Stories That Live In Us

Episoade

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  The Heirloom Portrait & The Danish Flood: Verifying Family Lore (with Rhonda Budge) | Episode 129 17.09.2026 34min

  Growing up, my guest Rhonda Budge spent hours sitting beside her grandmother, staring at a massive framed portrait of her great-great-grandfather, Johann Christian Hansen. Family lore claimed he heroically rescued neighbors from their rooftops during an 1872 Danish flood, lost his ship, and gave away his reward money. It’s a story that sounded almost too extraordinary to be completely true. But when Rhonda set a clear research goal and wrote to an archive in Denmark, a 1908 newspaper obituary...
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  From Utah to Iceland: Passing Living Heritage to the Next Generation with Eric Allen | Episode 128 10.09.2026 30min

  How do you take dry facts on a family tree and turn them into something your kids can actually feel? In this episode, Eric Allen joins me to share how a trip from a pioneer monument in Spanish Fork, Utah, to the volcanic coast of Iceland transformed his family's connection to their roots. From discovering heritage food traditions in the kitchen to an unbelievable workplace coincidence involving ancestors who lived in the exact same house 140 years ago, we explore how family stories build resi...
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  From Belarus to the Boston Meat Wars: Uncovering a Rebel Ancestor (with Suzanne Hoffman) | Episode 127 03.09.2026 42min

  When Suzanne Hoffman sat down to help her daughter with a middle-school history project, she never expected to uncover a radical rebel in her own family tree. In this episode, Suzanne shares the remarkable story of her great-grandmother Eva, a 15-year-old Jewish immigrant who spoke six languages, led street marches for working mothers, and spearheaded the famous Boston Meat Wars boycott when food prices spiked. From Belarusian photo studios to secret passenger manifests, we explore how histor...
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  How the Air Force Saved My Father’s Life (with Victoria Robinson) | Episode 126 27.08.2026 40min

  When Victoria Robinson’s father stepped in to defend an elderly coworker at an Arkansas sawmill in 1952, he had to run for his life. Shaken and hiding in the dark balcony of a segregated movie theater. A chance encounter there saved him and sparked a powerful family legacy of military service and resilience. Join us on Stories That Live In Us as Victoria shares her father's harrowing escape, her mother’s groundbreaking military service, and how unexpected paper trails (from quiet Salt Lake ar...
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  The Adoptee, The Next Door Neighbor, and The DNA Twist No One Saw Coming | Episode 125 20.08.2026 32min

  When I handed an adoptee a paper with his biological siblings’ names, he burst out laughing. Turns out his long-lost brother was his neighbor! After connecting with an AncestryDNA cousin match looking for his biological family, I spent hours piecing together census records and city directories to identify his biological parents. But nothing prepared either of us for the moment he read the name of his oldest brother. In this episode of Stories That Live In Us, I share the incredible story of a...
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  Raising 8 Kids After Divorce with Music, Faith, and Family Roots (with Bubba Page) | Episode 124 13.08.2026 58min

  When my guest Bubba Page walked into the studio holding his grandfather’s 1960 vinyl record album, I knew we were in for a special conversation about legacy. But after facing a painful divorce that left him with his eight children 50% of the time, Bubba turned his family’s roots in music, faith, and Depression-era resilience into a daily blueprint for intentional parenting. Join us as we discuss Sunday family jam sessions, the joy of having grandparents move close to home, and how we can anch...
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  Bootleggers, Mine Massacres, and Brooklyn (with Linda Stasi) | Episode 123 06.08.2026 39min

  Long before mobster legends took over New York, Italian immigrants were riding in rodeos, surviving coal mine massacres, and brewing bootleg wine in the Colorado mountains. In this episode of Stories That Live In Us, best-selling author and journalist Linda Stasi joins Crista Cowan to uncover how her family survived the horrific 1914 Ludlow Massacre in Pueblo, Colorado, fled to Red Hook, Brooklyn, and inspired real-life Western mafia lore. Plus, stay tuned for an eerie family address coincide...
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  Alex Haley is My Uncle: The Rest of the Story of My Family “Roots” (with Chris Haley) | Episode 122 30.07.2026 59min

  Growing up with a world-famous uncle whose book transformed American history, Chris Haley spent decades pursuing stage lights and applause before realizing his true calling was waiting inside dusty archives. In this deeply moving conversation, the nephew of Roots author Alex Haley shares how making cold calls to phone book listings led him to face hidden family truths, discover a Civil War ancestor, and direct major archival research at the Maryland State Archives. Listen to learn how confron...
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  A National TV Crew Showed Up At My House: Discovering a Lost Legacy (with Melissa Stafford) | Ep 121 23.07.2026 42min

  What if a national TV crew showed up at your door to reveal a family secret? Have you ever felt a missing piece in your family tree that you couldn’t quite place? In this episode, I sit down with Melissa Stafford, who thought her family history stopped with her immediate grandparents until an unexpected email from Ancestry® and a visit from Good Morning America changed everything. From driving past a local statue in her town for 13 years to discovering she is the direct descendant of Revoluti...
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  Stories That Connect Us (And Why DNA Isn't Enough) | Episode 120 16.07.2026 17min

  Shared ancestors make us related. Shared stories make us connected. Can I tell you a secret? My absolute favorite part of family history isn't just discovering people who lived hundreds of years ago. It's what those stories can do for our living relationships right now. Welcome to the Season 3 premiere of Stories That Live In Us! In this episode, I’m sharing a powerful realization I had during a recent, three-day primitive youth camp in the high, wildfire-threatened mountains of Utah. After p...
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  Fifty Nifty United States (with Lisa Elzey) | Episode 119 09.07.2026 59min

