Forgotten Children: Genealogy and Lost Burial Grounds

Episode Overview

Hittin' the Bricks with Kathleen is the genealogy podcast that features your questions and her answers, exploring the records, places, and historical context that help families uncover difficult and forgotten stories.

In this episode, Kathleen speaks with Mark Schindler, Rebba Omer, and Daniel Feldman about the Forgotten Children Initiative and what happens when historical research into youth prisons leads to the discovery of children buried in neglected and forgotten cemeteries.

The conversation traces a path from Maryland to the Missouri Training School for Boys in Boonville, Missouri, where research uncovered another forgotten cemetery and raised difficult questions about race, institutional history, access, ethics, and how genealogists can help reconnect families with children whose stories were nearly lost.

If you would like to help with this initiative, Contact: Rebba Omer at ro295@georgetown.edu

In This Episode, You'll Learn

• How historical research into juvenile institutions can lead to forgotten burial grounds
• Why death certificates are an essential starting point for forensic genealogy
• How annual reports, institutional archives, and facility newspapers can identify individuals when names are missing
• What racial segregation and historical disparities reveal about institutional records
• How genealogists can assist with family identification and restorative justice
• Why access, permissions, and family involvement matter when researching burial sites

Topics Covered

• The origins of the Forgotten Children Initiative at Georgetown's Center for Youth Justice
• Historical research into youth facilities and hidden burial sites in Maryland
• The Missouri Training School for Boys in Boonville, Missouri
• Research into Boonville's forgotten cemetery
• Juvenile justice history and its connection to the present
• Racial segregation and disparities in institutional history
• Death certificates as a starting point for forensic genealogy
• Annual reports, archives, and institutional newspapers
• Identifying individuals when names are incomplete or missing
• Restorative justice, memorials, and family-guided decisions
• Access and research permissions for burial grounds on Department of Corrections property

Episode Discussion & Key Moments

Kathleen and her guests explore how a historical investigation can grow into a larger effort to identify forgotten children, locate burial sites, and reconnect families with relatives whose lives disappeared into institutional records.

The discussion begins with the origins of the Forgotten Children Initiative and research into youth facilities in Maryland. That work uncovered evidence of neglected burial grounds and created a broader effort to identify the children buried there and locate their descendants.

The conversation then turns to Boonville, Missouri, where research into the Missouri Training School for Boys led to the discovery of another forgotten cemetery. The guests discuss how a seemingly simple search can open a much larger investigation involving institutional records, death certificates, annual reports, newspapers, archives, and historical patterns of racial segregation.

The episode also addresses the ethical responsibilities involved in forensic genealogy and cemetery research. Identifying a person is only one part of the work. Questions of access, permissions, memorialization, and family involvement remain essential—particularly when burial grounds are located on government or Department of Corrections property.

Key questions examined include:

• How do genealogists begin identifying individuals buried in forgotten cemeteries?
• What records can help when a person's name is missing or incomplete?
• How does institutional history reveal patterns of racial inequality?
• What does restorative justice look like when families are finally connected with a forgotten relative?
• Who should make decisions about memorials and the treatment of historic burial grounds?

Resources & Research Tools Mentioned

• Death certificates
• Institutional annual reports
• Juvenile facility archives
• Institutional and facility newspapers
• Cemetery and burial records
• Historical records relating to racial segregation
• Forensic genealogy research methods
• Department of Corrections records and property access procedures

Why This Episode Matters

Genealogy is not limited to building family trees. It can also help restore names, identities, and histories to people who were marginalized, institutionalized, and forgotten.

This episode demonstrates how genealogists, historians, archivists, and families can work together to investigate neglected cemeteries and recover the stories of children whose lives were often reduced to incomplete institutional records. It also asks an important question: once these individuals are identified, how do we respectfully return their stories to the families and communities connected to them?

About the Podcast

Hittin' the Bricks with Kathleen is the genealogy podcast that features your questions and her answers, helping listeners explore overlooked records, difficult family histories, and the historical context that shapes the stories we inherit.

