In this episode, Adam and Christopher interview Carl Jackson (Georgia State), a genealogy enthusiast with over 30 years of experience exploring his own family history. During the episode, Adam, Christopher, and Carl talk about Carl’s Sigma Nu Story and his interest in genealogy. The team also discusses tools, resources, and best practices for folks who may be interested in starting their genealogy journey.
The Gavel Podcast is the official podcast of Sigma Nu Fraternity, Inc. and is dedicated to keeping you updated on the operations of the Legion of Honor and connecting you to stories from our brotherhood.
To find out more from the Fraternity, you can always check out our website at www.sigmanu.org. Also consider following us on: Facebook | Instagram | LinkedIn | Twitter | YouTube | Flickr
Have feedback or a question about this episode? Want to submit an idea for a future topic you'd like to see covered? Contact the Gavel Podcast team at news@sigmanu.org.
Hosts for this Episode
Guests for this Episode
Episode References
General Fraternity Resources
The Gavel Podcast - Ep 24 - Genealogy and Family History with Carl Jackson (Georgia State)
[Intro Music]
0:00:42.3 Adam Girtz: Hello, and welcome to the latest episode of the Gavel Podcast. I'm Adam.
0:00:46.5 Christopher Brenton: And I'm Christopher.
0:00:48.2 Adam Girtz: The Gavel Podcast is the official podcast of Sigma Nu Fraternity and is a show dedicated to keeping you updated on the operations of the Legion of Honor and connecting you to the stories from our brotherhood.
0:00:58.3 Christopher Brenton: To find out more from the Fraternity, you can always check out our website at sigmanu.org. You can also find us on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter @SigmaNuHQ or by searching for Sigma Nu Fraternity.
0:01:08.8 Adam Girtz: Alright. Christopher, with our regularly scheduled lines that we deliver out of the way, how are you?
0:01:16.8 Christopher Brenton: I'm doing well. I'm doing well. How about yourself, Adam?
0:01:20.0 Adam Girtz: I'm doing wonderful, man. I got to do a Minnesota tradition this weekend, some curling, which I was terrible at, but had a good time. But honestly, I thought it was going to be like bowling where like, you know, you can go... Anybody can just go bowl. You're not going to throw a 300 or whatever, like perfect game, but you're not going to get a gutter ball every single time. But like, I did the curling equivalent of getting a gutter ball every single time. Like I either was too short, too far, way off to the side. Like, it was hard, man.
0:01:51.5 Christopher Brenton: Hey, I don't know what gave you that impression. I think if you look at the athletes from this most recent Winter Olympics, those men are peak performers. That is what the body looks like at its peak performance.
0:02:07.5 Adam Girtz: Curling, yeah. It was funny, there was a, I'm pretty sure, a girls high school team or maybe college team they're like practicing or maybe they're just like, I don't know if it's just exhibition or whatever it is, but they were there practicing and then like pushing off and in the lunge position, like all the way down the ice and getting their warm-ups in and then doing like a curling practice, I guess. And they had these like accelerometers that were telling them how fast they were pushing off, like really, really precise and watching some of the people that knew what they were doing. It was like, oh yes, there is a significant amount of like learning and finesse that you need to have. So that was kind of neat.
0:02:49.3 Christopher Brenton: Yeah, well I'm glad you got that experience. It feels very relevant to our topic today, talking about connecting to your cultural heritage.
0:02:57.7 Adam Girtz: Yes, oh absolutely, wonderful segue. Yeah, so our interview this week is really neat. So this is actually an interview with a brother, an alumnus of ours, Carl Jackson, who has been studying his own family history, genealogy and all of that. He's been studying it for like the last 30 years, he said, and has a lot of awesome information for us there. And we actually had him on last week for a live webinar that we do, which if that's news to you, welcome to Sigma Nu's live webinar series that we have ongoing. Lots of wonderful topics, you know, kind of interest topics like this, like genealogy. And we have, we've done recently a Thanksgiving cooking webinar, which was really cool. We had Chef John come in and do a couple of side dishes. So that was cool. And then we have some different stuff like educational stuff for members, for alumni.
0:04:07.0 Adam Girtz: So, you know, alumni volunteer series, we have a lot of careers in different fields. So if you're a soon to be graduate or maybe a younger member in the fraternity, even interested in a particular career, we have our careers in series as well. So definitely want to plug that here because that's where this episode kind of stems from, is our live webinar series. So sigmanu.org/webinars. Go ahead and check it out and sign up for future webinars. For the most part, they are no cost to the participant. You know, there might be some that have a small cost. For example, the Chef John cooking series has a small cost associated with it. But other than that, free for members to attend. So definitely check those out. Some really neat stuff. But yeah, so we'll get into our interview in a little while here with Carl Jackson about genealogy. But did want to plug on the topic of alumni volunteers as well as collegiate learning. I think we have some institutes coming up. Do you care to speak about that, Christopher?
0:05:21.6 Christopher Brenton: I was just going to see how long of a segment you were going to go for there.
0:05:24.6 Adam Girtz: No.
0:05:24.6 Christopher Brenton: I was going to interject and say...
0:05:26.4 Adam Girtz: Segue King, man. Come on.
0:05:30.4 Christopher Brenton: That was like a very long meandering stroll rather than a segue.
0:05:35.7 Adam Girtz: No, I knew exactly where I was going. Come on, I'm a professional, man.
0:05:38.9 Christopher Brenton: Well, I was actually intending to comment on the webinar portion over your webinar plug. I, a little bit of a behind the scenes here for people who aren't as intimately aware of the ongoing server staff, but not all of us are in the loop on the day to day activities of different departments. And so while I, as the director of communications, assist Adam and our senior director of engagement, Justin Winger in publicizing and making known our webinar series, I am not in the day to day process of selecting the topics and working with our guest speakers to get them prepared for the webinars and all of that. And so I just wanted to give Adam on this call a tip of the hat because I think he's been doing an excellent job. And really do truly hope that alumni and collegiate members who have the opportunity to listen to this podcast take seriously this invitation to check out some of our webinars because they really are a cool value add that I think the fraternity is providing. I say that not only is just a staff member who is proud of the work that's being produced, but also as an alumnus, who's really excited about some of these topics. Has had the opportunity to attend, has found them incredibly valuable, including the conversation that we get to have today. Bringing the webinar conversation to the podcast format to give you a little bit of a sneak peek, kind of, into the types of conversations that we're getting to have over on the webinar platform.
