Good morning everyone! Good morning! Happy Roundup Day! Happy Roundup Day! Yes, happy peace of Scottish Independence Day too and we'll talk about that in the profiles later. Sneaky! Yes, hi! Hi! Yes, and welcome to Sandy! Yes, thank you for being with us, Sandy! Nice! Nap, latch and fill in for Mags. I have my biscuits and I have my blueberries, but I am also currently sitting on land that her ancestors probably out at one point up in Raven County, Georgia. So, I kind of feel like Mags is here with us. I feel her ancestor spirit. That's nice, nice. It's great having you here. Hey, look guys! Oh, she's there in the chat! Mags, how are you doing? I don't know if you need any cemetery photos. Yes, that's right. Yes, Mags is traveling and not able. She doesn't have reliable internet at her. She's got some, obviously, but yeah, and other things. So, we have Sandy. So, Sandy, you're like the supply teacher of the Roundup. You get called in when one of us is sick. Which we so appreciate. Well, you guys are so nice to invite me in. Now that I know I don't have to do any calculating or any math or singing, then we're okay. Yes, I had to sing the oboe Maria at a funeral the other day, but I didn't record it. So, maybe another time. The hangouts. The connected thumbs coming. So, maybe something. That's right, yes.  So, welcome to everyone who's watching us live and those who are watching us after the fact. D gets the award for being the early bird this morning from a nest of Georgia, home of the masters, among other things. Yes. Now, the masters isn't going on right now. Surely it's not that warm in Georgia that they're playing golf. They do the masters. It does not matter. They do the masters.  But is it going on this weekend? I thought it's connected on weekend, but I might have it wrong. Might be next weekend. And those pimento sandwiches are everything they say they are. Nice. Nice. Christine Miller is here. Judith Fry, Chris Wine. Hello, so we have Mojavelin. A lot of back and forth. And Fjordalisi, how are you doing there? Ann. Hilary Gadsby from Wales. John Tyner from Ireland. How you doing, John? From sunny and warm Appalachia. I'm glad it's sunny and warm for you there. It's actually sunny here. Yesterday was a nasty day, but today was fine. Um, Vicky Blanco from Chile. Hey, Vicky. There's Patricia Rye, distant cousin. Yoke, how are you doing? Susie Carter. Uh, Dame Mellon, the first. I love that. Uh, Jory Jordan. Uh, Chris Feriolo. How you doing, Chris? Donna Gerber. Hey there, Lesh, how you doing? Gail Martin playing biscuits. Ruth Chavez. Oh, we do have them. My personal chef came with me to, uh, the cabin. So, we did that. You will see me here. Lisa Gervais is having a blueberry muffin when thinking of mags. Isn't that nice? How you doing, Mikey? And Terry Birx, Bonnie Dragoncat. Uh, let's see. Patricia, you're true. And I think Kathy Bauer. Okay. I think I've caught up to all of them. Did I miss any names? I think I saw you, heard you mention all the ones that I scanned through. Okay. JRE is here. Mikey is the personal chef. Well, that's great. Okay. Well, great to see you all. Uh, we have a fun hour or so. I shouldn't, I shouldn't guess how long it's gonna take. That would be a fun thing to do is at the beginning of everyone, write down how many minutes we think it's gonna go before we end. And see who's the closest. But I'm gonna turn it over to you, our guest, Sandy, to talk about the question of the week. So, the question of the week is what is your genealogy bucket? You know, what, what is the one thing that you want to get result with your bucket list? What's in it? I say one thing because I know that we probably have a full bucket, but I'm gonna go over just about one thing that everybody is really, really got on their question of the week bucket list. Let me bring up my page here. Bear with me just a little bit. I'm on a different system. So, I thought it was really interesting when we talk about bucket list to know Greg and Bessie, what is in your bucket list? Well, for me, it would be my, my birth father was a Douglas and I've got him the line tracked back to about to 1800 where my great-great-great-grandfather was married. But I don't know, I, and that's in Ireland, County Wexford, Ireland. But I'm, I'm guessing that with the last name Douglas, he prop, there's probably a Scottish connection there. And I'd love to go further back than 1800 and make that Scottish connection. But I haven't, or any connection to, you know, what happened before that. I do know the town, the townland where he was, the townland in County Wexford. So, that's a good start, but I can't get any further back. It sounds like a road trip might be needed. What about you, Bessie? Well, I have two. One is, has to do with my Scottish ancestry too. My second great-grandfather had the surname Menzi. And so, I know I'm a, I'm a part of the Menzi clan. Other researchers have said that he came, he was, he was the immigrating ancestor, said that he came from Perth, Persher. But I don't have proof. And I really, I'd like to, to be able to feel more confident in that. And, and then my second one is what got me into genealogy, got me interested in genealogy as an eight-year-old, although I didn't even know that's what it was called, which was my middle name being Tudor and the family legend that we were related to the Tudors, which I really don't think is true. But there have been some tantalizing, you know, the family, it's interesting to me that I've seen the family belief persist widely like side branches and for a long time going back. And there have been a few tantalizing clues. So we'll see. That would be fascinating. And you actually make a really good segue because on the question of the week on GDG, a lot of people were saying something similar. Well, family stories said, or family folklore, or we were told by the great aunt or by my grandmother's sister, you know, this might happen, but we have no proof. And it's really tough because, you know, now that we're all doing genealogy, we want proof. We want sources. So it's fascinating. Now, I don't know if answers are usually selected as best answer for this particular instance. It makes sense. And I'm going to read this. It's just going to repart it because it's fantastic. And this is from Judith Bryant. I might add that she is a Kentucky Appalachian and said, I would love to go to the Family Search Library in Salt Lake City. Oh, to be able to hold, read, see all those books about my family. I grew up in El Paso, Texas, and they had quite a large genealogical collection. I was able to find several books about my mom's family in Virginia. It was quite a thrill to actually hold a book and find information you didn't have. I was able to break down a couple brick walls with a will book from Virginia. But imagine what I could do with all those books in Salt Lake City. And I think that's, you guys were recently at Roots. Did you have a chance to visit the library? I did not. Oh, now I didn't get to Roots Tech this year, but I did for the first time ever last year. And I did plan. I told the people, I told the people at the Wicked Tree booth, I have to take a few hours off to zip up to the library because I just have to experience. And I actually found, I actually found a record that I didn't have before. I found a baptism of one of my great grandmothers who actually, I was looking for, I was looking for one line and it was, well it was related, but it was another line. So it was a total surprise that I was able to get this. And it was, oh man. And I would tell you that when you go, if you make a trip or plan to go to the Family Search Library in Salt Lake City, you probably have a research book. You don't have a page. It's not a couple notes. You have detailed information on the ancestors that you want to search and probably not enough time. And I like, I think Joku said that she doesn't have a bucket. She has a bathtub. I know that was great. I want to point out too, on the question of the week, GDG, tons of tons of people saying DNA, DNA, DNA. You guys might want to look into the Wicked Tree DNA project and see if they can help. And also, fact check me on this, but I know the Wicked Tree Adoption Angels project will also help you trace back to a grandparent or free. So if some of you are looking for a little bit closer on your bucket list than, you know, say really far back 1700s, you might want to check out the adoption angels on Wicked Tree and they might be able to help you. In worst case, they tell you that they're not. Something else that's very popular for us in North America, the Native Americans. We always kind of looking to see if we can trace back to the Native Americans. And that's what T was mentioning. I like this one goal from Ray. He gave us three. And I'd like to encourage other relatives. I'll add relatives, friends, cousins, whoever might be Wicked Tree to help us and continue. And I know that there's several profiles that I share. PM management with a cousin. So that's helpful as well. And this one was kind of interesting. So Oliver is looking and researching the church books that came out and they were digitized in 2023. And Dieter, the PL from Germany mentioned that. And I'm just going to come over to this page. Look at more than 1000 church books from three parishes to dig through. This is kind of like going through your own miniature family search library and more than 1200 parish books. And this is all he said to try and break down the family walls, the family brick walls for these people. That's a pretty heavy duty bucket list item. And then if this is Betsy, this is kind of related to something that we just talked about is Monty McCoy said he'd like to figure out his paternal line and Monty was just rocked. And one of the goals was to see if he was related to the father of Randolph McCoy. And we never were able to do that because we're waiting on DNA. So again, a lot of people are saying DNA DNA. And then the bucket list that I was thinking more of for me personally, and let me just scroll down there, I want to visit my family homeland in Scotland appropriate for today. So I think we got other people who want to do a road test. Yes, that's right. I will tell you that my bucket list is used to be quite large. You chip away at it every year. I think we might have New Year's resolutions, but we chip away at our genealogy bucket list as we go through wiki tree thongs and wiki tree work that we do and try and connect more and more of our family. Mine is connected oddly enough to a question that I was here two weeks ago, the ethnicity. I'm trying to use DNA and try and narrow down ethnicity, which is almost impossible by the way. But I'm determined to kind of narrow down where my Linger family came from because I've been told that they were German and they were not, they were chainsawed. And somebody placed them in France in just four a.m. this morning. One of the researchers that helps me on wiki tree placed them in Italy. So you know I'm going to be bugging Chris Ferriolo for that. But that's the bucket list.  