RLP 64: Finding Jeanie’s Father with DNA Case Study – Interview with Hazel Scullin

Nicole (1s):
This is Research Like a Pro, Episode 64: Finding Jeanie’s Father with DNA Case Study Interview with Hazel Scullin. Welcome to Research Like a Pro a Genealogy Podcast about taking your research to the next level, hosted by Nicole Dyer and Diana Elder accredited genealogy professional. Diana and Nicole are the mother-daughter team at FamilyLocket.com and the creators of the Amazon bestselling book, Research Like a Pro a Genealogists Guide. I’m Nicole co-host of the podcast join Diana and me as we discuss how to stay organized, make progress in our research and solve difficult cases.

Nicole (42s):
Let’s go. Hi everyone and welcome to the show. I’m Nicole Dyer, co-host of The Research Like a Pro Genealogy Podcast. Today I’m here with my mother accredited genealogist, Diana Elder, and our guest Hazel Scullin. Hello.

Hazel Scullin (1m 2s):
Hello.

Diana (1m 3s):
Hi Nicole.

Nicole (1m 3s):
Today we are going to talk with Hazel about her case study with using DNA to find her grandmother Jeanie’s father.

Diana (1m 11s):
So I am gonna start off with just getting to know Hazel a little bit. We’ve been working with her for several months, but I still have some questions for you, Hazel, for all of our listeners so they can get to know you. We met Hazel at RootsTech this last year, 2019, and she was a fellow ambassador and I believe Nicole started chatting with her and found out she needed an internship for the summer and we were so pleased to have her choose FamilyLocket to do an internship with and I’ve had a lot of fun working with her on projects and she’s done some great blog posts, which we are going to talk about today, one of her case studies. But first let’s just find out a little bit more about you, Hazel. So how did you get interested in genealogy?

Hazel Scullin (1m 53s):
So I loved local and family history for as long as I can remember. I grew up in California really close to where gold was discovered. So local history was always a huge part of my life, really fascinating to me. And then I started seriously doing genealogy research about four years ago when I joined the church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints.

Diana (2m 17s):
Oh great. So with the church’s emphasis on genealogy, that really kind of spurred you on. That’s neat. So what is your background in genealogy? Because I know that you have got an actual degree in that. So tell us a little bit about that.

Hazel Scullin (2m 33s):
I began the Family History program at BYU in June, 2016. I had been at BYU for one semester before that and I was just general major trying to figure out what I wanted to do and I had started doing more genealogy research and I thought it was fascinating. I was staying up all night doing it and then I was looking at the list of majors at BYU and I saw that they had a Family History major and I thought, well that sounds really fun. And I had no idea what it would have in store for me. I just felt like this is something I love to do, why not go in and and see how it goes. So I haven’t been doing genealogy for very long.

Hazel Scullin (3m 15s):
There are some people who you know, have been doing it for 30, 40 years or people my age who have been doing it since they were like a kid. But I think that I’ve gained a lot of valuable experience in a short amount of time because of how concentrated and immersive the BYU program is.

Diana (3m 34s):
I think that’s so true because I do hear that a lot with people that we work with that they’ve been doing it for 40 years or you know, for their whole life. But you can just gain your skills incredibly by immersing yourself in it. And that’s how I felt like with accreditation. Those two years were worth more than the entire 14 years before that I’d been doing family history and genealogy. So I totally get where you’re coming from on that. So tell us a little bit more about what the BYU Family History major is comprised of, because I’m sure our listeners are curious what a real college major entails when you are doing a genealogy focus.

Hazel Scullin (4m 11s):
So we were required to take courses in paleography, general history, methodology and technology. A lot of the classes are divided by geographical region or language, such as Scandinavian research or German paleography. There’s also three US classes. We have the Northern US states, southern US states and Colonial. And some of the technology classes that are offered are genetic genealogy, digital history and technology in family history. And for general history classes, there’s US history, there’s region or subject based history classes.