0:07:11.9 Adam Girtz: Content Synergy, Christopher, Content Synergy.
0:07:13.4 Christopher Brenton: Yes, absolutely. Well, Adam, so you you cued me up, although I did not initially take the offer to talk about our upcoming Sigma Nu Institute. So for alumni volunteers and maybe previous chapter officers who are listening to this, you will likely be familiar with the Sigma Nu Institute. That is going to be taking place again this upcoming 2023. The Sigma Nu Institute is a curriculum that is designed to complement the College of Chapters experience. College of Chapters being the fraternity's premier officer training academy, if you will, for our collegiate commanders. Every January 3rd through 6th, our commanders gather in Roanoke, Virginia, to go through intensive officer training, strategic planning training. They get basically a fire hose blasted at them of important information that they need to know to make their chapter successful. Well, the Institutes is designed to supplement that by giving an additional swath of officers the tools and resources that they need to support the commander in his work to effectively change the chapter and help them pursue excellence. In the past, we used to offer the Sigma Nu Institutes in-person at various locations across the country in response to the pandemic.
0:08:45.4 Christopher Brenton: But in a way, this kind of made us realize the tangible benefits of a virtual experience. The Sigma Nu Institute has moved to a virtual format, and so we offer two virtual sessions as well as one session for alumni volunteers. Dates on those, just a moment. But now we have the opportunity for more people to attend. It used to be that if an institute wasn't conveniently located to your area, it may have been hard to attend some of our chapters. It would have taken them a day's worth of driving to attend, and that is unreasonable to expect. So the virtual institutes do provide us the opportunity to serve more of our collegiate members and alumni. So we're excited to continue those virtual sessions. In the future, we may return to in person. We don't know exactly what that's going to look like, but we are in conversation about it. But in the meantime, I strongly recommend any volunteers who may be listening, any collegiate officers, make sure you register. Registration will be up soon. It is not yet up, but I believe if you go to and I'm typing this in to double check right now, sigmanu.org/institute. Make sure that...
0:10:09.5 Adam Girtz: Link in our episode description, obviously, as with everything that we mentioned, no need to pause and write down a web address. Christopher does a wonderful job of putting these notes in our episode notes. So if you have access to that through your pod catcher, you can you can find it there.
0:10:31.7 Christopher Brenton: Hey, no need to hedge for me. I got it right on the first try. So, www.sigmanu...
0:10:38.0 Adam Girtz: I'm not hedging, I'm vamping.
0:10:39.0 Christopher Brenton: That's true. Www.sigmanu.org/institute will take you right to the registration page for the Sigma Nu Institute. So you'll be able to get information there. There's also a link that will take you over to the alumni and volunteers portal for registration for that institute. Important information about the institutes. The Volunteer Training Institute actually takes place first. That's going to be on Wednesday, January 18th. It'll take place from 5:00 to 6:30 PM Eastern Standard Time. So make note of that. So Wednesday, January 18th. And then the collegiate version of the institute. We're going to offer two different sessions, one on Saturday, January 21st from 1:00 to 5.00 p.m. Eastern and then another on Saturday, January 28th. So the following weekend from 1:00 to 5:00 PM pacific or 4:00 to 8:00 PM Eastern, if you're on the East Coast. The institutes are provided that way so that we're giving, no matter what coast you're on or Coast you're closest to. There we go. Coast closest to. You still have the opportunity to attend an institute that makes the most sense for you. Anybody can attend any institute.
0:12:00.6 Christopher Brenton: If you're a Pacific coaster and you are wanting to attend the session that is prioritized for Eastern Coast and Eastern Coast audience. You're more than welcome to attend that and vice versa. But again, more information can be found at sigmanu.org/institute.
0:12:17.9 Adam Girtz: Yeah. Or if you're in East Coast or like to sleep in until 3:00 PM. On an average day. Yeah, absolutely. We've got an institute for you. You can join in on that West Coast. Well, awesome. Yeah, definitely. Like Christopher said, some very valuable information there for those. If you're an officer who did not get to attend College of Chapters as an additional participant, you're going to get a lot of that information. And it synergizes really well with the curriculum that our commanders and second participants are getting at College of Chapters. So definitely a great kickoff for our brand new officers. As excited as you are to get into the position, we are just as excited for you to go out and affect change in your community and in your chapter with your position. It's a very exciting time. So let's give you some of the practical skills to accomplish the things that you'd like to go accomplish. So we are always every year very proud of our officers and our commanders and our chapters, what they're able to accomplish. And that is through the skills gained at these educational sessions that they're able to attend.
0:13:30.5 Adam Girtz: So definitely try to attend that. And also, I think, to one of the benefits of the online version, in person and online, but online specifically is you being able to network with fellow officers that are across the country. I know from experience working at some of these institutes that a big takeaway is getting a couple of guys contacts and being able to reach back out to them and maybe a fellow alumni chairman, alumni relations chairman, you get to talk about events that you're doing and share ideas and all that stuff. So on top of the curriculum that you're getting, you're also getting that networking available there with that. So pretty neat experience. Christopher, any other plugs or anything else before we dive into our interview?
0:14:20.6 Christopher Brenton: No, I think that's it.
0:14:23.0 Adam Girtz: Okay, awesome. So our interview today, as I mentioned, is a kind of a follow on from our webinar that we did with brother Carl Jackson last week. And so definitely check out those webinars, check out the institutes and listen to our wonderful interview with brother Carl Jackson about genealogy and family history. Let's go.
[Transition Music]
0:15:09.2 Adam Girtz: Hello, everyone. Welcome to our interview for today. Very excited to have our guest with us this wonderful morning coming at you live from here in Des Moines, Iowa, or at least I am. Today we have with us Carl Jackson, brother Carl Jackson, who is a retired middle school principal and educator. And today we're going to talk about researching family history and genealogy. So Carl's been researching his own family history for more than 30 years and has a lot of really great advice for us. We actually just yesterday had our live webinar with brother Carl and went really well. We had a lot of great attendance and a lot of great discussion and questions and all around. I thought it was a really enjoyable webinar. So Carl currently serves as chapter advisor for Ada Gamma at Georgia State. He has a BA From Georgia State and a master of education from the University of Georgia. He's also an active member of the Sons of the American Revolution. So kind of a neat connection there being able to trace lineage back to to the American Revolution. So pretty neat stuff. Carl, thank you so much for being on the show.