Let's know. I'd like to encourage those that work with DNA to come up to this G2G post and see if you can help some people out because I would say about 90% of our DNA help wanted on the G2G question of the week. So if you're into mysteries, solving mysteries for others, take a look. A lot of them are global. They're not just specific to one particular area. And see if you can kind of help out a wiki tree or if not, then this is going to be a throwback to you, Greg. Hold on to that thought because you never comes around for secret santa. That's right. And that is the question of the week. Excellent. That's great. Yeah, there was lots of lots of good stuff going on in the chat about fine. Their bucket list, what they'd like. Travel was another one. Someone else has a Douglas brick wall, which is nice. And there's another biological DNA related question. Yoke was giving, Chris was, is it wrong that I didn't want to, I don't want to visit the Coliseum and said he just wants to go to one of his hometowns and she said, you visit what you want. And I would definitely, I think I would definitely want to see the hometown or the place where my ancestors were born versus the tourist. Yeah, exactly. Great. It's much more personal. Yeah. Yeah. So me and what do you think about this? Betsy, this is Meg's bucket list. I think we're going to give you a checkmark next to that. Excellent. Underway. That is great. Yes. Meg's is one of the ones being rocked actually. So that's cool. So the profiles of the week, the theme for this week is which figure from the Declaration of Arboroth are you most closely connected to? Because today, April the 6th is the anniversary of the Declaration of Independence of Scotland. It was made in 1320. So that goes way, way back. So the question is, are you closer to King Robert the Bruce of Scotland or are you closer to King Edward Longshanks of England? So which of those two kings are you the closest to? So I've decided that well, I'm going to take you on a bit of a rabbit rabbit hole tour before we even get to the profiles. So we're not going to do the what I've been doing the last couple of months and doing sort of combat and pairing things up and doing a bunch of different little things. We're only going to worry about in terms of the combat, whether you're closer to Robert the Bruce or Edward Longshanks. So just put in the chat whether you're closer, Robert the Bruce or King Edward of England. Or you could even just put King Scotland, King of England, whatever. And if you're one of your first times here, you're not sure how to do that. You can just, you just go to your own profile page. And if you scroll right down to the bottom, you will have a section that looks like this. Now I've got the WikiTree browser extension installed and turned on the option that organizes my connections so that they're in a nice, nice little table like this. If you don't have the WikiTree browser extension installed and you're just using the regular WikiTree site without any extra extensions, you'll get the exact same information, but it'll be in sort of in paragraph form. So you might have to hunt a little further, just see that. But for me, because all of the profiles are all related to Scotland and are all connected up from that neck of the woods, all of them are only two degrees from my closest to my most distant ones. So I suspect that many of us will have a similar small range. So connecting or competing one against the other is not going to be very exciting. So we're just going to worry about King of England, King of Scotland. And for me, it looks like Edward Plantagenet, that's the King Edward Longchanks, King of England. I'm 25 degrees from him. I'm one more to Robert the Bruce, King of the Scots, 26. And also 26 degrees from the Douglas, who I'm not directly connected with at least yet, but it'd be nice to know whether I am or not. So that would be interesting. But anyways, tell us in the chat which one you're closest to. But let's go back. Now, the one cool thing about this. So this is the anniversary, of course, of the Declaration of Arboret. And there is, in fact, a project on WikiTree about the Arboret. And if you click on this link down here in the GDG point post, that'll take, or where is it here? I think it's that, that'll take you to the free space page, all about the Scotland Declaration of Arboret. And this is a wonderful free space page, project landing page. And there are many, WikiTree has many, many projects. And I encourage you strongly to, you know, get involved in one if you haven't already done so, because you get to meet other people, you get to collaborate, and you get to learn skills and or really refine your research skills in a specific area. And that helps in lots of different ways. So I'm just going to do a quick preview of this free space page for the project, because it's really set up really nicely. So just like all many free, most free space pages, there's a table of contents there, so you can quickly jump to different ass places of it, if you want, right away. But what I like how this is set up is it's sort of got two sections that on the left panel is all sort of the information about it. So the mission of the project. So it's very interesting. So what's interesting is that so the mission is to improve the profiles of the nobles and the barons who signed this declaration, this declaration of independence, including up to three generations of their descendants. Now, most of these have 10, 12, 15 generations down. So that would be ridiculous, a ridiculous number.  So three generations of big families is going to be a lot of profiles. And then they say after they get that done, then maybe they'll revisit, maybe the latter fourth generation, who knows. But the other thing about this, because this, this declaration was in 1320, see there it is right there, 1320. All of these profiles are pre 1500. So you need to be certified for pre 1500. So there's some some things you have to do, some reading, some things you have to agree to, to, to work on profiles that are back in time. But that's all worthwhile, because you learn lots and lots of good stuff about that. And then there's more details on another page. But the initial goals are, I guess on the wiki tree browser extension, one of the neat things you have is if you hover over a link, it'll give you a little preview of that, of that page, which is very handy, unless you're live casting, in which case it gets in the way sometimes. It's a great feature, but not when you're live casting always. I'll try to keep my cursor away from those live links. And it tells you then it tells you how to join the project. So if anyone wants to join that today, I'd recommend it and how to get started, but the assignments are and so on. But the other cool thing is in the middle, so there's a picture of the one of the copies of the declaration that still survives. And little details about it. The actual title of it, it's a letter from the nobility barons and commons of Scotland to Pope John the 22nd. And it was a declaration of Scottish independence. Interesting. They compare it to like the English Magna Carta. And sometimes there are the ideals of the Scottish declaration inspired notions of individual liberty in the charters of English colonies. So what happened back here in 1320 had ripples into the founding of America, which is very cool. And later to the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. So that's very cool. And then here's the whole text of the declaration, which I think is really cool. Now the declaration to see somebody took the time to do that. I know. Isn't that amazing? The declaration was done in Latin. It was going to the Pope in Rome, so it had to be done in Latin because, you know, that's that was the official language of the church. Then they did an English translation, of course. And one of the lines in it, talking about the Scottish independence and the will to be independent, in truth, not for glory, not for riches. Where is it? Where was that line? There was a line about as long as there's 100 of us left, we will fiercely fight for independence. I thought it was in this opening paragraph here, but it is later on. But anyways, you should read the text because it's very interesting.  