Category Archives: Genealogy Not DNA

Memories Resurface When the Old Family Home Gets a Facelift

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Two years ago, a friend messaged me, letting me know that my old family home in the historic “Silk Stocking” neighborhood in Kokomo, Indiana was for sale. Perusing that listing, even though the home was clearly in poor condition, jogged so many memories.

I found several photos from when we lived there and positioned them in the rooms as they were photographed in April of 2023. You can take a look, here.

I was shocked at that time at the low price of the property at $89K, even considering its condition and its advanced age. The house was built in 1915, although the Zillow listing says 1925, which leads me to wonder if it was initially wired for either electricity or fitted for plumbing. I know it was built with two fireplaces, likely for heat.

Of course, for all I knew, in 2023, it might even still have had the old boiler – so who really knew how extensive the remodel would need to be? And why are some of the radiators still visible in the home today?

Fast forward.

A classmate messaged me again, this time with a listing for the fully remodeled home, now for sale again at $219.9K.

Some of the photos from the 2023 listing showed areas in the home that aren’t shown this time, and vice versa.

I realize this isn’t your home, but perhaps you can use some of the same techniques to overlay your photos. I love house history as well as genealogy. Plus, who doesn’t enjoy a good story?

Maybe finding real estate listings of your family home will cause you to reflect as well.

Let’s take a virtual tour.

The front porch hasn’t changed much at all. Not in two years. Not in 50. Even the address plaque is the same.

We used to grow beautiful blue Morning Glories that wrapped their tendrils around those green wooden trellises that were painted green, even back then.

Of course, your attention is supposed to be on THIS house, but I immediately noticed the neighbor’s huge home, which was incredibly unique and always fascinated me. Rumor has it that they eventually owned both houses. I’m glad they didn’t just tear the smaller one down to expand their yard.

On the upper portion of the chimney is a decorative piece of iron that always looked to me like a backward S. It’s still there, and so are other historic features. Those two quarter-circle windows in the attic always looked like insect eyes to me. This house is very symmetrical.

I still miss the tree that was located where the dark marks are to the right, near the driveway in the yard. I had a stump “treehouse” of sorts that I sat in there and read books in the summer. I loved to read and spent hours here!

I do wonder what happened to the bricks between the doors. A fireplace is on the other side.

The street looks pretty much the same except that ALL of the plants on the hill and the beautiful mature maple trees in the front yard are gone now. We grew Periwinkle there because that hill next to the sidewalk was steep and difficult to mow.

The rear of the house looks pretty much the same as it did in 2023, although all of the windows in the entire home have now been replaced. The garage is gone and was two years ago, replaced by the white fencing, which I’m sure simply serves as a visual barrier for the edge of the pavement where the garage used to be. This entire area was much more inviting when we lived there. Now, it just looks sterile and utilitarian.

I’m impressed that the big pine tree is still there. Mom and I used to have weekend picnics in the backyard on a quilt under its sheltering branches. We used to lay out here to suntan.

All the grass and perennials are gone now. The electrical service was installed originally when we lived there so that the upstairs “apartment” could have its own service and be billed separately. It terminated in the kitchen – and that electrical box helped me orient in the new rooms. The upstairs apartment kitchen was located in the upper right corner. Our kitchen table sat right behind that window and the pine tree, much smaller then, was the view.

We lived in the upstairs apartment for the dozen years we owned this house, entering through a side door, marked as the foyer in the drawing below.

This downstairs floor plan will help in understanding the way the home is laid out today.

Previously, the three large windows in the lower left that now grace the eat-in kitchen led to a bedroom, but (I think) with fewer windows. The downstairs kitchen was small, and the back door was how the downstairs residents usually gained entry, although they could have entered through the front doors, too.

Today, what I remember as a relatively dark bedroom is a light, cheery eat-in portion of a kitchen. The wall between what was then the kitchen and bedroom has been removed.

The original kitchen here was trolley-style, just on the right side outer wall where the sink and dishwasher are today, and included only a stove, sink and a few cabinets. The refrigerator stood on the wall that was been removed. You can see it in the 2023 photos.

This room, including this entire half of the downstairs, has been entirely redesigned.

You can see the back door here. The original kitchen was only to the right of the door, and the hallway led straight from the back door through what is now the cabinets. It’s a solid wall today. I love that they included the floorplan drawings so I can orient myself.

The door from the bedroom into the hallway appears to be where the fridge is located today. You can see where the wall between the kitchen and bedroom was removed.

A fireplace is centered on the outside wall of the living room, which spans the full the width of the house.

You can’t see in the 2025 photo, but there’s a doorway on the right in the living room leading to a small hallway and a very small bathroom. When we lived there, it had a toilet, sink, and small shower that had been built in what I believe was originally a closet when the house was turned into two apartments.

This isn’t the apartment where we lived, so this living room doesn’t evoke memories for me.

I did notice that the carpet has been removed, exposing the beautiful original floors, which have been refinished.

The fireplace is still original.

I’m not quite sure what the mirror is covering up. I don’t remember anything structural being behind it.

At the end of the living room, you’ll notice a small closet and a door to the left, which leads to the side entry foyer.

This photo looks across the foyer, past the stairs at the right, and into the end of the living room, where the closet is visible.

When we lived here, the door from the living room and its identical twin on the other side, which led to the bedroom, could be closed and locked, affording residents of both apartments privacy. Ironically, those doors were almost never locked. The side entrance was how Mom and I entered to go upstairs to our apartment.

I notice that while most of the old radiators are now gone, this one is not. It also doesn’t look original. Ours were painted.

I don’t recall ever having seen the full wood floors, so I think they had all been covered with carpet prior to Mom purchasing the property. Upstairs, the carpet wasn’t “wall-to-wall,” but still covered all but a few inches on each side. I remember itchy grey-green wool carpet.

Today, the house has been restored to a one-family residence, but when we lived there, the side entrance had its own mailbox, and the address was 530 ½ W. Sycamore, while the front was just 530.

Today, the second floor has been reestablished as bedrooms, and had been by 2023. Note that the fireplace in the front bedroom is in the same location in the front of the house as the fireplace in the living room downstairs.

The back right bedroom was originally the kitchen. In yesteryear, the kitchen sink and a couple of small cabinets were located in what appears to be a reconstructed closet today. The refrigerator stood alone on the wall to the right as you walked into that room. Since the side of the fridge is what you saw immediately when entering the kitchen, it’s where we put notes and other reminders.

The bottom right bedroom in the drawing was Mom’s bedroom, although it was in the rear of the house.

The “primary bedroom” was divided into two: the bottom third, partitioned by a (now removed) wall, was my bedroom, and the rest of the room, which is now the full width of the house, was the upper apartment’s living room.

The area labeled as the hall was a nice-sized bedroom closet for me that held a dresser beneath the window, hanging rods, and shelves.

The rear of the hall was the door that led to the attic, which was planked and had a light, but was unfinished – AND COLD in the winter! We used it for storage, and all kinds of treasures from Mom’s dancing career were to be found in boxes and suitcases.

I was discouraged from looking at those and asking too many questions, so of course, I was fascinated by the forbidden fruit and Mom’s former life that accompanied those beautiful sequined costumes. Yes, indeed, a treasure trove!

Mom knew unquestionably that I’d look in that suitcase, so when she passed, that’s where she left me the story of her “crazy mixed-up life, but it wasn’t all bad.”

The wall that sectioned off my bedroom was installed between the window and the fireplace mantle – closer to the fireplace. A twin size bed just fit between the window frame and the (now removed) wall.

On the other side of the wall, my Mom’s secretary, where I did homework, stood for years. It fit, but you couldn’t open it if it was scooted any closer to the outside wall, so a decorative basket stood between the secretary and the wall.

The room today is the full width of the home in the front of the house, mirroring exactly the living room downstairs.

There’s so much white paint on those fireplace bricks that shy of sandblasting, there’s no prayer of ever removing it. The fireplace was already painted white when we moved there.

One of the few things not remodeled since 2023 is the ceiling wallpaper.

The door to the left leads to the hall which was my closet, and then upstairs to the attic.

To the left of the bed, out of sight in the photo, is the hallway to the other two bedrooms and the stairs descending downstairs.

Yesterday’s kitchen is now a small bedroom.

Needless to say, there is nothing here today reminiscent of the kitchen that we had installed when we purchased the house and turned the upstairs into an apartment. The downpayment and remodel, back then, was thanks to Mom’s inheritance from my grandparents. This home provided us with stability and income to help with the payment.

Using the outdoor clues and the electrical box on the wall of the former kitchen, I was able to identify this room.

Back in the day, our cream-colored Formica kitchen table with brown trim, much larger than this one, stood in this corner. It had six chairs with leg-adhering vinyl or plastic-covered seats.

The stove was to the left of the window, and the few cabinets were located beside it, in the corner out of sight, at left, and beside the sink on the other wall. The kitchen was small, but I guess we never really considered that. It was big enough for us, and by 2023, it was already gone.

I have some fantastic memories of this kitchen, including my grandmother’s ever-present salt and pepper shakers, sugar bowl, and a toothpick holder.

I learned to sew on the old kitchen table using Mom’s black Singer Featherweight sewing machine that she had used back in the day to create those beautiful, mystical dance costumes. Of course, we ate on that table, so the sewing project had to be put away every day. No luxury of leaving it out so you could just pick up and start sewing again.

I also typed my school reports facing out that back window on an old Olivetti manual typewriter, making liberal use of CorrectType. If you don’t know what those are, it’s just as well.

That A5 report on King Louis XIV that I typed at this table is what earned me a scholarship to Europe to study in Switzerland and France during the summer of 1970 – an opportunity that dramatically changed my life. We weren’t allowed to use correction papers or fluid on that report, so if you made a mistake and messed up a page, you had to put another sheet of paper in and start over.

That humble kitchen table, which stood where that innocuous white table stands today, altered my life in ways that are still reflected in who I am today.

Oh, the talks we had there…

Never underestimate the power of a kitchen table.

The linen closet was outside the kitchen door, between the stairs and Mom’s bedroom, and across from the bathroom. Today, that space houses a stackable washer and dryer, a drastic improvement over hauling dirty clothes to the washer in the basement, down two flights of stairs, and back up, or to the laundromat. Generally, the person living in the other apartment didn’t mind us using the laundry facilities. We shared them, but we had to plan around their schedule since we were in and out of their apartment to access the basement. Today, this type of arrangement would be unheard of.

Mom’s bedroom was in the back corner, closest to the huge house next door. In fact, it overlooked the shared driveway. I’m sure it’s gone today, but there used to be a radiator to the left of that window, the view obstructed by the pillows. The old phone table, which, ironically, I still have, stood beneath the rear window. If a friend called, Mom would answer, come get me, and then I would flop on Mom’s bed while talking.

If it was a boyfriend and we talked for “too long,” Mom would wander through like she was checking something and give me the all-knowing evil eye.

Mom’s vanity, which I also still have and absolutely love, stood against the wall at right, next to the white closet door. I can look at the photo of the present-day bedroom and see her vanity sitting there.

If I focus my eyes in the distance and let my mind wander, I can see her there too, and feel those memories flooding back.

Our collective lives often revolved around this room. Getting ready for school, church, or a date – putting on makeup, or in this case, getting ready for the prom. Talking on the phone, and even just listening to the radio in the mornings for important local information about work or school as Mom and I got ready to leave – preparing for whatever that day held in store.

I even remember what was written on that tiny piece of paper, clipped from something, and slipped into the mirror frame. “It’s not what you say, but how you say it.” I’m pretty sure me remembering it was the entire not-so-subtle point.