0:16:21.5 Carl Jackson: Well, I'm excited to be here. It's a great topic. I love the topic. And I think that a lot of us somehow really want to get involved with finding out who our family members in the past have been. And frankly, it's just kind of getting started is the tough part. So maybe...
[overlapping conversation]
0:16:36.2 Christopher Brenton: Sorry. I was going to say I know I'm particularly excited about this topic. I wanted to attend the webinar yesterday, but wasn't able to. So now I get the chance to ask the questions that I was interested in during this podcast recording.
0:16:50.6 Carl Jackson: Terrific.
0:16:52.4 Adam Girtz: Yeah, absolutely.
0:16:53.8 Carl Jackson: Yeah. One thing. Let me just say this. I think that a lot of us, particularly folks that may be on this podcast, it's when you're working, you have a career and you know you're trying to figure all of this out. Time is more of an issue than actually finding the other tools. But getting started, there are a lot of things you can do at home now that you could not do just a few years ago because of the Internet and because of all the tools available. So I'm excited to talk a little bit about that today.
0:17:19.0 Adam Girtz: Yeah. Awesome. Well, Carl, before we dive into genealogy and family history, would love to hear your Sigma Nu story. I think that's an important part of your history. And maybe someday future generations doing family history research might stumble on this podcast and get a little glimpse of your Sigma Nu story if you wouldn't mind sharing.
0:17:40.8 Carl Jackson: Adam, I'll be glad to. And Sigma Nu has been a huge part of my life since 1974. I graduated from high school in 74. I was going to just attend Georgia State University in Atlanta for about a year and then transfer. I met the Sigma Nu's on campus. They rushed me hard and it really changed my life. It allowed me to stay in Atlanta. It was a great group of friends. To this day, they're some of the best friends that I have on this planet. And I really enjoy working with the younger guys. I'm chapter advisor of Ada Gamma now. And it's been really fun to, after having been a middle school principal, dealing with a little bit older group of guys. And usually that works out really well. The middle school guys and the college guys are quite a bit different. But it does help that I had a little bit of an opportunity to work with a lot of young people in their teens before I began to work with our active chapter. We've got a great chapter and I enjoy working with them. And that's the big part of my Sigma Nu life right now.
0:18:45.0 Carl Jackson: I also chair the Atlanta Honorary Board, which is a fundraiser for our national organization. And I've gained a lot of good friends across the country and the region because of that. So Sigma Nu is a big part of my life. It has been and I enjoy giving back a little bit.
0:19:03.0 Christopher Brenton: That's awesome. So just a second ago, I mentioned that I was particularly excited about your webinar. I had registered, was getting ready to attend, and unfortunately a conflict came up that prevented me from being able to listen. So selfishly, I'm excited that I now get to ask you the questions that I was wanting to bring to that conversation. But I know for me, like when I saw the topic, Adam was doing an awesome job of coordinating these really interesting webinar topics that we have. And I saw this one and I was like, oh my gosh, I'm really excited about that. Because a few years ago, I guess I joined the bandwagon of the 23andMe movement for a lot of people who were, you know, there was kind of an intense, I think, interest in this topic, specifically because that service had recently launched or recently had gained a lot of appeal.
0:19:56.8 Christopher Brenton: And so I went through that process. I had a lot of my family members who did as well. But then even recently, I have found that while the genetic history was really fascinating, and I did get some of my ancestry reports, I get to see like the family tree tool that 23andMe generates, and it's incomplete. And it doesn't really provide you with a lot of the opportunities to kind of then explore family records or to kind of do a deeper dive into your past. And so I was really interested to kind of go into the webinar thinking like, hey, what other tools are going to be helpful if I'm interested in exploring that further. So I know, we'll ask you more about those tools in a moment. But that's my genealogy kind of story. Carl for you, what got you interested in this? And where did you start?
0:20:49.6 Carl Jackson: Well, I began probably when I was in my mid 30s. So age wise, I wasn't too far off from where you guys are right now. I didn't really know where to start. And I had talked with some family members, I had a little bit of information. But I think the thing that got me hooked was when I talked to a couple of cousins and began to get a few stories. And in the early '90s, when I was in my mid 30s, my mother passed away, she had a lot of that information. And it made me realize that folks are not going to be here forever. The folks that we all take for granted, our grandparents, our parents, our aunts and uncles and cousins are not going to be here. So what really got me started was kind of a, I thought, wow, these people, a lot of them are aging out, and I need to get the information. They know these people that lived in the 1800s. And I need to get that so that I have that. And so I kind of went on a quest, I called some cousins, they put me in touch via email, which had become available by the '90s. And I was able to carry on a correspondence and begin to really gather together a network of cousins and people. At that time, unlike today, nothing was available really on the internet, there was no ancestry.com generally available or 23andMe.
0:22:08.2 Carl Jackson: So a lot of it was, you know, sending emails out finding message boards online with family names. And so I went through that process, I visited, and this is still important. I visited a lot of courthouses. I'm fortunate I'm in Atlanta in the metro Atlanta area, most of my family's from Georgia and Alabama, and maybe a little in the Carolinas. And I was able to take a day off here and there and drive to courthouses and pull marriage records and probate records for wills. And once I kind of knew what I was looking for. So that was a process in those days, a lot of that now you mentioned that 23andMe was kind of what got you started. A lot of that information in ancestry.com is available more so than 23andMe. They really have two different functions, I think that maybe, that you kind of articulated. 23andMe is really kind of a DNA site that kind of does family history as a part of it. Ancestry is a family history site where they build a lot of family trees, and the DNA piece is an adjunct to it.
0:23:19.3 Carl Jackson: You can use only the DNA feature but if you're not using the whole feature of tying the trees to the DNA, you're missing the essence of it. I have not, in full disclosure, have not done a 23andMe test yet, I will because I think that's a good site. But I use typically Ancestry and that's where the tools are today, I think that most of us need with our busy lives.
0:23:46.7 Christopher Brenton: Absolutely. Carl, this may be prying a little bit, but in your discovery, did you discover anything that was particularly fascinating or surprising?
0:23:57.5 Carl Jackson: I did. And you know, I get... A quick story. My DNA was out there and I had, my wife warned me, she said, "If you put your DNA out there, is there anything that might happen that you don't know about?" Well, the good news is it didn't happen to me directly. I had no DNA that was unaccounted for, but I did. It can happen, so be careful. But I did get a contact from a lady in Columbus, Ohio, and she said, "Could we talk?" And she asked me if my uncle was so-and-so and I said, "Yes." And I said, "Well, give me a call, let's talk." And we talked on the phone. It turned out that my uncle had an affair with a lady at the end of World War II and there was a child that came out of that affair. And I was talking to her on the phone. She's my first cousin. And she had kind of always knew who her birth father was, but had no connection to him. She waited until he was gone and until his wife was gone. And then she approached the families. And as a cousin, I was really excited.
