In light of recent prison escape events: Charles Ricklefs, career criminal, in the 1940 census

This is an image from the 1940 U.S. census of a listing for my great grand uncle Charles Ricklefs, once again in prison, I believe this time for the bank robbery in Mattituck, Long Island. He actually started out being sentenced 15-30 years to Sing Sing Prison in 1938, eligible for parole in 1948 - but as you can see from this picture, by 1940 he was a resident of Clinton State Prison in the way upstate New York village of Dannemora. These names should sound familiar to you as Clinton Correctional Facility in Dannemora is where those two murderers escaped from last week - it's still in the news because they're still on the run. Charlie is still in Dannemora in 1942 per his World War II draft registration. I don't know what happened to him after that, but I hope Dannemora was his last stop after 30 years of being in and out of the prison system. Oh those black sheep - they sure do make family history research more interesting!!

Nobody's family is perfect: all the hullabaloo over Ben Affleck and "Finding Your Roots"

Whether or not you're interested in genealogy, you've probably seen all the news articles about Ben Affleck asking that a slave-owning ancestor of his not be included in his story on the Henry Louis Gates Jr. PBS genealogy show "Finding Your Roots." For some reason, it's even front page news on some websites. As a writer and a family historian, I have two points to make on this story.

The first, in defense of Gates, is that just because the discovery of Affleck's slave-holding ancestor was omitted from what aired doesn't mean it was deliberately excluded at Affleck's request. On any of these genealogy shows - on any show, really - all we're getting is an abbreviated glimpse of the story. We are all the product of thousands of years and millions of people - can't cover 'em all in one third of an hour long episode! Every family tree we see on any of these genealogy programs is edited for time, for entertainment value, for drama or for interest. And no disrespect to any of those people, but not everybody on your tree provides a compelling story to viewers - they might be compelling to you as part of your personal story but they might not even be all that interesting to you, either. It happens. Sometimes people just live ordinary lives. That's probably most people. From a writer's perspective, the omission of Affleck's controversial ancestor might simply be for editorial reasons - maybe he didn't fit with the story they were weaving. "Finding Your Roots" in particular covers a lot about the history of American slavery, from both sides - celebrities with slaves in their family trees and celebrities with slave owners in their trees. On this show, Affleck's slave owner ancestor is not necessarily an interesting and/or unique storyline, and possibly not as compelling as some of his other found ancestors.

My second point is important whether or not the show and Gates acquiesced to Affleck's request, and especially in light of his request - nobody's family is perfect. The course of our family histories is imperfect because our family trees are made up of individual humans, who are imperfect. We have to learn from the mistakes of our ancestors. By showing these imperfect people and events, we can show that we can become better as individual people, as a society, as the human race by not ignoring the unpleasantness of the past, by acknowledging it and moving forward in a positive manner. It does a great disservice to genealogy and to humankind to gloss over periods of terrible atrocities and the individuals who participated in them, such as American slavery. We all have those stories. Shows like "Who Do You Think You Are?" in particular have become somewhat guilty of whitewashing ancestors of questionable character in recent years, with a noted exception of the recent Sean Hayes episode - uncovering the generational cycle of paternal criminal activity and family abandonment helped Sean not only find compassion for the father who left him but also helped him determine to break the cycle. Though it was not his act, Ben Affleck should be embarrassed that he had slave-holding ancestors - it's a national embarrassment. But he's not alone in it. He would have been better off acknowledging it on camera, if the showrunners deemed it important enough to be part of his story, and then acknowledging that he's happy to be a part of the process that continues to fight against discrimination and inequality of minorities and all people, or something to that effect.

What are your thoughts on this incident? I'd love to hear!

Some genealogy quotes for a lazy, rainy Monday

It's hard to get going on days like this. Meaning Mondays. But on top of that, it's dark, dreary, and rainy out. So today I'm embracing the lazy and sharing a few genealogy quotes that always strike my fancy and remind me how important it is to keep doing what it is we do - not just because we love doing it, but because it needs to be done, even on lazy, rainy Mondays. Hope your week gets only better from here!

Today is a good day.

Today is a good day.

Today, April 5, is a special day. For anyone who is Christian, today is Easter, the holiest day of the liturgical year. Christianity molded many generations of my family, and church records, both Catholic and Protestant, have been invaluable in my family history research.

Today, two years ago, was also the day I entered the hospital to give birth to my daughter, the first of the next generation in my immediate family. I am so grateful for her and can't wait till she's old enough to tell about our family history! So far, she’s still the only one, though she has a cousin on her father’s side and many second cousins on my side – I see them playing together, which brings back many fond memories of being young and playing with my cousins. My cousins were some of my first friends, and over the years as a family historian, I have connected with many cousins beyond the second-cousin circle, to fourth, fifth, and many more. While these cousins aren’t playmates, some of have become friends, and almost all of them have become very important partners in researching our common family trees. 