And then it sort of gives a little bit of a history. The history might be a little, you know, little one sided. Driving out the Britons, utterly destroying the picks, assailed by Norwegians and Danes. And then basically, and then talking about the horrible things that the King of the English, Edward, has perpetrated in the deeds of cruelty, massacre and violence and stuff. They do mention attacking monasteries, you know, so that's going to hit home to the Pope. And then basically be seeking for the Pope's protection or his championing their cause. And then there it is. I mean, this is amazing. This, I think, is what makes WikiTree special, what it is. You can't really do something like this easily elsewhere. I'm just fascinated by this page. Yeah, it is amazing. It is amazing. Yeah. Now, I just glanced over briefly. Chris asked that this is in line with the war with England that they talk about in Outlanders. It's a long time since I've watched an episode of Outlanders, so I'm not sure what the time frame is, but the time frame Scotland and England were at war around the turn of the 1300s. So in 1297, I think, so was the time. This would be earlier than this way earlier because I was thinking, aren't they always still being contentioned with each other? Yeah, that's true. This is so true. Yeah, that's right. Yeah. So, yeah, I think it is a little earlier. But then, so the other thing on this page is a link to the categories. And in the category page, so people who have that category are those who signed the declaration. So there's a list of all the profiles. You can click on any one of them and go to those profiles, or you can click on my connections. And then you can see how closely you are related to all of these. And look, and I am either in it, well, all of these are either ancestor cousins. In fact, I went through, they're all cousins. None of them are my direct ancestors, but all of them are cousins of mine, distant cousins. Because look at this, the closest one is at 30 generations, which really is a second cousin, 24 times removed. So I guess that means my 24th great-grandfather was second cousins with one of this guy. So I guess that's not too far, but anyways. And the last one, let's see how far away this Magnus is. Eighth cousin is 23 times removed. So yeah, pretty distant. But then here we are. So King Robert, the first King of the Scots, Robert the Bruce, he's the first profile we're going to talk about. But again, before we do that, let's dive down another rabbit hole because look at the top of his profile here. I love when they do this because he's the King of the Scots, right? That's his title. And you have on his profile, you have this little template here, the succession template. And so you can, if you're just interested, well, I mean, let's see where the King of the Scots, where that, you know, who what happened before or after, you can just click on that. So right before he became King of the Scots in 1306, there was, he was preceded by what was called the second interregnum, which isn't the person's name. Second is his first name, interregnum is his last name, no. Actually, if you know a little bit of Latin, you can tell that interregnum means between kings, interregnum, regnum meaning king. So that's a period, a period in time when there are no kings. So it's sort of a temporary thing. And then before him, John Balliol was the King of the Scots. And then there was another interregnum. And then from then on, we have kings all the way. Well, actually, not quite kings. We have a queen of the Scots, Margaret, who was also known as the mate of Norway. And then we can keep on going back. You can just click, click, keep clicking on the preceded by, and you can go back and back in time until you get to the very first one. So Margaret and I are over second cousins, 24 times removed. But if you go far enough back, or for me, I went far enough back. I came to a king. I've got Duncan the first is my 30th great grandfather. That means I'm directly related, directly descended from a king of Scotland, which makes me a very, very distant member of the Scottish royalty. So my challenge is to all of you is to start with, with, go to open up the profile for Bruce and go for, where are we here?  And I want to see if I want, I'm, I'm challenging you to see if anyone is closer than 30th great grandfather. And how, or how many of us are actually Scottish royalty? Oh, Scottish. That's tough. Yes. Now there might, I suspect not every one of us descend from some Scottish royalty and see it like this was, he was born in what 10,040s or no, about 10,010. So there are literally millions of people who have a closer claim to the throne. So I'm not moving to Glasgow or Edinburgh any time. But I thought that's a very cool thing. So moving on. So here is the first, Constantine is the first king, or the first king of Scotland, or the king of Picts. No, wait a second. There was a point there where the king of Scotland was mixed in with the kingdom of Picts. And in fact, there's a nice little map, where does the map that shows how Scotland, there's Pictland is the northern part. There's another part here called Strathclyde. There's also sometimes Strathclyde, it's his own kingdom. There's Delredia, Deliada, which I hadn't heard of before until I saw this map. And then there's Northumbria, which I believe is actually part of North and England is not Northumbria. That's not part of Scotland currently. We have maybe some of our Brits in the chat can confirm that. That's right. Believe Ruth's in the chat. Oh, Sharon Haynes. Robert the Bruce is her 19th great grandfather. She's very okay. The last thing I want to show you about these, this succession rabbit hole is something that I discovered this week. And those who watched Ask Alesh with me is that Alesh now has a report that he puts out weekly on the succession templates. So if you go to that page, and I'll put the link right to it in the chat, you can actually see the list of the succession. So you don't have to just click, click, click, click to go back in time. You can actually see all of them. Now, there was something that happened in this middle column that says errors. This middle column that says errors is supposed to be a link to the actual profiles, and some of them it does. And some of them it as long as it says errors doesn't. But you can see the URL or the wiki tree ID there. But here is the King of Scotland's Monarchs of Scotland. And you can see that. And you can in this one page, it starts at the top, Kings of Hungary. So you can see the list of all the Kings of Hungary. This, I mean, the page was put together for people who work on projects and who, you know, whose job is to make sure that these succession boxes work. So it may not look very exciting to others. But it's a one place where you can actually see them all in one list. And I think that's kind of cool. So that is my little geeky. Great. So we have a confirmation from both Hillary and Ruth that Northumbria is in Northern England. And Ruth says, literally, the land north of the Humber. Of course. That makes perfect sense. It's used to refer to Northumberland and sometimes County Durham as a tourist destination. Northumbria, north of Humber. Oh, yeah. I love that. I really, I really hope that the H is in silent. Thank you. Thanks for that. Okay. Okay. So Robert the Bruce, now we've got lots of profiles and we haven't even started. So I'm going to pick out one maybe interesting fact about one interesting fact is that Pennegan wants to go outside. My wife just got home and he might he's hoping that she might have dropped a crumb on the floor or muffin or something. He can dream. So anyways, Robert Bruce, first King of the Scots. He and King Edward, King Edward did not see eye to eye all the times. Well, not there were times when when he did play pledge fealty to England and was okay with Edward. But then it became obvious that Edward did not have the best interests of Scotland at heart. So he joined the repent rebellion and the fight for Scottish independence and eventually and led that and eventually became their King. The other three big names in this whole or the another big name in this that of course, which is not a profile of the week, but as William Wallace, who you know, there's been lots of movies made about as well, and great part exactly. I've got an interesting fact about him. Okay. One of my brothers is actually a factual proven to be brother of William Wallace. He tells everybody every Friday night that he is William Wallace's brother, actual brother. So really, there you go. Everybody, everybody seems like an Apple Edge wants to be a Scott, but there you go. Yeah. So there we go. This profile is really well done. And it goes into all sorts of details. What's interesting. So the one thing and I'm not going to read through it all. And I'm pretty sure we covered a lot of this history on a previous roundup. So I'm not going to repeat it all. But the one really cool thing is that he comes from a very royal family. And the top here talks about, you know, his various titles and whatnot. He had lots of siblings, four brothers and five sisters. Unfortunately, three of his brothers were executed by the English in 1306 and 1307 during the rebellion. His sister, Mary, the king of Norway, and his brother, Edward became the king of Ireland. So in their immediate family, they had three kingdoms between them, which is very, I thought very cool. That's amazing. Isn't that neat? Neat. So the rebellion happened in the early 1300s, 1306, 1307. And let's see, is this the one that has the timeline? No, I think another profile has, I think Edward has the timeline on it. Then 1320, the day that we're, the anniversary today, it was a declaration of Scottish independence. And it was finally recognized in later 1326, 27, actually I should, we could actually look here on this thing. Well, he became, he declared himself king in 1306, but England sort of let it be or agreed with the declaration in later in the 13, late 1320s. So then next one, of course, is Edward, Edward I, Edward Longshanks, king of England. And, of course, he's the one who wanted more control over Scotland and was fighting against it. And here's his timeline. So the one thing I like about this is it does give you the timeline here. He fought in Crusades, so back in the early 1200s, he was part of a bunch of Crusades to the Holy Land, didn't like Wales, was trying to wipe out the Welsh rebellion there, built a whole pile of castles in Wales to keep them under control. And then, so the predecessor to Robert the Bruce was crowned, and then the details about the War of Independence are all there. So that's kind of neat how it sort of delineates that. The next person, William III Earl of Ross, he's one who went, so most of the, I think all the rest of these, or almost all the rest of these, were ones who signed the Declaration of Arboret, the Declaration of Independence on this date back in 1320. And you'll see that little indication right there at the top of their profile. And there, and