Hazel Scullin (4m 52s):
One of the classes that I took was US Women’s History. There’s also a history of the American family. There’s history of the European family. So there’s lots of different options to choose from and a lot of people also choose to do a minor. I didn’t choose to do a minor, but sometimes people will do a minor in a foreign language if they’re particularly interested in researching in in that area. I have a friend who is an anthropology major, so there’s lots of ways that you can go with it.

Diana (5m 24s):
I love that they have a genetic genealogy class now, which I believe is the project that you are going to share with us today in your case study, right? Is that where you did the DNA project?

Hazel Scullin (5m 36s):
Yes.

Diana (5m 37s):
Tell us about the requirement for an internship.

Hazel Scullin (5m 40s):
Every student is required to complete an internship and it can be in Utah, it can be out of Utah. You can do anything really. So my internship of course was with FamilyLocket and I’ve had friends that went to countries in Europe for the whole summer, weeks on end they go to libraries and repositories out there doing research. Lots of people in Utah will go up to the church history library or FamilySearch. So there’s a lot of opportunities to learn outside of the classroom. In addition to the internship, there’s work opportunities like working at the BYU library or working as a research assistant or a teaching assistant.

Hazel Scullin (6m 25s):
There’s opportunities to attend national conferences. So there’s so much to do outside of the classroom. There’s also a BYU Family History club. I think that the BYU Family History major is so much more than just the classroom setting. It’s a true immersive experience in genealogy.

Diana (6m 43s):
I love that the professors and the developers of the program have recognized the need for that and I am just so curious. So I know we’ve talked a little bit about this before, but you know, coming on as an intern for us and I just gave you hard projects and you had a variety of different types of localities and types of projects and how was that different from just being given a client project to work on from maybe an assignment in a class?

Hazel Scullin (7m 12s):
The biggest difference that I felt was that I was not researching my own family and I couldn’t control what kind of background information was given to me on the family because it was a client project and we were just starting with what they had for us.

Diana (7m 28s):
And sometimes there was a lot you had to wade through and sometimes there was just very little.

Hazel Scullin (7m 33s):
Yeah.

Diana (7m 33s):
And you’re working under a timeframe, so of course that’s different too.

Hazel Scullin (7m 37s):
Yeah. Our projects at BYU, they’re typically, they, we have a 50 to 60 hour project for each class that we work on and there’s no time limit. So we have to do a minimum of 50 or 60 hours, but we can do more than that if we want. But with client research, none of the projects that I worked on were 50 or 60 hours.

Diana (7m 58s):
Well I, I loved working with you and we had, if I remember right, a couple of those projects a major breakthrough for the clients. So that was really fun.

Hazel Scullin (8m 7s):
Yeah.

Diana (8m 7s):
So let’s talk about what you’re doing now that you’re all graduated, full fledged holder of the BYU certificate or whatever it is. What do, what do they call it? Just a degree.

Hazel Scullin (8m 17s):
Bachelor’s degree. The only university in North America with a bachelor’s degree.

Diana (8m 22s):
Family History. That’s awesome. So what are you doing now?

Hazel Scullin (8m 26s):
Now I’m working as a probate researcher at the American Research Bureau in Salt Lake City. If you’re curious about what you they do, you can check out their website arb.com. I’m also going to be a RootsTech ambassador for the second time this year. So I’m really excited to be doing that. And I’m preparing for certification. So I’m taking some private clients to continue to work on my research and report writing skills.

Nicole (8m 55s):
That’s so great. Hooray for becoming a Certified Genealogist. Hopefully we can both get there soon.

Hazel Scullin (9m 1s):
Yes.

Nicole (9m 1s):
Why don’t we talk now about your case study with Finding Jeannie’s father, you’ve written a wonderful series for our blog about this and so we’re just gonna kind of talk about each of the steps that you outlined in your blog series. In the very first part of your series, you talked about kind of figuring out who should take a DNA test to help you with your objectives. So tell us about why you chose the project and what your research objective was.