Today also would have been the 100^th birthday of my grandmother, Mary Cronin Raynor, who passed away last May at the age of 99. She was my genealogy inspiration and mentor, as those of you who read this blog regularly well know. Though I am sad to be missing celebrating this milestone birthday with her in person, I know the 99 years she was here with us all were years well spent. I also know she is spending her first birthday in heaven celebrating with all her family – from those she knew well like her parents and husband to those from further in the past who she spent so many years trying to find. 

Today is a good day.

Éirinn go Brách - a Happy St. Patrick's Day to you all!

Unless you're deaf, dumb, blind, and live under a rock, you are aware, I'm sure, that today is St. Patrick's Day. I am half Irish - my mom was half Irish, and my dad is as well - and though I have a tendency to identify more with my German side of late, my Irish pride can't help but spilleth over every year on this date. My Irish ancestors have been some of my toughest nuts to crack, and I am still for the most part unsuccessful tracing any of those lines further than a generation back in the old country. I know a lot about many of them, though, on this side of the pond, though I have a few who have maintained their Irish mystery, much to my chagrin.

I boast ancestors from Counties Cavan, Westmeath, Cork, Limerick, Kerry, and Longford. My Gorrys and Corrs were here in New York by the mid- to late-1840s, refugees of the terrible Great Potato Famine, and on the other side of my tree, the Cronins didn't arrive till the mid-1890s, searching for new opportunities in a new land. My great-grandfather, Timothy Cronin, is the most recent immigrant on my tree, generation-wise and year-wise - my family has been here so long that a lot of the culture from their European homelands has been lost, though some of the Irish has managed to live on, passed down to us by Timothy's daughter, Mary, my grandmother. It is she who first told me about leprechauns, and how her father saw one once when he was living as a boy in Ireland. Well, my grandmother would never lie, and her father probably never lied to her, so when my elementary school teacher asked us to name made up creatures and one of my classmates threw out leprechauns among all the dragons, unicorns, and fairies, I promptly raised my hand and announced to my whole class that leprechauns were, in fact, real.

My grandmother used to complain about the leprechauns a lot - they are a mischievous lot and apparently continued to play tricks on her and hide her belongings well into her later years, even here in New York. I live in her old apartment now and have yet to see a leprechaun, though whenever I lose my keys or misplace a book or some other item, I have a feeling there are some wee Irish shoemakers behind it. My grandmother passed away last year and would've celebrated her 100th birthday in a couple of weeks and today, especially, I really miss her.

So today I will raise a pint and teach my 2 year old, who is half Latina and only a quarter Irish but looks more Irish than I do, how to say "slàinte" instead of her usual "cheers" (she'll be drinking milk btw!). As they say, "If you're lucky enough to be Irish, you're lucky enough." Luckily, today we're all Irish, in spirit if not ancestry, so wherever you are and whomever you're with, a Happy St. Patrick's Day to you all!

Genealogy Roadshow New Orleans Redux

Last night's episode of Genealogy Roadshow was confusing at first, since they were already there this season, but it appears they split each city visit into two episodes...just in case you were also a little lost. But maybe it was just me.

I still don't have the time to properly review this show but last night's episode really spoke to me on a personal level, so I felt compelled to comment on a few things:

• When Joshua Taylor was helping the first guest, the man whose family lost all their photos and documents during Katrina, he visited and talked about local archives and historical societies, smaller, localized repositories where one can find family Bibles, letters, photos, and other mementos that have been donated to their holdings. Everybody should know about these places. Does every archive have every single family Bible ever made? No. Is it guaranteed you will find a photo of Great-Grandpa Cletus in their files? No. But you never know who might have inherited this photo or that letter and who might not have had anyone to pass it along to...and it's actually a wonderful suggestion for anyone who has their hands on these things who doesn't have anyone in their family to pass it to - don't throw it out! Donate it to somebody - I guarantee some society or archive will want it. I came across a wonderful photo on the Internet, completely by accident, from the late 1890s of my great-grandfather, about age 10, his little sister, and his parents - I had never seen a photo of any of these people any younger than 50 years of age, and I had only ever seen one other photo of my great-great grandparents. And where did I find it? In a digitized photo collection of the Freeport Memorial Library - somehow they had gotten their hands on a photo of my family. I don't know who had been in possession of it but I'm glad the photo made its way there and not into the trash bin!
• My husband's family is from Honduras, and many of them worked on the banana plantations, or for the railroads or shipping companies that brought the produce from Central America to the United States...several of his relatives, including his great-grandfather, sailed into New Orleans many times in the early 1900s. There's actually a decent size Honduran population in the city because it is the port through which most people from that country arrive...so hearing the woman's story about her great-grandfather was of particular interest to me.
• The woman who was trying to find out if her great-grandfather actually had a sister, Alice, or if he had imagined her all those years...that story was heartwrenching. The fact that he actually did have a little sister, name unknown, who died as an infant when he was about 5, and then he lost his mother only a few months later, and then his father remarried to "New Mother" - she didn't even have a name! - then the FATHER died only a few years later, and New Mother sent this woman's great-grandfather away to school, didn't return for him, and he ended up in an orphanage??? Yikes. But that's sometimes what we discover - the hard, sad side of life. The story reminded me a little of my own great-great grandmother, who lost twin girls as infants, then her husband died quite suddenly in his late 20s leaving her a 20-something year old widow with two young sons, one of which died shortly after before the age of 10. She never remarried and because she had to work, her late husband's three siblings basically raised my great grandfather, the only surviving child. Life is hard and sad sometimes.