Transcript

Copy

Welcome To Forgotten Children

John 0:00

Ladies and gentlemen from the depths of the sweltering, fetid, and humid heartland of America, the Kansas City on the other side of the mighty Moe. Welcome to Hitting the Bricks with Kathleen, the Do-It-Yourself Genealogy podcast with your questions and her answers. I am John, your humble hubby host, and today we have a very special discussion about the Forgotten Children Initiative. You're not gonna want to miss this one, but there's a lot to cover, so let's start hitting the brick. Okay, we are here with Mark Schindler, Reba Omer, and Daniel Feldman, and of course the brick hitter, Kathleen Brandt. And we're going to talk about Forgotten Children.

Kathleen 0:35

I call this Forgotten Children Initiative. Is that correct?

Marc Schindler 0:38

That is correct. That's the initiative that we have initiated out of Georgetown University's Center for Youth Justice in Washington. So uh the work in Missouri, I think, is is coming off of that. So I think it's it's fine to refer to it as Forgotten Children.

John 0:55

Morg, could you tell us a little bit about you and how you got involved?

Marc Schindler 0:59

Yeah, I'm happy to. Thanks, John. Thanks, thanks for having me. Uh so I'm an attorney by by training, um, but I've done a number of different things uh in addition to lawyering during my career, uh, primarily representing children in juvenile justice and child welfare systems. Uh that includes serving as a public defender for a period of time, like Daniel does in Missouri. Uh, I did that in Baltimore uh many years ago. Uh I've worked as an advocate on policy and research as well as litigation on behalf of children in juvenile justice and child welfare systems. Um and I've had two stints in government, uh, helping to lead juvenile justice uh agencies in Washington, D.C. from 2005 to 2010, and most recently in Maryland uh from 2023

Meet The Lawyers Behind The Work

Marc Schindler 1:55

uh to the middle of 2025. Um and I it was during my stint in Maryland when I was helping to lead the Department of Juvenile Services that we came upon the issues that we're gonna be discussing today related to forgotten children.

John 2:12

Thanks so much. And and also thanks for the work that you do on behalf of people who often need an additional voice to back them up. And Reba, can you do the same?

Rebba Omer 2:22

Absolutely. So my name is Reba Omer. I work for the Georgetown Law School's Juvenile Justice Clinic and Initiative. I am the senior staff attorney and lead program manager there. I do research and writing and help uh create and execute trainings for youth defenders and other systems actors in the juvenile legal system. I've been at Georgetown eight years now, and before that, I also was a public defender. I was in Knoxville, Tennessee, representing kids there.

John 2:50

And how how's the weather in Georgetown today?

Rebba Omer 2:53

Well, so I actually live in Missouri. So that is how I am connected to this. So even though Mark and I both work for Georgetown, I work remotely. I've worked remotely since 2020. Yeah. And so this is really a personal project for me in many ways, coming out of the fact that I live in Missouri. I'm um, you know, raising a child here. I'm I'm married to a public defender who will introduce himself in a moment. Um but I care deeply about what's happening with children in in Missouri. And so this is a personal as well as professional passion of mine.

John 3:28

Wonderful. Thank you. And thanks for the work you do. Daniel, thanks for being so patient while I figured out where everybody was.

Daniel Feldman 3:36

Um I'm Daniel Feldman, and I am with the public defender's office. I'm the district defender, so the supervisor of the children, our children's defense team here in Columbia, Missouri. We represent young people charged with delinquency offenses. And then if they are certified as adults in adult court, sort of throughout central Missouri for the public defender system here. I think I have to note off the top, John, that I'm not speaking today on behalf of the Missouri State Public Defender, but in my personal capacity. More importantly, I am here living here in Columbia, married to Reba and raising the same toddler she is. Um so we're we're we're we're honored to be doing this work here here in Missouri specifically.

Kathleen 4:27

So I have a question for both uh Reba and Daniel. Did you get connected to this program through Mark or was that a ham happenstance?

