thank youfor supporting this free podcast and blog!

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The Genealogy Gems Podcast with Lisa Louise Cooke     -      Your Family History Show: Episode 215 (2024)
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