What did you think of the episode?

Snowy Saturday nostalgia & thoughts on Genealogy Roadshow

Snowy winter days always make me nostalgic - today the snow was melty and sticking, perfect for building a snowman and having a snowball fight with my husband and 22-month-old daughter...first time she got to experience that. Afterward, we came in and I made hot chocolate for everyone. Just reminded me of my childhood, playing in the snow, having fun and getting all cold and coming inside where my mom would make us hot chocolate. Still waiting for snow deep enough to take my daughter sledding for the first time - might even take her to the hill where I used to go as a kid!

Hope everyone's been checking out this season of Genealogy Roadshow on PBS. For some good, insightful reviews of these episodes, check out Cousin April's blog at Digging Up the Dirt on My Dead People. I don't enjoy this show quite as much as I do Who Do You Think You Are and Finding Your Roots but I just had a couple of bullet points to make about it:

• Unlike the other two shows I mentioned, it's a bit refreshing to see the everyday person, and not celebrities, getting help with their family trees.
• I love Josh Taylor, one of the expert genealogists on Genealogy Roadshow - I think he's fantastic at what he does and it would be awesome to work with him doing family history research, but it drives me absolutely nuts that he pronounces it "jen-ealogy" and not "jean-ealogy" like everyone else I know. Who knows - maybe he's right and it's the rest of us who are all wrong, but it's like nails on a chalkboard to me whenever he says it!
• I think Cousin April might have pointed this out in one of her reviews, but one thing that bothered me about the first season of Genealogy Roadshow is that it seemed like everybody was trying to connect to a famous person in history. That's annoying. Yes, it's cool if and when it happens, but your family is your family, whether they're famous or not, and you don't have to have a famous ancestor to have a super interesting and awesome or infamous and nuts ancestor. And yes, it's cool if you can find a gateway ancestor that links you to European royalty but for most of us, that gateway ancestor is so far back that that connection is fairly meaningless - not to burst anyone's bubble, but practically everyone of European descent can claim William the Conqueror as an ancestor. My point is, though, that this season seems to have stepped away from that, which is awesome, and seems to be focusing on the unique and interesting individuals and stories that are important to the particular person or family.

That's all for now. Keep your eyes out for the return of Who Do You Think You Are sometime next month, I think...and just an fyi, I'm in the middle of figuring out how to move this blog over to Wordpress, so if and when that change ever happens, I'll keep you posted. If you're in the middle of this snowy day - have fun building a snowman, drink some hot chocolate, then come inside, get warm, and look through all those old photos of your childhood snowy days - this kind of day is PERFECT for nostalgia!!

Enjoy your weekend!

Revisiting a personal connection to New York's deadliest maritime tragedy

I was watching an episode of Mysteries at the Museum on the Travel Channel last week - the description had caught my eye, about a museum dedicated to the Mothman mystery in Point Pleasant, West Virginia. I got distracted, missed that whole segment, and just happened to leave the show on. The next segment was a visit to the New York Historical Society, where a tiny pair of girls' shoes, over 100 years old, were on display, a remnant of a tragedy that was the worst loss of life in New York until the terrorist attacks on 9/11. My husband was intrigued and tried to guess what it could be, but I knew instantly.