Rebba Omer 4:36

Yeah, great question. Um I I heard about it through the Georgetown Network. So um I know I work for Professor Chris Henning at Georgetown, and she and Mark's office have done a lot of projects and trainings together through the years, and she's the one that forwarded me the email about their sort of launch webinar, and it immediately made me wonder you know, what what's happening in Missouri or what happened here in the place that I now call home. So really it is through Mark.

Daniel Feldman 5:02

And and I will note, Kathleen, that I heard about it from Reba, and it feels particularly prescient to because I'm currently representing young people in in Missouri here in Columbia, near Boonville, which we're going to talk about, and so it feels particularly sort of relevant to the work we're doing right now.

Kathleen 5:20

These types of projects are popping up all over the United States. And I get lots of calls and messages from them. Like, what do we do next? How do we find this out? And it's not just for young kids' homes, it's all institutions. So whether it's a prison, where it's an asylum of some sort. And we find that there's always the same issue, and that is how do we identify family? Where are the records? And what other things would you all add to that?

Maryland’s Discovery Of Hidden Graves

Marc Schindler 5:52

I think it's a great question, Kathleen. You know, when when we started this work, it it really comes out of an experience uh while I was working at Maryland's Department of Juvenile Services just a few years ago. When I started there in 2023, we initiated a research project about the history of the agency's facilities and the juvenile justice system in Maryland generally. And we were interested in doing that because when we were doing advocacy 25 years ago when we were uh working for nonprofits and trying to push for better conditions for kids, including in Maryland, we were focused on one facility in particular back then in the early 2000s, and that was the Sheldon Ham Youth Attention Center down in Prince George's County, Maryland, just outside of Washington, D.C. And when we were doing that advocacy, we learned that back in the day that facility was originally called the House of Reformation for Colored Children, and that name just stuck with me, that it was a segregated facility. It didn't surprise me, but it did stick with me. Fast forward 20 plus years when uh my colleague Vinny Girldi and I were now running that agency, we talked about it, and I said, I think we should research the segregated history of the facilities and the system, and so we started to do that, and we started to learn lots of information. We had a terrific staff member named Crystal Ferrettia who was uh doing the research. It was about a year into that research when we quite frankly stumbled upon that years before, many, many years before, children had died out of that facility and were buried across the road. We had no idea that that happened. And so at that point we started to look into it and to try to figure out uh what had happened, and that's what led to uh discovering tragically raves of what we were told was four to five children who were buried out in the woods, but what we discovered was probably somewhere between two and three hundred lack boys who were buried between the years about 1870 to 1940. Uh, and this is while we were still at the department, and we started to think about what we should do. I will say our first uh thing on the list was not to do genealogical research. That was included in the things that we thought about doing, but we didn't have experience in that. Uh but we started to think about and talk to people around the country about doing an investigation to try to figure out how many children were buried.

How Boonville Came Into Focus

Kathleen 8:39

So we is that how you found out about the project there? And how did you land in Missouri finding a reform school also?

Rebba Omer 8:50

Yeah, so I went to the the launch webinar of the Georgetown Forgotten Children Initiative, like you know, Mark is talking about, and I was um so moved by learning this some of the stories of the boys and hearing from family members that you know Mark and his team had connected with, um, seeing how they were connecting this to advocacy for children in the juvenile legal system today. Um, and and the whole project I found you know incredibly moving and important, and it made me immediately wonder about Missouri. And and I just knew, you know, there must have been, right? These reform schools, as they were called at the time, and I think are are fairly referred to as youth prisons now, right? Um there must have been places like this in Missouri. And so I just started Googling and quickly found that about 25 minutes from where I live in Columbia, there was um in Boonville, Missouri, that what was called the Missouri Training School for Boys, had a few different names through its almost 100-year history. Um, and and then quickly found from there that there similarly is a burial ground, a forgotten cemetery where some of the young people who died when they were incarcerated are buried. Um, and from what I found on uh you know findagrave.com, people had been out to this cemetery and had uh done some preliminary research on who was buried there and just quickly kind of started taking notes on all of this and ultimately found 27 death certificates of boys who are buried on this plot of ground. And people think that there's probably at least 50 boys actually buried there. Um there could be even more, you know, we're we're not sure. But it was just a quick sort of internet search, um, and then it just made it feel, you know, even closer to home.

