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© 2026 Crista Cowan
Description
What if the most powerful way to strengthen your family’s future is to look to the past?
I’m Crista Cowan, known online as The Barefoot Genealogist. I created this podcast to inspire you to form deeper connections with your family - past, present, and future. All families are messy and life is constantly changing but we don’t have to allow that to disconnect us. I’ve spent my whole life discovering the power of family history and I know that sharing the stories that live in you can change everything.
Tune in weekly to receive inspiration and guidance that will help you use family stories to craft a powerful family narrative, contributing to your family’s identity and creating a legacy of resilience, healing, and connection.
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Want to climb your family tree and uncover your own family stories? Visit my website - CristaCowan.com - and sign up for my free newsletter.
100 Episodes
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When Sue Talbot's grandmother casually mentioned items belonging to "Arthur," Sue discovered a family secret buried for decades. But that revelation was just the beginning of a journey that would uncover scandal, betrayal, and tragedy stretching from Victorian England to the streets of Chicago. In this episode, I sit down with British genealogist Sue Talbot as she shares the shocking story of her great-great-grandfather John Jenkinson—Methodist preacher, mayor, and jeweler whose respectable f...
When Noah’s car broke down in rural Ukraine, he discovered something unexpected: the warmth of strangers who knew his ancestors had once called their town home. It's a moment that captures the heart of Noah's journey. As a professional genealogist his childhood obsession with family history led him from the Birmingham Public Library to the decimated streets of Kobryn, Belarus, searching for the roots of Alabama's surprising Jewish community. Join me and my guest, Noah Lapidus (Research Manage...
What if history isn't just about the past—but about creating connections that shape who we become? In this episode, I sit down with Steve Bromage, Executive Director of the Maine Historical Society, whose childhood road trips to a family camp sparked a lifelong passion for preserving Maine's stories. Steve shares how his organization has revolutionized history-making by putting communities at the center—from small-town historical societies to middle school students scanning precious photograp...
〰️ 🌳 🧬 〰️ 🎧 Ready to discover more stories that could transform your family connections? Subscribe to 'Stories That Live In Us' wherever you get your podcasts, and leave a review to help other families find their path to deeper connection through family history. Together, we're building a community of families committed to preserving and sharing the stories that matter most. 🖼️ Ready to get your family tree out of your computer and onto your wall? Visit FamilyChartmasters.com to create a...
〰️ 🌳 🧬 〰️ 🎧 Ready to discover more stories that could transform your family connections? Subscribe to 'Stories That Live In Us' wherever you get your podcasts, and leave a review to help other families find their path to deeper connection through family history. Together, we're building a community of families committed to preserving and sharing the stories that matter most. 🖼️ Ready to get your family tree out of your computer and onto your wall? Visit FamilyChartmasters.com to create a...
〰️ 🌳 🧬 〰️ 🎧 Ready to discover more stories that could transform your family connections? Subscribe to 'Stories That Live In Us' wherever you get your podcasts, and leave a review to help other families find their path to deeper connection through family history. Together, we're building a community of families committed to preserving and sharing the stories that matter most. 🖼️ Ready to get your family tree out of your computer and onto your wall? Visit FamilyChartmasters.com to create a...
〰️ 🌳 🧬 〰️ 🎧 Ready to discover more stories that could transform your family connections? Subscribe to 'Stories That Live In Us' wherever you get your podcasts, and leave a review to help other families find their path to deeper connection through family history. Together, we're building a community of families committed to preserving and sharing the stories that matter most. 🖼️ Ready to get your family tree out of your computer and onto your wall? Visit FamilyChartmasters.com to create a...
When Sylvia Hernandez discovered vintage Christmas cards in a university archive, her coworkers didn't understand their significance. But for her, they represented everything familiar about growing up Mexican-American in Waco, Texas. Sylvia Hernandez, outreach and instruction librarian at Baylor University's Texas Collection and a seventh generation Wacoan, traces both sides of her family back to the Mexican Revolution. She has great-great-grandfathers, one on each side of her family tree, wh...
When archivist Rosie Grant stumbled upon a gravestone with a spritz cookie recipe carved into it, she had no idea it would change her life. What began as a TikTok curiosity during her cemetery internship became a viral phenomenon and, eventually, a groundbreaking cookbook celebrating 50 recipes from gravestones across America. Rosie shares her remarkable project "To Die For: A Cookbook of Gravestone Recipes." We discover how her library science background and passion for community archives le...
When Dani was in eighth grade, she watched her grandmother wash and braid her own mother’s hair. In that moment, she was witness to a ritual passed on through generations of Black women. Join me as Dani Allen, Senior Director of Talent Acquisition at Ancestry, shares her family's journey from the Deep South to Wisconsin during the 1930s and 40s as part of The Great Migration. Together we explore how her grandfather's search for work in the auto industry led their family north, the tumultuous ...