Hazel Scullin (9m 27s):
So I chose this project because my family has always wondered who my grandma’s father was. She passed away in 2003 and I think we’ve wanted to complete her family tree for her. When I enrolled in the genetic genealogy class, I just knew that this had to be my project. It was, it was an obvious choice. And so my research objective was to locate the biological father of Jeanie Maleski through autosomal DNA testing. Jeanie was born on January 6th, 1943 in Salt Lake City. Her biological mother, Lois Lee was from San Diego.

Nicole (10m 2s):
So you had a very specific question. It wasn’t to find the parents, you already knew the mother. So you just were honing in on her father.

Hazel Scullin (10m 10s):
Correct.

Nicole (10m 11s):
So then who did you decide to have take a DNA test?

Hazel Scullin (10m 15s):
I tested myself and my mother, but since my mother has a closer genetic relationship to my grandmother, obviously I used her results for the research. You want to try and test the closest person to who your question is about. If I had an unrestrained financial budget though, I would’ve also liked to test my mom’s sister.

Nicole (10m 37s):
Of course. And were those the only two children of Jeanie?

Hazel Scullin (10m 40s):
Yes.

Nicole (10m 40s):
Cool. And did Jeanie have siblings that were from the same parents or was she the only one?

Hazel Scullin (10m 45s):
So on her mother’s side we knew about two children, two half siblings, but only one of them we’re still in contact with.

Nicole (10m 55s):
So working with your mom’s DNA results, that is how you solved this case?

Hazel Scullin (11m 1s):
Yes.

Diana (11m 2s):
When you first got your results back, you know you’re looking at your matches on Ancestry and you have to somehow figure out how to organize them. So what did you do? What was, walk us through your process.

Hazel Scullin (11m 14s):
So I used the shared matches feature on Ancestry to separate my matches into clusters. Ancestry has a cool feature where you can assign colors to make groups for your matches. I noticed in my results that there was one person that I could recognize. I know that that person is from this line, so then you can assign colors going from there. And then I got to a cluster of people left over that I didn’t know where they fit in. And by process of elimination I knew that I had someone from every other line in my family. So I knew that that line had to come from my grandma’s paternal side.

Diana (11m 54s):
Aha. So did you assign them a special color? All of those matches?

Hazel Scullin (11m 57s):
I gave them the star actually.

Diana (12m 1s):
They were the ones you were interested in?

Hazel Scullin (12m 3s):
Yes.

Diana (12m 4s):
They were your subjects. What did you notice about the amount of centimorgans shared with your matches?

Hazel Scullin (12m 9s):
So, I just looked last night and I don’t remember exactly how many were there at the time that I did this, but there were matches in the three hundreds, one in the mid two hundreds and several in the one hundreds. And I was really excited to see that since those are close matches when working on an adoptee project, high three hundreds is a really good match.

Diana (12m 30s):
That is really exciting because if they had been smaller matches, you would’ve had a lot more work to do.

Hazel Scullin (12m 36s):
Yeah, I would have to be looking for someone’s maybe their second great grandparents, but when it’s three hundreds, I knew that I was looking for people in the grandparent to great grandparent level.

Diana (12m 48s):
So exciting. And that’s one of the great things about Ancestry DNA with so many people testing, we are getting more and more of those higher matches.

Hazel Scullin (12m 55s):
Yes.

Diana (12m 56s):
So anyone listening who is working on an adoptee project, make sure your subjects have tested on Ancestry because that’s the place to be for sure.

Hazel Scullin (13m 3s):
That’s the one that I recommend to anyone who asks me what DNA test should I take. And if they say that they’re looking for biological family members, I tell them to test on Ancestry first.

Diana (13m 14s):
Yeah, that’s a really great point.

Nicole (13m 17s):
So after you had found these closer cousin matches, how did you reach out to them? Did you just send them a message or what was your method?