John 10:46

Kathleen, I'm trying to tie this to uh do would this fall in the time frame of orphan trains and things like that?

Kathleen 10:53

I don't know. What time frame are we talking here?

Rebba Omer 10:56

So in Missouri, the the um youth prison in Boonville, the train school for boys opened in 1889 and then it closed in, I think I want to say 1984.

Kathleen 11:07

So, John, this is a lot more recent.

Why This History Matters Now

Kathleen 11:10

So, Daniel, what is your role in this?

Daniel Feldman 11:13

Well, I think that there is a connection between how we have treated children in the past in Missouri and how we treat children today in Missouri. You know, Missouri's legal system has wrestled as early as like the 19th century, what we're talking here with how to treat our vulnerable children. And so I really do believe that how we treated children in Boonville, not far from here, in the 19th and the 20th century, not that long ago, it's really important in terms of the context of how we're treating our most vulnerable children involved in our systems today. I will also say, first and foremost, Kathleen, I'm making this connection to the current day. It's my job working with children now. First and foremost, though, the children who were sent to Boonville, who died there, deserve to be remembered by us as Missourians. So I think that's an important place for us to start is we live here, we are citizens of Missouri, and so yeah, yes, I could go off on a tangent about our system, and I'm I'm excited to talk about um our systems, how they've improved, and where we have room to grow. But we need to remember the children who who lived and and died at Boonville. Ultimately were responsible for how we treat our children, and then includes those in our past.

Kathleen 12:24

So, the Boonville project that you all are working on, what stage are you in? And what are you doing? And how did you all happen to become genealogists?

John 12:36

Are they all genealogs? I'm assuming that nobody here except for Kathleen is a genealogist. That would be correct. We're lawyers. So so please tell tell her how we all became genealogists.

Rebba Omer 12:52

Yeah, I I would not claim the title of genealogist. Maybe someday I'll I can say I'm an amateur genealogist, but not even that today. Um we are we are in the early stages, but we do have a small team formed already to move the project forward.

Building A Missouri Research Team

Rebba Omer 13:10

Uh, we've gotten a lot of you know interest from people who are interested in, like Daniel was saying, protecting the rights of children today and remembering and honoring these children who died in the past here here in our home in Missouri. And so we've been meeting pretty regularly to learn more, share information with each other as we learn about the history of Boonville. We have been, you know, strategizing about how to move the project forward in terms of genealogical research. That our goal, like Mark was saying, really is to connect with living family members, living descendants of these boys, so that then they can help inform our process for what it looks like to remember. Um, what does it look like to honor these children? We really think that having the voices of the family members is critical. And so that's where, you know, in part we're we're here to invite the community members of um of the podcast to consider whether they might be interested in joining us and volunteering and offering their genealogical skills to help us begin to identify

Race And Segregation At Boonville

Rebba Omer 14:16

these people.

Kathleen 14:16

Mark mentioned that the one he worked on in Maryland was a colored boys historically. Is that makeup the same, the demographics the same in Boonville?

Rebba Omer 14:26

Yeah, great question. Um it's it's different, but I do think that the racial disparities that existed at this um in in Boonville are a huge part of the story and a huge part of what we can learn and um what we can you know consider about how we should change today. So Boonville it had both African-American and white youth. Um, the number, the total number of youth varied between about 400 to almost 700 at different points during the history of the facility. And there was a racial disparity in terms of comparing to the general population of Missouri, right, at the time. So from my sort of quick research into this, the African-American population of Missouri has varied from about 5% in 1910 to then like 10, 11% in the late 80s, early 90s when Boonville closed. And from what I've seen in the 27 death certificates that we have, um, about 40% of the boys buried that we have records of from those death certificates at least, are African American. So that is a huge disparity, right, when we're thinking in terms of comparison to the general population. And then also in historical research, you know, reading about what conditions were like at Boonville throughout its history, the African-American boys were segregated into a separate house, a barrack. It was a military-style academy for most of its history. There were reports throughout the history about how African-American boys did not have the same access to vocational programs or educational services. They didn't have the same access to like the dining hall as the other boys. They had to eat in a separate space. It seems very apparent that they were having a different experience and conditions were were horrible for everyone. So, you know, I can only imagine how much worse it must have been to be an African-American child in this facility.