0:25:00.8 Carl Jackson: We were kind of interested to see how the actual half siblings would feel about it. But interestingly enough, we had a big family reunion. We've become very close to her and her family. I've been to her home. She's been to ours. And it's a wonderful experience. She's my first cousin and I'm probably closer to her than really any of my other first cousins that I've known all my life. So that was a huge, huge discovery. I was really excited about that. So that's the best part of it, guys, is when you find the people along the way, when you're doing this detective research look at things. The best part is the people that you meet, your second and third and even first cousins you didn't know. And they become family that you didn't know that you had. And that's really, to me, the best part of it.
0:25:44.2 Adam Girtz: It really is incredible.
0:25:46.5 Christopher Brenton: It's funny that you say that. I was just going to add really quickly that that same experience happened to my mother when she had done the 23andMe service, that she got connected to a distant cousin who was kind of in a similar situation. Had come from an offshoot of a relationship. But they unfortunately haven't been able to get connected as closely as it sounds like you have with your distant relative. I believe this individual lives in New York state, I believe in the upstate. And so my mother lives in North Carolina. So it was a little bit difficult for them to kind of arrange opportunities to spend time together. But they have connected. And it is interesting, the discoveries that you make through this opportunity.
0:26:36.1 Carl Jackson: It really is. It really is. And in one other while we're talking about DNA, one of the thing that I found my surname is Jackson. I've always considered myself a Jackson. I have researched my line back to my second great grandfather who was born in 1825 in Georgia. But I couldn't get past that 1825 date for him. And I thought, well, that's odd. And Jackson's a very common name. So it's sometimes hard to put the families together because there's so many of them. It turns out that because of DNA that a cousin of mine that I work with on this and we did our DNA and got to doing the research. It turns out that apparently my family was not named Jackson before 1825. All of my cousins in that line are Blakes, B-L-A-K-E. And there's a whole Blake family there. And apparently my second great grandfather was originally a Blake. And we speculate that maybe he was a child from an affair before his father got married or maybe a child from another wife that we're unaware of or whatever. But we don't know why he took the name Jackson. We speculate, but we don't know. And all of a sudden, all of my thoughts about being a Jackson, my family's only had that name for 200 years. It's a long time, but I expected something...
0:27:52.3 Adam Girtz: Yeah, only 200 years.
0:27:53.6 Carl Jackson: Yeah. But so many of these lines and particularly my lines, because most of mine are English and they were here early on in the colonies. That was a real surprise to me. So it kind of shook me to the core in a good way. It's like, wow, what a mystery this is. We haven't figured it out yet, but the DNA is absolutely... Doesn't lie. So it's put us on another course of investigation and we may never know the answer, but it's quite a story within our family.
0:28:23.9 Adam Girtz: So I like to draw a parallel here to a favorite genre of movie of mine of the last couple of years, which has been like re-colorized old footage, notably. Peter Jackson directed a World War I documentary called 'They Shall Not Grow Old', I think. I might be butchering the name, but regardless, really, really incredible recoloring and remastering of this old footage where, if... Like me, I grew up watching the History Channel and I would see the footage like this. But it's always really grainy and it's, the frame rate is really low compared to what we're used to going and seeing, a modern movie or something shot with a high speed camera now. But then watching that recolored, it's almost like, oh, wow, these were human beings that that existed and had feelings and lives and all of these things. And that to me is kind of what... It reminds me of, like what you're doing here, right. because you can look at a newspaper article or something like that that has a birth record or a death record. But then you start to get some of these pieces where it's like, oh, my second great grandfather changed his name at some point or there was a shift in the last name. Why was that? And now you're starting to color in and fill in these blanks and really start to see your ancestors, not just as ambiguous, just a name and a birth and death date.
0:29:55.7 Adam Girtz: You may be on a grave marker or something like that, but really like a full fledged human being with a life and with relationships struggles, successes, turmoils, like all of this cool stuff. Like that's just so, so fascinating to be able to start to color all that in. I just... It's such a neat thing.
0:30:15.1 Carl Jackson: Well, it is. And let me say, first of all, that's a fantastic movie that you reference. And when it came out, it came out in a limited release. And I remember going at like 10 o'clock at night on a weekday to be able to see it in the theater. And it was so cool.
0:30:27.6 Adam Girtz: I did it too. [laughter]
0:30:30.2 Carl Jackson: Yeah. It was so cool to be able to see it. And it was... It really your point to your point. It humanizes them. They're not just an image that moves on the screen. You felt like you got to know those guys in the trenches. And there are some features in Ancestry. It's funny you mentioned that. But Ancestry.com has a feature that I don't really use, but I haven't had a chance to play with it. But you can take older photographs and they will colorize it, digitally colorize it.
0:30:57.5 Adam Girtz: Oh cool.
0:30:58.5 Carl Jackson: And it clears that up and it makes... All of a sudden, it's almost to put you there with them. And I think that's what the quest that a lot of us have is to kind of get to know them better. Who were they and learn those stories. I'll give you another quick example, guys. When my dad served in World War II. And he was in the Navy, he landed at Normandy at Omaha Beach. And then he was... His ship was almost sunk at Okinawa. So he was in both theaters during the war. So I always heard his stories and he talked about the war. But after my parents died, I was cleaning out their house as you do and going through things. And I found a box of letters and every letter that my father sent in four years during the war to my mother, were in a box that she kept. And so it gave me this window into my parents who were no longer here. And I got to see them as just, 21, 22 year old young adults in the middle of this incredible world situation and all of his thoughts while he was overseas. And I was looking for the big hitter like, tell me about your experience at Omaha Beach or whatever. It was mundane things like, well, gas rationing is tough. And if you need tires for the car, you can buy used tires from this guy. Go see so-and-so or take some money to my mom or whatever.
0:32:25.3 Carl Jackson: And it was just their day to day lives. But it really gave me a window into that great generation before I ever existed. And kind of the way that they saw the world. So I would encourage everybody that's on that journey to look for letters, talk to your talk to your cousins, talk to your aunts and uncles. Take a tape recorder, a video, record them, get that information from them because it makes them come to life. And one caution, Adam, that we talked a little bit about when we gathered the last time was that we can't look at history always through our eyes today. We can look at it through our eyes, but we can't judge them based on our standards and morals and whatnot from today. These people lived in a different, much more difficult time. And we have to study the history around them. We need to study the locations where they were to really understand who those people are. So I would encourage people as they go through that journey to bring them to life like the colorization of those documentaries. I would tell you to go and kind of colorize who those people were by learning the history of their towns or cities and how they interacted with those folks.
0:33:40.0 Adam Girtz: So I think, Christopher, you had mentioned earlier that you'd like to hear about resources and stuff like that. Did you have a specific question that you wanted to ask or?
0:33:53.4 Christopher Brenton: Not in particular. You know, I do not have experience with Ancestry, and so I'm coming to the table looking for more information about that, which it sounds like Carl has. But Carl, if you want to talk more about your Ancestry.com experience or if you have any other resources, I think that would be really helpful.
0:34:10.0 Carl Jackson: Yeah. And I don't want to make this an Ancestry.com commercial, but I will say, you know, what?
0:34:14.9 Christopher Brenton: Sigma Nu, sponsored by Ancestry.com.
0:34:17.1 Adam Girtz: Yeah, really.
0:34:18.3 Carl Jackson: If we can...
0:34:19.0 Christopher Brenton: We're not actually in full disclosure
[laughter]
0:34:20.9 Adam Girtz: No yeah, that's a joke.
0:34:23.4 Carl Jackson: Well, let me, Christopher, let me do this. Let me just start it out with, all of these resources are available mainly because of the Church of Jesus Christ and the Latter-day Saints, the LDS Church, the Mormons.
0:34:35.4 Adam Girtz: Interesting.
0:34:38.1 Carl Jackson: It's important to understand that in the Mormon faith that they have a sacrament, a temple sacrament, that is a proxy baptism of ancestors. So if you're... They can bring their predecessors into the Mormon faith by proxy. So they go out and do all this incredible history research. And if you can, you go to any Library of Congress, local, regional library, and there'll be ladies from the Mormon Church in there on weekdays going through and you'll hear them say, well, Salt Lake needs this or that. And they research all the history of all the people here in the United States and they scan it, they put it online, they make it available, Ancestry takes advantage of it, along with other services. So we owe the Mormons a great debt and they've shared this. And if you're researching and trying to get started and you have a local Mormon church available, many of them have a research room and volunteers that will help you get started. So that's a great way to get started with your search on your folks. And they're really good at teaching that. So that's one resource that I highly recommend. And I think most people don't know that. And so we owe the Mormons.
0:35:49.8 Christopher Brenton: That's interesting.
0:35:51.3 Carl Jackson: You know, the LDS folks a big thank you. Let me talk just quickly. If you're going to get started these days, don't do it just on paper, do it online. So you can use a variety of services. Ancestry typically is the one that is the most extensive. It's the one I use. People need to know, it's about $22 a month. It's what I pay for access to North American records. If you want to go worldwide, you pay $33 a month. And then they have an all access feature with all their databases for $50 a month. So you can get started at $21 or $22 a month. And it's usually within everybody's budget. You might consider if you're getting started, you can do a trial with Ancestry. I've heard someone the other day in our last meeting, they talked about just doing a trial for a week or two to see if it's something that you want to do.
0:36:45.0 Carl Jackson: But when you're ready to go, they offer a lot of features. Let me mention some other things you can do. Family Tree Builder is software you can put on your computer. Roots Magic, Legacy. A Family Historian and Family Tree Maker are all things that you can put on your computer. You can create something called a ged.com file that you can upload to a service like Ancestry later. So if you want to do it on your computer and don't want to pay so much yet while you're collecting your data from relatives and grandparents and cousins, you can put it all there rather than just putting it on paper and begin to build your family tree. And then you upload it into Ancestry.com. That's what I did when Ancestry's features became richer. So that's one feature. Resources, though, it's always good to go firsthand so you can take some of your vacation time during the year when you're traveling, go to some of the places where ancestors were. You can go to local universities. I got my grandfather's transcripts from Illinois College. He attended there in the 1890s. And they sent me his transcripts in the local Greek organization that he was a part of on his campus.
0:37:58.0 Carl Jackson: There are also the local public libraries. I did a lot of research there. There are city directories that are available. There are books available there that you wouldn't find online on Ancestry or any other place. So those local libraries of the towns where your ancestors were are huge. The State Archives here in Georgia, our State Archives is tremendous. They are in a big brand new facility down south of Atlanta. And you can go there and work with people and they can help you pull information that you can't actually physically get to. They can get it for you. From the State Archives, I got one of my great grandfather's Confederate records when he applied for his Civil War pension, which paid like $20 a month in 1905. But he had to prove that he was a soldier and he had to verify it and have other people swear that he was in this particular unit. And he applied for his pension records. So I got all of his Civil War history as a Confederate soldier from that one source. So that's available from State Archives. If you have parents or grandparents that served in World War II or Korea, if you provide a death certificate, the U.S government, the military will provide you with the military records of a father or a grandfather or uncle or whatever.
0:39:11.8 Carl Jackson: So that's another place to go. Church records. I'm a Methodist. My wife's Catholic and the Catholics do a lot better job of recording history than the Methodists. And her family was from New York and Brooklyn and that area. And I have all sorts of baptismal records from the Catholic Church on her great grandparents and other relatives. So those are some really good places to go. Much of it's online, but not all of it. So and part of the hunt is actually going to those cemeteries, going to those courthouses, looking at the... It's nothing like picking up a document that's 120 years old and looking at it. It goes to Adam's point about... It kind of colorizes it. It makes it real. It's more than just an image online.
0:40:00.4 Adam Girtz: Yeah. You mentioned during our webinar, findagrave.com. Is that the website or service?
0:40:06.5 Carl Jackson: Yes. And that's a great one, Adam. That's one that you can even I think they're connected to Ancestry. You can actually go and pull information down at findagrave.com and you can see pictures of the... Volunteers go out and take pictures of headstones and cemeteries. Sometimes they put information about the family on the page. So that's another great source. And as I recall, I haven't used it directly outside of Ancestry in a while, but I believe that you can go in and pull information out. You just can't document anything there unless you're a member of like ancestry.com.
0:40:39.8 Adam Girtz: Gotcha. Okay. So Find a Grave is something to research your ancestors, not necessarily to find prime real estate for your own personal eternal resting place.