you actually can click on that, so he has a title. So again, you can use that successor to go back and forth and see who before and who after them. But though he signed the Declaration, at one point he was on the side of Edward. And in fact, his claim to infamy was that despite what the sort of the rules of the land were, he actually kidnapped relatives, female relatives of Robert the Bruce, after his wife and conjured with daughters and they were jailed or sent to live. So that was not nice. No, to say the least. Now at one point he and Robert the Bruce made up and he switched sides and so on. And the women were eventually released, but that's quite a turn about him. That speaks a lot of what Robert the Bruce that he was actually willing to forgive that, like that's a pretty major, major brooch of things. Next one, Henry Sinclair was also a signer. The thing I found cool is that he went by the name St. Clair and his father went by St. Clair. And this is again, it's sort of like the Northumbria thing. It's how names and words evolve. And St. Clair, if you just say it fast enough, it sounds like St. Clair and that's how it evolves. Sure. Yeah, yes, yes. Yeah, St. Clair, St. Clair, St. Clair. Yeah. So I thought that was very cool. And he was appointed, he was a sheriff, not the sheriff of Nottingham, but the sheriff of the planet. Yes, but I can't help but think of the sheriff of Nottingham and all those cartoons and stuff. And he also was like, like the previous guy, it originally started out following the Edwards, but then eventually switched sides and realized that Scotland's independence was more important. And so he joined Bruce's banner. Then we have Roger Mulberry, another signer. And he was, look at the name of this book here, the original Chronicle of Scotland, like look at how it's spelled. I love the old English. Is that cool? It's still like very recognizable. Wow. I think that's cool. So that's a cool fact from this profile alone, you know, second sentence in is really neat. He was, let's see, there he goes. He was part of what was called the soul's conspiracy. So after the declaration of Arborth was signed, there were some people who didn't like Robert the Bruce as their king, and they wanted to put someone else, same William DeSolis on as the king. I don't think that's about that. But apparently Robert gave out lands to people who were supporters of his and took lands away from people who were not on his side. And some of these people had their feelings hurt, I guess. And so in a typical Game of Thrones type of move, there was a plot, but that plot did not survive. And some of those supporters in the area of the solace were counted as treason. Some were killed. And this guy died in prison. And because of his participation, he was supposed to be drawn and quartered. And by doing that, then his lands would resort to the crown, Robert the Bruce, which could be dispensed otherwise. But he actually, Robert the Bruce, rescinded that and allowed the body to stay intact so it could be buried in a proper church graveyard. So that was kind of magnanimous on him at the end. James Douglas, the one who has my birth surname, is only a cousin and not a direct ancestor, at least so far, as I know. Good Sir James, the black Douglas. He was one of the, along with William Wallace, one of his closest, Robert the Bruce's closest allies. And he was the one, I believe, he was the one charged with taking Robert the Bruce's heart to the Holy Land after he passed away. And unfortunately, let's see there. Yes. So on his deathbed, King Robert elicited a promise that Douglas take his heart to the Holy Land. The Papilla Pledge later. He began his journey, but Douglas didn't make it. Douglas was killed in Spain. So Robert was returned back to Scotland. So I didn't quite make it. It was on the pilgrimage, but didn't quite make it all the way to the Holy Land. But Can you imagine a pilgrimage? What it would be like back then and carrying somebody's heart? A little different. Maybe it was dried out by then. Yeah. Alexander Fraser of Touch Fraser and Cowie. So I love how they, you know, the names and titles are given out. And he served, he was a sheriff of Stirling and Concarton, signed the Declaration, of course. And he was also known as, we're going to see there. Yeah, advice to the sheriff. He was married to the King's sister. So that's an interesting link there. Edward was the Marshal of Scotland, or Marshal, basically is the translation of that. And so that was a title that he was bestowed on. Again, he was another signer of the Declaration and was involved in the parliament. There's a nice little snippet from the Declaration itself. Andrew Leslie, the sixth of Leslie, Leslie being his title. Now, interesting thing here. There's a neat, I love how they show the heraldry. And so his heraldry, the Leslie one, let me think now. I think the Leslie aspect is the three signets there in a row with the blue stripe. And the other one that he incorporated is the Abernathy, which is his wife's side. So he changed his coat of arm or he changed his armor. There's a whole interesting thing about here. So the three buckles were the Leslie signs. I'm probably not using the right term, the heraldry terms for this. But he changed his heraldry or his armor so that it incorporated not just his but also his wife's. And the idea was so then it could be divided up between his four children. And then there's details about there was details written about what each aspect of could be given to each of his four children. So I thought that was interesting. So there's what it looks like now, instead of one big shield with just the three buckles across some quarters. Yeah, I thought that was a neat little thing. David Lindsay, the Lord of Crawford and Byers, also another signatory. And the thing that I thought was cool about his is they included a picture of the crop of like an old style genealogy. Isn't that kind of cool? Yeah. I mean, obviously this didn't come out in 1320 because I don't think typewriters were around in 1320. Plus the dates are past 1320. So unless they were mind readers. But what is the date on that? I mean, can you tell from the image description? Well, the latest date, the last person was his dates are 1781 to 1808. And actually, no, that's the 22nd Earl, the 23rd Earl died in 1825. So it goes up to 1825, it looks like. Okay. Does it say the following those traits that just sent of the Earl them up to the 22nd Earl them, and then there's some details, a stress there. It doesn't say it says when it was uploaded. Yeah, it did. So here it is from the complete peerage book published in 1913, it looks like. Anyways, I always find those old things pretty cool. Jones accountus. Here's the first. There's only two women in the profiles. She was a countess of Stratham. And what's interesting about her is that that. So she was, let me think, she was the wife of one of the signers. She herself was there or an Earl, so she couldn't sign. But she was the wife of one of the signers. And she had she was second. So he was an Earl of Stratham. But she became the countess of Stratham. And so she held the title, but she also was given other titles. And let's see. So she was made the countess of Stratham and the lady of the barony of Porta. And these she did in free power of her widowhood, which I take to mean is that mean she was granted this title, even though she was a widow, it did not pass on to a male. She didn't lose the title, at least in terms of that. So that's kind of cool. And some of her titles gave her some annuity, some funds. So that's kind of cool. The last one, the last profile is a very cool one. This is Lady Agnes, Randall Countess of Dunbar in March. So she is the she was suspended from a signer of the declaration. But she wasn't there. But one at one point. So she lived, she and her husband, Patrick Dunbar, the ninth Earl of Dunbar, lived in the castle. They actually got married in they got married in England, because at one point in time, Scotland was under interdict, interdict, which means that's a term that the church uses when it says that you're not allowed to do any sacraments. So at one point they were in this favor with the pope. And so they weren't allowed to celebrate sacraments like match money. So they had to go to England where they were allowed to get married. And anyways, later on in 1337, her husband was away. Yes, her husband was, I think it's 1337, her husband was away. And the castle they lived at, Dunbar Castle was under siege by Salisbury, the Earl of Salisbury, from an English, English Earl. She thought, he thought, there's just a few women and a few old men of this castle, I'm going to take it. Well, yeah, not so fast. You've got to read this profile, it is hilarious what she did. And he never, he never made it in. But boy, did she want him.  And she sends a message of Scotland's king, I hold my house, he pays my meat and feed, and I will keep my god in house, while my house will keep me. Basically, take off, buddy. I'm staying in my house. You're not coming in. Siege engines, they begin bombarding the castle with boulders. They keep the boulders on the castle walls. And then that doesn't do anything. So then they make a show, look at this, then they go, she and her lady go along the top of the ramparts and they dust off the ramparts where the boulders left dust like to taunt them.  