"It's the General Slocum steamboat disaster," I told him, without hesitation. Which is exactly what it was. I could have written the segment - how on June 15, 1904, a steamboat full of more than 1,300 German immigrants and German-Americans from Manhattan, Brooklyn and Queens going on an annual church picnic outing - meaning it was mostly women and children - caught fire in the East River; how most of the people on board couldn't swim; how when they donned the life vests and jumped into the river most of them sank because the vests had rotted and were full of nothing more than cork powder; how the captain of the boat tried to save everyone by sailing full-steam toward an island in the middle of the river but instead only fanned the flames; how more than 1,000 of those on board were killed. Though I could've written it, the show had a lot of pictures and images of the ship, before and after, that I had never seen. It was heartbreaking.

A lot of people have never heard of this disaster, but I know it well. It hurts my heart to read about it because my 3rd great-grandmother's sister was on the ship, and she was one of those who died. Hulda Lindemann lived in Brooklyn and wasn't a member of St. Mark's Lutheran Church, which sponsored the trip, but the family she worked for in the city did belong to the church. The father didn't go on the picnic - Hulda joined the mother and the son for what was supposed to be a day of fun. All three of them died.

I think it was meant to be that while I turned on the show for one reason, that I ended up watching it for another. As a genealogist, I trace family lines, but some family lines just end, and some of them end rather abruptly. While we are all the continuation of somebody's line, and we read about and remember and honor those who come before us, I like to remember those in our families who are the ends of their lines - the aunts and uncles who never married or had any children, the babies and young children who never grew into adulthood - they don't have children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren to visit their graves, but we can.

You can read an earlier account of mine on Hulda Lindemann and the General Slocum steamboat disaster here.

In honor of Veterans Day and all those who served, including the Raynor brothers.

...I actually found this newspaper clipping just yesterday. A bit of serendipity that made me look and that found new images up at http://www.fultonhistory.com/Fulton.html. It's a little blurb about my grandfather, Clifford Raynor, and his brother, Monroe Raynor, from May 8, 1945 - that's V-E Day, right? - both being promoted because of their military service during WW II - Monroe for fighting in Germany with a tank division in the Ninth Army, and my grandfather, who was based in Portsmouth, VA, being promoted to radio technician, second class, for the U.S. Navy. Not only that, but there are pictures of the two of them. I've seen photos of my grandfather from his younger days but I've never seen a picture of him in his Navy uniform - they both just look so handsome and I'm incredibly proud of them and their service to our nation. So today we remember all our veterans, their families, and their sacrifices, but I especially remember these two men and the sacrifices they and their loved ones made for their family - my family.

Monroe Raynor and Clifford Raynor, Freeport brothers, promoted for military service, 1945.

Wordless Wednesday: We are the storytellers of the tribe

"Who Do You Think You Are?" recaps and reviews

I've been worse than usual with writing, folks, in case you haven't noticed! Between taking care of my ever-increasingly mobile and adventurous 16 month old, planning a wedding, doing freelance genealogy and editing work (usually not at the same time for the same clients ha ha), and getting ready to go back to work part-time, blogging has taken a back seat!

I have managed to find time to watch this season of "Who Do You Think You Are?," though I haven't found the time to write my impressions on each episode. For recaps and reviews of the episodes so far, I recommend checking out Cousin April's blog, Digging Up the Dirt on My Dead People - she has been on the ball posting her thoughts on each episode and I expect she'll be doing the same for the rest of the upcoming eps. I think I'll probably do a round-up of thoughts after the season is over - so get ready for a random mish-mash of thoughts. At which point, we'll be almost ready to start watching Henry Louis Gates Jr's excellent genealogy series, "Finding Your Roots."

Hope you all have been enjoying your summer and having wonderful genealogy adventures!

AncestryDNA: My sister and I are officially related...hurray!

My sister recently took the AncestryDNA test, completely of her own accord - so bizarre to not have to coerce any of my family members into taking the test. Just as a refresher, unless you are an identical twin, you and your siblings (or parents) will NOT be exact DNA matches. You will, of course, share most of your DNA, but each of us gets a different combination of DNA from our parents, just as they did theirs, just as they did theirs, and so on. So testing other family members, while expensive, is worthwhile from a genetic genealogy standpoint, because it will give you a more complete genetic picture of your family tree AND it will expand the number of people you can connect to genetically. What does this mean? Let me use me and my sister as an example:

I only just checked her results (yes, I was impatiently checking every day, and for the record, it only took 11 days for her results to be posted after they received her sample) so I haven't a chance to see her percentages yet, but we match 99 percent as immediate family. So, no awkward explanations needed from Mom and Dad, thank goodness! :) She has two main ethnic matches: Ireland and Western Europe, which is not surprising...our families are primarily from Ireland and Germany, and looking at my sister with her red hair, she looks like she could be from either. My main ethnic groups are Great Britain, Ireland, Western Europe, and Scandinavia. We both also have trace genetic regions that showed up. Both of us got European Jewish and Iberian Peninsula - I can see European Jewish being somewhere in our German roots, but I'm not sure where the Iberian Peninsula comes from (ethnic groups are so fluid in their localities and a genetic match could've been inherited from many, many, many, MANY generations ago...). She also had Scandinavia and Great Britain show up in her trace results. We each have one more trace, and it's different: mine is Eastern European, and hers is..... Italy/Greece. What???? Where in the heck did THAT come from??? I guess that's the crazy thing about genetics.

