Publications and Projects | Video Tutorials | Collaborative Genealogy: Gussie Audrey Manlove 

Collaborative Genealogy - the Story of Gussie Audrey Manlove and Nerdfighters

On February 18, 2011, young adult novelist and video-blogger John Green visited a cemetery in Indiana.  He filmed a video blog there, and he talked about people's names and speculated on the life of Audrey Manlove, who was not buried next to her husband Walter despite the fact that her name is on his gravestone.
At the time, Nerdfighteria (the name of the following that John Green and his brother Hank have) had a forum called YourPants.org. I started a thread in which I expressed my interest in finding what really happened to Audrey, rather than just speculating. I had no idea that Nerdfighters would react the way they did. Before I knew it, we were all engaged in an genealogy research project with participants around the globe.  Sadly, the forum was hacked and the thread no longer exists, but several summaries of the work are available.


On February 25, 2011, Hank Green posted a recap video summarizing all the work we did.  He also answered our Twitter-pleas to write a song about Gussie.

I was incredibly amazed by all the work we were able to do in such a short period of time, and how people with a variety of skill levels converged on equally diverse resources to compile as much about this woman's life as we could - out of sheer curiosity.  We did our best to be respectful of any living relatives that Gussie may have.  I was impressed by the number of people who chipped in and dug around their local library's resources, called Indiana newspapers and libraries, and otherwise gave their time to help solve the mystery.
Lastly, I made a thank-you video (and I apologize for the poor lighting and my attempt to subdue my excitement in order to remain intelligible) expressing my thoughts on the project over all.