They moved it up and then Agnes had them roll the boulders that they had just lobbed on down onto the sow and break it and then she yelled down. So because all the people who were hiding in it or were pushing it had to scatter, because behold the litter of English pigs. And then she goes on and on and she's, anyways, it's hilarious what she does and then she taunts them. At one point, they stop attacking and they thought, well, we'll just hold out. We'll surround it so that it'll be under siege and they'll starve. But what they didn't realize is that there was a secret door to the coast where they could get resupplied and so at one point she sends out some fresh bread and wine to those people. She's a gracious host. Anyways, and then it ends, I'll just end with this final thing. This is from the the Earl of Salisbury's thoughts were moralized in this old ballad. She kept a stirrer and tower and trench that watchful, plodding Scottish winch. Came I early, came I late, I found Agnes at the gate. Oh, she is great. Anyways, I think that's my favorite profile of the group. So Lady Agnes, my seventh cousin, 23 times moved. Anyway, profiles of the week. Wow. That was great. I love learning about it. That was a good one to end with. That was a great one. Yeah. Super. Well, thank you, Greg. So we have photos. It's a new month. Our first roundup in April and the new theme is couples. And we have about six photos. Let me make this a little bigger. So this lovely couple is was posted by Alexis Nelson. And it is her husband's grandparents, Eunice and Hugh Hennan. The photo was taken in Tulsa, Oklahoma. And she said that they truly loved each other and had a wonderful life. I'm going to let me move this up a little bit so we can see more of the photo. A little bit more. They had a wonderful life together. She lived to be 100 and told me that they did all the things that they wanted to do. I thought that was just lovely. That's nice. Yeah. Thank you to your bucket list. They did. They took several trips to see her sister in Colorado and they even went to Canada a few times. Such a beautiful portrait. And I just love the lacework on her blouse. Then next, I think is Yoke, if I'm right. Yes. Yoke's grand aunt and grand uncle. Oh, I'm going to try. I'm going to try. But Rangelina Maria Vinedale and Andres Grigspor. So she said, I never met them, but I think they look quite elegant and dapper in this photo. And I completely agree. Yeah. Yeah. Lovely. Okay. Now this. Oh, look at that. Yeah. This was posted by Brenda Millage and it's her grandparents in 1972 with the gingerbread house that her younger sister made for them. Kind of looks like English Christmas hats. Yes, it does. Grounds. Yeah. Well, gingerbread, that comes out of Christmas often, right? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. She doesn't give the date just 1972, but looks like it could be Christmas. Thank you, Brenda. And let's see. Ann Fiorna-Lisi posted two photos. These are her maternal grandparents, Ferdinand Francois-Rochier and Violent Rose Kay from Kankakee, Illinois. I, you know, Ann, I, maybe I forgot it, but I was, as I was reading your things this morning, I didn't realize that you have such a strong Illinois connection. So we have that in common. Yeah. It's a very, very nice photo. And then also her great aunt, great uncle and aunt celebrating their 50th winning anniversary also in Kankakee. Very nice. So I think, yeah, of course, D is in the chat. With the first. Yep, D was the first. And D said that she had trouble posting this to the G2G post. So I went ahead and posted it. And I have to apologize, D, when I was doing that, the system asked me, would you like to make this a comment instead of an answer? And I thought it was referring just to the photo and that the photo would be posted as a comment to your answer. But it made the whole thing, everything's still there. But it looks a little different. Anyway, my fault. So D said, these are relatives from my husband's branches upon discovering two vintage suitcases, chalked full of old letters and old letters, documents and photos. This is the only one of the beautiful photos we found inside. Only one of many, I think. Yeah. It's the Butcher Love wedding photo from 1896. Wow. Wow.  Cairo, Illinois. And so, look, we've got someone wrote Mary, Mary Butcher Love. And of course, the lovely image of the couple. And then we've got the photographer's studio and location. Just stunning. That is neat. I'm jealous of those suitcases she has. Yeah. Me too. I think by now, everybody in my extended family knows that if they want to declutter and things like that, then they should contact me. Send it your way. Yeah, exactly. So I love this. Thank you so much, D. Right. Okay. So I'll just say in advance that we don't have a roundup next Saturday due to Kinectathon, but we have two more Saturday roundups in April following that, the 20th and the 27th. So more time to post your couple's photos. So please do. So moving on to our ancestors. We have, oh, I don't know, a good handful of ancestors to celebrate this morning, about five of them. So let's go to the first one, who is, well, the wiki-trier who posted this ancestor is Andrew Simpier. I hope I'm saying your last name correct. This is the brother of his great grandfather. So Joseph Amos Simpier Jr., who was his connection to April, is that he was born on April 12th, 1871. So his birthday is coming up in the next week, born in Manistee, Michigan. But somehow, this is quite a distance, made him his way to Olympia, Washington. Can you share his profile? We're just seeing the G to G. There we go. Excellent. Yeah, made his way to Olympia and has a tragic story. As you'll see, he only lived to be 30 years old. And what happened was that he, he was in a, he was worked very briefly for a logging, it was a lumber accident. And so this was July 13th, 1901. And his, it's described here in some detail, he, his leg was caught. Yeah, yeah. And he was only, I think it was his second day on the job. So perhaps, perhaps he didn't quite know how things worked. So, so sad. And he was survived by his wife and children. We have some, some photos here, beautiful handsome photo here. And I think I thought there was another photo here that he, he and his brothers. So, Joseph, so he looks like he would have been the one on the, the far left here. What a nice, nice family photo. How old is that photo? It says 1885 approximately. That's great. Yeah. Yeah. I like how they posed the little one. Now I wonder in 1885, how long they would have had to stand there. Oh, for the exposure to work. For the exposure. Yeah. So, okay. Well, thank you very much for, for sharing your, your, your great, great granduncle with us, Andrew. Next, we have George Benjamin Manley. So this, so Ruth, who's in the chat with us, shared, is sharing him with us. He's her great, great, great, great, great granduncle. And his connection to April is that he married, who did he marry? Amy, Amy Ellen Sharp in April, April 19th, 1899. They were in Hull, Yorkshire. And he was the inspiration for Ruth starting a one-place study. So this, and the study is on the Port of Hull Society, Sailors Orphan Hull. So what happened was he was born in Hull to, he was the son of John Manley, a fisherman, and Mary Gregory. In the 1871 census, he would have been two. His father's not listed in the census, but Ruth is surmising that he was, he was away at sea at that time. Because his wife is, I guess his mother's listed as wife, not the head. Maybe he's listed as still married. His father definitely did die in March 1875. And his mother was not able to look after all of the children. So in the 1881 census, that would have been when he was like 12, we see him and his brother George, some of the children were in the orphan's home, which is now called the Sailors Society, Sailors Children's Society. But George himself followed, he became a sailor fisherman. Well, I don't know if he's a fisherman, but he followed his father to sea. And at the census, he was fifth hand on the ship Borehound. So I also opened up Ruth's one page study page. So she's got a nice picture there. And it's part of the one place studies directory with the history and her tasks to do the rest. It's an ambitious project, but really worthwhile. And then- Yes, because she's probably had a lot of people reach out to her for help. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah, people who are really hungry to find out the history of their ancestors. And then also, a second one from Ruth is her grandmother, Gladys Renefels Atkinson. So if we, I think this was Ruth's paternal grandmother. There we go. There's Ruth. Yes, paternal grandmother. And her connection to April was that she died April 28, 1991, also in Hull. And she, let's see, have a wedding announcement. That's really special. That is neat. Yeah. And in those days, I mean, they really dug deep with the details of the dainty gown of Chantilly Lace. Oh, it was in the flowers and whatever. And what her going away outfit was. Oh, I saw the word organist in there too. Where is that? There. The bride has been a member of the church choir and the bridegroom became a former organist there, being a former organist. There we go. Very nice. A singer and the organist. Wow, that sounds very familiar to me, that combination. Now we're in your world, right, Greg? Yeah. So, yeah, beautiful lady. Thank you for sharing her with us, Ruth. I'm going to go with Ruth. Ruth made a comment about the previous profile. Oh, yes. She became a college in a hotel and she stayed there. I mean, that's amazing. Yeah. Let's look at the photo. Huh. Isn't that cool? That would be very meaningful on the whole point, poignant, but meaningful. Yeah. Yeah. And to walk the grounds and knowing that our ancestors walked the grounds and was there or get through. For sure. Yeah. Yeah. When I visited England, one of my great-grand, great, I guess it was my third great-grandfather, and has spent the last few years of his life in the workhouse in Yates, and I was able to visit there. And I had that same sensation. You get a different feeling from just reading about it and then being there, right? Absolutely. It just encompasses that feeling comes to you. That's where they were. Yeah. So, good luck with the OPS, Ruth. Yeah. So, Liz Schifflett gave us our next person, ancestor, William Hamilton Watkins. And his connection to, he's her second great-grandfather, and his connection to April is that he was born, April 11th, 1815, birthday coming up this coming Thursday. And very, I thought it was very special. What, I'll read what Liz said. She said, because of wiki tree, I now know what my great-great-grandfather looked like. The following picture was provided by a distant cousin who found me through the profile I had posted for him. So, cousin bait. Wow. So, there, yep. And another very interesting thing about this portrait. She says, this is an excellent example of a portrait produced by an itinerant artist of the time who had canvases with the torsos already painted. And then the artist would just insert the head and the hands. That's wild.  