Stories in Our Roots 0:03
Welcome to the Stories In Our Roots podcast. I'm your host Heather Murphy. In this podcast, we dive deep into how knowing the stories of our ancestors can make a difference in our lives today, discovering our family history is more than a hobby. It is a way to connect deeply with ourselves, those we love, and the world around us.
Heather Murphy 0:26
Hello, and welcome to another episode of stories in our roots, I am so glad that you have decided to listen today. Today's interview is with Nancy Stratford, Nancy has been researching her family history for over 50 years. And yet she still finds new information and learns new things about her family. In her interview, she talks about how she and her family use food to connect with their ancestors and to pass on traditions to new generations. She also tells a story about how a man who appeared to be a cemetery gardener give them information about one of their ancestors that they never would have been able to find otherwise, here's the interview with Nancy Stratford.
Hi, today I am here with Nancy Stratford. And I am so pleased that she would come and join us and share a little bit of her stories. Nancy, could you introduce yourself, please?
Nancy Stratford 1:22
I'm Nancy Stratford, and I'm doing genealogy a very long time. And I'm anxious to talk to you about it.
Heather Murphy 1:31
Great, thanks. Where are you from?
Nancy Stratford 1:34
Pennsylvania.
Heather Murphy 1:36
Okay. You said you've been doing this for a long time, what is your story of how you got started,
Nancy Stratford 1:44
I joined The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. And part of the program is to trace your ancestors. Back in Albany, New York, I was given a calling of helping establish the genealogy library in our stake center. In doing that, I was motivated to do my own research. And also, we set up a syllabus and program that people signed up for and came as a conference and took classes. And we taught them how to read the German script and how to set up a filing system. So I learned by doing that, what I needed to do for myself.
Heather Murphy 2:41
That's great. That's very similar to my story as I started teaching people how to do it as I was learning myself.
Nancy Stratford 2:47
Absolutely.
Heather Murphy 2:49
Great. So when you started researching your own family, what was the first part of your family you started researching?
Nancy Stratford 2:55
Well, I did it all. These are my parents, these are my four sets of grandparents, and then their parents. And so I had all of these lines going. And at first, it was kind of confusing, because it's easier to take one name and trace it. But when you have 16 names, you have to keep them straight. And so I had a file system. And I've filed all the my dad's side and then on my mother's side, and some of them are easier. And some of them are more fun, because most of them came over to this country across the ocean. And they landed in different ports, but they all ended up in Pennsylvania.
Heather Murphy 3:49
So as you're starting to research, what did you have to do in order to find out the information did your family already know a lot?
Nancy Stratford 3:56
Well, my mother knew a lot about relatives. And she knew that her mother and her gret her grandmother had run a boarding house and in up in the mountains. And so she fed me this information. So I have a little background to start with. And then the early part of research was going there. I took my oldest daughter and we went up into the mountains in Pennsylvania and we went to the cemeteries and we went to the church archives, and we went physically went to the places. We took pictures we wrote down names off. Not that gravestones are always 100% accurate, but we took names and dates off of tombstones, and then we put them under the right file or whoever we were researching. I also learned to use the census records. You can get those. And I had the forms. And so we filled out those. And so bit by bit we just added kept adding information. And some To this day, you know, 50 years later, I still do not know where my great grandfather on my father's side came from. He was born in New Jersey. I don't know his parents, and I don't know how he got there. He obviously came from Europe. But I don't know where. And to this day, I still don't know where. So there are places that stop you. Now, other ones, my mother's father's side, I go back to the new hearts, and they're in France. And they're royalty. And they're traced. I haven't back to the 14th 15th century. I didn't do it. Somebody else did that. But I could tie my line to that line. It's easy and exciting because you find things. But then sometimes, they're elusive, and they're hard to find.
Heather Murphy 6:14
So how do you keep yourself motivated to look for those hard to find people?
Nancy Stratford 6:18
You just decide one day, you're going to work on genealogy and you think, Okay, what is missing? Okay, this is missing? Where can I find this? And now that ancestry and family search, or together, I find that I get things on the computer, it'll pop up and say, Did you know so and so your ancestor was in the Spanish American War? Well, no, I didn't know that. And I look at the name, and then it has a button, then you can click and it tells you your relationship. So you click on it. And you say, Oh, yeah, I don't know these people. They're back too far. But every once in a while you get something and you say, oh, that adds right to my my genealogy. And sometimes you go by inspiration. There was one time before my father died, that we went up to find his grandmother. She'd be my great grandmother. We found her name on we went to a school. And there was a roster on the wall of people in the school. And Rosie Yaple was a name there. That was my great grandmother. And she was enrolled in that school. So we went to find out her story. And down the hill, cross the bridge, there was a house and this was her father. And he was a judge. I found the April's, but my grandfather was her illegitimate child. So I had to trace another line, not the Yaple line, that was only part of it. Dad, and I went to the cemetery. And we thought, well, we'll find your gravestone and then we'll have some dates and things. While we got there, we looked and looked and we were going around, and we couldn't find her. And so Dad says, Let's test this person who us appeared to be a gardener in the cemetery. And so he stopped and we asked for the name, Rosie Yaple. And he looked at us and he said, you're in the wrong cemetery. You need to go on the outskirts of town up this hill. And there's an old church up there with a graveyard. She's buried there. So we left the cemetery. When Well, first of all, before we left, we turned to each other and said, No, we have to go and find her. And we turned back to thank him for this information. And he wasn't there. He was gone.
And so we followed his instructions. And he also told us, her married name was Miller. When we went there, Rosie was a nickname. Her real name was Mary and the last name was Miller. Well, Mary Miller was not in our conscious mind. And so we didn't know what to look for that. We did find her gravestone. It is not dated. It just is a gravestone with her name on it. But we did find that so we knew we were on the right track. Her parents, the Yaple's are traced. They're one of those families that go back to the 15th century. But on the long side, because that is who she had the affair with. And so my grandfather was not I don't think he was adopted, he was taken in by his real father, and that stepmother, that another woman, we have his line down to follow, because it's my grandfather's real father. And I got him to New Jersey, but I haven't found the record of his parents. So I don't know where he came from, I only can go back that far. And I spent a whole week in Salt Lake City at the library, looking up him, just him. And I never found it, there's always a lot to do. It's not always, you know, here, this is all this line. And this is all this line. But I've been very grateful for family search and ancestry, both have filled in siblings, and children, because my line will hit somebody else who has the same grandparents. And so therefore, they filled that all in. And I haven't researched that. Sometimes it's difficult to find some of these, either the name has been repeated because somebody died, you have to be very careful about finding just records. And then sometimes the children, if they were up in the mountains, like I was in Pennsylvania, they didn't record it right away. You had the baby at home. Well, maybe the next time you got to the courthouse was almost a year later before the date was recorded. There's a lot of things to look at. And it's interesting, because as soon as I get something online, then I'm really excited about finding out more and taking this further. Last week, I got a notice about somebody that can be used if my daughter's one to belong to the DA er, and we've been looking for records, because the DA er won't take you on your word. You have to have documentation. And so that's kind of exciting because I didn't find it, but I can run with it.
Heather Murphy 12:32
Can you tell me the story of another one of your ancestors that is meaningful to you?
Nancy Stratford 12:37
I have a Mary McKenna, who came across from Ireland during the famine in Ireland. She came on a boat where she met a man called Reichel and Reichel are originally from Moravia. But he was in Ireland. And I guess there were there was a time when people from Moravia did disperse into some of Europe. Anyway, they were on the same ship. And the family's story goes the ship when the ground outside of Baltimore and they all prayed, they all knelt and prayed it off the sandbar. And anyway, they landed in Philadelphia or Baltimore. I don't know which the story I have not been able to officially done a cake yet. They married and he collected herbs and routes for a drugstore in Philadelphia. He had to go to the mountains to get them. And that's how they ended up in the mountains in Pennsylvania. She had 15 children. They had big families back then. They were up in the mountains and she ran a boarding house mostly hunters came up there especially hunting season they came up to get their years meat. They moved down to strausberg. They had a boarding house and strausberg to net right next to the railroad station. And my grandfather worked on the railroad in the shops and the Erie railroad. When you do research on your ancestors, sometimes some of the family can remember most of them are dead now. They remembered when they were small this happened or this happened and you kind of put it in there then you try to prove it. Because proof is one thing and genealogy and family stories are another and some of them may be exaggerated over the time and space. But it's fun.
Stories in Our Roots 14:53
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Heather Murphy 15:38
Do you remember any of those stories that have been passed down that you either approved or disapproved?
Nancy Stratford 15:43
The story of the Biggs's and Blitz being up in the mountains in Pennsylvania, this is above strausberg up in the mountains, and that they had a hunting camp. I guess the fact that I have grandpa's hunting jacket, and some pictures of them hanging up deer would say they really did have a hunting camp up there. So sometimes the tangible things that have been passed down, help prove the story.
Heather Murphy 16:18
As you've learned these stories over the years, how do you like to share them with your family?
Nancy Stratford 16:24
We have done genealogy, and my daughter has helped me but to put a book together on the Biggs's all the daughter's and, and I have their pictures and and their little bit their life stories. And we have shared that. And that was several years ago. I don't know how many. I recently got a letter from a cousin. She said, Do you have any more of those books? I'd like four of them. So evidently, because we did this, and she has one from originally, she now wants to pass them on to her children. And so the stories your past. That's the way it is with this book I wrote last year, when I was confined inside, I wrote a book. And it's called Gold, Bears and Fly Fishing. And that's a picture of my husband. In here. I'm mostly wrote about Island Park, which is where it took place. But there is a picture of our cabin. And of one Ray went there when he was a little boy, this just came out this fall. And all my family is buying it. They're all every family once one for all their family. And they're all buying the book because grandpa's in it. And so it's being disseminated to a lot of people that may or may not know him well, but they will if they read the story. What's the general theme of the book, generally, I started out with place. And I started in Ashton at the bottom of Route 20, and Ashton, and just went all the way up to the Montana border. And we pass this and this, this edits a Greater Yellowstone area. And we just, I just took story, this story. And then this story of is avid stories. And then the second half of the book are people. And these are the people that lived in 1800s. And they lived here and this is what they did. And these people and it's a place and people. That's how it's set up.
Heather Murphy 18:54
That's a neat project. Congratulations on that's a great thing to do.
Nancy Stratford 19:00
Yeah, well, there's more than my ancestors in this book, because I did it for a community because I was president of the stoical society for a long time and, and I wrote articles for the newspaper. And I thought, you know, I did all this research. Why don't I put it in a book?
Heather Murphy 19:19
Yeah. And then that's great, because somebody else is going to find their ancestor in the book and maybe find a story that they didn't know before.
Nancy Stratford 19:26
Right.
Unknown Speaker 19:27
Well, that's wonderful
Heather Murphy 19:29
Over your time researching your family. You said you did it partly because your church had that was part of the church. But why else do you research your family? What does it mean to you?
Nancy Stratford 19:43
It's kind of nice. When I was a little girl, we always went to my grandmother's. We drove up for holidays and vacation in the summer. When you're there you meet people that knew your great grandmother. And you say, Oh, well, I don't know my very much about my great grandmother, maybe I should know more. And then you're motivated to find out more about the people that you meet that knew them. And also, when you go down town, when I would go down town, they'd say, Oh, your tree says granddaughter, and I'm thinking, they knew my grandmother. Well, you know, maybe I should know more about my grandmother. We go, and there'd be a property at the lake, white Heron Lake, we'd go there and swim, and they'd be fine. But then we found out that my grandfather was one of the original person that made the lake, they actually dug it. And they had a stream and it filled up. And it was, it was originally an artificial lake. But my grandfather was there. Okay, what about my grandfather? Who was he married to? Where did he live? And you just are interested.
Heather Murphy 21:12
And then it sounds like it. It kind of gave you a better sense of your community around you as you go place to place and you see people who knew your family or where your family was at a previous place in time and kind of adds a different dimension to it, rather than just the names and dates on a piece of paper?