The First Record To Pull

John 16:25

What would be um your your go-to record when let's say you're taking a particular circumstance, a particular child, and you were for whatever reason needed more information on that child? Where do you guys go first? What's your thing like okay, I know I'm I'm 90% likely to get a hit on this if I go and tell me where it is your first stop is when you're starting to do your research.

Marc Schindler 16:52

Most of these facilities, when they were established, they were actually established to remove children from adult jails and prisons. Right? That's why they were first established. And that's a issue that people are wrestling with from a policy matter in Missouri today, most recently in Maryland and other places. So I think that context uh is important to your question, John, about what we look at. Um first of all, again, we didn't know we were going to be finding uh kids who had died in these facilities and were buried nearby. So we weren't looking for the children at first. But when we did, we we wanted to figure out what we should do, and so we started talking to people in Florida because that was the only other place that we were familiar with in a juvenile justice context of a similar discovery. Uh and they started to guide us, Dr. Aaron Kimberley of uh uh Florida, in Florida, who's a professor there, uh at the University of South Florida, started to guide us and we started to put plans together. Uh we then, for various reasons, left state government. And so I started doing this on my own. Um for folks, I think your listeners are probably familiar with Georgetown's history uh of the sale of enslaved people and the genealogical work that was done to discover uh those descendants of what is known as the GU 272. Uh when I was thinking about going to Georgetown, Georgetown, I started talking to some of those people, and that's where the work started to try to find the families and to look at the records. And so that's when we started doing the genealogical work and looking at the records, particularly the initially the death certificates. So John, you asked to go to. If we can get a death certificate, that's the initial most important document uh to find. And in Maryland, we were able to find 128 death certificates. I then handed those to our genealogist, and she then went to work.

DNA And Forensic Genealogy Basics

Kathleen 19:06

So let me ask this question, and it's hypothetical. I'm a descendant looking for an ancestor who disappeared in 1869, 1870. And I'm saying those years because of the Civil War, right? So somewhere shortly after the Civil War, I notice that a person has disappeared from a census record, let's say the 1870 census record, that might have been in some other written record. In that case, as a descendant, is what how would you tie your goal to that descendant?

Marc Schindler 19:46

That's a great question. Uh first I want to say uh anything I talk about here, I've been educated by Melissa Ruffner, who's the uh genealogist who is working on behalf of the Forgotten Children Initiative, and who was one of the lead genealogists who worked with the Georgetown uh Remembrance Project. A couple of things. Uh and I think this is probably important for your audience, and I'm just learning these things. They didn't have descendants. Almost all of these children died.

Kathleen 20:18

Let's say it's my great uncle who died. Yes. So I'm doing research, and of course, for me, doing research for a family, I'm doing an entire family. I I do a cluster, I don't just go straight up a line. I do all the siblings, first cousins, second cousins, third cousins. We get DNA up to about fifth cousins. So are you working with DNA at all?

Marc Schindler 20:43

Not yet, but I think that will likely happen in Maryland. Uh in Maryland, there's now been a statutorily created commission uh called the Commission on the House of Reformation for College Old, that's been established. There are three family members who have been appointed as members of that commission, and they will be taking over the question of the forensic investigation that could and should be delays, including DNA analysis, including grades, uh those all those things I think will be considered. And we already have a uh pathologist, a forensic pathologist who is volunteering his time, Dr. Roger Mitchell, who was advising families on those processes and what could potentially happen.

Kathleen 21:36

Rebel,

Restorative Justice And Family Voice

Kathleen 21:37

I'm going back to this Missouri project, and that this is in what we call the black belt, right? Boonville was part of the black belt, even though it was on the edge, uh, because we have slavery all up and down the Missouri, Mississippi. So if we are talking about that, what would you want to do in the end with this information?