Yeah. His arm looks too short. Yes, exactly. But still, the likeness of the face is invaluable to have. So, wow, that's so special that that worked out for you, Liz, when you joined wiki tree. And he's a very fascinating historical figure within Mississippi. He was prominent Methodist minister. And his biographies and in lives of Mississippi authors. And she's working at gathering, collecting his sermons. So, that sounds like a big project. And if you ever see any of Liz's profiles, she does an excellent job. Liz was actually one of my first mentors on wiki tree when I came in. I love her profiles. I love the work that she does. She does tremendous amount of work. Actually, she's pre 1500 certified. So, a lot of work that we saw for older purposes. That's amazing that the cousin fate worked. And the photo, because if you're not going to get a source or DNA connection, what do you want? You want a photo. Absolutely. And, and Fiora D'Alesi wins the prize for having the largest number of April connections. Okay, let's see. We're not going to look at all of them in detail, but I wanted to show off. This is her grandmother, Anna Porcello, who was born April 25, 1899 in Brooklyn. And made her way later in life to Cleveland, Ohio. And let's see. She was part of a large family. I think that you have 12 children. Yep. And she she married, let's see, let me go to the top again. So, she she married Fiora D'Alesi. So, I guess this would be on your paternal side. Yeah. So, I mean, pictures. We've got a picture there. It's a little hard to see, but I wonder who that is. A grandchild, hopefully, maybe Anne can tell us. And then also, and so let me go here. This is Anne's mother, who was born April 11, 1932. So shares a birthday with Liz Schifflett's ancestor, Yvette, Marie-Louise Roquet. And I think we've we've heard her story a little bit before, because I remember some of the details. But I'm not sure I had looked at the profile. So we've got some there's there is Anne and her mom. Very sweet photo. And then let's see. Who else am I missing? We had she had the the I think a lot of the other profiles, at least two of them were siblings of her grandmother Anna. And they they had either April birth or death dates. And then her grandfather. Let's see if I go back here. And it was husband of, no, Ferdinand, Ferdinand Francois was was the other one who was born and died in in April. Double April. Double April. Now he wasn't married in April, was he? I don't know what what what a lovely photo. That is great. Yeah. Let's see. When was he married? Not the date is not May 7, 1927. Well, you could call it April 37. That theme going. Yeah, that's right. And he was born in France. Interesting. Oh, Rookiee. Yeah. One would love to hear the story sometime of how he made his way to Cleveland. What's the journey? You think before the war, as a teenager, before World War One, let's see he migrated and where it went. He went to Paris to become a chef. He was hired to be a cook at a private club in Chicago. So he took a ship from Bordeaux in December after his parents died. This all happened. Hmm. Hmm. So he came to Chicago first. Anyway, I'm guessing. Well, I don't have to guess. His parents died in. Yeah. So it must have been after 1911. Interesting. Yeah. So thank you all for sharing those ancestors. And as I said, with the photos, we have two more Saturdays. Keep them coming. We love celebrating the ancestors and seeing the beautiful photos, hearing the stories for a tip. I have a quick tip and it is related to some new new things, some new changes this week on wiki tree. So here I am on the home page and one of the changes, and I'll talk about the second change maybe in two weeks. This looks like enough for today. But this has to do with how we search for people on wiki tree. So if I do, I'm going to search for an ancestor of mine that I worked on very hard last weekend. Isaac Healy. He's my third great grandfather. So you can see that it now looks just a little bit different. It looks different. Yes. We're getting a table instead of a list. Easier to read. Easier to read and more very more ways to filter it. So I can I'm a big one to filter by birthday. So I can still do that. I can reverse it. Now, this is super cool. You can short by privacy. And yeah, yeah, you'll see that. Now, fortunately, there are only 40 hits with this name. So everybody is open. That's that's hyperlink pink, because that's my guy. That means that I've clicked on it. But but they're all like blue background. These are all open profiles, except for Eileen. And we can see that there's a private privacy lock on the private republic biography. Oh, you can't see that. Yeah. Oh, there. There it is. Okay. So now if we go back to the table, the other thing we can sort by is edit date. And is that is that something we could filter for before? I don't remember. I never used it. But that's very cool. It's fairly new if it was. Yeah, it is. But it is not just edit when we edit anybody. Right. So so it's it's to show you the Isaac E. Lee profile that has had the most recent activity. Now I have this in reverse order. So let me reverse it. And now you can see, yep, it was me last weekend, working away. How are you related to Isaac? He is my third great grandfather. So I'm glad you said that because I will use this sometimes just to double check and see what's going on with my thirds. Just somebody added new information. It's kind of a quick way for me to just see if there's a new photo. Somebody added a photo. As a matter of fact, not too long ago. So it was kind of interesting to see that edit date. Yeah. Yeah. I love that. And there's more. There's more. You can also do a secondary sort. So see, it says sort by relevance, first name, birthday, death, date, privacy and edit date. And then by first name, birth, date, death, date. So if I wanted to do, let me search by birth date. Well, what do I want to do? Do either of you have a preference? Can you do a birth date and death date? And then you can see somebody died young. Okay. So I'm searching by birth date. Okay. We're starting from earlier dates and getting lighter. And then, and then by death date. So, yeah. I think with birth date, unless unless you have double two of the exact same, that's probably going to be the primary one that. Yeah. Well, what if I did by search by name and then a date? Yeah. First name. And then I did first name. Yeah. Then you get all the yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And I do. I do love being able to see the profile manager. So, so some of you may also be wondering, well, what about those surname pages, which I think I talked about a couple of months ago. And those are still there. Okay, here, here's what I'm talking about. We're primary. They're not meant, they're no longer meant to be functional for us hard for us active wiki traders. They are there to to show off to new members like, look, look, you know, how many of whatever surname we have as well as for Google, getting getting caught on Google. So, yeah. There is there's the tip of the week. Excellent. Great. Well, before we go, we should let mention that there's lots of stuff coming up. Isn't there a little something happening next weekend? Oh, the connectathon?  Yeah. And it's still not too late to sign up, right? Betsy, right? I think the registration is open until Wednesday. Usually Wednesday is Wednesday at midnight or 1159. Yes. And Betsy has been curiously going through it and registering people, haven't you? Me and Azure. Yes. You and Azure. Yes. Oh, I guess do you do the Canadian one? Because every time you update the Canadian one, I get a ping in my mailbox. Oh, yeah. Yeah. No, basically, I take the first half of the alphabet team name wise and she takes the second half. That makes sense. And it'll be in the top. Yeah. Right.  So if you want to be part of one of the smaller teams, then you can join that. And the post for that is, let's see.  Oh, do you want the link for registering? Yeah, the registering. Or is it in the, if I go to G to G, it's probably pinned to the top, isn't it? Have you registered for the connectathon? Yeah. So this is, you know what, what's really handy is these things that are pinned to the top of the G to G if you're ever looking for something. So there's the link to the registration right there. And I don't know if one of you want to put, dump it into the chat as well. There you go. But make sure to sign up under the font team that you wish to sign up. That's right. I say that because we're listed first, Appalachia's listed first, and we had several that, we kind of figured out that they probably don't want Appalachia. And we reach out to them and they go, oopsie. Yes, thank you. Yes. So I love how they did this year. So there's an answer for every team. Yes, so you're right. There's the Appalachia runs, Banyan. So if you go, you can see which one. So there's the Canadian connectors. There's 18 previous comments plus one, two, three, however many more there are. So you can tell how many people are on a team. So if you want to join a team that's got a low number, then you can just scroll through there and find one and help them out or pick your favorite team, whatever you like. It doesn't matter because we've grouped them so the teams are of similar sizes are sort of in the same bracket. But really it's all about making the tree healthy. That's what really matters. And have fun doing it.  If you're staying up 24 hours straight, you get silly. Sometimes get a little silly. That's great. But other than that, so this week the wiki tree challenge is going as a concern and we're back to taking genealogists. And so the person for this week who we're trying to find and increase her cc7 score is Mellie Alexander. So she's got connections to Canada, America and Lithuania and Europe, England, lots of places. So help out there. Of course, there's a weekend chat going on, the regular Saturday sourcing sprint. There's the regular things of the week, question of the week, ancestors of the week, that are doctors challenge, connection, combat and stuff so on. And we will not be back here next week with the roundup because we'll be appearing every four hours. What do you like it or not?  To give you little updates during the connect-a-thon. And I think all three of us are doing hangouts. We're all doing hangouts. Yeah. We kind of call mine, I only enjoying the midnight one this hangout or this on and we call it midnight madness. It is kind of silly. That's fun. In Betsy, you have something. Yes. There's a new member Q&A via Zoom this coming Thursday. So I put the link to the free space page in the chat. So all the details are there. Excellent. Great. Well, thank you. Thank you, Sandy, for joining us once again. Yes. Being so solid and everything. So I think that does it for now. Sign up for the connect-a-thon, if you haven't, because we want to see you next weekend. And have a great week, everyone. Bye. Happy Saturday. Happy weekend. Happy weekend.


As of June 8, 2022, St. Luciahurst diagnosed a total of 26,250 cases of COVID-19 in country with 492 active cases presently. The daily infection rate for the last 7 days is 28.3 per 100,000 population per day, with a 29% average testing positivity rate and a transmission rate of 1.3. We have noted a total of 370 COVID-19 deaths. We have 18 positive COVID-19 cases admitted at the respiratory hospital. One is critically ill and two are severely ill. This past week, we continue to register cases daily. We note increases in our public health indicators. As we continue to note the return to normalcy with the opening up of events and activities, we need to ensure that the proven public health protective measures are in place to protect us from getting sick and to protect the most vulnerable. The public is reminded that the threat of COVID-19, long COVID and its complications still exist, especially given our below average immunization rate in country. Personal responsibility is extremely important at this time to reduce transmission of infection to ourselves and our family. The public is guided to continue the use of face masks in public, ensure hand washing and proper general sanitization. The public is also advised to use their discretion, ensure they and their vulnerable family members are fully vaccinated and boosted before attending mass crowd events. The public is also reminded that as we commence the rainy season, this also corresponds to increases in vector-borne diseases such as dengue fever and leptospirosis. The Ministry of Health has intensified community and household visits, fogging operations and public education. The public is reminded to inspect around their households and communities for mosquito and rodent breeding grounds. The use of mosquito nets is also advised. We already note some areas on the island with high mosquito indices at this point. The Ministry of Health is closely monitoring the multi-country monkeypox outbreak globally and has increased surveillance and put measures in place to manage in country. Since May 13, 2022 to June 2, 2022, 780 lab confirmed cases have been reported from 27 member states not endemic for monkeypox. Of particular concern is that most of the confirmed cases reported a travel history to countries in Europe and North America. The risk is presently assessed as moderate by the World Health Organization as this is the first time that many monkeypox cases and clusters are reported concurrently in non-endemic and endemic countries. St. Lucia has not recorded any cases of monkeypox to date. The signs and symptoms of monkeypox includes a rash with macules, papules, vesicles, pastels and scabs, fever, enlarged lymph nodes, back pain and muscle pain. Testing for monkeypox in the region is facilitated through the Caribbean Public Health Agency. Patients with monkeypox are given symptomatic treatment such as antipyretics for fever and analgesics for pain. Nutrition and rehydration are particularly important. Some patients may develop severe and life-threatening complications. More information on these diseases of concern at this time will be provided in further updates. Thank you.


The world has faced many challenges recently, a global pandemic, energy shock and the outbreak of war, all of which has affected people, every one of us, and of course our economy too. Inflation started to increase, it peaked in late 2022 at 10.6%. To fight this, we started raising interest rates in July 2022. We did that 10 times. And since September 2023, we have kept them unchanged. And this was also the case in our meeting in March. We have seen strong disinflation. In February this year, inflation declined to 2.6%, but we are not quite at our 2% inflation goal yet. You are listening to the ECB podcast, bringing you insights into the world of economics and central banking. My name is Stefania Secola. With me today is ECB Chief Economist, Philip R. Lane. He'll be updating us on where inflation stands and on the recently announced changes to our operational framework. This is what we use to implement our monetary policy. I think many are interested in understanding what this is about and what it means for interest rates in the years to come. Philip, great to have you back on the podcast. We've got lots to cover today. As we said earlier this month, you and your colleagues on the governing council decided to keep interest rates unchanged. This is part of our fight against the high inflation we've seen. Can you give us some background into that decision? Where does inflation stand right now? So what we have is a situation where compared to the very high peak you mentioned of 10.6% in October 2022, inflation has come down a lot. This is, by the way, what we expected to happen last year. Essentially, the very big price increases in 2022 especially were not repeated in 2023. And with this improvement in the situation, inflation has come down. But we have to make a judgment call. We have to make a judgment call about at some point the improvement in inflation will allow us to roll back some of the rate increases you mentioned. And essentially where we are now in March is we do have a baseline forecast. We look ahead and the baseline forecast says this year inflation will average at 2.3%. So since in February inflation was at 2.6%, we do think there'd be more progress this year. And then we think next year and the year after inflation should stabilize around a 2% target. I think this is a good baseline. And essentially what we decided is in these weeks from that meeting, we need to keep on checking this assessment. And what I would say is if this assessment is confirmed, then we will start looking more closely at reversing some of the rate increases we've made. So what I would say is good progress, there's still some questions to answer, and as the data teaches us about the open questions, then we will move forward. Thank you. Let's talk about wages now. Because along with profits and productivity growth, wages are one of the things you are keeping a close eye on. In a previous episode, and by the way, dear listeners, we will link to that episode in the show notes, you explain how wages and prices are interlinked in what we call the wage price spiral. So prices go up, then wages rise in response to that, firms increase prices to cover the higher wages, and so the spiral continues. You said that rising wages are pushing up inflation. What's going on there? So it's important to emphasize is the very high inflation did not originate with high wages. The very high inflation primarily had to do with very large increases in energy prices, which is mostly for Europe coming from the rest of the world. So high gas prices, high oil prices. But these, of course, raise the cost of living. And then we have, if you like, the second round is people naturally need to see an improvement in their wages to offset, to some extent, that increase in the cost of living. And so the trigger was, if you like, external price increases. So what we have now is those external price increases are coming down or stabilizing. So what we have remaining is this second round dynamic. How big are the, we expect to see bigger wage increases than normal. We had that last year. We expect to have it this year and also, by the way, next year in 25. So it's a multi-year process. So last year, wages grew around 5.3%. We expect wages to go around 4.5 this year, 3.6 in 25. And then, if you like, back to a normal value around 3% in 26. So we expect to see wage increases. But let me encourage you, if you like, in terms of language, we don't think it's a spiral. The spiral suggests the dynamic every year is getting stronger. So to me, that's a spiral. And some historical episodes, we saw a spiral. What I would face this is, it's an adjustment. What's key to the adjustment is every year it's kind of moving closer to normal. So as I mentioned, we had the peak last year of wage increases at 5.3. What we're looking for is evidence of deceleration to mid-force this year. We've seen deceleration in the last months of 23. We've seen deceleration in the opening weeks of 24. But we need to see more evidence of that. So what I would say is that, to repeat, workers were not the origin of the high inflation. It's desirable and inescapable that we do have several years of wage increases above a normal level. But what we need to make sure is it's basically a return to normal. It's a normalization process. And this is where we're looking at this. And I would say we're confident that it's on track. But of course, it's always good to double check with the incoming data. And is the situation the same across all euro area countries? I'm thinking, for example, about how countries have very different ways of negotiating pay rises. So let me mention, and I think there's a number of factors here. One is the increase in the cost of living has been very different across Europe. Partly, the energy mix is different. Countries have a different exposure to gas and to oil. And other countries, renewables are important