This is NPR's Life Kit, I'm Mary Alcigara.

A lot of the time when people build a family tree,

they're looking for their famous relatives.

You know, maybe I'm the 16th grade granddaughter of a queen,

or the fifth cousin of a revolutionary poet.

Micah L. Anders has a different perspective.

I think really it's the everyday people that make us who we are,

and we're the everyday people.

So we want to be found by our descendants in the future.

You know, we want to be just as celebrated as

some random famous person, and oftentimes it's just the everyday folks

that we have the most in common with.

Micah is a professional genealogist in Minnesota.

I first talked to her for our episode on connecting with your ancestors.

So an example, she plays the piano, and she learned by doing her genealogy

that she had multiple musicians in her family tree.

They weren't famous, they weren't somebody anybody's ever heard of,

but that's a really cool thing to be able to trace and identify

that's part of who I am that I got from my ancestors.

She says that's what's so cool about genealogy.

You never know what you'll learn.

That can also be a little intimidating.

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