0:40:49.4 Carl Jackson: Well, interestingly enough, I've got some graves available over in Tallapoosa, Georgia. There are six graves that are unused and I actually claimed them just because somebody in my family had died and not done so. So if anybody's looking for burial plots in Haralson County in Tallapoosa, Georgia, I've got a prime spot and I'll sell it to you cheap.
0:41:10.6 Adam Girtz: Oh, is that... This is getting away from the topic, but is that comforting at all knowing that that's your spot? Like, that's such a... I had never thought about this.
0:41:19.8 Carl Jackson: No, you know what? It's not my spot. And I'm not one of these people that want to go put my name on something before I'm there. So but I will tell you this, cemeteries are fabulous and you can go to historical societies as a resource if you're looking for information. There's something special about going to a cemetery and seeing somebody from the 1840s or 1790s or 19 early teens and seeing where that resting place is and touching that headstone. I've actually gone out and had some of them cleaned and restored. I've actually marked some graves of some of my great grandparents that had not been marked. And at once I was able to prove they were there by going and doing some research. And I felt like I was honoring those people that went before me by doing so. And so, I think that's a really important thing. And it's a place of... It's a solemn place. But a trip through an interesting graveyard, particularly if you live in an area that's a little bit older, particularly in the northeastern United States, is a fabulous trip.
0:42:19.6 Carl Jackson: So again, you can kind of reach out and touch history, so to speak, because you can imagine those people as they were being buried there and their family and what they experienced. And to Adam's point from earlier, it colorizes that memory and in that historical note. So I would recommend you using that. That's a great point.
0:42:41.6 Adam Girtz: What an incredible experience. Cool.
0:42:44.5 Christopher Brenton: Well, I guess, Carl, to add to your perspective and the tools that you've referenced, just as a quick aside, being a 23andMe user for any listeners who are interested in that. The one thing that I'll say about their ancestry tools is because it's genetic, you know, they're really trying to map out your genetic heritage, which provides kind of a global perspective on human migration. And so it is really interesting just to kind of see, or I found it very interesting just to kind of see like, they talk about your ancestors from thousands of years ago and kind of their global migration and ultimately how you ended up where you are. So they're not necessarily connecting you based on documentation, which is, of course, ancestry strength. But, I do think that it also provides an additional layer to understanding your human story and kind of how you came to be. And I really found that the tools that they focused on from a genetic history perspective are really, really fascinating. So if anyone's interested in that, I give it a two thumbs up but certainly, I think both services are great at doing what they do best. And they're providing a little bit of a different service.
0:44:08.2 Carl Jackson: I totally agree. And I need to get involved with 23andMe. One of the things that I understand 23andMe does, it gives you also kind of a look at health issues and whatnot. So it can kind of map genetic health issues and problems and provide you with a little more detail about who you are genetically in a variety of ways. Ancestry, they take DNA, and then they take the family trees that people have put up online, and it allows you to kind of look through and see and compare. It gives you some hints that way, the ancestry strength with these family trees that people have created as they take the DNA match and map it. I've got like 6000 cousins that they list, I think it's somewhere between four, five, 6000. And I'll never know who they are. I mean, I'll never have any way to connect them. A lot of people just take the DNA test only, but it has allowed me to meet and work with and create some friendships with some second and third and even fourth cousins that I never knew that I had and we've been able to like solve some mysteries and then raise some other questions about who we are.
0:45:16.6 Carl Jackson: So the DNA component's fascinating. One aside to that guys is that a lot of you, if you watch any of these shows on network television, like 48 hours or whatever, there are a lot of criminologists that are now using a public database that where people submit their DNA and I don't remember the name of the public database, but they're using that to try to solve murder mysteries where they have DNA from a crime scene from the 1970s. And they're able to use today's DNA technology to figure out who actually left that DNA through blood or whatever the crime scene and they've actually solved a number of murders and other crimes because of that. So if you've committed a crime several decades ago, don't put your DNA out there unless you want to get caught.
0:46:03.5 Christopher Brenton: Yeah, and I will say too you know for anyone who are concerned about you know public access to your records, of course, through these services I assume ancestry is the same as 23andMe, but you can opt out of the data being publicly accessible. So if that is your interest, you don't have to completely opt out of the service but you can ensure that your data is protected.
0:46:29.6 Carl Jackson: Well, it is a privacy issue and I think the generation of young adults today probably view privacy different than we viewed it 20 years ago, 30 or 40 years ago. We all give up a lot of privacy online. I mean, Google and everybody else, I mean they have all these details about us. Yeah, cell phone, you name it. And there's not a lot of privacy out there anymore but I do have one of my sons, I have two sons, my older son's DNA is there. My younger son, he says "No I don't want my DNA out there it's a private issue." You can also mark your family trees that you build, you can hide living people if you don't want people to see the family tree because most people are more interested in the past. But if you want living people to be shielded and don't want them to be out there, you can make sure that they're marked private and nobody sees them, which I think is important because you need to protect your privacy.
0:47:26.1 Adam Girtz: Yeah, absolutely.
0:47:27.4 Christopher Brenton: Carl, before we wrap up I do have one other question for you. Again, as someone who is interested in the Ancestry service, I know that I have a relative who is similar to you, has spent an extensive amount of time with Ancestry to look up our family tree and she has provided some of that information to our family. She's on my father's side so we don't really have anyone to my knowledge who's done it on my mother's side. If I become a customer through Ancestry, if I link to her, this family member who has done a good amount of research through Ancestry does that then populate, utilizing kind of what she has found? Or is it I'm still going to have to do that research on my own to duplicate her efforts?
0:48:17.9 Carl Jackson: The beauty of a service like Ancestry or Family Match or any of these other services, you can, and I can speak to Ancestry, you can... It'll, if you begin to build a tree or you have an Ancestry, it will tell you who else is researching the same person. So if that name is matched, and you can compare family trees on a side-by-side comparison, the caveat to me that I always offer to folks is don't believe anything that everybody else has done unless they cite it with a good citation. So in other words, when I put in information, I'll say it's from the 1870 census, or I'll say it's from the probate will of so-and-so.