Okay, so back to what I was talking about before. Because my sister took the test, my genealogy picture became more complete. She and I have the same exact family tree - we have all the same ancestors. She inherited Italian/Greek DNA from someone somewhere down the line, from one of her ancestors. That means, I also have an ancestor who is of Italian/Greek ethnicity, even though it didn't show up in my DNA. So that's kind of a cool and exciting discovery for me. And now for what I'm most excited about - because my sister inherited different DNA than I did, she's going to match genetically to different people than I did. So the people she matches with are her cousins; they're related. And because she and I are related, that means that even though I don't genetically match with them, they are my cousins, too - I'm excited to see if anybody has any family tree info that matches mine, or better yet, can help me with mine!

Confusing stuff...but oh so exciting!

By the way, new Who Do You Think You Are tonight at 9 pm on TLC - Modern Family's Jesse Tyler Ferguson will be featured. At some point eventually I'll get around to posting my thoughts on last week's Cynthia Nixon ep which, surprise, surprise, had me in tears by the end, and hopefully tonight's ep and future eps!

In his own words: Grandpa Elmer Gorry reflects

Elmer Gorry reflects on his career/life before working at NBC in the Fall-Winter 1998 Peacock North newsletter.

My dad recently showed me this page from an old NBC magazine, in which my grandfather, Elmer Gorry, reflects on his days before working for the television network. He talks about his days working as a longshoreman in Brooklyn in the late 1940s-early 1950s (think the classic movie "On the Waterfront") and delivering baked goods to homes in Queens in the early 1950s. I knew about his working as a longshoreman but it was so cool to "hear" about it in his own words. These are the kinds of stories - the stories about life in general in a particular time period and place and about life in particular for individual members of our families - that really round out our genealogy research and make it come alive. These are the stories we try to get when we interview family members, glimpses into their lives, the stories that become part of our families' oral tradition. My grandfather, who passed away 8 years ago, was always very funny and had a sharp wit, and it was nice to "hear" his voice again in reading this vignette.

Call for help: What happened to William Meyer/William Myer? And who was his family?

Sometimes in genealogy, people seemingly disappear into thin air. Sometimes it's someone from way back, like my John Meinberg, who pretty much just dropped off the face of the earth somewhere in the mid-1870s. Did he die? Did he up and leave? Did he get swallowed by a whale or abducted by aliens? Nobody knows. Well, maybe somebody knows. But I don't. Other times, it's somebody more recent, as in the case of a recent client who is searching for someone from the 20th century on her family tree. So this is our call for help - we don't know what happened to him or even really his family history, but maybe YOU know. Here's what we do know:

• His name was Bill or William Mayer(s)/Meyer(s)/Myer(s).
• He was born possibly in 1932, but to cover our bases, let's say somewhere between 1927-1934.
• He was from the Bronx, New York, though he might not have been born there and he might have lived in other parts of New York City as a child.
• He was an Air Force military policeman (MP) at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base in Tucson, Arizona, where he was stationed in 1953-1954. 
• He also worked off base as a bartender.
• He wore glasses!
• He was Jewish.

Edited to add: we have some new information to take into consideration! In addition to the above info, the following are STRONG leads:

• William Meyer seems to be the correct spelling, or at least how he was spelling his name in the late 1940s, early 1950s.
• 1929-30 seems to be the more accurate date of birth range.
• He may have attended R.O.T.C. School of Military Science at the University of Arizona in Tucson, Arizona during the years 1949-50.

Did you serve in the Air Force with Bill Meyer? Was William Myer you grandmother's cousin? We're all connected in so many ways and there's always somebody else somewhere either looking for the same person in the same tree or who has the info being looked for. My client is just looking for some personal connection to that branch of their family tree - were William or his parents immigrants, and where might they have come from? Were they musicians? What were they like, and might it be possible to make that leap even further back to across the Atlantic? 

So if you think you can help, please leave me a comment on this post and we'll figure out how to put all the pieces together! Thanks, genealogy family! :)

Check that tunnel vision - looking beyond what is right in front of you

This is, I think, good advice in general, in life, and also in genealogy, whether it's looking to the side - siblings, cousins - to try to work our way backward, or whether it's switching from an ancestor we've been scrutinizing unsuccessfully to another person or branch, or just thinking outside the box when it comes to what records or resources we use.