When I inherited Mom’s vanity, I left it pretty much as it was. That china tray, which was my grandmother’s, still lives there, and Mom’s hairbrush still resides in the drawer, as do many of her other personal items. So many memories of just everyday things. At that time, they were unremarkable. Today, they mean the world.

Our bathroom was small. When we first moved into the residence, a larger mirror was glued to the wall where this mirror is affixed today. It was supposed to be screwed in with brackets, but it wasn’t. I had just finished brushing my teeth and walked out the bathroom door when I heard the most horrific, frightening crash and glass shattering. The mirror had fallen and broken, of course, scattering glass shards everyplace – in a bathroom. Had it hit the back of my head while I was brushing my teeth over that sink, it would probably have killed me.

We had a bathtub that included a shower that can be seen in the 2023 photos, but now they have a walk-in shower in this bathroom.

There’s a soaking tub elsewhere that came as a complete surprise.

The attic is now beautifully finished, and, I’m sure, heated. You could see it has been begun in 2023 when the project was apparently abandoned.

This attic bathroom is the entire size of the house, minus the rafter area, which is too short to be accessed.

The other end of the attic, towards the front, is also finished, with the brick fireplace exposed.

I recognize the original floor planks. They weren’t finished back then, and were dark brown from years of attic dirt and dust. They look a lot better today.

I can’t help but think that I wouldn’t want to climb to the third floor to take a bath, and it amused me to no end to read how the realtor describes this feature.

I guess it’s all a matter of perspective.

The last photo, which I was actually surprised to see in the listing, was the basement.

I never really thought much about the basement, but I have a surprising number of memories.

It wasn’t exactly an inviting area. Today, the walls are painted white, but back then, I don’t remember it being painted at all and the only color I associate with the basement is “grey,” as in “dark and grey.” It was also damp.

We had hot water heat, which meant a boiler, which Mother was terrified of. Boilers were pressurized and occasionally exploded, spraying boiling water everyplace and on anyone unfortunate enough to be anyplace close. If you were in the basement and the boiler blew, your goose was cooked along with the rest of you.

The basement was actually more like a quarter basement. I don’t recall it having concrete on the floor back then, but it could have. There were “entrance holes” to the underside of the rest of the house from that cavern. I always wondered what lived under there – monsters, I was sure.

It wasn’t as tall as a normal room and was barely high enough for an adult to stand upright.

As you stepped from the bottom step onto the floor, the boiler was directly in front of you and to the left.

The boiler seemed alive and made terrible noises. We could hear them in the radiators, and we called it Mr. Clank.

Initially, we had a washer but no dryer, which was located near the hot water heater today. I don’t recall the hot water heater then, but clearly, there was one. Maybe it was somehow connected to the boiler.

In any event, we hung the clothes to dry, either on a line in the backyard, one here in the basement, a collapsible spider-shaped clothes drying rack, or over the shower rod in the bathroom. Wet clothes were a lot heavier going back up those stairs than dirty ones were going down. We hand-washed a lot of things, like underwear and hose, by hand in the sink.

When the washing machine broke, we started going to the laundromat because it cost too much to fix the washer or buy a new one. I actually liked the laundromat, in part because it was light and cheery, not grey, and we got to go someplace. We also got to dry the clothes in a dryer there, too, meaning fewer wrinkles and less ironing, and there was ice cream at the dairy near the laundromat. Win-win if you’re a kid!

My most vivid memory of the basement, though, occurred on Palm Sunday in April of 1965.

That was the day that a series of more than 55 devasting F4 tornadoes, many more than a mile wide, ripped through central Indiana, including Kokomo – and would be forever known as the Palm Sunday Tornadoes.

In 1965, there were no early-warning systems. No sirens. Nothing on the radio.

In a town north of Kokomo, these double-funnel clouds swirling around each other swept everything away. They were followed by others in the exact same place a little later the same evening.

Our house stood on a hill, so when I looked out my bedroom window, I was looking over the treetops of Foster Park, across Wildcat Creek, and could see a significant distance to the south. An old Indian legend said that they would not live south of the Wildcat, and that Sunday, we learned why.

Late that afternoon or perhaps early evening, I finished my homework and was standing in my room, looking out the window at the green-colored storm sky, thinking that I had never seen a sky that color before. It was dusky, but I couldn’t tell if it was because of the time of day, or the intensity of the storm – and I really wasn’t thinking much about it.

My mother hurried into my room and said I needed to come with her. I could hear the urgency in her voice.

I tarried and started to argue because that sky was SO interesting. It was MOVING – swirling.

Skies didn’t do that. It was so COOL!!!

She grabbed my hair and screamed at me, literally screaming, “COME DOWNSTAIRS NOW!” What? We never went downstairs. We lived upstairs.

Mother was a small woman, but she half dragged me as I half stumbled-ran to keep up with her. I had no idea WHERE we were going, but I had no choice in the matter. She had my hair in her clutches, and that woman was not about to let go.

She was flying down the stairs like her shoes had wings.

As we hit the first landing, by the side door, I heard a terrible crash someplace upstairs.

The entire house shook.

I can’t believe she could run faster, dragging me – but she could and did.

We had to round the corner, run through the living room, around the next corner, open the door, and hightail it down the basement steps.

She somehow managed to slam the basement door behind us.

By now, I was utterly terrified.

Another crash – and another.

The house shuddered.

Then another.

Deafening.

Mom covered both of us up in the corner, as best she could, with something. I don’t remember what. She sheltered behind and beside that terrifying boiler, between it and the wall in the smallest of spaces. We were pressed tightly together, clutching each other. She covered my head with her arms and held me close.

I remember thinking that whatever was wrong must be atrocious because she was more afraid of it than of that boiler. In fact, right then, the boiler seemed like a good friend. A protector. I could feel the metal, including maybe a bolt or seam, and its heat against my skin.

Strange what we remember, isn’t it?

I was trying to ask Mom what was happening, but the noise was deafening and it was pitch black. I remember very barely hearing the word “tornado.” She was screaming, but I’m not sure if I heard her voice or somehow just sensed her terror.

We stayed in the basement for a long time after the train wreck sound had abated.

I realize now that Mom knew from growing up on a farm that tornadoes sometimes arrived in clusters. That night, tornadoes swept across a wide swath of Indiana multiple times – including Kokomo and vicinity.

The storm outside continued.

We didn’t know what had caused the crashes, so we didn’t know if or when we were safe to exit – or what we faced. No power and no flashlights either – at least not in the basement. Later, we had an emergency kit down there with candles and matches, but not that day.

As it turned out, the large maple tree beside the house had split and fallen on the roof. The multiple crashes were multiple parts of that tree, or maybe parts of two trees. Some may have been debris from other houses too. It was a mess.

We were the lucky ones. No life lost. House not destroyed. Nearby, just south of town, entire neighborhoods and small neighbor towns were wiped from the face of the earth. People we knew died.

We were incredibly relieved to discover that our very frightened cat, Snowball, had hidden and survived. She even let us pick her up when we located her. Mom and I wrapped our arms around her together and sobbed. Our small family was safe.

But then, we looked outside. We couldn’t see a lot, but it was enough. Plus, I’ll never forget the sirens and red flashing lights, which were the only way we could see much of anything. It was raining and the lights were reflecting off of everything. Fire trucks had to stop and pull debris out of the road before they could pass. Someone stopped to ask if we were alright when they saw the trees and the roof. It was a very, very long night.

More storms came and went.

It wouldn’t be until daylight in the morning that we understood the gravity of the situation our neighbors and community were facing. So much was simply gone. Wiped away. Only rubble left.

But we were safe that night, thanks to that scary, frightening, sheltering basement.

It’s amazing the memories that a picture of a basement can resurface.

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Just Walking Each Other Home

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I wasn’t going to write a Christmas or holiday article this year, but here we are. I couldn’t NOT write this, although, trust me, I tried.

This one is quite different, however. It’s about making a difference and, well…meet my new family.

The holidays are difficult for many people for a variety of reasons. Layers upon layers of loss and grief of all different descriptions.

Sometimes, as we lose people in our lives and there aren’t any in the “next generation” to fill new seats at the table. Then, there are none left.

Sometimes, we have recently lost a dear pet. Often, we’re closer to our pets than other humans, and their death is devastating. Our fur-family loves us unconditionally.

Sometimes, family is far away, or drifts away, or worse.

Sometimes, a run of bad luck, bad choices, or poor health leaves people in dire straights.

Sometimes, it’s the dark, cold, and grey of unrelenting winter – or maybe all of the above.

So, in a moment of insanity about 10 days ago, I decided to stop by a local Medicare/Medicaid facility to see if they had someone who needed something. Something as in something physical, such as clothes, or a visitor.

In particular, I had a hand-made cover to donate, with a few more in reserve.

I spoke with the aids a week ago Sunday, and they were talking about three people who didn’t have enough clothes. One woman only had one change. That’s all she owned.

I returned on Monday to speak with the administrator about how best to proceed.

This is a small facility with about 45 residents. It’s clean but rather threadbare. There’s no urine smell, which is always a good sign, and also no bleach smell or other “coverup” scents. The staff is very nice, welcoming, and caring.

The residents all appear to be clean and they don’t smell. It’s both an assisted living and memory care facility, but I’ve come to learn that even the people on the assisted living side are very close to needing the memory care side.

Why am I telling you this?

Because, as difficult as this is for me, there’s a huge blessing here for others. They really need us. Plus, it’s my holiday story for you.

Maybe I should subtitle this: The 10 Days of Holiday Insanity, because we’ve visited every day, and every day has held surprises of one sort or another.

I’ve disguised names. They have all given permission to take and publish their pictures, but all things considered, I’m not sure they have the agency to understand that, so all photos are disguised, too.

I discovered that they like to have their pictures taken with whatever they received and then be shown the photo. I always ask them to smile and tell them how wonderful they look – and they light right up. And everyone of them likes the photo when I show them. They also like to look at photos on my phone.

I’m borrowing liberally from my Facebook page where I’ve written about this adventure day by day. I’ll pause here to thank others. I never asked for donations of anything, but many of my friends reached out with offers and goods. Thank you to those who have helped and contributed in any way, including moral support. This hasn’t been exactly easy for me.

To be VERY clear, I’m NOT asking you for anything except to perhaps look around your community to see where you can make a difference.

Meet my three adopted family members this holiday season.

Steve

Steve has no family, at all. Translated, that means he has the barest necessities.

He’s a veteran, and after he got out of the service, he was a metal fabricator, a “tin man,” as he puts it.

He likes cars and trucks. But mostly, he likes snacks. Not healthy snacks like the facility provides, but the kind of bad-for-you snacks that all of us like.

He doesn’t feel well often, so we sometimes just have to leave his gift by the side of his bed in the gift bag and talk to him for a few minutes.

The other thing he likes to do is sit outside on the patio, so we got him a blue denim shirt, some sweatpants, a couple of t-shirts, and a patriotic throw for his bed.

Plus snacks, lots of snacks.

Ellen

Ellen is such a lovely lady. She knows that she’s forgetting things, and it worries her. She asked for puzzle books so that she can keep her mind sharp.

She doesn’t remember me from day to day unless I give her memory queues.

For example, one afternoon, she was sitting in the activity room, and outside, a fox wandered through the backyard. The building backs up against the woods.

Ellen was up and out the door like a shot. Past the patio like a sprinter. Immediately, the staff was off to retrieve her – but Ellen was thrilled to see that fox and quickly rounded the building.

Now, every day when I visit, I ask if she remembers the fox, and every day, you can see the light bulb come on, and she says she thought she was dreaming. She does sleep a lot. She’s always thrilled to know the fox was real.

Ellen has received several pieces of clothing, a throw for her bed for napping, which she does liberally, plus puzzle books.

