Discovering the Family Secrets

Family secrets were much easier to keep before DNA came along.  Especially readily available DNA.

I have over 700 names in my family tree.  Many of course are not direct relations, but people who married into the family.  And relationships are interesting.  The children of one of my second cousins are my first cousins.  No, not a typo.  The second cousin married my uncle.

I have spent hours researching family and where they came from.  I've discovered marriages and divorces I never knew about.  Name changes are enough to drive one crazy.  And I've discovered relatives I never knew I had and some relatives I thought I had may not be close relatives at all.

My Ancestry DNA has ove 14,0000 matches.  I've tried to just figure out who the fourth cousins and closer are.  But there have been many surprises. 

There is a second cousin once removed who I will not put in my tree.  After much sleuthing, she and I figured out that her mother was fathered out-of-wedlock by one of my cousins.  It was war time and I am sure a lot of that happened. Neither of us wants to cause any embarrassment, and she has been asked about it and has been vague in her answers to the family.  I am like a dog with a bone and wouldn't give up until I pieced it together.

OTOH, I found out today that my supposedly second cousin is a distant cousin and may not be a cousin at all.  I have long wondered why a relative who was in America in the 1880's would return to her home in Europe and remain for several years before returning.  She left here with her husband and daughter, but they returned here with a son in tow.  Now, through DNA, it appears that descendants of that child are related on her maternal side only, and distantly at that, if at all.  Did this person bring back an illegitimate child of a relative and raise him as her own?  I guess we will never know.  Family secrets.  If you are gone for more than two years and come back saying you had a child while you were gone, who would know?

Thanks to a distant cousin in Florida, I discovered that my great-grandmother had siblings (we are related though her father's family).  I had the address of a family in Pennsylvania that my mother corresponded with.  One of the those descendants had no idea who we were.  But once I had the name of a sibling, I found her coming to America to be with her sister, marry and have her family in PA.  I am kinda amazed that no one other than my grandmother and mother seemed to keep in touch with them.

There are very good reasons to ask questions and learn about family when you are younger.  One of my Canadian cousins has lived in New Zealand for many years.  She says she remembers me, but I am sure she has me confused with another cute cousin, lol.  We have been sending messages back and forth with her trying to figure out who she visited with in the 1960s in Detroit.  I am pretty sure it wasn't me.  But my memory of old family get togethers gets a little fussy after 70+ years. 

I am not sure there is much more I can learn without hiring an expert (pricey).  It still amazes me how families all seemed to be so close when I was growing up, but now we are spread all over the world.  We see each other rarely, if at all.  Then again, there are some I have no interest in seeing, lol.  Family secrets and all that.

Finding My Roots in the Frigid North

Hey.  I am still here.  I have not frozen yet, though as I sit here typing I must say that my fingers are cold.  The official temp right now outside is minus 9 F.  That is bone-chilling cold.  All the schools are closed, mail delivery has been cancelled and because of an explosion at a gas transmission center yesterday, we have been asked by the utility and the Governor to keep our thermostats at 65 F.  I normally keep mine at 66 F during the day and 62 F at night so, fortunately, I am used to cooler temps indoors.  I haven't left my house since Tuesday noon when I went out to bring the trash can back inside.  And then I nearly froze my face 'cause I forgot to wrap my scarf around thinking it was just a minute to walk to the street and back.  It looks nice out, but truly, looks can be deceiving.

So, what else have I been doing all month?  Finding my roots.  I have made inroads.  An Ancestry member in Australia sent me info from a Polish website and I have traced back to my paternal great-great grandmothers and grandfathers in northeastern Poland.  Finally, after much searching, my cousin in New York (who I never knew about until last year) and I figured out that our grandfathers were born in Zapieczne, Poland - a small village in the Lomza province.  Yes, Lomza, not Lodz as I was told, but one can understand the confusion.  We think they were first cousins based on family lore.  Unfortunately, folks who remember this connection, including my mother who kept in contact with his grandmother, are all deceased.  I am still hoping that an uncle may have some old family records from my grandmother.