But I have a very specific reason for talking about this today.

This morning was my grandmother's funeral. If you read my blog, you know that my 99 year old grandmother, my genealogy inspiration, died May 15. Born in Brooklyn, we returned her there today to be buried with my grandfather, both her parents, Timothy Cronin and Ellen Casey Cronin, her grandmother, Nora Donahue Cronin, and three aunts and uncles who never married - Denis Cronin, Daniel Cronin, and Mary Cronin.

Just as a side note, I love cemeteries. Morbid? Maybe. But I feel very peaceful and at home whenever I go to one, even when I'm not there to visit anyone specific, but moreso when I am. I love seeing names on headstones that I've researched so well that I feel like I actually know them, so today it was nice to "visit" my great-grandparents, my great great grandmother, and some of my great great aunts and uncles.

Anyway, back to the whole reason for this post. My grandmother's family plot is in Holy Cross Cemetery in Brooklyn. In the course of my research, I've tried to visit all my family plots that I know of, and more than once if I am able, so I'd been to the plot in Holy Cross before. After the graveside ceremony, my family hung around for awhile, and somebody happened to walk behind the headstone and say, "Hey, there's another Cronin buried here. Maybe they're related!" So of course I was intrigued, and yes, right behind the big family headstone is a smaller plot with a smaller headstone, and while everybody was sitting there going, "I wonder if they're related. Could they be related?," I was sitting there thinking, "Oh, hi Aunt Julia, hi Aunt Kate." I never even knew that headstone was there but I knew the names immediately. I finally got to "meet" Julia Cronin, a fourth unmarried sibling of my great-grandfather Timothy Cronin's - I had seen her death notice in an old newspaper but never knew where she was buried. And she was in the same plot as her sister Katherine, or Kate I guess, Flannery, who died fairly young, somewhere in her 30s or 40s, as well as Kate's two children, who died heartbreakingly young - John, at less than a year old, and Julia, as a young teenager. Considering how sad the circumstances were of us being there, it was a fairly exciting discovery for me, and I wonder how much my grandmother had to do with nudging us toward that headstone.

Which brings me to the point of this post - don't be so focused and wrapped up in the one person or family you're researching or looking for; step back and look around. Specific to cemetery research, if you're visiting one grave, take a look at the surrounding ones - family was often buried near family, and even if the names are different, they still might be related. But in general, just step back and look around - you never know what you might find.

Thanks, Grandma. I'm looking forward to your genealogy help from the other side.

Passing of my grandmother, my genealogy inspiration

This morning my 99 year old grandmother, Mary Elizabeth Cronin Raynor, passed away in her sleep.

At the ripe old age of 99, you don't exactly mourn the passing of a loved one - Grandma lived a long and happy life, filled with love and surrounded by family, and that's all any of us can really hope for in this life. Of course, living almost a century comes with some heartache as well - she lived to see most of her friends and family go before her. She outlived her husband, my grandfather, Clifford Monroe Raynor, by almost 23 years, and she had to live through the death of her youngest daughter, my mother, Margaret, almost 14 years ago, so I know she was ready whenever her time came. But she also lived to see her grandchildren grow up, get jobs, marry, have children of their own. I am forever grateful that she was well enough to attend my baby shower last year, where she gave me one of my favorite gifts, ever - an afghan, hand made by her mother. And one of the best days was when I got to introduce my daughter, her first great-granddaughter, to her last summer, and I loved watching them laugh and play together every time we went to visit. I am sorry my daughter won't remember her great-grandmother, but I am so happy that I have pictures of them together and that I can tell her, "You always made Great-Grandma smile, and boy, did she love you!"

My grandmother was our original family genealogist. She is the reason I became interested in genealogy. She is the one who got our tree started, who handed me the information and tools I needed to continue on my own. She is the one who got me hooked, who introduced me to what has become one of my life's passions. She is the one who told me stories about her childhood and about her parents and grandparents and my grandfather and his parents. She is the one who asked how my research was going and who I could talk to about some of the exciting discoveries I made. I am heartbroken that she is gone and forever grateful that she gave me the gift of genealogy.

My grandmother was a devout Catholic. I don't know what I believe about the afterlife, but whatever it is, I hope my grandfather and my mother were there to greet her on the other side, and that all our ancestors - those she and I knew about and those I have yet to discover but who are hopefully introducing themselves to her even now as I type -  welcomed her with smiling faces and open arms.

Grandma, I am so thankful for all the years I got to spend with you. I will always continue working on our family tree, to pass down to my grandchildren like you passed it down to me - I will miss you always, till we meet again.