Her favorite thing, though, is to visit and look at pictures on my phone. We look at dogs and cats and quilts and my daughter and whatever else she wants to look at. Sometimes, she tells me stories.

I just love Ellen. She’s a beautiful soul, concerned for all animals and people, and just lovely.

Bear

Bear, bless his heart.

Bear is someplace in his 80s, although he doesn’t remember how old he is. I can’t help but think about my ancestors who didn’t either.

Bear was a Navy Seal and then a farmer. He loves Harley Davidson motorcycles and thinks he still owns one or some. I don’t know that he ever did, but that doesn’t matter. He does in his mind and it makes him happy.

I’ve confirmed his military service, plus I’ve seen his literal physical scars.

His picture from when he graduated from boot camp is on his dresser. He served in Vietnam and was shot 6 times in his knees and once in the back.

You may recall that I lost my brother to the long-term effects of being shot down in Vietnam. I told him my brother served and was shot down. He asked if Dave lived. I teared up. He hugged me. We both cried. He told me that he was sorry.

I went to the local Harley dealer hoping to score some free Harley gear for Bear, but that didn’t work. A helpful employee showed me the closeout clothing rack, though, and gave me a 25% discount – plus, my friends began to donate.

We went back that same day with a Harley cap for Bear and the next day with a Harley t-shirt. He showed me his boot from when he was a little boy and told me that he was one of 10 children. How hard his mother had it raising them on the farm.

People love it when you ask them about their lives and show interest in their stories.

He’s incredibly proud of his military service.

The next day, I found him a flag and Constitution shirt. He had trouble reading it, so I read it aloud to him as he cried.

OMG!

I cried too.

We hugged each other.

God bless this man.

He does have moments of clarity. I saw him smile with a glint of recognition when he first saw me and cheerily said, “Hello.”

I’ve gone every day, but yesterday…well…Bear was having a rough day.

He told me his mother died, and they wouldn’t let him leave to go to her funeral.

He had her picture on his table and was truly distressed.

I gave him a hug and distracted him with his gifts.

We gave him a patriotic throw for his bed, which he loved, and two Harley wall decorations. His room is so very bare. He wanted to find his Harley hat, so we did and put it on him.

Then he told me about his mother again and that her funeral is today.

I have way too much experience with this from prior family members, so I told him the funeral is over now. I told him I thought he went on his Harley. I asked him if he didn’t remember the funeral, and he said he did. I could tell he felt better.

Whew!

Then he told me he was going to be in a parade. Told me he was getting ready to go out to eat before the parade.

I asked him where, and we had a nice conversation about who-knows-what.

Another resident came in and tried to flirt with him. That was so cute. She asked if I was his wife, and I had to explain to both of them that I’m married to someone else.

He said, “but you’re my family, right, because you come to see me.” I told him that I had adopted him and yes, I’m family.

My heart just aches.

Then he asked if I wanted to go for a ride on his Harley with him. I told him I had to go back to work, so we’d have to do that some other time, and he was fine with that. I told him I’d be back tomorrow, which made him happy.

I know he won’t remember 10 minutes later, but he’s happy right now and he’s happy for a little bit every day that I show up.

He wants to visit with Jim again. He told Jim earlier in the week that he has a good handshake. He’s so happy when anyone comes to visit. You can see all the residents look hopefully when someone walks by.

Bear asked if he could kiss my cheek goodbye. I gave him a hug, too, and a kiss on the cheek.

I was walking out the door to his room when he turned in his wheelchair, looked at me, smiled, and said, “Love you,” just like my brother Dave used to do. That was the last thing Dave ever said to me. I smiled and said, “Love you,” and quickly escaped down the hallway past the lady who is always screaming and the people who wander aimlessly all day, tears streaming down my face for their loneliness.

I am not good at this. I would much rather die than be abandoned and confused.

I hope someday someone is kind enough to tell me that I attended my mother’s funeral, and listen to my stories about a cowboy boot. Or maybe my stories will be about my ancestors.

The Shelter

I didn’t mean to go to the shelter. Truly, I didn’t.

On Friday, the administrator of the assisted living home where our three adopted people live declined 8 or 9 personal-size quilts or lap robes, whatever you would call them. She said they already have “so many blankets.” Needless to say, I was stunned. They were for the residents, not the “facility.” However, we had little choice except to take them back home.

Then, CASA wasn’t taking donations either. Seriously??? I began to question if people really do like the quilts I make them, or if they are just being nice. Now I see how quilts wind up at Goodwill.

A third place said they like soft, plushy blankets, not cotton. WHATEVER.

On the way home, I was really struggling with where to donate those small quilts where they would actually be appreciated. It was depressing. I already struggle with the holidays, and this didn’t help at all.

Then, two things happened. First, I got a notice on my phone that the local warming shelter would be open tonight for homeless people who sleep on the ground in various places. Just so you know, this includes children.

These people are in dire need. Some from their own poor choices, some from mental illness, some from whatever. It doesn’t matter. Many here got flooded out in two back-to-back hurricanes. One woman lives in her car. Once you’re in that situation, it’s extremely difficult to get out of it.

This clicked with what my friend had posted that morning about having lost her son several years ago today.

I immediately knew what we needed to do.

We went home and gathered more things. Warm felt booties and socks, plus another blanket. When the church that offers their building as the warming center opened for donations at 5:30, we were waiting.

They were grateful. So very grateful.

They said the people would love that their little quilt came in a gift bag. I wondered how long it had been since they had a gift, as such.

When we left, their clients were waiting patiently in line for a warm place, a hot meal, often the only hot meal since they were last there, and some shred of dignity. Many of the donations are things like underwear and socks. They can also safely shower there. There is no homeless shelter in this county.

The entire warming center is volunteer staffed and solely run on donations from the community, including food.

They said they accommodate from 20-35 people per night when it drops below 39 degrees, and so far this season, they have helped 88 people. Many people are repeat clients. Yes, they call them clients.

I couldn’t help but think how this was actually fulfilling Christ’s mission. How he said to care for the least of us. He didn’t say except for those most in need or the ones with very serious problems, or the ones that are inconvenient or can’t remember your name. If I recall, he said something about not being judgmental, too.

So, we remembered and honored my friend’s son today with our contributions. I knew that they would be going into the woods tomorrow when the shelter closed after breakfast, but they would at least be in the possession of someone who truly needs them.

Then Jim and I got Chinese on the way home, and my fortune was truly eerie.

This is your fortune, too, and really, the fortune for all of humanity.

So I ask you…

Look around.

Who needs their hand held, a hug, or some time?

Maybe a hot meal or some snacks.

A helping hand of some type.

Just someone to listen.

Who needs walking home?

Genealogy Proof Series: Extracting and Recording Data So That You Can Find It

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This is the second article in the series, Genealogy Proof Series. The first article is:

The first article discussed finding location resources for where your ancestor may have lived. Of course, once you find those resources, you’ll want to start searching for your ancestor, your ancestral surname and recording the information.

So let me stress one thing now. You’re not searching for your ancestor specifically. You’re searching for everyone with that surname because they all have a role in his or her story.

Information

Genealogy research and proving someone is actually your ancestor is all about data. Pieces of data linked together provide information. Information identifies your ancestors and their family members.

How many of you know you once found something but can’t find it now and have no idea where you put it?

What? You too???

This article is about how to search those resources once you find them, who to record, and how so that you’ll be able to analyze the resulting information.

Elizabeth Shown Mills introduced the concept of the FAN Club in 1987, which she documents in her book Evidence Explained – Friends and Neighbors. People found with or near various groups of people will help sort out who is whom, especially in the case of same-named men.

In order to evaluate who is found with various families in a specific location, you need to methodically organize your data as you transcribe it.

Extracting and Recording Your Data

After you have compiled a list of what’s available for your specific counties, you need to extract and transcribe records into a spreadsheet. If you don’t like spreadsheets, you can do the same thing in a table. But it’s critical that you do it someplace.

You’ll also index the information as you go so you can reasonably retrieve it. This is why I utilize spreadsheets – they are made for filtering and sorting.

I’m also going to touch on using AI to help with transcriptions. If you just cringed, please don’t. This is easy, I promise.

Before I share the first screenshot of my spreadsheet, I want to set the stage a bit.

I started this particular spreadsheet 25-30 years ago. There were no guidelines for spreadsheets or for organizing genealogical data. So, I’m going to share the mistakes I made and, with the benefit of hindsight, what I wish I had done differently.

Here are the first four entries (rows) in my Halifax County, VA spreadsheet where I was extracting and recording entries for multiple primary surnames.

  • Estes
  • Younger
  • Combs
  • Rice
  • Moore

In some cases, I had rumors about how these people connected. In other cases, something written decades before with no sources. And in yet other cases, I was the first researcher to plow that ground so I had no idea of who I was looking for. I needed to verify that my ancestor was actually from there before I could figure out who their parents were.

Of course, this means that over the years, I discovered that I needed to research additional surnames that I didn’t initially look for.

Following the Path

My first foray into Halifax County was via an obtuse reference from Claiborne County, Tennessee to my ancestor, John R. Estes, being from Fairfax County, Virginia, not Halifax County.

Thank goodness for this reference, even if it was inaccurate. A local lawyer. P. G. Fulkerson (1840-1929) practiced in Claiborne County. He recorded his remembrances about roughly 300 early families and more than 4,000 people. Beginning in 1979, they were published in a series of “Early Settler” columns in the local newspaper and later indexed. I have many of the newspaper clippings themselves.

What did Mr. Fulkerson say about John R. Estes?

I’m going to scan the article and let AI transcribe it. It’s super easy!

Scan and Transcribe

I scanned this page on my flatbed scanner. Today, I could also take a photo with my phone or a screenshot on a computer.

After scanning the page, I cropped the rightmost column but left the rest to preserve the date.

As an experiment, I scanned the page a second time using my scanner’s OCR (Optical Character Recognition) function, but the results were rather poor. The formatting was off, and lots of words couldn’t be read, as you can see below.

Fixing this would have required as much work as transcribing John Estes’s portion in the first place.

ChatGPT 4o

I took the original article scan and submitted it to ChatGPT

Here’s the entire interaction. I pasted the image and requested a transcription. About 15 seconds later, ChatGPT complied.

The output was text, just like you see above, so I could just copy and paste. Chat GPT was intelligent enough to format correctly and logically fill in the gaps that the scanner OCR hadn’t been able to read.

You can see that this is MUCH better. More importantly, it’s accurately transcribed and easy to confirm. No additional work is needed. I simply deleted the additional text that I didn’t need.

AI is just that easy. You can also use ChatGPT to create a spreadsheet showing the relationships and interactions of the people in the text.

Here’s my request to ChatGPT with the text I want it to process.

There’s a LOT you can do with AI very easily, but for now, let’s move on and work with our extracted information.

Keep AI in mind, though, because you might eventually want to submit everything about a surname to ChatGPT and ask for some type of summary. Always validate the results.

Original Information

Is the original information in the Fulkerson article fully accurate? No, but it gave me something to start with – which was one heck of a lot better than the nothing I had before.

Actually, there’s a LOT of information here:

  • John’s name, including his middle initial. (The middle initial turned out to be important because there were multiple John Esteses in Halifax County, VA.)
  • John’s original location of Fairfax County (Inaccurate, but it was in Virginia. Remember, Fulkerson’s handwritten notes have twice been transcribed. Once typed and then once for publication.)
  • John’s wife’s name – Nancy Moore. (Accurate, except she was called Nancy, Ann, and Nancy Ann Moore in various locations and records.)
  • They married before arriving in Claiborne County. (accurate)
  • When they arrived – prior to 1800. (Inaccurate – it was closer to 1820. He fought in the War of 1812 out of Halifax County.)
  • Location in Claiborne County – Little Sycamore Creek. (accurate)
  • Children’s names (All children are accounted for except the two who died as children before Fulkerson was born.)
  • Children’s spouses’ names. (Two were misspelled, Cloud is Clouse, Rudledge is Rutledge. George married Ollie Pittman, not a Willis. Lucy’s husband was Coleman Rush.)
  • John’s son’s middle initial – John Y. Estes. (That turned out to be important because John R. Estes’s mother’s birth surname was Younger.)
  • Where the children moved to. (Some locations were simply wrong. Others might have been stops on the way to a different location. My ancestor, John Y. Estes, wound up in Texas and never lived in Kentucky, so this error sent me on a wild goose chase.)
  • John’s age of 105 when he died. (He did live to be quite old, about 98 – and his advanced age was certainly part of his legacy.)

Where do I go from here? I didn’t know it at first, but Fairfax County was wrong. I searched but couldn’t find anything there, so I widened my net.

The First Breakthrough

I did a LOT of searching before I eventually found a reference to a marriage record for John R. Estes and Ann Moore in Halifax, not Fairfax County, Virginia. I was suspicious because Nancy is not Ann, but those names are often used synonymously for each other. After I found that record, I still needed to prove it was my John Estes and Nancy Moore.

Today, finding a marriage record is generally much easier because many records are available online by surname, through genealogy sites, such as FamilySearch and others, and by location. Online records were not available at that time.

Back then, I was relegated to library visits, courthouses, and microfilm or microfiche that the LDS church would order into their local Family History Center for me.

Once I located a reference to that marriage record in Halifax County, VA, I knew that I needed to visit the courthouse there. I wanted a copy of the original, plus I needed more information which would only be found in that courthouse. Thank goodness it hadn’t burned.

It might seem like that marriage record was an answer, but really, it was just the starting point for a very long line of questions.

Halifax County, VA Courthouse

Once in Halifax County, I spent two weeks, opening to closing, in the dusty damp basement of this courthouse where I was in Seventh Heaven. Occasionally one of the staff would come to check on me to be sure I was still alive!

There weren’t cell phones or digital cameras, so I took notes on pad after pad after pad of legal paper. I had to get everything that even MIGHT be useful while I was there, because the drive was about 700 miles through treacherous mountains, one way.

It was treacherous on those backroads, but it was also stunningly beautiful, and I never fell out of love with my ancestral connection to this place.

I would transcribe and analyze those handwritten notes later, after I got home. I wasn’t going to waste valuable research time in Halifax County going over the information I had retrieved.

Needless to say, I had to devise a methodology to organize that information. I also made discoveries, some of which necessitated additional trips. However, it was information from those initial forays that provided hints and research fodder.

Important Information

On that first trip, I didn’t realize that additional people were important in documents. I didn’t know which of the many people with the surname of Estes and even more with the surname of Moore were my family – if any.

I didn’t know what was important and what was not, so I began recording everything.

For example, let’s look at the fourth item in my spreadsheet.

  • The item number is my serially assigned number, not to be confused with a spreadsheet row assigned by Excel, which is shown at far left.
  • The source is the book or resource where I found the information. You’ll notice immediately that I did NOT record the page number, and I should have. My bad – but I know now.
  • The year and date, of course.
  • The last and first name of the person in the text, in separate columns to facilitate sorting.
  • Their role in the document – defendant, plaintiff, lawyer, etc.
  • Places, which include roads, waterways, proximity to landmarks, etc. In later spreadsheets, I added a separate column for watercourses.
  • Today, I would also add a column for a link to where I found the info online.
  • I transcribed the full text of the entry and added a separate row, as you can see to the left, for each person in the entry. You can only see 5 here, but all 7 people found in the text have the exact same entry in the spreadsheet, except for their role and their name, of course.

I wish I had a single entry for which surnames I’ve actually searched a document for, the date and how, meaning in person or a book, or what. Let’s say I actively transcribed all of the Estes and Moore items from the index. I happened to find several Combs individuals in those records, but I didn’t search specifically for Combs. I wish I had made note of that because otherwise, I’m missing actual Combs entries.

If you’re thinking to yourself that this process is extremely labor intensive, perhaps obsessive and you won’t need a lot of it eventually – you might well be right. However, YOU DON’T KNOW WHAT YOU DON’T NEED UNTIL LATER. So you also don’t know what you’re missing and I guarantee you, the ONE THING you will need will be in what you don’t have.

Because I did a poor job of documenting what I covered during my first visit, including books where I didn’t find anything, I had to review them again – and sometimes, I found things I had missed or ignored the first time, thinking they weren’t relevant.

If you don’t enter everything, you won’t be able to:

  • Sort to see how many times you find a particular person associated with your family members.
  • Sort for everyone in a particular location, like Birches Creek.
  • Sort for people on Roanoke Road.
  • Sort for someone who witnessed a deed to see what other transactions and interactions they had with people in your spreadsheet, which is really a form of database.

If you don’t enter everything, you’ll be missing a lot of important information.

Secondary Spreadsheets

Sometimes, I create secondary spreadsheets. I find these useful for records such as census, personal tax, and land tax records.

Using those records, I was able to track groups of people, with their locations, correlated with deeds, across time from 1750 through 1817.

The bond for the marriage between John Estes and Ann Moore was provided by John R. Estes and William Moore who would have been a close relative of the bride. The name of William Moore provided me with a “direction” in which to look, which is exactly why I transcribed every document type I could find in that courthouse. On the tax lists, I found two distinct groups of Moore men. William Moore was grouped with a different group of men than the Dan River group of Joseph, John, and Alexander Moore.

Using documents across multiple years, it was easy to group these people together. I quickly discovered that John, Alexander, and Joseph Moore lived on the Dan River, near South Boston, while the William Moore and James Moore group lived on the west side of the county on the second fork of Birches Creek, about 15 miles away from the Dan River group.

Eventually, years later, Y-DNA would confirm that these two groups were not paternally related.

Clearly, this land and tax information won’t fit on the columns of the original Halifax Spreadsheet, so this information is stored on a separate tab titled “Land Tax Summary,” shown above.

I have yet another tab titled “Census.” I do enter placeholders for the appropriate person and year into the original spreadsheet pointing me to the Land/Tax and Census tabs.

As I continued with my research, I was extremely grateful that I had recorded everything, because, as luck would have it, the signatures, marks of those who couldn’t sign, neighbors, and locations were critical to finding my way back to Prince Edward, then Amelia County where this Moore family had come from before settling in Halifax County.

Eventually, it would be revealed that Edward Henderson, a witness to the deed above, was the uncle of Nancy Ann Moore. Nancy’s son, John Y. Estes, would marry a Dodson female. Yes, the Dodsons who migrated to Claiborne and Hawkins County lived down the road from the Birches Creek Moore family in Halifax County. Charles Spradling lived with James Moore at one point and is somehow related, but we still don’t know exactly how.

Can you see how valuable these records that include people we don’t know turn out to be?

When I finished transcribing these records, there were 173 entries for the surname Henderson. Many of these records documented relationships with other people, proximity to land, and inheritance. These, along with other transactions, connected many dots.

If you’re thinking I’ve strayed far from John R. Estes, I really haven’t. These families were all allied in some way. John’s father and grandfather were involved with Nancy Ann Moore’s family. I suspect they attended the same church. William Moore was a minister, and John’s mother’s Younger family and his grandmother’s Combs family lived nearby and probably attended the church that William Moore pastored.

Follow the Path

My Estes ancestral path led to the Combs and Younger families and from Halifax County to King and Queen County and Amelia County, Virginia. The Moores led to the Rice family and to Prince Edward, Amelia, and New Kent Counties.

I did not create a new spreadsheet for those counties. I simply continued to add to the same spreadsheet because often, the same allied families are found in those earlier locations, too.

That FAN network is VERY powerful. Almost no one went to the next frontier alone. You needed other people for survival – and you married who you saw.

In Summary

Most of us aren’t fortunate enough to find the dots already connected. Even if someone else has connected them, especially in today’s copy/paste tree-grafting world, you’ll want to check their sources and records, check the transcriptions, and do your own proof work. We will talk about the Genealogical Proof Standard in this series.

You will find the answers to your brick walls hiding in the groups of family, friends, and neighbors. Recording everything not only provides you with valuable information, now and in the future, it also keeps you from replowing the same field. You won’t have to wonder if you’ve already looked at a particular resource or if you extracted a specific surname.

Now that you know how to extract, transcribe, and record relevant records, you can begin to sift through those location records from our last article.

Our next article will be about surname searching.

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Martin Aucoin (1595-after 1633), Carpenter, Survived the Siege of La Rochelle – 52 Ancestors #425

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Martin Aucoin lived in a time of great upheaval in France. Somehow, he survived a religious war, or more precisely stated, wars. He may or may not have made the trip from France to Acadia, today’s Nova Scotia. Whether he died in France, arrived in Acadia, or died trying, he was one of the founding fathers through his two daughters, Michelle and Jeanne Aucoin.

Laleu

Par Patrick Despoix — Travail personnel, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=32678016

Martin Aucoin was baptized on August 26, 1595, at Saint-Pierre de Laleu, a church that now lies in ruins.

Par Remi Jouan — Photo taken by Remi Jouan, CC BY 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=8657028

The priest scribed the record of his baptism for posterity. We would find it more than 400 years later.

Martin Aucoin’s 1595 baptism is recorded in Latin, found in La Charente Maritime archives, here.

I don’t read Latin, and certainly not Latin written in 16th-century French script. ChatGPT 4.0 came to my rescue, though.

Transcription:

Die 26 aprilis Anno Domini 1595 Martinus Aucoin filius Martini Aucoin et Barbelleae parochiam Dieslis in Xra fuit sacro sancto baptizatus receptus ab aquae et spiritu sancto abbas mae Joannes Godardus capellaniae S. Johannis in hunc anima

Translation:

On the 26th day of April in the Year of Our Lord 1595 Martin Aucoin, son of Martin Aucoin and Barbelle of the parish of Dieslis in Christ was received into holy baptism by water and the Holy Spirit by Father Joannes Godardus, chaplain of St. John’s in this parish.

Others have interpreted his first name to have been Martinus, the Latin form of Martin, and the surname to have been written as Aucoing. His mother’s name has been interpreted as Suzanne Barboteau.

Unfortunately, the first remaining parish records from this church begin in 1593, although the church itself was much older. It was built in the 12th century, partially rebuilt in the 15th century, half ruined at the end of the 16th century, and restored in 1592 – hence the reason why there weren’t earlier records. The bell tower was restored in the 17th century.

Given the church’s ruined state before 1593, the Aucoin family would have attended services and had their religious needs attended to in another nearby community before this church’s restoration. This strongly suggests that Martin’s family lived in or very near Laleu.

Cousin Mark, who provided this information, also discovered that Lalau is shown on the siege map of La Rochelle from 1627-1628 in Guy Perron’s wonderful blog.

Laleu is shown on the map of the siege to the left. Today, Laleu is part of La Rochelle, although sadly, we were not able to visit the ruins during our recent trip.

The tower and some walls remain, along with the cemetery.

Today’s streets are probably just paved versions of the old cobblestone pathways for donkeys and carts that drew fruits and vegetables to market and supplies back home again when Martin’s family lived there.

Walking along the Rue Notre Dame, the “street” adjacent to the church appears to be an alley, but it’s not.

You can see the centuries of history carved into the mortar and stones of the old buildings, still in use today. Calling this a one lane street is being generous. Note the very small car in the distance.

Some of the little “streets’, like the Rue de Rambouillet, are only large enough for a person.