or nuclear power. That's one element. A second element is we've seen very big increases in food prices. And again, parts of Europe are different in how they expose the art to that. So one basic issue is the cost of living pressure is different. Yes. And that source of wage pressure is different. But then also on top of that, we have to recognize in some countries, the labor market is tighter than others. Unemployment is lower, firms report that they have shortages of workers. And so the environment, how quickly workers can raise their wages, differs across the area. So of course, we have 20 member countries, we look at this. But what I would say is by and large, and it's the nature of Europe, I think it is a very strong focus in Europe on essentially having a fair process. So for example, one way the wage increases are happening is through public policy. So minimum wage legislation. So we saw last year, on average across Europe, minimum wages go up by about 10%. So in other words, it's clear that the people who are hurt most by the cost of living increase are those on low incomes. So raising the minimum wage has been a big part of how Europe adjusts. And more generally, unions are stronger in Europe than in some other parts of the world. So there's a lot of emphasis on negotiation. So famously, the ECB has been tracking wages. And we're essentially looking at the negotiations between unions and employers. And that kind of centralized or coordinated way to set wages is maybe contributing to an orderly process. But again, we need to keep an eye on this in the coming years. So let's stay in the realm of jobs. Unemployment is still at historically low levels. That's good news. Of course, many people are still in work despite of tough times we've experienced. At the same time, though, 2023 wasn't a great year for growth. And our last projections expect growth to be at 0.6% in 2024. Just to compare, in 2022, it was at 3.4% in the euro area. So despite the low growth or low growth, the labor market is strong. Why is that? So let me say that the pandemic has been very unusual in many ways and around the world. So let me focus on the fact that we welcome. It is very good news. Unemployment is so low. But when we think about the overall strength of the labor market, that's not all we look at. So compared to 2022, for example, the amount of vacancies has come down. So if you are looking for a job, you've just graduated from college or school or you're re-entering the workforce after taking time out and so on, the opportunities are less. The amount of jobs created last year was lower than the year before. So it's not a very strong labor market. But it is an interesting question about, normally, you would expect to see if there's a big slowdown in the economy to have a kind of pickup and unemployment. And this is going to be one of the very big questions we face. Essentially what we think is happening is many firms agree with us that there is a recovery coming. We have a recovery in the economy coming from the middle of this year onwards. So rather than go through the very expensive process of, if you like, kind of downsizing your workforce and then rehiring them six months later, firms, in many sectors, I think I'm making the calculation, we will hold onto these workers. We will need them when the recovery comes. Let me mention top of that two other factors is that throughout the pandemic and also in relation to the energy crisis, in many European countries, the government, the public sector has been hiring. And so there's been a lot of labor demand from non-market sources like the health system and so on. And maybe the other factor is the mix of activity has changed. What we see is manufacturing and construction has been subdued, whereas the service sector, especially what we call contact-intensive services like tourism, hospitality, entertainment, these hire a lot of people, especially in terms of more kind of entry-level positions and so on. So that is keeping unemployment low. But what we need to see over time is the economy to kind of rebalance, to see a recovery if like in high-value added sectors like manufacturing, to see a recovery in construction. And so it's a complicated picture, but I think a lot comes back to, let's not forget the really, really huge shock of the pandemic and how destructive that's been around the world. And so we do have this unusual configuration right now. We think we understand it and as I say, ultimately our assessment that the recovery is coming will basically rationalize the decision of many firms to hold on to workers. Yeah, thanks for breaking this down for us, Philippe. I'd like to discuss something else now. As I said before, our governing council just decided to make changes to our operational framework. But let's briefly explain what that is. As a central bank, we influence the economy and ultimately prices by steering the price and the amount of credit available to people and businesses. Commercial banks are the ones providing credit, but the conditions for doing so are steered by the central bank. This interaction is governed by a set of tools and procedures which we like to call our operational framework. Philippe, why did we decide to review our framework now? What I would say is that the fundamental basis of money is controlled by us. So among the listeners today, I think when people think of money to think of what any bank notes they may have, but they primarily think of the money in their bank account. So then the question is what determines those monetary dynamics? And what I would say is in the end, the decisions of the banking system in terms of how much they lend, how they invest and so on, turns on how they interact with us as a central bank. And essentially, the relationship we have with banks turns on basically three key interest rates. One is at what rate can they borrow from us in a regular operation? So we have what's called as the main refinancing operation, which is every week. So that's basically a very important number. A second number is at what interest rate can they deposit money with us, and that's called a deposit facility rate. And then we have a third interest rate called a Marta lending facility, which is basically for maybe unusual circumstances for individual banks. So we have created a lot of money since 2015 through asset purchasing, through lending operations, and this is true around the world. But what's happened in the last couple of years is now a lot of that is in reverse. We've stopped QE, our stock of bonds is coming down, and the very large lending operation, the TELTRA program is coming to an end. So as the amount of money shrinks, if you like, then it's important that we updated our operational framework. And essentially, in broad terms, we have, I think, a system that will suit your area, which basically has a narrow differential between the rate at which we lend in our main refinancing operation to banks and the rate at which they can deposit money with us. And we think this will create a lot of stability. So let me just emphasize, is in the end, and I think it's the main basis of this, is that we want our operational framework to deliver the commercial environment in the money market needed to bring the economy where we wanted to go in terms of inflation. And we think this system, this operational framework will do that. It's a system that relies less on a very large balance sheet. And so it's suited to this new world in which we no longer need to do QE. We no longer need to have a very large targeted lending operation. And so it's really, I think, good practice to anticipate the fact that in the coming years, let me emphasize, this is about the coming years. It's not about next week or the rest of this year. This is just helping the banking system prepare for the future. And some people might wonder how the review of the operational framework fits with the ECB's decision to raise, hold, or cut rates every six weeks. Could you explain that? So I think it's very important maybe to say this is just how we implement. So the decision about where interest rates should be, we take on the basis of where we think inflation is going. Then at the second stage of, okay, how do we implement that decision? So I would say there's no implications for the interest rates that you listeners care about.  But from the point of view, unless you work in the money market section of a bank, this is not something that's super visible to you. So I would say it's very important from a technical point of view. It's very important for the money specialists in the banking system. But again, when you read your headline in the newspaper, when the ECB raises the cuts rates, that's what matters. Thank you so much, Philip. As you know, we always have a question for our guests. And that's for a hot tip. Link to the topic we've been discussing. Philip, what do you have for our listeners today? So this may surprise you, or maybe not, since you know me a little bit. I'm going to, my hot tip is the new occasional paper 344, which is called ECB macro econometric models for forecasting and policy analysis. So I think this is a fascinating read. It's basically our group of economists who run the models, the famous models here at ECB, explaining what's inside these models, how we use them. I think there's a lot of mystique about this phrase about the ECB models, and this will demystify, I think, this topic for many people. So I welcome that this new report is available. I think you need to sit down and take your time in reading it. So it's not the easiest read, but it's definitely my hot tip. Thank you so much, Philip. This brings us to the end of this episode. I want to thank ECB chief economist Philip Arlene for this very interesting conversation. Thank you, Philip. You're welcome. Dear listeners, check out the show notes for more on this topic. You've been listening to the ECB podcast with Stefania Serkola. If you like what you've heard, please subscribe and leave us a review. And in the spirit of Europe, I'd like to end in Irish today and say slán. Until next time, thanks for listening.