Hazel Scullin (13m 26s):
Yeah, I just messaged them on Ancestry and I think it’s really important to be honest upfront about what you’re doing and to not kind of skirt around around it. I think that some people might disclose certain details depending on what your, what you say that you’re researching. So I wanted to tell them upfront that I was searching for my grandma’s biological father and I gave her birthdate and her mother’s name. Just like I stated in my research objective the beginning of the episode. And I think it’s important to be brief in your first message, you don’t know how much genealogical knowledge your match has. They may be an expert Genealogist or they may really know nothing.

Hazel Scullin (14m 8s):
So you want to avoid using a lot of complex genealogical terms that they may not understand. So you need to find a balance between overwhelming the match within information and being too vague and not giving them enough to go off of.

Nicole (14m 25s):
That’s a good point. I think there’s so many different ways that you can strike up a conversation with a match and hope that eventually you’ll get to the answer that you’re hoping for. I like your idea to just tell them upfront what you’re looking for so that they don’t feel like they might disclose something that they didn’t want to or whatnot. How many responses did you get? Did a lot of people respond back?

Hazel Scullin (14m 48s):
Yeah, I think that I got a response from everyone, but they didn’t have any information that was helpful. But I knew that they, they would be there in the future if I had more information that I could tell them or more questions that I could ask. They just said that they didn’t know anybody in their family tree. I was specifically looking if they had someone in their family tree who had been in San Diego before my grandma was born and they didn’t know of anyone. So I thanked them for their help. But sometimes you don’t get responses back and that’s okay. You just have to be patient. Sometimes people, they’re not interested in helping you and, and that’s okay

Nicole (15m 23s):
For sure. You, we just have to be patient. I’ve heard of responses coming a year later or even longer. What did you discover after you created a tree with all these DNA matches and clusters and things like that?

Hazel Scullin (15m 36s):
So I made the private tree on Ancestry and I found which ancestral couple the matches all had in common, which was really, really exciting. This couple had six sons and all were within the age range to be my grandma’s father. Their surname was Hubbard. And so I knew that one of those sons in the family had to be my grandma’s father.

Nicole (15m 58s):
Great. So great. And with six sons, you know, there’s a lot of candidates.

Hazel Scullin (16m 5s):
Yeah, there were.

Nicole (16m 6s):
That maybe would seem frustrating. Which one is it?

Hazel Scullin (16m 9s):
Yeah, it was a little bit daunting. I think you have to have a lot of patience when doing this research ’cause you never know, there could just be one son and then there’s your answer. Or there could be 10 even.

Diana (16m 20s):
For sure. I love that there were six sons. That’s so funny. I was doing my sister’s adoptee case and her shared ancestors had 13 children.

Hazel Scullin (16m 28s):
Oh my goodness.

Diana (16m 29s):
And there were so many descendants. Luckily we found somebody that knew more and helped us a lot. So I didn’t have to wade through all of that. So I can feel your pain with six sons. So what did you decide to do? Because you had no idea which of these sons could have been her father. So kind of what was your approach then?

Hazel Scullin (16m 47s):
So I wanted to track the family, do a census survey. That’s usually the first thing that I do. And I was really looking for anyone who maybe moved to San Diego or lived in San Diego. I didn’t find anything with that. They all stayed on the east. But I did find that there was one son who passed away in 1935. And so he, I knew couldn’t be my grandma’s father. So that was really helpful to research the descendants because people may become eliminated as candidates as you do research, for example, a death or maybe a move to another country or something like that, then you would be able to eliminate that candidate or put them on a lower priority.

Diana (17m 30s):
And you also had some clues from what the family knew a little bit.

Hazel Scullin (17m 35s):
Right.

Diana (17m 35s):
You knew that we had a locality of San Diego and you had the clue that the father was a member of the military.

Hazel Scullin (17m 42s):
Yeah, the member of the military. That was more of a hunch just based on the time period. But that did end up proving true. So trust your hunches. I guess,

Diana (17m 50s):
What year was she born again?

Hazel Scullin (17m 53s):
1943.

Diana (17m 54s):
Yeah, 1943. So we would all logically think, yeah, he’s gonna be in World War II, so that makes total sense.