Great-Grandma and Elena meeting for the first time, summer 2013.

Baby me and my grandmther, 1979.

In honor of DNA Day, an AncestryDNA update

Today is National DNA Day apparently, commemorating the 1953 publication of papers on the structure of DNA. In honor of that, I actually have an AncestryDNA update - I got my first shared ancestor hint!

I have literally 150 pages worth of DNA matches on Ancestry, people I connect to genetically, but up until this week I had no idea how I connect to any of these people. Nowhere did we have any matching people in our family trees. But finally, FINALLY, I got a shared ancestor hint. And, of course, it's a Raynor connection (that's my most researched line). This person and I are seventh cousins. Our shared ancestors are Joseph Raynor and Elizabeth Lester, who lived in the 1700s on Long Island. So, yay, I DO have at least a tiny bit of Raynor DNA in me! But I can't believe this is my only shared ancestor hint so far - Cousin April over at Digging Up the Dirt on My Dead People has very genetically cooperative DNA...mine is making me work just a little bit harder.

But, that's exciting. That's what I've been waiting for, that's what I was hoping for when I took this test, not only hopefully adding to and extending some of my branches, but connecting to cousins in a definitive way where I can see the connection.

But it wouldn't be an AncestryDNA post without some complaints, right? So here they are:

• I never got a notification that I had a shared ancestor hint. I found it by accident, when I was looking to see if I had any genetic matches with anyone with Raynor in their tree. If I hadn't checked that specifically, I have so many pages of matches, I might never have found him! I had actually, manually, connected myself to this person before, seeing we had Joseph and Elizabeth in common, but this was months ago and there was no shared ancestor hint at the time.
• Which brings me to my second complaint - I was doing a Raynor-specific search because Cousin April's sister had matched with someone who had a Micajah Raynor in their tree. If you've read this blog before, you may know that April and I have been searching for a connection to Micajah Raynor in the hopes that he will shed light on one of our brick wall ancestors, Jacob Raynor. But this person April's sister matched to had Micajah as a brother to Jacob's wife Rebecca, the daughter of Joseph Raynor and Elizabeth Lester (yes, the same people who were my first shared ancestors hint). But I have a copy of Joseph's will, and he lists his children by name, and nowhere is there a Micajah mentioned. So Micajah probably is NOT the son of Joseph and Elizabeth. So while this DNA project is a great help in connecting us to people, some of those people we are connecting to are unfortunately doing shodding genealogy work. DNA doesn't lie - if you are a match to someone, you ARE related, but do NOT take their family tree at face value, especially if it is not sourced well!
• And my third complaint - the person I have a shared ancestor with also has Joseph and Elizabeth as a shared ancestor with April's father (she is related to me through her father's side) - so how come her father and I don't have Joseph and Elizabeth as a shared ancestor hint? 

So many questions, so many things for AncestryDNA to continue working on. How has your experience been so far with DNA genealogy? Would love to hear what you're happy with and what you think could still be improved!

And on a completely unrelated note, have a wonderful weekend everyone!

Call for help: Who was Thomas Thomas' parents?

Hello all - it's been awhile! Spring is finally here - the perfect time to start adding new leaves and branches to my tree again, I hope!

Since I began blogging about genealogy, I have connected with so many cousins near and far, old and young - many times I've been able to help them with a genealogy question or problem they've been having, but more often than not they have been invaluable in helping me break through my own brick walls and add to my branches. So I thought as a service to my genealogy clients, I'd offer them the opportunity to post their own genealogy problems, questions, or brick walls to my blog - you never know who's out there reading; you never know who's out there researching those same questions...or who is out there with the answers!

So today we have a question from K. about his great-great-grandfather, Thomas Thomas. According to K, Thomas Thomas is listed in the 1880 Census in Ellsworth, Kansas, where it says he was born in Pennsylvania and was married to Louisa A. According to his family's oral tradition, the couple lived previously in Lebanon, Ohio, where K's great grandmother, Rebecca Jane Thomas, was born. From there, the family moved to Ottawa (LaSalle), Illinois, where Rebecca married Loren(zo) Dow Pratt in 1866 - he was just home from the Civil War.

Soon after Rebecca and Lorenzo's marriage they moved to Marion, Kansas, and Thomas Thomas, her father, moved his family to Ellsworth, Kansas. In the 1880 census, Thomas is listed as a policeman, "which is interesting," K writes, "since Ellsworth was one of the wildest of the end of the trail cowtowns." Sounds exciting, right? Bet there are some good stories there! In addition to Rebecca Jane, Thomas and Louisa had a son, Joseph C., also of Marion, Kansas, and a daughter, Maria, who accompanied Louisa to Marion for the birth of Thomas V. Pratt (Rebecca's son and Thomas' grandson) in 1875.