0:48:56.8 Carl Jackson: A lot of times people just take a quick look at it and if it's a common name, they make mistakes. They'll see that this, for instance, they'll see four children in the 1890 census under somebody's name and they'll assume they're all daughters and sons. Well, it could be that they might be a niece or a nephew or somebody that was just a boarder living there. And it may or may not be marked. And let me just say this, when you go through the census records, which are probably, that's the Holy Grail for everything that we do in North America and the United States. You have to be careful because the census takers were just average people. They were illiterate, but they were interviewing people that many of whom, particularly if they were rural people, they... I had ancestors in the 1800s, they couldn't read or write. So they would say, "My son Adam, well, how do you spell Adam? Is it Adam?" They're like, "Well, I don't know how to spell it." So the guy would put A-D-A-M-M or something. And so you'd see misspelled things. I have cotton relatives like the fabric or the plant spelled Colton or Calton.
0:50:05.2 Carl Jackson: Sometimes their handwriting is bad. Today's generation, these young kids that are coming up today they don't use and at least not exposed to cursive writing, wouldn't be able to read most of these documents because they can't read cursive. Ancestry is pretty good about translating that and giving you a typed copy of it. But all these people made mistakes. So when you go through it, don't trust the information. Know that the people that were being interviewed, many of them were not completely literate. And there are... You can see a lot of mistakes made and you have to kind of navigate that. So that's a caveat. But be sure that the information is cited before you adopt it. But you would not have to go back and reinvent the wheel to your initial question. They will share that with you. You can put that into your tree once you're sure that's good information and build it out. You would start with yourself and then work back on your father's side and then go through those lines and then work back on your mother's side and work through those lines.
0:51:04.3 Carl Jackson: And I would build it one line at a time until you get to a point you can't go any further and then go to another branch and go to another branch. Stay focused on that branch because it's like a big puzzle. You need to keep your head in who these people are, where they were as you begin to solve the issues and begin to see who is related to whom. So that's just a little advice on that.
0:51:26.2 Christopher Brenton: And it's funny the illiteracy piece. Adam, I don't know if I have ever told you this, but...
0:51:34.8 Adam Girtz: That you're into it?
0:51:36.0 Christopher Brenton: My last name is actually a misspelling. So my great, is either my great grandfather, or my great great grandfather immigrated to Canada from, I believe, England and was illiterate. And I believe, I can't remember exactly what the spelling was prior, but Brenton was how he spelled it out phonetically. And so to your point, Carl, that is literally my family history. So Brenton is a completely made up name, which is why it is really fairly unique. Like, I don't feel like I encounter very many Brentons. So a funny connection there.
0:52:16.7 Adam Girtz: You're not Christopher Benton.
[chuckle]
0:52:20.8 Christopher Brenton: Not that I know of. I don't think that it was that misspelling. We think that it may actually be spelled like Britain, like the Great Britain. But we're not 100% sure.
0:52:32.2 Carl Jackson: But those are phonetic names. And you'll see different spellings. One of my family's names, you know, is Dorough, D-O-R-O-U-G-H. But many times within the same generation, they spell it with two R's. So you're right. People were illiterate. And remember, the folks that were coming in the 1800s from Eastern Europe through Ellis Island, a lot of the people at Ellis Island, the clerical people there would try to get their names. These these folks spoke Polish or Czechoslovakian or whatever, and they would almost just invent a name for these people or they would anglicanize it in such a way that you wouldn't recognize it. So a lot of people have names that really were only changed a couple of hundred years ago, me included. And for a variety of reasons. But that's what makes it kind of fun. And that's kind of the exciting part of kind of exploring that. But the best way to figure that out is to just get involved. And you probably can figure out where those changes were and what the original spelling was, perhaps. So good luck with that.
0:53:34.4 Christopher Brenton: Yeah, I appreciate that.
0:53:36.4 Adam Girtz: Well, on the topic of advice, we love as we wrap up here, just any quick do's or don'ts, just quick tips for people getting started. Do you have any hard and fast hints that you'd have some do's and don'ts?
0:53:55.0 Carl Jackson: Yes. And I mentioned it earlier, but start... Call family members, email them, send them a Christmas card and tell them you want to follow up with them. Record your conversations digitally, write it down, build up your files, Adam, based on the family surname. And even if it's a girl that gets married later as an adult woman, keep her listed with her original family. because she may be married two or three times. You don't know. So stay with the original names. Build your files. Get some of these big plastic boxes like you get at the container store and get some hanging files that'll fit in there. I've got a closet full and everybody that does this winds up after about 10 years having three or four of these big boxes. Scan the information as quickly as you can and get it into your digital files, no matter where you're building on Ancestry or wherever. Get it scanned in and get started that way. And get to, read the local history of the people that you're looking at, because it'll help you explain how they get from point A to point B.
0:55:01.9 Carl Jackson: And you begin to put the pieces of the puzzle together because you're not just looking at dates and names. You're trying to build a story about your family and a history of it. And that's the best part. And just like Chris was mentioning, "Wow, my family came through and they changed the name spelling. I don't think that my great grandfather could read." And it's that whole story of not that they migrated from here to there. But why did they migrate? What did they do? What were their occupations? So look at it as a story, not just a collection of data and cherish the people that you meet along the way because you meet some fascinating relatives. You have something in common because I'll leave you with this. If you're married or have a partner or a girlfriend, whatever, they don't really care about your family as much as you do, and they're going to be... They'll smile and listen politely like my wife does. But you need somebody that you can be excited about finding something with. And that's the people that you meet along the way.
0:56:01.0 Adam Girtz: Very cool. Brother Carl, thank you so much for doing this with us. Again, I was very excited to attend the webinar. Christopher, I'm glad you got your chance to ask a couple of questions as well. So very valuable. Carl, is there, if people are interested in learning more or would like to reach out to you, is that something you'd be interested in or?
0:56:24.4 Carl Jackson: Absolutely, I'm glad to help you, listen... I got... After we did our... After we did the Zoom call the other day, I had several people reach out last night by email and I was able to answer some questions and I've made some new friends. And we're having discussions about maybe they're beginning to walk through their history. So I can be reached. I'm happy to talk to anybody. Email's the best way to get me. And since you're not looking at it, I'll give it to you. It's carljackson3@bellsouth.net, I spell Carl with a C and the three as numeral, carljackson3@bellsouth.net. And just send me a note and say you're a Sigma Nu brother and I will look forward to answering questions or helping any way I can.
0:57:10.5 Adam Girtz: Yeah, we'll put that in the show notes as well. Christopher makes really wonderful show notes. And that's a little plug for Christopher show notes, if you haven't gone in and looked at that, our listeners, Christopher does amazing work getting our podcast both transcribed and also notes on the episode itself, including any relevant links or other plugs in the show notes. So definitely check that out. And if you ever have any issues with that, definitely reach out to us news@sigmanu.org and we can can help you out there. But, Carl, thank you again so much for being on the show. We will talk to you soon.