Hazel Scullin (18m 0s):
Yes, it does. That’s that’s why I think it’s so important to understand the history of the time that you’re researching and that’s something that’s really emphasized in the BYU program. And I think that I was trained really well to look at what’s going on during the time period.

Diana (18m 15s):
That’s great. Yeah, that’s, that is absolutely key. You mentioned that you used the FAN club, the friends, associates, and neighbors for this. So how did that kind of work into this case?

Hazel Scullin (18m 26s):
Early on in my research I looked into who was living around Jeannie’s mother and Jeannie’s adopted mother for clues. Jeannie’s adopted mother actually was a good friend of her biological mother. So they really fit into the same circle. So when you’re researching adoptees, it’s important to build a FAN club since there’s often overlap between the biological family members and the adopted family members. So I talked with my great-aunt, so my grandma’s sister, that we’re still in contact with to figure out if she had any information and she had a theory about someone who lived near the family at the time that he may be the father. But once we started doing the DNA research, the Hubbard family came up a lot and this other family didn’t.

Hazel Scullin (19m 13s):
And the book, Finding Family by Richard Hill, has a lot of great examples of using the FAN club and adoptee research. So I would recommend for anyone interested in adoptee research to check that out because it really gives a lot of examples of what the FAN club can do for your genetic research.

Diana (19m 31s):
Oh, that’s so interesting. I don’t think I read that one yet. So I’ll have to put that on my list of to-reads because I’m always looking for more ideas on methodology for, you know, using DNA and adoptee research. So that’s great. So how did you end up eliminating the various candidates? Because you eliminated one because he had died in the 1930s. What about the rest?

Hazel Scullin (19m 54s):
So I used the Shared cM Project to eliminate one of the matches because one of the matches was actually a daughter of one of the six sons, so that would make her my mom’s half aunt. So I compared the centimorgans that they shared to the estimates for a half aunt relationship and it was much too small. So I thought that’s not really likely because it’s such a small amount of centimorgans. So that’s where you see combining the traditional research and the DNA research is really important. Like I was able to eliminate two, but if I had only done traditional research, I would’ve only eliminated one. So you really need to combine both, both types of research.

Diana (20m 37s):
Oh, that’s such a good example. And I love that you talked about that Shared cM Project because that’s so helpful when you are charting it out and trying to compare and see if the matches make sense. That’s an essential part of any kind of a DNA project.

Nicole (20m 53s):
That’s exactly what I’ve been doing with the case that I’m working on right now of unknown parentage. I found six children who all have really close, their lines have close matches to the subject and only two of the six children have no matches descended from them. And those are the two candidates that it has to be for the father or mother because the other ones don’t share enough centimorgans to be that close. So it’s interesting how you can eliminate them based on how close of a match does. Alright, let’s ask you Hazel, which DNA databases did you end up using?

Nicole (21m 33s):
You mentioned Ancestry, did you transfer at all?

Hazel Scullin (21m 36s):
Yes, I started on Ancestry and then I uploaded my results to My Heritage, Living DNA, Family Tree DNA, and GEDMatch. But there weren’t any strong matches with ties to the Hubbard family. So I decided to hold off on asking my mom’s permission to upload her results to those sites. I just didn’t think it was necessary at that point with the primary project I was focused on with my mom’s research was the Hubbard family. So I just kept my results on there though because I was working on projects on other lines on on my dad’s side.

Nicole (22m 8s):
So did having multiple databases help at all?

Hazel Scullin (22m 11s):
Yes. So you’ll never know who will be in which databases. Sometimes a bunch of family members all decide to test together in one database. Maybe a mother gets all of her family members, I don’t know, Ancestry tests. So then that entire family is all in one, one database. So you never know. And the match that confirmed for me, which son was Jeanie’s father, ended up being in 23andMe. I had kind of reached a stopping point in my Ancestry results. I didn’t want to ask to find any other members of the Hubbard family and ask them to take a test. That is something that you could do. But I didn’t really feel that I wanted to do that at that point.

