Okay, not really, but let me tell you about an interesting connection the NCGenWeb has to a recent television show.

Brigham Young University has an ongoing series on their cable station called “The Generations Project.”   I am at the moment I write this, watching the most recent episode  and have seen a great example of how USGenWeb fits in the larger picture.  In the current episode, the subject of the show, John Robert Searcy,  is seeking to learn more about his ancestors. In one of his meetings with a genealogist, she informs him of her research and finding out about his first Searcy ancestor to come to the United States.

The first one in his family to come to the U.S. was John Searcy born 1694 in Nottingham, England and died in 1787 in Granville County, NC.

When I saw this, I wondered – hmm.. is there anything that is on the NCGenWeb site/ USGenWeb Archives that the genealogist may have used?  Of course, I don’t know for sure as it was not stated.  But, I did find that back in 2002,  Waunita Powell submitted the will of John Searcy to the Archives site.  In 2004, she submitted the same information to the Granville site, along with other Searcy documents (here and here).   Additional Searcy information can be found by searching the site using the FreeFind Search Engine.

John in the television show  is descended from John’s son (John Jr.)  as named in the 1787 will.  In less than 10 minutes, I quickly found several trees in Ancestry Public Member trees that document the family and can provide a lead to locate original source documents for the family tree.   Just thought I would share this as a way to show how our volunteers efforts could potentially make a difference in any person’s quest to learn more about their families.

If you’ve not seen this show, you must watch it.  This is the second episode I’ve watched and they are done quite well and bring an extremely intimate and personal touch to learning more about your ancestors.  You can view the episode I describe by going to http://www.byub.org/thegenerationsproject/, though, as each new episode comes out, the video is replaced.  Enjoy.