When Candace Dixon-Horne's husband bought AncestryDNA kits in 2018, she hesitated before sending hers in. Raised by a single mom in Arkansas, Candace spent her entire life with her mom as the only blood relative she knew. One DNA match changed everything. A simple Google search led to names she recognized, faces that looked hauntingly familiar, and a connection to California's golden age of cinema that seemed too extraordinary to be real. I talk with Candace about the moment she realized the ...
What if your family's pioneer past looked exactly like your favorite childhood TV show? When Lisa Elzey discovered her great-great-grandfather's story, she realized she'd been watching his life every Monday night on Little House on the Prairie. Complete with homesteading, hand-hewn cabins, and a white beard down to his belly. In this episode, Lisa shares how a purple-inked memoir written by her great-grandmother's half-sister unlocked the story of Johann Heinrich Seba, a German immigrant who ...
When Phyllis Zegers discovered her cousin died alone in Oregon State Hospital in the 1890s, she never imagined it would lead to reconnecting hundreds of families with their forgotten ancestors. In this episode, Phyllis shares how her genealogy research uncovered 3,500 unclaimed cremains at the hospital—and how she's worked tirelessly to honor each person by researching their stories and finding their living relatives. From sending surprise letters that reveal family secrets to sprinkling ashe...
Calvin Osborne, a Washington D.C. attorney and Civil War reenactor, spent nearly three decades studying African American military history before Ancestry researchers revealed a stunning discovery: his great-great-grandfather, William Lacey, was a soldier in the First Kansas Colored Troops, the very first Black men to fight in the Civil War. In this powerful conversation, Calvin shares how a 1989 viewing of the movie Glory sparked an unstoppable passion that led him from battlefield reenactmen...
When Mallory Peterson discovered she had Scottish ancestry instead of Cherokee heritage, she uncovered something intriguing that has captured her imagination. In the little town of Martinsburg, West Virginia she found a spy. And not just any spy but 17 year old Belle Boyd, the infamous Confederate spy known as "Cleopatra of the Secession." In this episode, I sit down with Mallory, a young genealogist whose complicated family story—raised by grandparents, not meeting her biological father unti...
〰️ 🌳 🧬 〰️ 🎧 Ready to discover more stories that could transform your family connections? Subscribe to 'Stories That Live In Us' wherever you get your podcasts, and leave a review to help other families find their path to deeper connection through family history. Together, we're building a community of families committed to preserving and sharing the stories that matter most. 🖼️ Ready to get your family tree out of your computer and onto your wall? Visit FamilyChartmasters.com to create a...
When Greg Wagner's great-great-grandmother made her dying wish to be buried not in a cemetery but beneath an oak tree on their Nebraska homestead, she planted more than roots in the soil. Greg is a sixth-generation Nebraskan whose family has maintained the same land for 158 years through blizzards, armed robberies, and economic crashes. As someone who's spent 46 years caring for Nebraska's natural resources through the Game and Parks Commission, Greg brings a unique perspective on how place s...
〰️ 🌳 🧬 〰️ 🎧 Ready to discover more stories that could transform your family connections? Subscribe to 'Stories That Live In Us' wherever you get your podcasts, and leave a review to help other families find their path to deeper connection through family history. Together, we're building a community of families committed to preserving and sharing the stories that matter most. 🖼️ Ready to get your family tree out of your computer and onto your wall? Visit FamilyChartmasters.com to create a...
When Sarah Walker's grandfather checked his mail one last day before leaving for World War I, he discovered a neighbor had intervened to keep him home—a bachelor farmer needed on the home front. That single act of community support changed everything. Sarah Walker, Head of Reference Services at the North Dakota State Archives, shares her grandfather's journey immigrating at age 10 from Germany through Russia to North Dakota's farmland. We explore how tight-knit immigrant communities preserved...
When historian Marni Sandweiss discovered an 1868 photograph of six prominent Civil War generals standing around an unnamed Indigenous girl, she couldn't let go of one haunting question: Who was she? In this episode, Princeton University Professor Emerita Martha "Marni" Sandweiss shares how she identified the child as Sophie Mousseau and uncovered a remarkable story of survival, identity, and resilience spanning generations on the Northern Plains. Through meticulous research combining written...
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I love this podcast so much and listen to every new episode. I first heard Crista and Roots Tech earlier this year and loved the session I went to with her. This podcast is inspiring and entertaining. It helps solidify my love of family history, especially family stories. Thank you!!!
I was fascinated to learn how Crista started her genealogy passion. I too made a promise to a grandparent to find someone! Stories That Live in Us takes a look into the stories that make us who we are, in part designed by people we never met. But their lived experiences, their choices, their DNA are in us. I have listened to 4 of Crista's podcasts and her guests, their stories of discovery are moving. I can not wait to listen to more.