Rebba Omer 21:57

Great question. Um, I I do really. Believe in the importance of involving the living family members in guiding that process. I think you know Mark has at some point in the past described this as a restorative justice project in a way, right? That um this is about parishions in some way, right? It's about making things right as as close as possible with the understanding that there's no, there's there's nothing that can you know create the opportunity for these boys to come back to life and live their full lives as they should have and have direct descendants, like Mark is saying, right? That that is a tragedy that's um irreparable, but that the family members could could guide a process honoring them and seeking this sort of restorative justice. I think you know, some you know, outcomes that we've talked about that that could be possible could you know be things like a remembrance ceremony, grave markers. I think it sounds like there's a lot of unmarked graves. This, to be very clear, the cemetery is on Department of Corrections property. There are no trespassing signs, you know, kind of all around where we know it to be. And there's a grove of trees around it. You can't access it right now, so without permission from the Department of Corrections. Um, which also means, you know, that the people, even if you knew that that your you know, great-great uncle was buried there, you would not be able to just walk in. You would have to seek permission from the Department of Corrections. And across the street, there actually is a cemetery that's beautifully kept that uh presumably, you know, other people who lived in Boonville throughout the years are buried there. It's just a very stark contrast. Um, I think you know, some other things like you know, Mark is talking about a state commission to explore all of this seems like it could be very important in Missouri as well. Like I said, we don't know how many people are buried there. I think that's gonna require um it's gonna require more resources and I think cooperation at some point, right, from the Department of Correction, since it's on their grounds. I I think the family members, if they're interested, could be involved in testifying about current issues happening in the youth justice system today. Like Mark has said and Daniel has described, we we are where we are today, in part because of the policies of the past and the way these children were treated in the past. I think it's also important to say that I'm sure many people who were involved in creating and implementing the policies that created this place of horrors for these children, I'm sure there were many people who were well-intentioned or who thought that they were doing the best thing for kids or for society. Um, and that to me should give us all pause today, right? That we can think that we are doing the best thing for children when actually we might be causing harm that reverberates for generations. I also think when we're talking about racial disparities, this is like looping back a little bit, right? Um, and talking about today, I always feel like it's very important to say that there are these huge disparities between African American youth and white youth in our juvenile legal system throughout the country today. And we also now have, I think, about 40 years of data, they call it self-report data on behavior of youth. So kids are filling out these surveys about, you know, are they using drugs? Are they stealing things? Are they carrying weapons? And that data shows us that these disparities in our juvenile legal system are not justified by differences in youth behavior. That actually the way kids behave is really similar across race. So the white kids and and the African-American kids are they're all behaving like kids. They're all doing these things that you know we as adults would prefer they didn't do at very similar rates. Um, so I just think that's important to say. We don't have that data going back to you know the 1910s. That's it's more recent, but just with what we know about how kids are, I think we can safely say the same was true back then, and yet the disparities are are there. So I think, like I said, I think there's just there's so much that that we can and should learn from the past.

Kathleen 26:17

What

Immigration Clues And Other Records

Kathleen 26:18

are the numbers of immigrants that you all are seeing in your records or databases or whatever you have gathered?

Rebba Omer 26:25

So I can I'll speak just briefly for Missouri that we are not far enough along to really answer that question accurately from the 27 death certificates that I have. There's 11 African American, I believe three that where no race is listed, and then one Alaskan native, um, and then the rest are white. So when I I've also been kind of starting to look through these annual reports that the state agency in in charge of the facility, you know, issued every year. And there's more information there on the youth who are incarcerated, and it lists out the the different countries of origin or immigrant groups, like you're talking about, Kathleen. So that's something that we could continue to look into in the future.

Kathleen 27:11

John, do you have other questions? Because I wanted to make sure that those who are genealogists and they're looking for their missing ancestors are covered, but the background is so interesting to know how to get there.