In even earlier history, before the 1100s, soldiers from the Gallo-Roman empire established ports on the peninsula where Laleu and La Rochelle are found and harvested salt from the salt marshes.

That history was probably forgotten by the time Martin’s parents took their infant child to be baptized, likely the day of or the day after his birth, as was the custom.

I can see Martin’s parents standing inside the church, facing the chancery, as baby Martin was anointed with Holy Water and baptized by the priest – the words of the ritual spoken in Latin, of course.

I wonder if his parents understood Latin. They had surely witnessed hundreds of baptisms.

The ghost of the pillars that would have supported the gabled archways soaring overhead.

The baptismal font was probably towards the front of the church, perhaps near the altar or maybe in one of the side chapels.

Beautiful stained glass windows would have graced the openings, radiating their colorful rays across the church and perhaps baby Martin as well, a blessing message from the sun.

Today, only one side of the church partially remains, along with the rear wall that appears to be stabilized by the bell tower.

Martin and his parents would probably have entered through the door, on the side near the bell tower today.

The small door at the rear of the church would have been where the caskets were carried out of the church for burial in the cemetery outside.

Looking at the left side and rear of the cemetery, we see small buildings that I thought were ossuaries, where the bones in old graves are removed and stored so the graves can be reused. While the practice is foreign to those of us in the US, it’s the tradition in most of Europe, where land is very scarce. Upon further research, it appears that these are not ossuaries but apparently a type of mausoleum or grave house.

That doesn’t mean there wasn’t an ossuary, just that I don’t see one today. Of course, the burials remaining today are contemporary, some reaching back into the 1800s but more from a later date – certainly long after the church was restored the last time. Martin’s parents may repose here, but if so, we don’t know where. Clearly, the early graves are gone, given that this cemetery has been in use for at least 800 years, since the 1200s.

Generations of Martin’s family members may have watered this soil with their DNA and would have lived within a block or so of the church.

The Neighborhood

Directly across the street from the church at 4 Rue de L’Eglise, this ancient building and its walls remain. It appears to be from the time when the church stood, and I can’t help but wonder what it was? Did Martin walk past here? He surely did.

Everyone did because it was across from the church. In a small village, everyone walked past everyone’s house and knew their business, too. Most of the people were probably related.

What was this building? Could Martin’s family have possibly lived here?

It’s labeled as Foucaud Dominique on the map, and further investigation suggests it is or was an osteopath’s office.

The ancient walls surround and are incorporated into the homes and lives of the Laleu residents today, some of which might be descendants of Martin Aucoin and Suzanne Barboteau.

Possible Siblings

French Acadian researcher Jacques Nerrou recorded the following:

The Aucoin family was in La Rochelle in 1570 at the time that Martin (1) AUCOIN was born. He was a locksmith by profession in Cougne parish. He then went to St. Eloy.

During this time period, there seems to have been only one AUCOIN family living in La Rochelle. He married Suzanne BARBOTEAU in 1592. Records found give us the various spellings of this family name: Aucoing, Ancoing, Auconnois, Oguin, Angevin, this last derivation could come from a more ancient form of the name that would have originated in the Angers region.

Birth records were found for four children belonging to this couple:

    • Sebastien, baptized 27/09/1593 at St Pierre Laleu (La Rochelle) as his father, he became a locksmith.
    • Martin (2), baptized 26/04/1595 at St Pierre Laleu (La Rochelle)
    • Francois, Baptized 9/11/1599 at Cougnes
    • Daniel, baptized 17/06/1604 at Cougnes.

Another marriage is reported for Martin Aucoin, the father, to Catherine Hilarin on July 10, 1606 in La Rochelle. If this is accurate, and it’s the same Martin Aucoin, that tells us that Suzanne Barboteau has died

Please note that I have NOT confirmed or verified any of the above information. I have not been able to use the French archives search feature for parish records successfully.

It’s also worth mentioning that there have been heated discussions about the surname and whether Angevin or Langevin is the same as Aucoin or if they are two unrelated families.

If baptism records are available for Aucoin family members, by any spelling, as indicated above, perhaps death records are too. It’s also possible that the witnesses for the various baptisms above can be associated with the records known to belong to our Martin Aucoin found in La Rochelle. That would serve as indirect evidence connecting the dots between these people.

If you have these records, additional information, or can figure out how to use the archives search features, please contact me.

Martin’s Life

Assuming that Martin Aucoin and Suzanne Barboteau are our Martin Aucoin’s parents, we know little more and nothing concrete. The first positive ID of our Martin is in La Rochelle in 1630, just a couple of years after the siege ended.

We can’t say positively that the Martin Aucoin baptized in Laleu in 1595, just 103 years after Columbus “discovered” America, is the same Martin Aucoin that was later found in La Rochelle, but Aucoin is an extremely rare surname, and Martin is not a common first name either. It’s certainly possible that if, indeed, Sebastian, Francois, and Daniel are the brothers of our Martin Aucoin, they named one of their sons Martin after their brother. It’s somewhat unusual that of the 19 children, 10 of whom were males, born to the younger Martin Aucoin found later in Acadia, born about 1650, none were given any of those three names.

About the time our Martin was reaching adulthood, a religious war would shape this part of France, and in particular, La Rochelle, dramatically.

The Edict of Nantes, signed in 1598 by King Kenry IV, granted the minority Protestants called Huguenots rights within the Catholic nation of France. Meant to quell the Wars of Religion in France; two decades later, the results were disappointing for France as a whole and catastrophic for some, especially in La Rochelle.

Catholics and Protestants

This map of La Rochelle was drawn in 1597 when our Martin Aucoin was just a toddler, in a more innocent time before the religious wars would take their toll during the following three decades.

It’s easy to see the city’s walls, the hospital, St. Bartellemy church, and possibly a small adjacent churchyard that equates to a cemetery, but I can’t tell for sure. There are at least four more churches scattered in different parishes, two of which can easily be identified here. At that time, the churches were shared between Catholics and Protestants, which was probably the only thing that saved them.

Several towers are in evidence, including the ones guarding the city gates. The main gate, by the harbor, still stands today.

The three massive towers guarding the harbor and quay, including the one with a terrifying gibbet cage, protected La Rochelle from attack from the sea and provided shelter for merchant ships offloading their wares in the portion of the harbor inside the city walls.

Coming or going, every ship sailed between those sentry towers.

La Rochelle, strategically located, became the Huguenot center of sea power and a hotbed of Protestant resistance to the Catholic government.

Henry IV of France, baptized Catholic but raised Protestant, balanced the interests of both but was assassinated in 1610 by a Catholic zealot. His son, Louis XIII, was only nine years old when his father died, and his mother, Marie de’ Medici, was named as the regent of France during her son’s minority, with the assistance of the powerful Catholic Cardinal Richelieu who would eventually betray her, as would her son. Marie was removed and exiled in 1617 by her son, who was only 16, causing revolts by regional nobles of both faiths, followed by the outbreak of the Thirty Years War in 1618.

In 1621, Louis XIII reestablished Catholicism in a formerly Huguenot region of Béarn, about 270 miles further south, resulting in an uprising and the escalation of tensions in La Rochelle.

The Huguenots were powerful and in control of La Rochelle, which, of course, was a part of France ruled by the French monarchy. While King Henry IV had been flexible and accommodating, his son, Louis XIII, was much less tolerant. The King had flexed his muscle, and La Rochelle certainly knew they might be next in his sights.

They were right. The blockade of La Rochelle took place in 1621 and 1622 during the King’s repression of the Huguenot rebellion.

Fort Louis was built just outside the La Rochelle city walls, guarding the entrance to the city. The King attempted to blockade La Rochelle by preventing Protestant access to the port by land and sea. As a Catholic carpenter, did Martin Aucoin help build this fort?

Isaac de Razilly with Charles de Menou d’Aulnay, men later associated with the founding and settling of Acadia beginning in 1632, commanded the French blockade fleet. Razilly lost an eye in that endeavor. They worked closely with Cardinal Richelieu.

This initial conflict lengthened into a stalemate, which resulted in the Treaty of Montpelier in October of 1622, ending hostilities, at least for the time being.

The Huguenots retained military installations in only two places, La Rochelle being one.

Neither side was happy with the terms of the agreement; both sides ignored it, and the tension reached a boiling point again by 1625 when the Huguenots occupied, and the French then recaptured Ré Island, off the Atlantic coast opposite the entrance to La Rochelle, illustrated above.

Martin would have witnessed all of this upheaval, knowing worse was coming, probably praying daily for the protection of his young family. He had been married about a decade.

In this painting, you can see the harbor and towers of La Rochelle, with Ré Island across the channel.

Perceiving an opportunity, in June of 1627, the English King Charles I sent a fleet of ships with more than 7,000 men to encourage a Huguenot rebellion at La Rochelle. In August, the English soldiers with 600 horses and 24 cannons surrounded the city. On September 10th, La Rochelle fired shots against the French King’s royal troops at Fort Louis, beginning the next Huguenot rebellion.

La Rochelle was the center of Huguenot resistance, aided by the English. Both sides were determined to be victorious.

For the French, Cardinal Richelieu acted as commander when the King was absent.

Cardinal Richelieu is depicted here at the siege of La Rochelle in both armor and his red cardinal cape and hat, standing on a dike.

La Rochelle can be seen here in 1630, completely surrounded by fortifications and troops. The French built a seawall nearly a mile long to prevent all supplies from arriving in La Rochelle

La Rochelle is shown here ringed by forts, with its harbor blocked by a nearly mile-wide blockade. On the peninsula at right, you can see the small village of LaLeu, outside the blockade perimeter. Based on the area left outside the perimeter, one can assume there wasn’t concern about French or Catholic loyalty in those regions.

Laleu looks small on this map.

Laleu looks much more realistic on this map and you can make out the church’s spires. Still, there are only about 43 houses, plus the church, of course. The church was the center of every village and the life of the villagers.

This bird’s-eye view drawn by Jacques Callot shows the area of La Pallice, near the bottom, and Laleu, a small village above LaPallice, during the siege.

I think this would have been Laleu on the Callot map, but I’m not positive.

The English sent two more fleets to resupply the Huguenots and relieve the residents of La Rochelle but were unsuccessful.

After 14 excruciating months, on October 28, 1628, the Huguenots surrendered the city to the French.

Along with other Huguenots, Jean Guitton, the Protestant mayor of La Rochelle, had vowed to defend La Rochelle to the death. Indeed, they did, but the resulting deaths weren’t their own. Instead, the residents died. Shockingly, the population was reduced from 27,000 to 5,000, but in the surrender painting above, the politicians in charge don’t appear emaciated.

After an unconditional surrender, confessing their sins, and asking the King for forgiveness, they were allowed to return to the fold. At 11 PM, the treaty was signed, and the following day, the emissaries from La Rochelle were brought before the King, who said to them, “I forgive you for your rebellions. If you are good and faithful subjects to me, I will be a good prince to you.” The Huguenots of La Rochelle retained their religious freedom, property, and possessions but not their military defenses.

Two days later, the royal troops entered the city and witnessed an utterly horrific spectacle. Only 5000 residents were left alive, and another 1000 would die within the next three months.

The soldiers handed out 10,000 loaves of bread immediately. The next day, they herded cattle and sheep into the city. More than 3000 carts of supplies were escorted by the soldiers, too, but those carts had a secondary purpose. The priest recorded that “so many corpses piled up without burial in the city.” Those corpses were removed from the streets before the King’s arrival on November 1st. They wanted to spare him the painful spectacle of the devastation the blockade had caused. The King was so moved by seeing “the poor inhabitants,” and that was AFTER the cleanup, that he took pity on them and shed tears. Yes, starvation is horrific. The King was staying at Laleu, which was clearly in much better shape than La Rochelle. Still, it must have been terrible in Laleu, too, knowing that people just a few miles away were literally slowly, agonizingly, starving to death.

