HeyJaredKnow Your Ancestors
I’m Megan Hillyer, professional genealogist and host of Know Your Ancestors. This podcast is about more than building a family tree, it’s about discovering the strength, belonging, and healing that come from knowing your lineage.
- Indexed episodes, last 90 days
- 6
- Latest publication
- Aug 12, 2026
- Audience
- Checking…
- Earliest in this view
- Jul 8, 2026
Latest episodes
[ENCORE] Storytelling Roots with Christopher Ward (opens the original)
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Ep 83: This one's back by popular demand. Christopher Ward, the photographer behind Model Strangers, joins me for a conversation that turns up one of my favorite discoveries yet — his family's direct line back to the Brontë family, yes, those Brontës. We trace Christopher's roots from a two-story cottage in County Down, where storytelling nights around the fire were a nightly ritual, all the way down through generations of laborers, a servant at a grand manor house, and a great-grandmother whose
[ENCORE] Giving Her a Voice with Monica Packer (opens the original)
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Ep 82: This one's from the archives, back for encore because it still hits. Monica Packer of the About Progress podcast joins me to talk about the pull toward perfection so many women inherit — and then we go looking for where that pattern actually started in her family. We dig into her second great-grandmother, Lucy Rose Ehmann, and a story that's been sitting with Monica's family for generations — one involving a birth out of wedlock, a name that doesn't match the record, and a marriage that m
[ENCORE] The Grandfather She Never Got to Meet, with Ashlynn Allen Mitchell (opens the original)
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Ep 81: We're revisiting this one from the archive this summer — it's stuck with me. Ashlynn Allen Mitchell came on to learn about her grandfather, a man her own father rarely spoke of before he passed. What we found on FamilySearch took us through a WWII POW camp, a one-month gap between a divorce and a surprise remarriage, and a few quiet parallels between his life and the family that came after him. Find Ashlynn on IG: https://www.instagram.com/this.isashlynn Grab my free guided meditation her
[ENCORE] Untold Family Stories with Crystal Haitsma (opens the original)
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Ep 80: This one's from about two and a half years ago, back when Crystal was homeschooling her four kids while circumnavigating the globe with her family, working online from wherever they landed. We talk about what that life actually looks like day to day — and then I share what I found digging into her paternal family history. Why did her great grandfather change his name? What happened to his mother? Those are the mysteries we get into. Grab my free guide, The Pattern That Isn't Yours: https
[ENCORE] Results of Generational Trauma with Cristy Duce (opens the original)
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Ep 79: This was maybe my absolute favorite one of these interviews I've done and am so excited to share it again, almost 3 years later. I've known Cristy since elementary school, and going into her family tree, I thought I'd be sharing something lighter. Instead we ended up with a marriage that unraveled more than once, and a little boy who left home alone at twelve and crossed a border to start over. There's a lot more underneath it — where it all traces back to, and what it means for how Crist
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