John 27:23

I um if you're looking into kind of the reform school at any in any place in any circumstance, and if especially if you're looking from African American and probably immigrant side, the assumption that they would be in a juvenile home might be your first mistake, that they're actually in an adult prison as opposed to any sort of juvenile home.

Marc Schindler 27:45

I think that's a good point.

Kathleen 27:47

What kind of records beside beside death certificates are you all actually finding? And Reba, you mentioned that you're reading the the reports, but that do they mention the children by name individually in those?

Rebba Omer 28:03

That's a great question. They they don't. Um, not that I have seen. There's you know listed numbers of each year of kids who escaped, kids who died, kids who were paroled. Um I also have found at the the State Historical Society here in Columbia, they have a collection of newspapers that were printed at Boonville, and you know, sections of them at least were written by the boys themselves. There are these updates on what's happening at the facility. Um it's they don't have them for every year that the facility was open, but a number of years. And I have I've found records of deaths and funerals and burials that happened on site in those, and that has led me to a few additional that I need to you know research and find the death certificates for. But that I think could be another uh resource for people to look into if they're curious. What I have found is that those are not digitized in Missouri. So you can't you can't just do a control F and you know search for the name of the person. I, you know, I've been going there and sitting there and and leafing through and looking for these things. Um it's not the the most efficient way to do it, and you might not find anything at all. There's many boys who who I have records of their death from the death certificates who are not mentioned in the newspaper as well.

Marc Schindler 29:25

If

One Place Research And Policy Lessons

Marc Schindler 29:26

I could just add to that, and the three of us are lawyers. I'm I'm a lawyer who's learned a lot about genealogical research uh over the past year. As I understand, uh more typically, what happens these days is somebody is trying to research and find their ancestors. This is different, largely.

Kathleen 29:49

We call that forensic genealogy, and that is a different approach. I used to have to do that for adoption cases, people who wanted to know where their family was. So it is different. That research is different, and I'm thank you for reminding our listeners that forensic genealogy is something that we train on throughout the genealogical uh community.

John 30:11

You know, I I always go back to a lot of times the uh one place studies, and I don't know if our guests are familiar with that, um, which is sometimes a a a cluster research where somebody will take a place and instead of searching uh an an individual, uh then they really are documenting the time and space and all the individuals and all the happenings of that particular place. And in a lot of ways this kind of feeds into that. You're you're building from that time to the present as opposed to researching back to it. Um so the your forensic genealogy, Kathleen, would come into heavy play even with those one place studies or one name studies.

Marc Schindler 30:57

I think that's a very helpful way to think about it. And what we're doing with a place, if you will, is that uh youth correctional uh placement, whether it's called a reform school, a house of record, or house of reformation. So going through those records. Uh in Maryland, for example, we looked at the state archives, and the way we're driving at the annual report. We have learned that nearly 300 kids died. And a lot of those are documented, and those annual reports would only have any nearly 300 were otherwise they would have listed as a number of animals that we are working with. There was a child in their family that had died. But many didn't. So we think it's important. They have a right to know. And then as Rita was saying, it's really their right to determine what happens.

Daniel Feldman 32:03

Well, I just wanted to add to what Mark was saying that what we're really talking about is how we treat children, and we have examples. The reason why this genealogy here is so important in my mind, we don't have all the names. The names are not in those annual reports that that we're talking about in Maryland, whether it's Maryland or New York or Missouri. And so the question was and continues to be is how do we want our children to be treated? How do we want them to be documented? And I really think that we should all care what happened if you're in Missouri, you should care what happened in Boonville, because that's a reflection on all of us, right? I just as citizens, if you're in New York, you should care what happened at a reform school in New York. And I will just mention about these efforts. Currently, the research shows that community-based rehabilitative approaches are less expensive and more effective for young people. You know, we represent young people who, in some cases, have caused harm. And so what we're talking about is the harm caused by young people sometimes, and then the harm done to young people in these facilities. And the work that's being done shows us that we can have our young people integrated into our communities in positive ways through these juvenile courts and through these reforms. And so I think that we should all care what happened there so that we can do better now. Um, and also to, as Mark said, help the families of those young people to honor their families in the way that they wish.

