Not many people know this about me, but I am a family history enthusiast. The only party I throw every year, besides my kids birthday parties, is a Dia de los Muertos party, where we all get together and talk about our ancestors. We also eat really good food that is all of our ancestors’ favorites. When I found a podcast all about family history and learning about people’s stories, I knew that I had to talk about it on my show.
Genealogist Megan Hillyer, the host of Know Your Ancestors, interviews guests as they share stories and interesting details about their ancestors. The length of each episode is around half an hour.
Podcast Trailer
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Meet the Host
My name is Megan and I live in Alberta, Canada with my husband and seven kids. I love family history. I’m a professional genealogist and have loved helping people learn how to get started with their family history. Recently, I started a new podcast where I help people get excited about their family history.
The podcast started out sharing with people how to do their own family history. I had a podcast where I shared tangible tips and things to inspire people to do their own family history. Then about a year ago I felt like I wanted to shift gears and get people excited about their family history. Also using it as a platform to hear the discoveries that people can make in their own family tree.
A Dive Into Family History
The new podcast is similar to the shows, Who Do You Think You Are and Finding Roots. In those shows they get celebrities and they research their family tree and share things with them. I’m doing that on a much smaller scale where I interview content creators or influencers. I get a little bit of information about their family tree and I have some genealogists that help research their family a bit. On the podcast I share some cool things with them that we found.
I want to help people find out that everyone has a story. Everyone’s family has unique things that happened, hard things, fun things, scary things, traumatic things. We all are a part of our ancestors and when we learn about who they were, we can bring their story to life. Looking at different details that I share in the podcast helps us feel that we are part of something bigger. I feel very strongly that there’s power in knowing who our ancestors were and their lives. I want to share that message with the world.
Be Inspired by Family History
After listening, I hope that listeners gain a curiosity about their own family. I want them to get excited to take a second look at their ancestors. Maybe they think it’s boring to learn about them and they can realize that they were actually real people with lives that have influenced ours. I want them to see that the connection between them and their ancestors and how learning more about their ancestors can enrich their own lives.
For the people on the show, I want them to see that their ancestors were real people that lived lives. Our guests do a preparatory interview where I kind of find out who are you most interested in. One guest told me that they thought they had royalty in this Irish line and that’d be really cool to hear about. We didn’t get that far back but even seeing our ancestors who lived like 100, 200 years ago who had cool things happen and they had hard things happen is good to learn. When we learn about those people that are less glamorous or less exciting than those royalty lines that we think we have in our family tree, can be even more powerful. It’s important to learn about those close ancestors, because they’re the ones that affect us more now.
Lighthearted Conversation
The vibe of this podcast is lighthearted and not too serious. There are some tender parts that come up sometimes in people’s families. It is conversational as people are kind of explaining about their family. The podcast goes on YouTube too, so you can see the pictures of their ancestors or their homes or things like that. I’ll ask them their reactions to things and asking what you are feeling about this? How does that make you feel seeing that your ancestor left home at 13 all on their own?
Connect with Know Your Ancestors
On Instagram my name is Megan Hillier which is where I share most of my stuff. The podcast is called Know Your Ancestors. You can find that on any podcast platform as well as on YouTube. The website is also linked above and you can find updates there.
I will also be offering Ancestry Story Sessions. These are Story Weaving Sessions. If you, as a listener, want me to look at your family tree and do the same thing that I do for a podcast, but more in depth, this is for you. It would be an hour long, as opposed to, the episodes are about 20 to 40 minutes. You can find all that information on my website as well.
The Impact of Family History
One favorite is Episode 10 with Christy Deuce. She’s actually a childhood friend and she was the one that wanted to learn about her Irish royal ancestors. I told her we probably are not going to get there, but I asked her what family lines she wanted to learn about.
She picked one where she knew there was some stuff going on. I started looking at that line and found her great-great grandfather. He was married three times, twice to the same wife and it just seemed a little messy so I looked more into him.
It turned out that his mother died when he was like a toddler. His father died when he was six and he had previously been sent to an insane asylum. There was a lot of hard stuff in that family line. She said that information helped things make sense now. Her great grandfather, who was a son of that um, left home at 13, and came to Canada. He traveled alone and had a lot of hardships and eventually committed suicide.
She thought it was financial stuff, but it seems like there was probably a lot more going on in his life. It was really a cool episode to hear. I want to help people realize how our ancestors’ lives affect their own, for good or bad.
Safe for All Ages
The podcast would be fine for a little ears. I do not swear. There are some episodes where his ancestors died during the Holocaust, but it should be fine for a little years.
Learn Your Family History
Doesn’t that conversation just make you want to go and learn all about your amazing ancestors? If you know someone who could use Know Your Ancestors in their life, will you share this episode with them? Also, if you’ve been putting off making a podcast trailer, but you know it’s time. Grab my step by step podcast trailer guide which is linked above!
