Stories That Live In Us

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

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

From Utah to Iceland: Passing Living Heritage to the Next Generation with Eric Allen | Episode 128

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 pione

From Belarus to the Boston Meat Wars: Uncovering a Rebel Ancestor (with Suzanne Hoffman) | Episode 127

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 epi

How the Air Force Saved My Father’s Life (with Victoria Robinson) | Episode 126

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

The Adoptee, The Next Door Neighbor, and The DNA Twist No One Saw Coming | Episode 125

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 A

Raising 8 Kids After Divorce with Music, Faith, and Family Roots (with Bubba Page) | Episode 124

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 fa

Bootleggers, Mine Massacres, and Brooklyn (with Linda Stasi) | Episode 123

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 mountain

Alex Haley is My Uncle: The Rest of the Story of My Family “Roots” (with Chris Haley) | Episode 122

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 calli

A National TV Crew Showed Up At My House: Discovering a Lost Legacy (with Melissa Stafford) | Ep 121

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 thi

Stories That Connect Us (And Why DNA Isn't Enough) | Episode 120

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 peop

Fifty Nifty United States (with Lisa Elzey) | Episode 119

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

Delaware: Courage to Save the Words That Built America (with Anna Crowley Redding) | Episode 118

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

Pennsylvania: Stashed-Away Secrets and Forgotten Family (with Jessica Rae) | Episode 117

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 Genealogis

New Jersey: A Sentence of Survival | Episode 116

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.

Georgia: Two Lives, Two Coasts, One Massive Secret (with Julie Merrill) | Episode 115

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-yea

Connecticut: The Windsor Witch | Episode 114

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Massachusetts: From Rags to Riches to Ashes to Starting Again (with Laura Tasse) | Episode 113

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Maryland: A New Kind of Identity | Episode 112

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 revo

South Carolina: Ancestors Leading the Charge in Battle and in Life (w/ Anne Mitchell) | Episode 111

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 Pennsyl

New Hampshire: Chosen Family, Jewish Roots (with Nancy Kotz and Lynne Snierson) | Episode 110

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