My paternal aunt, who is 90, says she never really was interested in family history.  That just is mind-boggling to me.  I have had several people tell me they have no interest in who their ancestors were or where they came from.  To me, that is the epitome of thinking you are the most important person in the room, JMHO.

Anyway, I am making headway.  I found a distant cousin on my mother's side of the family who actually visited Cordenons, Italy to search old records.  Interestingly, he and I are not DNA matches, but I am a match to his brother.  He grew up in Fort Frances, Ontario, where my grandparents went when they came here from Italy (even though we have no Italian DNA, lol).

The search is made even more interesting by names.  Using the same first names for children born in each generation is a real nightmare on the English and Irish sides of my ex-husband's family.  In my family, it is the changing of a Polish first name from Wladislaw to 'Steve', 'Ladislaus', 'Walter', or whatever for example.  Then on the Italian side is the spelling of last names.  The Marius family in the USA is the Mariuz family in Canada.   I am thinking that the use of the letter 'Z' is more in keeping with the Hungarian background we seem to have.

And ages.  We always used to laugh about my paternal great-grandmother's age because no one seemed to know how old she really was.  Her funeral card says she was born in 1883.  If that were true, she would have been eleven when her first child was born.  I think not.  Going through old census records and her three immigration records of her arrivals in the USA (yes, she travelled back twice to Austria), it seems she was likely born in 1874, somewhere near what is now Nadolany, Poland in the southeast part of the country.  But hey, I also found older men who fudged their ages on marriage licenses when they were marrying younger women, lol.

One of my favorite shows is 'Finding Your Roots' on PBS.  Every week I am amazed at what celebrities find out about their past.  Often you hear a celeb say, 'I was told...'  NOT.  So, yesterday I called my sister and asked her where she heard that some members of my mother's family left Canada to go to South America.  She could not remember who said it, but does remember hearing it.  Well, I did too.  But, when I searched immigration records, I could find no evidence to support it.  I did find records showing them crossing from Fort Frances, Ontario, to International Falls, Minnesota.

So, did they go south to America? and not to South America?  Sure seems like it.

I hope to solve more mysteries about my roots.  I find it fascinating.   Already, one of my sons has had his DNA done.  I am thinking of using 23andMe to find more matches.  It is an adventure right on my computer and who knows what lies in store.  We'll see.

Thanks for stopping by and stay warm if you are living under this air mass that has broken off from the polar vortex.

Discovering Me

Several months back I submitted some DNA samples to Connect My DNA.  Curiosity got the best of me. 

Once I was notified that my results were ready, I went online to view them. 

My grandparents were born in Italy, Polish Russia, and Pennsylvania.  Great-grandparents add Galicia, or Polish Austria to the mix.  At least that is what I have found from doing research on my genealogy.

I admit that on my father's side of the family, things are strange.  Who was that man living with my great-grandmother in the 1930 census and since when did Uncle Andy become a step-son?  These are questions that will never be answered.

Anyway, back to my results.  These results are not ancestry oriented, but present day oriented.  I eventually would like to do an ancestry check and see what comes up.  The continent where my DNA connects with the greatest population of genetic similarities is Africa, specifically Rwanda.  Frankly, I was not surprised, but those questions again will never be answered.

In Europe, the second continent with a connection, things were clearer.  The first country listed is Hungary.  If you are thinking it should have been Italy, consider this:  the town where both my maternal grandparents and great-grandparents came from is in northeastern Italy and was once part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.  As a matter of fact, my great-grandfather died while working in the Tyrol Mountains of Austria.

I was online last night checking out the website of Connect My DNA and there was a Myers-Briggs personality test.  Now, I have taken this test on several occasions during my life and the results are always the same:  INTJ; Introvert, Intuitive, Thinking, Judging

In the next few blogs I will talk about these characteristics.  I have to admit that when I read the personality characteristics, this is pretty much 'right-on'.  Stay tuned if you care to know me better.