One American Family

In this first episode I summarize roughly 350 years of family history in under 40 minutes. My sources are listed further below in two categories, one for family history--which pertains to this episode any many others--and one for US history, which pertains specifically to facts in this first episode. But first some important acknowledgements and credits:

Sound effects were licensed from Pro Sound Effects, and these musical elements were licensed by way of NEOsounds.com:

For teaching me a million things about audio engineering I did not know six months ago, thanks go to Eli Webb and Steven Raets at Sonark Media in Hillsborough NC, Chris Wimberley and Hawthorne Weeks at Nightsound Studios in Carrboro, NC, and Brandon Grugle at Multitude Productions. I must thank Casey Emmerling at Defacto Sound and their podcast Twenty Thousand Hertz, for his immensely encouraging words of support, and Susannah Broun, the other podcaster in this family, for hers. And a very special thanks goes to my wife, the artist Becky Broun, for lending a hand at Nightsound, and for just supporting me every moment I was holed up in my study or away taking classes or doing interviews.

For the technically curious, here's the hardware and software I used to turn this idea for a show into an actualshow: A Shure SM7B microphone, Focusrite Scarlett Solo preamp, Rode Wireless microphones, Zoom H4 Essential digital recorder, Riverside for remote interviewing, the Rogue Amoeba Piezo, Avid Pro Tools on an Apple iMac with a Wavesfactory Trackspacer plug-in and the iZotope RX12 AudioSuite, VLC Media Player, and Transistor.fm for show hosting and distribution. If you're into audio engineering or podcast production, you'll know what all of those are.

Sources: Family History

Naturally, I draw on my personal observations and experiences as a member of this family for more than 60 years. And as I note in the audio, this podcast would have been impossible were it not for the work of others, starting with my late father, William Pius (Bill) Durbin, Jr., and his brother, the late Robert Emmet (Bob) Durbin. They spent years collecting and documenting precious family history, as did Robert Ross Durbin, a third cousin twice removed.

My mother, Lorraine Durbin, and her sister, Jackie Mahoney, have never tired of answering my questions about Mom’s side of the family. Last but not least, my cousin Ann Mahoney’s rich compilations of the Kalish, Krokvica, and Malec family histories were as priceless to me as they will be for generations to come.

Another source is the always-free, crowd-sourced, and community supported genealogical website WikiTree at https://www.wikitree.com

Unlike commercial Internet ancestry services (Ancestry, etc.) Wikitree has two great things going for it. One, it is entirely free to use. Two, it aims to compile a single, unified family tree for all of humanity—with countless contributors and editors, effectively checking one other’s work. To date it has millions of entries and is growing all the time. It is a priceless, forward-looking resource for the historian in any family.

Individuals
Here are individuals with whom I've corresponded or interviewed over the years in pursuit of family history:

Family Documents
And here are key books, papers, and letters I have relied on, each of them unpublished:

According to historian Joseph C Robert : Joseph C. Robert, The Story of Tobacco in America, 1949 

they outnumbered women by as many as seven to one... an opportunity for human traffickers known as spirits : Indentured Migration and the Servant Trade from London to America, 1618-1718, by John Wareing 

in the words of biographer Jon Meacham : Songs of America, by John Meacham and Tim McGraw 

defined by the United Nations : United Nations, Definitions of Genocide and Related Crimes 

In 1820, 120 thousand indigenous men, women, and children : A People's History of the United States, by Howard Zinn 

the so-called Trail of Tears : National Park Service, What Happened on the Trail of Tears? 

as author Dee Brown describes it : Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee, by Dee Brown 

Nobody puts it better than Nikole Hannah-Jones : The 1619 Project: A New Origin Story, by Nikole Hannah-Jones 

Kentucky at first declared neutrality : Kentucky Historical Society, Legislative Moments 

Chicago's massive slaughtering and packing facilities : The Jungle, by Upton Sinclair 

The junction of so many rail lines there : Southern Illinois, An Illustrated History, by Bill Nunes, 2001.

and the Eads Bridge : James B. Eads and His Amazing Bridge at St. Louis, National Park Service, January 2001

race riots ravaged the city : Race Riot at East St. Louis, by Elliot M. Rudwick

paraphrased the 19th-century abolitionist Theodore Parker : NPR History September 2, 2010 

Just read the 2018 book : How Democracies Die, by Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt 

or their 2024 follow-up : Tyranny of the Minority, by Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt