A little background.?ÿ
1. My wife and I wanted to get out of the city and moved to Frederick County, Maryland thirty years ago. ?ÿOur only connection to the area was my wife's college roommate was from there. ?ÿTwenty years ago we bought our current home in Washington County (the next county west) because the prices were 2/3's what they were in Frederick, no other reason than price.
2. Growing up we had no connection to my paternal grandmother's family. ?ÿKnew she was from Iowa, same as my grandfather, and they met and married in the late 20's in Chicago. Also knew that she was born in Maryland, but her family moved west as a child. ?ÿTurns out, after she passed away in 1989 my father was contacted by his, previously unknown to him, half sister. My grandmother had a daughter out of wedlock in a small town in the twenties, gave her up to be raised by one of her older married sisters, and moved to Chicago. ?ÿIf my grandfather knew, he never told my dad or uncle; and the total lack of connection to her family while my dad was growing up leads me to believe she kept it a secret. ?ÿ
Fast forward to 2018 when I start tracing my family tree. ?ÿGet some clues from other family trees on ancestory.com. ?ÿThen I remember that a year back I did the ancestory DNA thing. ?ÿThey list other members you may be related to. ?ÿFound a detailed family tree from a second cousin on my mystery grandmothers side.?ÿ
Not only was my grandmother born in Maryland, it was Washington county. ?ÿBoth her parents family's had been in Washington and Fredrick counties since the Revolutionary War. (Mostly German and Swiss anabaptists who originally left for Pennsylvania in the late 1600's and early 1700's). There is a restaurant in an old inn on the National Road outside of Boonsboro Md that we've been going to 3-4 times a year for two decades. Turns out every time we went I've been driving past my Great-great-grandfathers grave in the Mt Zion Mennonite Church cemetery. ?ÿMy great great grandmother passed away in her daughters house in 1947 where she moved after her husband died; its ten blocks from my house. ?ÿ
Throw in the fact that one branch were Wild's from the same Swiss Canton that Heerbrugg is in, and it's starting to freak me out a bit...?ÿ?ÿ?ÿ ??ÿ
A few years ago my old business partner became interested when I looked up a few of his relatives on my ancestry.com account.?ÿ He eventually subscribed and began building his family tree.?ÿ Some time later he discovered we were distant cousins from a 1700's connection back east.?ÿ
Some things you just can't make up. It's fascinating.
Any two people who trace to the same New England or mid-Atlantic colony are quite likely to be related at the 8th cousin level or better.?ÿ (Well, as I get older, maybe most people would add a generation.)?ÿ I've had discussions with a few people in genealogy libraries who were looking for the same colony and discovered that degree of relationship with them.
On our way to the Surveyors Historical Society gathering in Philadelphia a few years ago we stopped in Ohio to look for my great-great grandmother's grave, knowing only the little town she was living in/near when she died.?ÿ We missed the stone on our pass through the cemetery, but at the library we found a listing and went back.?ÿ Sure enough, and not only was her name on the stone, but her mother's name, too, that I hadn't known.
While we were in that library, my wife looked up a family name in her line and found a pioneer relative's name, so we visited that cemetery also. about 5 or 6 miles from the the one my relative was in.?ÿ Then leaving Philadelphia I checked my GPS and noticed a waypoint for another grave with that family name we had taken note of before the trip.?ÿ We hadn't actually planned our route to go there, but I said, "Hey, it's a mile from the next exit!"?ÿ So we visited the immigrant ancestor's grave.
It can be interesting, especially for people who like to do research.?ÿ However, I am not very impressed with long, thin lines of ancestry back to the middle ages.?ÿ You get a 1/2 generation with each parent, 1/4 with each grandparent, etc. and back in the middle ages each ancestor probably counts for something like a millionth of your ancestry.
I was recently contacted by a distant cousin, and in sharing stories, I became slightly interested in genealogy and enrolled at the Mormon's site.?ÿ 2 hrs later I was looking at wedding records in England for my 13th g-grandparents, , descended thru my paternal grandmother, who married in 1534 in Some-priory-or-other, England.?ÿ Pretty cool, I thought.
2 parents, 4 grandparents, 8 great-grandparents and so forth. ?ÿThen apply 25 years between each generation. ?ÿThus, in an idealized case, a child born today had 1024 unique ancestors 250 years ago, 1768. Go back another 150 years to 1618, roughly the Mayflower days and that number grows to 65536. ?ÿThe odds of all of those ancestors being unique is low. ?ÿFor each of those to not be related to any of the others boosts the odds to astronomical levels. ?ÿThen you can add in the cases where the true parentage did not, in fact, conform to the reported parentage. ?ÿToss in the age-old custom of warriors raping the females in the areas of their victories, thus further confusing the issue of true parentage. ?ÿDoes anyone really know how being a so-called Lithuanian differs from being a so-called Spaniard in the DNA labeling from submitting your DNA for testing?
True story. ?ÿNearly 40 years ago there was a consulting engineer working with us on a special project for two or three months. ?ÿIn a casual conversation he and I discovered that I had a distant relative living in his boyhood hometown that he recognized as someone he had seen at his family's annual massive family reunion. ?ÿHe said he had a thick family history report that had been assembled by some sort of distant relative and he would bring it with him after his next trip home. ?ÿOnce I had it in my hands it took only a few minutes to discover that his sixth great- grandfather, Jacob Conrad, who had spent most of his adult life near what is now known as Oak Flat, West Virginia was also my sixth great-grandfather. ?ÿHe was descended from daughter Barbara while I was descended from son Jacob, Jr.?ÿ
In my family tree there are at least two instances of "head scratchers".?ÿ?ÿ The one that comes to mind is my great-great grandfather's death in 1864 during the War Between the States.?ÿ His youngest son (my great-grandfather) has a birth date of 1866...two years after his "father's" death.
Lordy, the Miracles we see... ??ÿ
@james fleming
A few minutes ago I saw a picture on Facebook from the southern part of Washington County, MD showing how the flooding has totally destroyed one of your paved roads.
@paden cash
A former boss told of the time when he went fishing with his dad and uncle. ?ÿThe uncle told many stories that day from his time in the Army during WWII. ?ÿThis included a mention of how he was overseas for a very extended period. ?ÿAfter the uncle had gone home my boss asked his dad a difficult question about Cousin Jerry who was born shortly before the uncle's stated date of return. ?ÿDad said, "Jerry isn't really your cousin."
In a funny twist of fates, my mother is from GA, southern GA, Americus actually.?ÿ I learned that Americus was the "city" closest to Andersonville, the Civil War prison site.?ÿ I couldn't help but wonder if there was a connection.?ÿ Well, as I was running my dad's side (his family came from Rockland MA) I did find an ancestor that was in Andersonville, and died on the train home after the war.
Don