So, to bring us back to the beginning, K wants to knock through his brick wall and answer the question: Who was Thomas Thomas' parents?

We have a lot of good info here - we have specific towns and locations, we have a few years, and we have a couple of siblings and in-laws, all of whom might have descendants out there researching these same questions or who already have the answers! So if anybody is reading this and just got that excited feeling of, "Oh my gosh - this is MY family, too!" whether or not you have the actually answer K is looking for (sometimes two people working together to search for the same answer is better than one), you can leave me a message in my comments and I will be happy to put you in contact with K and y'all can enjoy the fun of connecting with cousins!

Some random snowy Monday night AncestryDNA thoughts...

On a personal level, I have been very happy with AncestryDNA and especially since the results were revamped, updated, and made more specific...I mean, it's been thrilling. I can't wait till I get a job and can buy DNA kits for all my siblings and my father to see the slight variations and hopefully see something pop up in theirs that didn't pop up in mine...you never know. That's the fun thing about DNA.

On a connecting level, however... ::sigh:: It's been a total bust. I have tons and tons of matches. I have 30 4th cousin matches (4th-6th cousin range, usually) and I would say more than 100 distant matches, many of whom are "moderate" probability, not "low" or "very low." And yet, I have no shared ancestor hints. Not a single one. Nada. Zilch. I am super super jealous of Cousin April over at Digging up the dirt on my dead people, who has made several genetic matches on the family line that we share - but I don't connect genetically to her or any of her matches. Of course, until the database is overflowing with people, most people are going to be in my boat - the great and terrible thing about DNA connections is it will connect you to people you might never be able to prove a connection to with any records. I have several very well documented lines - my Raynor line, which is my shared line with Cousin April and dates back to colonial America, and several of my German lines, which immigrated more recently (the 1800s). I think a lot of my DNA connections are on my Irish lines, which I will never be able to prove with records - so that's a genetic dead end. And unfortunately, AncestryDNA is not yet available to many foreign countries, so I won't be able to connect to any of my well documented German lines unless their descendants came to America and also took the DNA test. Which basically leaves me with my Raynor line, which has proved useless so far.

Part of the problem is two of my pet peeves with AncestryDNA - the people who took tests who A), have a private family tree and B) the people who took tests who have NO family tree. At the very least, you can input you, your parents, and your grandparents. That would be enough for me to see whether or not there was a possible Raynor connection. And I understand people who want to keep their family tree private from the general public but it would be nice if Ancestry came up with a way to allow users to make their trees public to other AncestryDNA users, to see if there's a connection there.

So, I'm taking matters into my own hands, as much as I can anyway. I have largely, on my public tree anyway, only gone backwards, never sideways. Well, my new goal is to add as many branches and cousins as possible, to widen that net and hopefully catch a few AncestryDNA cousin connections or even just normal genealogy researching cousins - if they won't or can't connect to me, I'm going to do my damnest to connect to them.

Now I also uploaded my DNA results to GedMatch.com after hearing that Cousin April was able to connect to a non-U.S. cousin through that website - no matter which DNA website you use, you can upload your results and connect to genetic matches - I got a ton of results (including one person with the last name Carman, who is, of course, somewhere on the Raynor line I'm sure - another old Long Island name) but I don't really understand how it works yet or how to contact these people or how accurate it is. What was kind of cool is there's a beta database that gives you a picture of what it believes your eye color looks like, based on your DNA results, and mine was DEAD ON. It was insane. I have a fairly unique eye color so the fact that it accurately picked out what my eye looks like makes me think the website is pretty legit.

Anyway, I have a lot of work to do - tons to keep me busy on these snowy days. Happy hunting, everyone!

My blogiversary!

I cannot believe it's been six years since I started writing this blog. Writing about genealogy has been such a blessing. I have had people find me through this blog and reach out to me for help. I have used this as an outlet for all my frustrations whenever I hit brick walls (which has been and continues to be quite frequently!). I have used this blog to celebrate all my genealogical victories, both big and small. I have used it as a record of my journey and of my growth as a genealogist. I have shared what I have learned in the hopes of helping others learn as well. But I think most importantly, I have found so many cousins (or they have found me), both close and distant, and many times I have been able to share with them things about our common tree that they didn't know, but more often than not they have been the source of invaluable knowledge - records, photos, letters - as well as kinship and friendship. So I'd just like to take a moment to thank everyone who has read me over the years. Hopefully six years from now, we'll all still be here - further along in our research and cousin networks, but still searching, always searching for more answers!

You can read my original blog post here.