0:57:52.4 Carl Jackson: Thanks a lot. And thank you for what you guys do for our national fraternity.
0:57:57.1 Adam Girtz: Oh...
0:57:57.2 Christopher Brenton: Thanks, Carl.
0:57:57.8 Adam Girtz: It's nothing. [chuckle]
[Transition Music]
0:58:30.8 Adam Girtz: Alright, everyone, welcome back. Wonderful, wonderful interview with brother Carl Jackson. Really cool. I think, Christopher, if you'll forgive my meandering segue into what we're talking about here, I am... I'm a sports fan. I enjoy watching sports and all of that, but I've never been the person that gets obsessive about stats and know, you watch Sports Center every night and gets caught up on who's going where and who's from where and all this stuff. But what I love about sports is going and watching an event or watching on TV an event with someone who is very passionate about it, because I love getting excited with them when they have something that they're excited about. And I felt a lot of that when you... When talking with with Carl Jackson about genealogy, right? Like he's very passionate about this.
0:59:34.4 Adam Girtz: And to see that type of passion and to get to indulge someone in something that they're passionate about is really neat for me. And then on top of that, you know, getting married this last year, like we did a little bit of family history research and finding pictures of grandparents and whatnot. And I was able to go even deeper, find great grandparents and people born in the 1800s that are my ancestors and finding pictures of them and all that stuff was really neat for me. So to kind of hear from someone who has been doing that type of research and much more in depth than I was even able to go research for his own family history to hear some of the stories that he's found, it really is kind of a neat thing to watch and be alongside someone who's passionate like that. What were your thoughts?
1:00:27.2 Christopher Brenton: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I hope that our listeners could also hear my enthusiasm for the conversation, too. I was super excited when we reached out to Carl and he was interested in basically duplicating his efforts...
1:00:41.3 Adam Girtz: Yeah.
1:00:41.7 Christopher Brenton: In following up on his, I think, really well attended webinar to then help us record this episode so we could kind of bring that same conversation to a different audience. I love this stuff. I'm super excited to... I was super excited to hear Carl's thoughts about it, to kind of get his tips and points of view. I found myself in the conversation being like, "Gosh, I just want to go over to Ancestry.com." Again, I always go out there. To start that process right now. And so I hope that our listeners felt like they got something of value of it. If the topic was of interest to them, I hope that again, it proves to be a very valuable resource. If it's not something that's interesting and you're not... Something of interest to you, and you're not particularly passionate about genealogy or finding, I guess, your your family history, or maybe that's something you've already done and so this is something you're well versed in, I hope at least you enjoy the opportunity to again hear from another alumnus talk about what they're passionate about, kind of like how they channel their passions into a post-graduate experience. And I'm glad that we get to feature our alumni in this way and really showcase, I think, just the unique alumni in alumni interests that makes up the Legion of Honor.
1:02:10.6 Adam Girtz: Yeah. Stated podcast purpose, connecting you to the stories from our brotherhood and what a story it was.
1:02:16.9 Christopher Brenton: Absolutely.
1:02:18.2 Adam Girtz: Yeah. Pretty neat. And it's... I just thought it was cool that he kind of found out, like... Encountered a problem, right? Like, "Oh, my last name lineage stops at this point. And it might be 200 years, but like, I'm trying to go further back than that," and then finding out the solution to that, which is, "Oh, wow, like through this DNA tool I was able to figure out that actually I had an ancestor that changed their name for some reason." And now, you know, now that that whole connection is... Enables him to go deeper and find out, okay, now he's going to research the the Blakes and kind of figure out how far back that that goes and what other records that that opens up. So, yeah, really neat conversation. Glad we're able to have it. And again, if that's something that that interested you, check out our webinar series.
1:03:12.5 Adam Girtz: There's all kinds of awesome topics that we're going to be getting into in the future here. And if you know... On that note, if you are an alumnus and you are passionate about something and you have this kind of more in-depth knowledge on a topic like that, you reach out to us. We would love to hear those things, be excited about those things with you and potentially indulge that a little bit and start to share in that with you. So pretty cool. Well, so this is our last podcast before the end of the year, before the holiday season. So from me to you, Christopher, and to our listeners, happy holidays. I hope you enjoy it. I hope you're able to spend some time with family and friends, with loved ones and pets and with yourself. Take some time for yourself. That's what I'll say. Happy holiday greetings from me. Christopher, would you like to share your your holiday greetings as well?
1:04:16.5 Christopher Brenton: To those sentiments, definitely taking from this episode, I hope maybe this gives some people inspiration to, when you're around your family. Maybe now is the time to start up those conversations about, "Hey, you know, I would love to learn more about our family history. Could you tell me that?" Or if you're maybe around some older relatives who you don't normally spend time with now is your chance to kind of hear about their history and stories from them growing up. So hopefully people found that as a source of inspiration. But again, to echo your points, we certainly want to wish everyone a happy holidays, lots of rest and relaxation and kind of what tends to be a down period for most folks. And we'll be back with you at the beginning of the year with a new set of podcast episodes on a number of different topics that we're excited for you to hear soon.
1:05:16.5 Adam Girtz: Yeah, we... Christopher and I did our planning meetings for the next season recently and I'm very excited. A lot of really cool topics. And again, just very thankful for this platform to be able to explore some of these stories and these topics that are important to our brothers and therefore important to us. I think that's a really neat experience. So, yeah, enjoy your downtime. And then we will be hitting the pedal hard right out the beginning of the year with College of Chapters. So very, very much looking forward to seeing our new commanders. And honestly, for me, and I might have said this on the show before, but the College of Chapters is a time that really energizes me for the year with getting to kind of feed off of the passion and the energy that our commanders bring and the excitement that they bring to that. So looking forward to that, looking forward to a new year, 2023. Who'd have thought? I always thought like, I remember being a kid in 2000 and whatever and just thinking ahead to like, "Oh, the 2020s. Wow. That'll be... That's the future, man." And now we're here. Now we're in the future. And it's... I don't have a flying car yet. I don't know if I expected that or what, but I don't have one. Not yet.
1:06:40.7 Christopher Brenton: Maybe one day.
1:06:42.1 Adam Girtz: One day, one day. Alright. Well, thank you all for listening. Very much appreciate you all and happy holidays and we will see you in... We'll see you next year. [laughter]
[Outro Music]