Nancy Stratford 21:33
Oh, yeah. My original thought was to know them as people. It was interesting, because my grandmother came to town a long time ago, however, her daughters and granddaughters all I ended up with restaurants, we must have about six or eight restaurants in the family. And so it was interesting to me to find out why they were such good bakers, and what did they make? What are some of the family recipes? They came through this session of? We always refer to first book, first book, just this is the recipes from Grandma, great grandma and some of the edits and, and so I've always been interested in cooking, and recipes, because they were important in the town that they lived. They were an American restaurant, and opposed to the Greek restaurants and the Italian restaurants and the other restaurants adapt. They were American cooking. Yeah, that's a heritage.
Heather Murphy 22:46
So what are some of your favorite foods that have been passed down from your family? Or a favorite recipe?
Nancy Stratford 22:53
I have always taken with me Shoo fly pie. Going from Pennsylvania where everybody knows where Shoo fly pie. And to Idaho and the West. What? They don't know what to show the first big sale I went to I took Shoo fly pie. Well, it didn't sell. Nobody knows what Shoo fly pie is.
Heather Murphy 23:18
Yeah, I've heard of it before, but I don't remember what it is. So could you tell me?
Nancy Stratford 23:23
it's molasses crumb. Okay. It's made with flour and molasses. And it's very sweet. But it's like a cake. And it's really very, anyway, the story goes that it's named Shoo fly because of its sweetness. It attracted flies. So you can say, Shoo fly. And that's where it got its name, but it's very Pennsylvania Dutch. And there are different recipes for it. But that's one that my family had. And everybody in my family bakes it and one son year, my son decided to make it to take it to a friend's house. Well, in this recipe, you take baking soda and vinegar and put them together. You know what happens to that? Well, he didn't know that. And it spill all over his Cather and they said, Oh, mommy said, and I said you have to have big enough bowls. That's one recipe that we had. And then when I married Ray, he skin the Navy and his family did crepes. And everybody in the family does crepes. You know, there are heritage recipes. And some of the family especially the grid, children, the grandchildren, the great grandchildren have incorporated them into their life too, which is kind of fun. Yeah. is fun.
Heather Murphy 25:01
Did you have anything else that you wanted to talk about?
Nancy Stratford 25:05
I just know that my husband and I went for seven straight years to roots tech. And part of the charm of that was the fact that we got a room in a hotel next to the conference, we would stay there and eat our meals together. And it was kind of, but then we'd pick classes and we never went to the same class, he go to his and I go to mine, and then we compare notes. I learned so much at those. But I always learned what was new. And that was important. And it's all computer now. In fact, this year's root tech I told my daughter I've signed up for, but it's online. I'm sure it's all online. That's nicer, because 10,000 people, a lot of people, so being online will be different. But it'll let everybody get what they will.
Heather Murphy 26:02
Yeah, the last I heard they had over 100,000 people signed up for more than 60 countries.
Nancy Stratford 26:10
It is so different now. This is another format that can accommodate all those people. Yeah, I'm looking forward to it. It's in February,
Heather Murphy 26:19
and last weekend in February. That'll be good. Um, I'm signed up for it, too. The last thing that I like to talk about is could you give some advice for someone that's just starting? What would you say to them if they want to research their family history?
Nancy Stratford 26:35
Well, first of all, you have to start with your parents and your grandparents. And so you have to begin at the beginning. You have to begin close stay at home. Before we just always did, parents, grandparents, great grandparents, you know, on back. I tried to do the siblings. Also. I find that some of those I thought I knew. And I found my mother's youngest sister had a baby out of wedlock, gave it up for adoption. And we found her 80 years later. And we've put her in our genealogy because she belongs there. There's lots of exciting things that you can do.
Heather Murphy 27:27
You know, one of the things that come to mind while talking with you is even though you've been working on identifying your family for decades, you're still finding new family. Like they're you're not
Unknown Speaker 27:39
finished and that that always boggles my mind. Oh, I've my aunt did that were ours are all done is not the right attitude. It's not all done. You can always find more.
Heather Murphy 27:54
Well, thank you so much for sharing your time and your stories with me. I really enjoyed our conversation.
Nancy Stratford 28:00
Thank you. I did too.
Heather Murphy 28:04
Thank you for joining me today for Stories in Our Roots. Please help this podcast grow by subscribing, leaving a review and sharing it with your friends if you have feedback or would like to recommend someone to share their story head to storiesinourroots.com and fill out the form. Thanks again for listening and I look forward to being with you again next week.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