Hazel Scullin (22m 52s):
So I decided to take, take a test with 23andMe to see if there were any other matches. And the match that I found in 23andMe, I still remember he was the third closest match after my father and my grandfather who were both in 23andMe. And he had the highest number of centimorgans for any of the matches. And his surname was also Hubbard. So I knew that he was tied to the family and he knew that his, his grandpa Don was one of the six sons in the Hubbard family. So then I thought, okay, if Don was Jeannie’s father, then that would make us first cousins once removed and the amount of centimorgans that we shared was well within the estimates for that relationship.

Hazel Scullin (23m 36s):
So that’s again where the Shared cM Project was really helpful. And then I continued to talk with the family about it and they told me that Don was a soldier in the Marines and he was stationed in San Diego the year before my grandma was born. So he was in the right place at the right time. And the centimorgans I shared with that match confirmed that this was the right son.

Nicole (23m 59s):
Wow, that’s so amazing.

Hazel Scullin (23m 60s):
Yes. So I would recommend being in as many databases as you can. You just never know what will come up.

Diana (24m 5s):
I love that. That is so true because when I was working on my sister’s adoptee case, she had tested on Ancestry and we just weren’t getting that close. But then she did the test on 23andMe and her half sister was on that database. So yeah, absolutely. You just never know. So great example. Wasn’t that so fun that it all came together for you?

Hazel Scullin (24m 26s):
Yeah, it was really exciting. I talked with a professor and I said, okay, I’m at this point where I have these six sons, I’ve been able to eliminate a couple of them, but I’m still not sure. And she said, well I think that you had a very ambitious goal for your project and what you’ve done well exceeds the expectations for this assignment. So don’t worry about finding the exact family member. You were only required to test in one database for this class, but I want, I really wanted to solve it. So I, So I did go, I guess above and beyond for, for the project to solve it and it it paid off.

Diana (24m 60s):
Well, it was your family too, it’s one of your lines. And so now you have this biological line that you can trace and connect. So my next question is, now that you’ve found these people, did you try to connect with the biological family?

Hazel Scullin (25m 14s):
Yeah, we connected through Facebook. That’s how I originally came in contact with the match is he messaged me on Facebook. It was so funny. He said, Hey, are you the Hazel Scullin in 23andMe? And I was so excited ’cause I guess he got an email saying that he had a new close match in 23andMe, and he told me that I’m actually his closest match in 23andMe and he didn’t recognize my name. So he was, he was just curious. He’s not a genealogist, but he was curious about who I was. So I connected with all the family on Facebook and most of them live in Florida, in the northern US states, so we couldn’t meet in person since we were far away from each other. But when I went to the Federation of Genealogical Society’s conference last month in Washington DC I got to meet one of my grandma’s brothers, Ralph, and he lives in Virginia.

Diana (26m 3s):
Oh my word. So this would be a half brother, right?

Hazel Scullin (26m 8s):
Yes. So he’s my half great uncle.

Diana (26m 9s):
So they share the same father?

Hazel Scullin (26m 11s):
Yes.

Diana (26m 12s):
Oh, that is so neat. And how did that go?

Hazel Scullin (26m 15s):
Yeah, it was so special. I think that getting to meet the biological family is the icing on the cake for anyone working on adoptee projects. Something that made the experience even more special was that we got to go to the US Marine Corps War Memorial in Arlington, Virginia. And Ralph explained to me that Don fought in the Battle of Iwo Jima and was present on the day that the flag was raised. So meeting Ralph and learning Don’s connection to the Marine Corps Memorial was one of the highlights of the entire trip.

Nicole (26m 44s):
Wow.

Diana (26m 44s):
Wow. That is so neat that you have this, let’s see, would he be your great-grandfather?

Nicole (26m 51s):
Yes.

Diana (26m 51s):
That’s wonderful. And that you got to go to the memorial in Arlington. Did Ralph grow up with Don as his father? I mean, he knew him well?