Unfortunately, the Catholic church records in La Rochelle end in mid-July 1627 with a final entry in the registers of Sainte-Marguerite church. More than 20,000 deaths later, the next known service was held by Cardinal Richelieu on November 1st, in the same church where “all divine services” took place for “all the churches of La Rochelle.” Records indicate that there had been five churches and cemeteries, one for each of the parishes. Sainte-Marguerite was reconsecrated by Cardinal Richelieu, and six days later, burial records were resumed.

It’s unknown how the bodies were disposed of during the siege or before the King’s visit.

Where Was Martin Aucoin During This Time?

We don’t know where Martin was during this time, but we do know a few things.

The fact that the King stayed in Laleu indicates that the town was considered Catholic, loyal, and safe. It would have been in pretty good shape, all things considered.

Martin could have been there.

The church in Laleu was about two and a half miles or an hour away, on foot, from the center of La Rochelle. Of course, the King wouldn’t have been walking. He would either have been riding a horse or in a horse-drawn chariot, accompanied by both an entourage and many soldiers. Martin was probably watching from someplace and may even have been involved in some fashion.

Martin survived the siege, as did his wife, Barbe Minguett, and eldest daughter, Michelle, who, according to the later Acadian census documents, was born about 1618. Michelle’s age suggests that Martin married sometime between 1615, when he would have been 20, and 1617. In addition to daughter, Michelle, Barbe and Martin had son, Francois, who was born about 1622. They probably had more children as well, given the distance between known children.

We know with almost certainty that Barbe Minguet was the mother to both Michelle Aucoin and Jeanne Aucoin who were founders of Acadia, along with their respective husbands. The mitochondrial DNA of their descendants, inherited directly from their mothers all the way back to Barbe, matches.

If Martin Aucoin and his wife and at least two children were living in La Rochelle at the time of the siege, the chances of all four surviving would be nearly impossible. Only about 1 in 6 or 7 people survived. It’s most likely that Martin and his family were living in Laleu or nearby, someplace outside the walls of La Rochelle, during this time.

Furthermore, as a loyal catholic and carpenter, there would have been opportunity in La Rochelle after the siege was over.

The first child born in La Rochelle to Martin and Barbe was daughter Jeanne Aucoin who was baptized in Sainte-Marguerite’s church on November 26, 1630.

The Grim Reaper and a Second Chance

Unfortunately, while Martin and his wife, Barbe Minguet, escaped the grim reaper during the siege months, Barbe succumbed sometime between November 26, 1630, and January 20, 1632, when Martin married Marie Sallé at Saint-Barthélemy church, just a couple of blocks away from Sainte-Marguerite, but in a different parish.

The church of Saint-Barthélemy no longer exists, but the bell tower does and is getting a makeover. The church proper was located where the building with the white shutters sits today.

We know that several people were present at their wedding. The bride’s parents would have come from the neighboring parish of Cougnes, bringing the bride, of course. I can’t help but wonder why they weren’t married in her home church. In addition, there were several witnesses, many of whom were carpenters and other tradesmen. Some may have been relatives.

Again, ChatGPT translate assisted with the transcription, but couldn’t read everything.

The 20th of January of Saints Fabien and Sebastien were married Martin Aucouin, Carpenter, in this parish with Marie Sallé daughter of Jean Denys Sallé and Francoyse Arnaud of the parish of Cougnes and of the consent and ?é in pr Jean and Nicolas Jaque neau ? Locksmith, Arnaud Gyon carpenter, Pierre Dusaut carpenterr, Jony Bichaud butcher Martin Barraud carpenter and Jony Brossard butcher and Antoine Couisau Masson & more’r others

Fousseaume.

Parish Priest of St. Barthelemy Nicolas Jagueneau Louis D’Loyer Pierre elder Arnaud Gion Johing Broussard Bastien Jagueneau

The signature of Arnaud Gyon, a carpenter, on the marriage certificate of Martin Aucoin with Marie Sallé is the same as that on the baptismal certificate of Jeanne Aucoin, daughter of Martin Aucoin and Barbe Minguet in 1630. This confirms that it is the same Martin Aucoin in both documents, even if there is no mention of widowhood in his marriage certificate with Marie Sallé. Furthermore, we later find Marie Sallé in Acadia, living with Michelle Aucoin’s daughter and son-in-law.

Marie Sallé was born about 1610, so she would have been about 22 when she married Martin. Martin’s daughter, Michelle, was already 14, so Marie was just 8 years older than her stepdaughter, 12 years older than Francois, and about 21 years older than baby Jeanne. With the addition of her new son, Jean, a few months later, Marie bore the responsibility of raising four children.

We know they attended Saint-Barthélemy, so let’s take a look at the tower, the only part of the church left today.

Martin probably attended this church while he lived in this parish in La Rochelle after his daughter, Jeanne was born, but before he married Marie. Otherwise, they would probably have been married in Sainte-Marguerite had he lived in that parish.

The bells of Saint-Barthélemy would have summoned the worshipers.

Just ten days after Martin married Marie Sallé, a child, Nicholas Aucoin, was recorded in the burial records of Saint-Barthélemy. The child’s age is not given, and neither are his parents’ names, but given that we know Martin attended this church and no other Aucoin families are present, it makes sense that Nicholas belongs to Martin Aucoin and Barbe Minguet. I can’t help but wonder if this child was born to Martin and Barbe just before her death. Given Jeanne’s birth in November of 1630, Nicholas could have been born literally days to a few weeks before Martin married Marie Sallé in January of 1632, although that really doesn’t seem quite long enough.

This must have been an incredible blow to Martin. Now, the church bells were tolling for his child.

I wonder where Nicholas was buried. Was he an infant, perhaps the last child born to Barbe before her death, or was he older?

Maps of that time don’t show a cemetery adjacent to this church. Besides, after almost 25,000 deaths in the previous few years, there would have been no space left in the cemeteries anyway.

The priest would have had to consecrate ground someplace else for burials.

Martin would probably have looked out these windows, wondering to God why. Why take his wife and children? Why?

Then, his attention drifted back to what the priest was saying, assuming he understood Latin. Regardless, Martin would have understood the rituals. Blessing the child and praising God for taking the child to His glory and happiness of everlasting life.

The priest probably said the Mass of Angels, begging for consolation for the family. He would have worn white robes, not black, because the child had never sinned, and blessed the coffin before it was taken outside for burial where he would bless it once again.

Martin and Marie’s first child, a son, Jean Aucoin, was baptized inside these walls ten months later, on November 10, 1632. It was a much happier day, and they must have been thrilled!

Sadly, he died seven months later, on June 25th, 1633. The priest would have repeated the same ritual that by this time would have been all-too-familiar. Grief seemed to be the staple diet of La Rochelle.

Martin attended the funeral of his son in this church, again staring out what would then have been stained glass windows as the Priest’s voice droned on. Martin had heard funeral services far too many times. He probably knew them by heart.

Did Martin and Marie have more children? Did they move someplace else, to a parish whose registers no longer exist? Maybe more baptisms are waiting to be found.

Marie was only in her early 20s, so she had another 20 childbearing years ahead of her.

Did Martin have siblings? What happened to them? Where are they?

Where were Martin’s parents buried? Were they trapped in La Rochelle and perished during the siege? What happened?

Are there more records for Aucoin family members in this part of France?

Daybreak

Very early, at daybreak, just as the sun rose one April morning in La Rochelle, I traced Martin’s footsteps. I walked to where his daughter, Jeanne Aucoin, was baptized, and then to Saint-Barthélemy, where Martin remarried after Jeanne’s mother died, where Nicholas was buried, then son Jean was baptized and then buried. All those events in this church occurred between January of 1632 and June of 1633.

The shadowy fragments of Martin’s joy and sorrow both linger here.

When I visited that solitary morning, the church was under repair. I walked as far around the church tower as possible, hoping to find a way inside.

No luck.

Around back, I looked inside the dumpster, which held trash and scrap construction materials.

I saw something in the dumpster.

I took a closer look.

There it was.

Stone.

Stone from the church tower where the trajectory of Martin’s life changed.

Tossed away in the refuse pile, just waiting for me.

Be still my heart.

A gift from his heart to my heart.

Yes, Martin, I am here. I came to find you and share your life, your pain, and joy, your path and footsteps with your other descendants.

You know, don’t you?

From my soul to yours.

Thank you.

It hurt my heart to turn and walk away. Tore at my soul.

I kept looking back, tears streaming down my cheeks, until I reached the corner. I paused one final time, took one last look, drinking in what Martin would have seen, etching it in my mind forever, then turned and walked downhill towards the city gate and the quay.

But Martin knew that I was here, and just as I did, he turned and walked away one last time, too.

Acadia

We don’t know for sure if Martin Aucoin set sail for Acadia or if he died before his family immigrated.

Given that we know Marie and three of Martin’s children sailed for Acadia, now Nova Scotia, the church would have been their last stop, offering prayers for safe passage before they sailed between the towers standing sentry, guarding the opening into the harbor.

They would have gathered a few meager belongings, boarded a ship along the quay, and set sail between those towers.

Martin’s family, and Martin, if he sailed with them, would have turned around until the towers and La Rochelle were only a dot on the horizon, then looked forward to nothing but waves and sea. An uncertain future.

The siege and its aftermath clearly played a critical role in the settlement of Acadia. I can picture the destruction and destitution in the city that prompted many to welcome a chance for a better life in New France.

In 1632, de Razilly and d’Aulnay began encouraging settlement at La Hève, Acadia, now LaHave, Nova Scotia. In 1635, the settlement was moved to Port Royal, on the northern side of the peninsula.

Did Martin sail with the rest of his family through those towers, out the harbor, into the westward sun, headed for Acadia?

Or does he rest someplace in La Rochelle, or maybe at sea?

The Other Martin Aucoin

There’s another Acadian named Martin Aucoin. What happened to our Martin Aucoin, born in 1595, may, in part, be told by the story of the younger Martin Aucoin.

The younger Martin Aucoin is recorded in the 1686 census of Les Mines, Acadia, living in Beaubassin, age 35, which means he was born about 1651. In the 1693 census, he’s shown as age 46, so born about 1650. Importantly, he is NOT shown in the earlier Acadian censuses.

This Martin married Marie Gaudet about 1673, given that their first of 19 children, including a set of twins, was born in 1674.

The younger Martin’s burial was recorded in the Grand-Pré register on May 15, 1711, noted as around the age of 60, born about 1650 or 1651, and living on La Riviere des Canards. Unfortunately, this entry does not reveal his parents.

According to the deposition made in 1767 by this Martin’s grandson, Alexandre Aucoin, Martin came from France. (Doc. inéd., Vol. III, p. 106). Five others, all made by widows or widowers of other grandchildren of Martin Aucoin, include statements to the same effect (ibid., Vol. II, pp. 181, 193; Vol. III, pp. 22, 29, 127-128). All six of these depositions indicate that Martin Aucoin married Marie Gaudet. Only one, that of Claude Pitre (ibid., Vol. III, p. 29), adds the detail that their marriage took place at Port-Royal.

What NONE of these depositions says is that Martin Aucoin (the elder) is the father of the younger Martin Aucoin or that Marie Sallé was his mother. However, neither do the depositions for either Jeanne or Michelle. In fact, the elder Martin Aucoin is not mentioned in any of those depositions at all. In 1767, the French were interested in the most recent ancestor arriving in Acadia who was born in France, not necessarily ALL ancestors born in France.