  What happens when you spend a year chasing family stories across all fifty states? I'm Crista Cowan (known online as The Barefoot Genealogist), and for this special Season Two retrospective, I’m pulling back the studio curtain. I’m sitting down with my longtime friend, producer, and editor, Lisa Elzey, to look back on our epic cross-country journey—from a 150-year-old sourdough starter in Alaska to a gripping witch trial in Connecticut. We’re swapping behind-the-scenes secrets, revealing whic...
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  Delaware: Courage to Save the Words That Built America (with Anna Crowley Redding) | Episode 118 02.07.2026 47min

  How close did America come to losing its foundational words forever? In this episode of Stories That Live In Us, host Crista Cowan (The Barefoot Genealogist) takes us to Delaware—the First State—as our countdown to America’s 250th birthday reaches its finale. Our guest is Anna Crowley Redding, an Emmy Award-winning investigative television reporter turned acclaimed children’s book author. Anna shares the thrilling, forgotten history behind her book, Rescuing the Declaration of Independence: H...
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  Pennsylvania: Stashed-Away Secrets and Forgotten Family (with Jessica Rae) | Episode 117 25.06.2026 49min

  What happens when a simple hint on your family tree uncovers a decades-old secret? In this episode of Stories That Live In Us, host Crista Cowan (The Barefoot Genealogist) sits down with nurse, history lover, and content creator Jessica Rae to discuss a discovery that changed her life forever. While researching her maternal line, Jessica stumbled across a U.S. federal census record that listed her great-great-grandmother, Susan, not in a household, but as an "inmate" at Mayview State Hospital...
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  New Jersey: A Sentence of Survival | Episode 116 18.06.2026 57min

  Imagine diving into your family tree to discover that your ancestors left you a secret message more than 300 years ago, encoded into the literal names of their children. I follow a trail of meticulous Quaker records from a genealogy brick wall in Ohio all the way back to 17th-century Boston to discover the story of Richard and Abigail Lippincott, my 10-times-great-grandparents. Together, they survived public excommunication in colonial Boston, two imprisonments in Devonshire, England, and rel...
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  Georgia: Two Lives, Two Coasts, One Massive Secret (with Julie Merrill) | Episode 115 11.06.2026 47min

  A dapper playboy, a broken plantation safe, an embezzlement scheme, and a grandfather who completely vanished. What happened to William H. Wheeler? 🕵️‍♂️🔍 When an 83-year-old client named Jane came to Julie Merrill, an accredited genealogist with Ancestry ProGenealogists, looking for clues about her missing grandfather, she had no idea the search would lead away from Washington state, straight past California, and deep into a high-society scandal in 1890s Georgia. Armed with DNA clusters and ...
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  Connecticut: The Windsor Witch | Episode 114 04.06.2026 21min

  〰️ 🌳 🧬 〰️ 🎧 Ready to discover more stories that could transform your family connections? Subscribe to 'Stories That Live In Us' wherever you get your podcasts, and leave a review to help other families find their path to deeper connection through family history. Together, we're building a community of families committed to preserving and sharing the stories that matter most. 🖼️ Ready to get your family tree out of your computer and onto your wall? Visit FamilyChartmasters.com ...
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  Massachusetts: From Rags to Riches to Ashes to Starting Again (with Laura Tasse) | Episode 113 28.05.2026 32min

  〰️ 🌳 🧬 〰️ 🎧 Ready to discover more stories that could transform your family connections? Subscribe to 'Stories That Live In Us' wherever you get your podcasts, and leave a review to help other families find their path to deeper connection through family history. Together, we're building a community of families committed to preserving and sharing the stories that matter most. 🖼️ Ready to get your family tree out of your computer and onto your wall? Visit FamilyChartmasters.com ...
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  Maryland: A New Kind of Identity | Episode 112 21.05.2026 19min

  Four months pregnant, two babies already buried in German soil, Anna Maria Niccum boarded a wooden ship in 1749 and crossed an ocean she'd never seen. Not for a revolution but for a foothold. My six-times great-grandmother made an extraordinary journey from the exhausted Rhineland Palatinate to the wild red-earthed frontier of Maryland's Toms Creek, where she would hold the line for nearly two decades so her children could inherit something no tyrant had ever offered her family: a new kind of...
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  South Carolina: Ancestors Leading the Charge in Battle and in Life (w/ Anne Mitchell) | Episode 111 14.05.2026 30min

  A wounded soldier refuses to dismount. His boot overflowing with blood, his hat riddled with three bullet holes, he rallies his troops up a South Carolina hill in Pennsylvania Dutch. History turns on a single moment. Anne Mitchell, a South Carolina native whose roots run deep in the Palmetto state, joins me to share the story of her sixth great-grandfather, Frederick Hambright, a German immigrant who helped win one of the most decisive (and least talked about) battles of the Revolutionary War...
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  New Hampshire: Chosen Family, Jewish Roots (with Nancy Kotz and Lynne Snierson) | Episode 110 07.05.2026 45min

  Chosen family and Jewish roots run so deep in New Hampshire's Lakes Region that two families spent generations wondering where one ended and the other began. In this episode, Jewish genealogy researcher Nancy Kotz and award-winning journalist Lynne Snierson share the stories of their families, woven together across generations. From a Lithuanian rabbi who may have missed his train stop in 1902 to lakeside lobster bakes and a synagogue that still carries the nameplates of the original founding...