Hazel Scullin (26m 57s):
Yeah, so he got to tell me a lot of stories about Don. And Don sadly passed away and he was younger, so Ralph was I think maybe 18 or 20 when Don passed away. But he still was able to share a lot of stories with me and I’m planning to go out to see him with my mom and hopefully her sister and my husband to to meet him. And he said he’d dig up some family memorabilia for me. I thought that was cute.

Diana (27m 24s):
Oh, did you get to see pictures?

Hazel Scullin (27m 25s):
Yeah, we had seen some pictures and that was another one of the fun things that kind of confirmed that I had the right family because one of Don’s other children looks just like my mom’s sister. They could be twins. It’s so funny.

Diana (27m 41s):
Oh, wow. What a great ending. So what advice would you give someone on a similar journey?

Hazel Scullin (27m 48s):
Be patient and don’t give up. Many people are taking DNA tests every week. It seems like you’re waiting for an eternity. But I mean, even just in the time that I had worked on this project, more people on the Hubbard lines were entering the database almost every month.

Diana (28m 5s):
I think that’s great advice. Well, Hazel, it’s been such a pleasure talking with you and working with you. Let me just ask a, a quick question, which we don’t really have here on our outline, but tell us just a little bit about your experience at FGS, the Federation for Genealogical Societies.

Hazel Scullin (28m 24s):
Yes, it was a great conference. Like I mentioned, the BYU program offers a lot of opportunities to learn outside the classroom. So I went with 14, I believe 14, other students to Washington DC and let me tell you, we looked so silly, I think walking around Washington, DC, the big group of us, but it was so great to go with other students and we got to research in the National Archives, the Daughters of the American Revolution Library and the Library of Congress in addition to attending the conference. So we were there for almost two weeks and the conference was great, lots of good classes and just, I love the spirit of history that is in Washington DC It’s inspiring.

Diana (29m 6s):
Wow, that’s really neat. I have to say I’m a little envious that you were able to do this degree. I don’t think they had it when I was at BYU and it sounds like it would just have been wonderful.

Hazel Scullin (29m 16s):
Yeah, it is wonderful. And one question that a lot of people ask me is, are there jobs in family history? And the answer is yes. There are a lot of jobs in family history and it’s more than just doing private client research. There’s lots of jobs in technology, and family history, working at Ancestry or FamilySearch, and this is a booming field, especially with genetics coming into play. And so quite a few people at BYU actually do a genetics minor or major in addition to Family History. Paul Woodbury for example, he was a genetics major and a family history minor, and he is now one of the most successful genetic genealogists in the world, I think.

Diana (29m 59s):
Well, wonderful. Thank you so much for being on this episode and telling us all about your case study. I think everyone listening is going to really enjoy hearing about how a young genealogist solved an adoptee case.

Nicole (30m 12s):
Oh, that’s so true. I think myself, just listening to you gave me so many ideas for what to work on next with the different cases that I have right now of unknown parentage. It’s just so helpful to hear how somebody solved a case and all the little pieces that came together to make it possible. And I’m just realizing I need to have one of my clients take a test at 23andMe. Oh, well, thank you so much for coming on and we’re so glad that you’re working at a wonderful job and having success in your family history career, and we’re so excited to see where you go and to see you at RootsTech.

Hazel Scullin (30m 46s):
Thank you. I’m excited too.

Nicole (30m 48s):
Thanks everyone for listening, and we’ll talk to you again next week. Bye-bye.

Hazel Scullin (30m 55s):
Bye

Diana (30m 55s):
Bye-Bye everyone.

Nicole (31m 21s):
Thank you for listening to Research Like a Pro with Diana Elder, accredited genealogy professional and Nicole Dyer. We hope that something you heard today will help you make progress in your own genealogy research. If you like what you heard, please leave us a review on iTunes or Stitcher or visit our website, FamilyLocket.com to contact us. You can find our book Research Like a Pro a Genealogist’s Guide on Amazon.com and other booksellers. We hope you’ll start now to Research Like a Pro.