The descendants of both Michelle and Jeanne Aucoin stated that they were born in France and came to Acadia with their spouses. For Martin the younger, it simply says he came from France. If Martin the elder was his father and Marie Sallé, his mother, they and their other children would not have arrived until after the younger Martin’s birth in 1650/1651 and before 1654, assuming the information about him being born in France is accurate. That’s the only possible window because there was no immigration from France to Acadia during the English occupation from 1654 to 1670.

So, if this Martin was born in France and arrived before 1654, he would have arrived as a child with his parents. There is no suggestion of a second Aucoin family. If he arrived after 1670, he may or may not have arrived with family members. There is no record of any Martin Aucoin in the 1671 census. Beaubassin was not founded until 1671-1672, so he wasn’t there yet.

Martin’s wife, Marie Gaudet, lived in Port Royal with her parents, who were shown there in 1671, 1678, 1693, and 1698. Marie is shown with her parents in 1671, age 14.

Martin would have HAD to have been living in Port Royal in 1673 when he married Marie. The couple likely packed up and went with Jacques Bourgeois to Beaubassin shortly thereafter.

So, here are the four possibilities for the Martin Aucoin born about 1650, in no particular order:

  1. Martin came from France, probably as the son of Martin Aucoin and Marie Sallé, between 1650 and 1654, when immigration stopped. If this is the case, Marie would have been about 41 or 42 years old, so having a child when Martin was born is certainly within the realm of possibility.
  2. Martin came from France between 1650-1654, the child of other parents. This is possible, but there is no trace of those other parents, nor is he found in the 1671 census.
  3. Martin came from France after the 1671 census, and before 1673 when he married Marie Gaudet and is therefore not the son of the older Martin Aucoin. This makes the most sense, especially when combined with a note by Stephen A. White, “Given the lack of dispensation, we do not believe that the husband of Marie Gaudet could be the second son of [Martin Aucoin] the carpenter of La Rochelle, but there still exists the possibility that he is related to the sisters Michelle and Jeanne, to a degree more distant.” Unfortunately, White does not identify which marriages he would have expected to find dispensations for. Knowing which marriages and in which generations would help immensely in eliminating potential upstream common ancestors. For example, could the younger Martin Aucoin have been the nephew or great-nephew of the older Martin Aucoin? For how many generations would a dispensation be required in each scenario?
  4. The last possibility is that the depositions regarding the younger Martin coming from France are incorrect and he was born in Acadia, but his parents came from France. This is possible but adds no evidence either way in terms of whether he is the son of the older Martin Aucoin.

Surely, with the same highly unusual name as the older Martin Aucoin, there had to be some connection. Even today, there are only three locations in France with clusters of the Aucoin surname, and one is a result of Alexandre Aucoin’s descendants who were deported back to France, arriving on Belle-Ile-sur-Mer in 1765.

More Upheaval in La Rochelle

It’s easy to imagine La Rochelle as peaceful after the siege, but that wasn’t the case.

By World Imaging – Own work, photographed at Orbigny-Bernon Museum, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=11205885

In November 1661, 300 Protestant families were expelled from La Rochelle, probably some 3000 people. We have no reason to associate the Aucoin family with Protestant leanings, but witnessing the heartache and devastation might well encourage young Martin Aucoin to daydream about leaving for more peaceful lands – or at least land he believed to be more peaceful.

Perhaps this event motivated the younger Martin Aucoin, born about 1650, to leave as soon as he was old enough.

The Elder Martin Aucoin

We have two bracketing events defining the possible death of our Martin Aucoin.

We know Martin was alive when he was married in January 1632 and in February when his son was conceived. I’d also presume (I know, unsafe word) that he was alive later in 1632 when baby Jean Aucoin was born to Marie Sallé because otherwise, the father would have been noted as deceased in the baptismal record and in the subsequent death record for the baby in July of 1633.

It has been presumed (that word again) that Martin accompanied his wife, two daughters, and (possibly) one son to Acadia, although nothing more is ever heard about the son, and some researchers believe Francois was misidentified.

The elder Martin Aucoin’s daughter, Michelle, was born about 1618 in France and had her first child with Michael Boudrot about 1642. Michel Boudrot was already in Acadia by 1639, but he was associated with Charles d’Aulnay so it’s possible, given his position of responsibility as a Lieutenant, that he made trips back and forth to La Rochelle for or with d’Aulnay. Given Boudrot’s residence in Acadia, it’s probably most likely that the Martin Aucoin family immigrated about 1641 and Michelle married Boudrot shortly thereafter.

However, and this is a big however, it’s possible that Boudrot traveled back to La Rochelle where he met Michelle and her family. If Martin Aucoin was living, Boudrot could have encouraged the entire family to immigrate. Given what Martin had been through, it probably didn’t take much. If Martin had been thinking about Acadia anyway, the encouragement of a responsible Lieutenant who just happened to be courting his daughter might have been all that was needed.

If Martin had already passed away, Boudrot could have married Michelle and brought her, along with her stepmother and sister, Jeanne, back to Acadia with him. We do not know that the older Martin Aucoin set foot on Acadian soil, although I think it’s likely.

The elder Martin Aucoin’s daughter, Jeanne, was born in 1630 in La Rochelle and had her first child with Francois Girouard in 1648. We don’t know if she was married in Acadia or France, and we don’t really know for sure where her early children were born either. It’s most likely that she immigrated about 1641 with her parents and married Girouard in Acadia.

We know for sure that Martin Aucoin the elder was deceased by 1671 when Marie Sallé is listed in the census as the widow of Jean Claude and is living with the family of François Bourg, whose wife is the daughter of Michelle Aucoin and Michel Boudrot. In 1678, Marie is still living with the same family but is listed alone in 1686, age 86. If she actually was 86, she would have been born about 1600, meaning it’s very unlikely that she had a child in 1650 or 1651, effectively eliminating her as the mother of the younger Martin Aucoin. However, ages of the elderly tend to grow, and who would know exactly?

We have no further information about Jean Claude or when Marie married him, which would provide us with a hint as to when Martin died.

There is no record or suggestion of additional children born to Marie.

I was baffled for some time about why Marie Sallé’s marriage date to Jean Claude was quoted as “after 1651,” with no source given anyplace. I now realize that it’s because there was a presumption that the younger Martin Aucoin, born 1650/1651 was her son, and she remarried after the elder Martin Aucoin died.

Out on a Limb

I’m going out on a limb here.

We have no more information about Martin Aucoin, born in 1595, or his father, Martin Aucoin, assuming that the Martin baptized in 1595 is “our” Acadian Martin Aucoin, the father of both Jeanne and Michelle Aucoin, and husband of both Barbe Minguett and Marie Sallé. There appears to be unverified information about the mother of the Martin baptized in 1595 in Laleu. Following up on her name might, just might, produce additional information – although we are far back in time.

So would finding the records reported by researcher Jacques Nerrou.

Having said all of this, I have a really difficult time believing that the Martin Aucoin in La Rochelle just two years after the siege of La Rochelle ended was NOT the same man as the Martin Aucoin baptized in Laleu – in part simply because he and his wife and at least one child survived that horrific siege – so it’s unlikely they were actually living IN La Rochelle during that time.

Both Martin and Aucoin are unusual names, and when combined, especially when associated with each other, a family connection is very probable.

Given all of the information we do have, I really doubt that the younger Martin Aucoin, born about 1650 or 1651, is the son of Martin Aucoin and Marie Sallé, although he could be.

I think it’s more likely that the younger Martin Aucoin is the nephew or other paternal line relative of the older Martin Aucoin. Perhaps he had no family left in La Rochelle and followed his uncle to Acadia, some 20 or 30 years later.

If they are paternally related Aucoin men, that means that they would share the same Y-line DNA.

Fortunately, one of the descendants of Alexandre Aucoin, grandson of the younger Martin Aucoin, has taken a Y-DNA test. If Martin Aucoin the younger and Martin Aucoin the older share a direct paternal Aucoin male ancestor, the Y-DNA of Martin the younger represents the Y-DNA of Martin the elder. Of course, we will never be able to test direct paternal male descendants of Martin Aucoin the elder, because no sons survived.

Aucoin Y DNA

What does the Y-DNA of Alexandre Aucoin’s descendant tell us?

To begin with, I’m functioning with a handicap because the tester has only tested to the 37-marker level. Although he didn’t know a great deal about his genealogy, I was able to confirm his descent from the younger Martin Aucoin.

The good news is that he matches two other Aucoin men who have taken the Big Y-700 test and are haplogroup I-FTC21121. They also descend from Martin Aucoin born in about 1650. Ironically, they have both connected the dots in their trees from the younger to the elder Martin Aucoin, but there’s no source information. I understand why it seems logical, but given the evidence we have, it’s probably not accurate.

The great news is that they also match several other Aucoin men, but unfortunately, none appear to have descended from France other than through the younger Martin Aucoin.

However, there’s something else of interest.

One match is a man who descends from a French family that immigrated in the 1800s. His progenitor, with a different surname, say “XYZ,” was born in 1766 in Saint-Pierre, du Chemin, Vendée, Pays de la Loire, France.

This location is only about 49 miles from Laleu and LaRochelle where we first find the Aucoin family. Unfortunately, Mr. XYZ has not taken a Big Y test, so we don’t know how long ago they share a paternal ancestor.

The Discover Time Tree shows us that haplogroup I-FTC21121 was formed about 1588, which maps nicely to what we know about the younger Martin Aucoin.

The Aucoin and XYZ families are related, we just don’t know when or how far back in time, although it could be quite distant. Mr. XYZ only has six 12-marker matches and no others. His Y-DNA is clearly quite rare, not to mention that French men can’t test today. His lack of matches could be a function of rarity, lack of testers, or both.

I wonder if Mr. XYZ would agree to upgrade to the Big Y-700 test, because it would be as informative for him as for the younger Martin Aucoin family. We at least know we’re in the right part of France with his match to Martin Aucoin the younger. That test would tell us when their common ancestor lived.

Still, though, it doesn’t answer the question of whether our Martin Aucoin, born in 1595, and the younger Martin Aucoin, born about 1650, are descended from the same paternal line.

However, autosomal DNA might potentially be useful, assuming their common ancestor lived not too long before Martin’s birth. If Mr. XYZ also happens to autosomally match Acadians descended through Jeanne and Michelle Aucoin but NOT descended from Martin Aucoin the younger, that’s a HUGE hint that the two Martin Aucoins were related.

Could we be that lucky? How far out on this branch am I standing anyway???____________________________________________________________

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Genealogy Proof Series: Gathering Location Resources

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This is the first article in the Genealogy Proof Series.

Most genealogists, even if they don’t realize they are genealogists yet, begin by creating a small tree of their known ancestors. Most people know who their grandparents are, and by asking a few questions, can probably complete another generation or two.

If your parents were born in 1950, your grandparents would have been born about 1920, and your great-grandparents may have been born around 1890. You probably have concrete facts about your parents. Their birthdates, birth location, marriage location, and so forth. They probably have the same information about their parents. However, with each generation reaching back in time, the information becomes less precise and less reliable. Memories fail people, and the information they were provided may not have been accurate in the first place.

For example, my mother told me what she knew about her maternal grandfather, which wasn’t much. He died when my grandmother was 20, several years before my mother was born.

As the information becomes thinner, the need for additional information and confirmation of facts becomes crucial. Furthermore, when utilizing new resources, you may discover information not previously known about close generations. One of the best resources for that is old newspapers.

Our ancestors are more than birth and death dates. I like to piece their life together, complete with historical events, both national and local, and how they influenced and affected their lives.

This first article explains how I gather and utilize location resources for each ancestor.

Before we start, let’s talk for a minute about where we are going and how this series will be organized.

The Genealogy Proof Series Roadmap

It’s difficult to put the steps in a specific order because often, I get very distracted and go right down a rabbit hole.