How To Help And What’s Next

John 33:37

Guests, do you have anything that you'd like to make sure that everybody knows about or any upcoming events, anything that anybody should be keying into, legislation pending or anything like that that you want people's antennas up for?

Rebba Omer 33:52

I I'll just you know end by you know saying thank you, Kathleen and John, for for hosting us and this important conversation. Um, as I said, we are really at a critical moment of stepping into searching for the living family members of the young people who who died and were buried at Boonville. And if anyone is interested in joining our efforts and volunteering their expertise in genealogy, we would be incredibly grateful to have you as part of our team here in Missouri. I will make sure that Kathleen has my email address to put in the show notes if anyone would like to reach out.

Daniel Feldman 34:28

Fantastic. I'm just sort of in awe of the work y'all are doing and have done and really seeing for the first time the importance of this work. So thank you to all the listeners who are involved in this and to Kathleen and John to you. Kathleen to you, and of course, we would love to work with somebody, but I just it's an honor to be here. Thank you for having us. Thank you for having me. And and um it's it's really wonderful learning about your universe a little bit.

Kathleen 34:54

John would wish it was not his part of his universe, but that's okay, Daniel. Thank you.

John 35:01

I love my many universes that I pass in between.

Kathleen 35:05

And Mark, thanks for sharing with us your Georgetown experience because that sounds like the the start of it all, the kind of the model that people are using, is how you did it. Yeah. But there is a group called the African American Genealogical Historical Society, Augs. And right now they're doing a conference, uh, online conference. That is another connection that each of you all should reach out to. I do not want to leave out the immigrants, but unfortunately, it's inside the reform inside these reform schools.

Marc Schindler 35:41

And if I just could, on September 10th, we will be issuing a report out of Georgetown, which will document how many places around the country there are where there are children buried in old cemeteries or burial sites. So that'll be coming out of Georgetown on September 10th. I'll send you the information so that you can link to it. Uh there'll be a national conference at Georgetown on the 10th, which will include many family members and others working on these issues, and it won't be streamed, unfortunately. Um but uh I'll send you the information, and when we release that report, we'll be looking at here and talk with people in other cities because it'll be the first time that there's a report issue that shows more than half of the cities that have children who died or were killed and were buried and were holding a weakness or the voting deserve you have your trial because they're the first to really follow up on this for people who are willing to pay genealogists to do this work. If anybody wants to fund that work, uh I think that's very important as well. Volunteers are great, but these are also professionals who uh ideally are compensated for their work.

Kathleen 37:04

Thank you for that.

Closing Thanks And Listener Mail

Kathleen 37:05

Jan, I think we need to wrap it up.

John 37:07

As usual, uh you know, I just learned so much. Um and it's and sometimes you make these connections that have nothing to do with genealogy, and sometimes you find out they do in ways that you just don't uh anticipate. So it's always very enjoyable. Um so thank all of you for uh taking time out of your day to chat with us and to s especially to uh give our listeners uh something of value. You get Kathleen.

Marc Schindler 37:35

Thank you for having us. Thanks to Reba and Daniel for doing the work, and Kathleen for you uh doing this. And I just glanced over and I'm pleased to say, like during this call, I got an email from our genealogist who just introduced me to another living family member. Fantastic.

John 37:51

Well, congratulations, you made it to the end of another episode. Thanks so much for staying. Thanks to Mark Schindler, Reba Omer, and Daniel Feldman for taking the time to tell us about the important work of the Forgotten Children Initiative. Thanks to Chewy Chewbacca Brandt for his unwavering lack of interest in anything we're doing. Thanks to new listeners in Botswana, Lebanon, and Pakistan, and of course, thanks to you for tuning in, downloading, and subscribing. The theme song for Hittin't the Bricks was written and performed by Tony Fistknuckle and the DraftSacks. Watch for the next appearance in a ventil near you. Do you have a genealogical question for Kathleen? Drop us a line at hitting the bricks at gmail.com and let us know.