In other words, I’ll be working on gathering resources for a specific county, but then I find a listing for what I think is my ancestor, and before you know it, I’m off on the chase. I really, really try NOT to do that because it’s actually very distracting to the process as a whole.

It’s also difficult for me to select an order to write these articles. For example, do I write about Leveling Up, determining what you need for each ancestor, first or last?

I’ve chosen to write about that topic last because I want to step through how to gather and use the resources before we get distracted by what you need to do with individuals in your tree. It’s way too easy to go after that bright, shiny object:)

Gathering and Organizing Location Resources: This article is about how to find location resources for the area where your ancestor(s) lived. I suggest starting at the beginning, meaning your closest ancestors. You know where your parents and grandparents lived, so start there.

If you think there’s nothing there that matters because you know everything about your family – I guarantee you surprises are waiting. They may surprise you, touch your heart, or even shock you, and they are just waiting to be discovered. But before you can logically extract everything to do with your family and surname, you need a comprehensive list of what is available for your county and region.

You’ll also need to keep a record of what you looked for in that county, and when, because you may very well need to go back and access those records again in the future.

Recording Your Data: After you have a list of what’s available for your specific counties, in the next article, we’re going to talk about extracting information and recording it in a spreadsheet. If you don’t like spreadsheets, you can do the same thing in a table. But it’s critical that you record it someplace.

You’ll also index and transcribe it as you go so you can reasonably retrieve it. This is why I utilize spreadsheets – they are made for filtering and sorting.

Surname Searching: You’ve found location resources, but where do you find surname resources? For example, what about books written about the Estes surname, or internet resources? Some will be in books or webpages about the location, but certainly not everything.

How do you find additional resources?

Proof Table: Now that you HAVE data about all the people in a region or regions where your ancestors lived, how do you prove that the Moses Estes or George Estes in Halifax County, Virginia is YOUR Moses or George Estes? What about men with the same name? What if there is no definitive proof in ONE document?

We will discuss the Genealogy Proof Standard and create a proof table for every single generation because you need proof for every single generation.

Including DNA.

(If you’re beginning to think you might dislike me by the time this series is finished – I fully understand. If it helps any, some days I’m tired and mad at myself.)

DNA: How and when can you use DNA as part of your proof argument? What about the different types of DNA? When are they useful? Are they conclusive? How do they bolster or refute other evidence?

Can you resolve conflicts between DNA and a paper trail, and if so, how?

Leveling Up: Leveling up is a methodology of determining where you are in the process of evaluating EVERY PIECE OF EVIDENCE available about each ancestor.

You don’t know what you don’t know.

For those of us who have been working on genealogy for a long time, it’s easy not to think about using new resources when they become available. For example, the 1940 and 1950 census, new full-text AI from FamilySearch, and new newspaper resources like OldNews.

What do you need to do yet for each ancestor to bring them to current?

Writing It Up: Now that you HAVE this information assembled, what will you do with it? I fervently hope you’re going to write or record it for posterity. I’ve chosen the 52 Ancestors series that I’ve been writing weekly for several years, but there are other ways, too. Genealogy is about resurrecting and honoring the lives of our ancestors. The more factual information you can saturate the airwaves and internet with, the less “bad information” can take hold. Genealogy is a team sport.

Gathering and Organizing Location Resources

This article is focused on gathering and organizing resources for where your ancestor lived, NOT on retrieving the records in those resources for your ancestor and their surname. The next article will cover retrieving and recording the data using a consistent methodology.

If you’ve followed my blog for some time, you’ll know that I’m a spreadsheet person, but I also use MSWord documents to organize and utilize resources from time to time, especially if the text is long. I have one Word document for every ancestor.

I’m going to use a chart as an example, understanding that you will create your own resource-tracking tool that you’re most comfortable with.

The first consideration is that you probably have at least three ancestors in any specific location. By that, I mean at least two parents and one child. You may have significantly more ancestors and family members from that location.

Conversely, those same ancestors may have moved from location to location – even state to state or cross-country, so you may have multiple locations for the same ancestor(s).

In my family, I have clusters of ancestors in the same county. For example, my early Estes line, along with their wives’ lines including Combs, Younger and Moore, resided in Halifax County, Virginia for about 4 generations or more than 50 years. The first generation, Moses Estes (1711-1787) who moved to Halifax County by 1771 came from someplace else, and the last generation, John R. Estes (1787-1885), moved to Claiborne County, TN about 1820, not long after his marriage.

I searched Halifax County records for at least four surnames and multiple generations.

This means I needed to compile the various resources for Halifax County across a significant amount of time.

Resources for Resources

There are multiple places to find available resources for a specific county and state.

We will use these to complete our own research list by county. In the next article, we’ll be checking each one of these resources for surnames.

FamilySearch Wiki

The first thing I do when beginning to compile resources is check the FamilySearch wiki.

Googling “Halifax County, Virginia FamilySearch wiki” brings up a lovely compilation of resources.

You’ll find general information by category, followed by very specific information and multiple resources for each category.

Click on any image to enlarge

Also note that the county website link is given, along with the county formation history further down the page. Don’t neglect to check each county’s individual resources and parent county, if relevant.

If you’ve checked the wiki, or any resource list before, check back often because things change.

I enter each of the resources into a spreadsheet for that county. This is NOT the same thing as making a list of information discovered for an individual ancestor or surname. We’ll get to that later.

Don’t limit yourself to just the years that you know your ancestor was living in that county because records pertaining to that family may exist before your ancestor arrived and long after they left. Other family members may have preceded them, while lawsuits, deeds, and other records may refer to them decades after they left or died.

Here’s the beginning of a list for Halifax County,

Resource State County Link Year Range Surnames Findings
Virginia Bible Records Virginia Halifax http://usgwarchives.net/va/halifax.htm Estes, Younger, Combs, Moore One was donated by the Tune family.
Halifax Biographies Virginia Halifax http://usgwarchives.net/va/halifax.htm Estes, Younger, Combs, Moore
1782 tax list Virginia Halifax http://usgwarchives.net/va/halifax.htm, http://files.usgwarchives.net/va/halifax/census/1782/1782tax.txt 1782 Estes, Younger, Combs, Moore 5 Estes, 1 Combs, 2 Younger 6 Moore
Slave Draft for Defense of Richmond Virginia Halifax http://usgwarchives.net/va/halifax.htm

http://files.usgwarchives.net/va/halifax/court/1862slavedraft.txt

 1862 Estes, Younger, Combs, Moore 2 Younger, 2 Moore

I enter the county and state in two fields, so it’s sortable. If I’m checking multiple counties using the same resource, I enter the resource twice, one for each county and the surnames in that county that I searched for.

For example, this link for Virginia Bible records takes you to a link for Halifax County Bible records on the USGenWeb site. I listed the surnames I checked for. I also noted the Tune donation because I know from prior research that the Tune home is on the old Marcus Younger land and the families intermarried. When you search any county for another surname, be sure to add it to the list so you don’t have to wonder later if you checked for that surname.

For county histories and biographies, check to see if they are available digitally. In the next article, you’ll want to search for and record all instances of your surname, even if it’s NOT your ancestor, because of the FAN club, Friends and Neighbors (thank you ,Elizabeth Shown Mills). Those people may or will help you identify which ancestors are yours. Not to mention fleshing out their lives.

Tax lists are often used to replace or supplement the census. You should be able to determine if the lists are recorded in procession order or alphabetical order. Clearly, procession order is much more relevant because it shows who lives nearby or are neighbors. This may help you identify specific individuals, especially when there are multiple people with the same name. In the case of John Estes in Halifax County, Virginia, the tax list placed “my” John by his father, George, which was a huge clue. Eventually, on a tax list that was stuffed in the back of a deed book in the Clerk’s Office, I found another tax list with the note, “S. G.” by my John’s name, and another note on the “other” John that lived in the north end of the county. “S.G.” meant son of George, as that designation had been used and spelled out for other people elsewhere in the same tax list. I’ve never been so grateful to the taxman in my life!

The Slave Draft for the Defense of Richmond is a fascinating document transcribed by a volunteer from the court minute book.

From Minute Book 20 page 169 Halifax County, Va

At a Court Held for Halifax County on Monday the 4th day of April 1862. Present Beverly Sydnor, Howell Chastain, John M. Craddock, William Moorewell, James Kent, Henry C. Logan, James Richardson, E. A. Coleman, Archer A. Farmer

The court in consideration of the Draft from the Governor of the Commonwealth for laborers on the Public Defense near Richmond do order and direct that the Sheriff of this County do proceed for ___ to require the following named persons to deliver to him the said Sheriff at News Ferry Depot, Boston Depot, Clover Depot and as may be convenient to the parties on ___ the day of ___ at such see hours as he may designate the Slaves between the ages of eighteen and fifty five years directed to be furnished by each person in the said following list and proceed with them to the City of Richmond and deliver them to the Agent of the Confederate Government and take receipt for the Slaves furnished by each person.

Then, by district, the name of the owner, and the number of enslaved persons sent.

This information may provide insight into who enslaved others at that time, which may provide insight into families that were slaveholders historically. Additionally, it may provide important hints and clues for African American researchers who seek their family and may have adopted the surname of their former enslaver after the war.

Also, please note that these records may not be entirely accurate. For example, there’s a list of ministers who performed marriages, and my Rev. William Moore is not listed, but I actually have the list of his marriages, returns made in his own handwriting obtained in the courthouse in Halifax County.

If you remember, I found my way to GenWeb through the FamilySearch Wiki. When I finish listing the GenWeb resources, I need to return to the FamilySearch wiki to list any further resources.

You may find lists of out-of-print books for land and property records and other record types. I sometimes find out-of-print books for sale at www.bookfinder.com.

If you own the book, note that it’s in your own library.

To locate books, check the WorldCat entry, but also check both the FamilySearch Catalog by county, the Fort Wayne Public Library and other book resources as well.

Surnames

While the goal of this exercise is to document and record location resources, if you stumble across surname resources, certainly don’t ignore them and think you’ll find them later – you might not.

I suggest starting either a second spreadsheet, or new tab on this spreadsheet for each surname.

I maintain a separate spreadsheet for each location and one for each surname or group of surnames on the same migration path. For example, my Combs, Estes, Moore, and Younger families are migrating from the Virginia Colony into the new frontiers, so I track them together from Amelia and Prince Edward Counties, where they are first found through Halifax County.

Ok, back to searching for our county resources.

FamilySearch Catalog

To search the FamilySearch Catalog by county, sign in and then click on Search, Catalog, and Place.

I was given the choice of British Colonial America or the United States. I’ll check both to be sure I have all available resources.

Selecting “Land and Property,” one of the items displayed is the Antrim Parish Vestry book. By clicking on that entry, you can see that it’s available in the FamilySearch Library in Salt Lake City. Maybe it’s available elsewhere too. I’ll check in a bit.

I build research lists from these resources routinely.

The entry for deed books shows that some are available online only at either the FamilySearch Library or a Family History Center (camera with key), which may be located near you. Other images are available online with no location requirement, indicated by the camera without a key, just by clicking.

These may or may not be indexed, and an index may be available elsewhere or by using the new FamilySearch Labs AI full text transcription tool. AI is not available for all records yet.

FamilySearch Labs

Next, try FamilySearch labs for additional assistance. I wrote about this new AI full text transcription tool, here.

You’ll see two features which may help you.

Using the “Find Help with AI Search” feature, type in what you’re searching for. I find the Full Text Search” to be much more helpful.

Click on “Go to Experiment.”

Typing “Halifax County, VA” into the search box returns resources from unexpected places. For example, county histories from elsewhere that reference Halifax County, or a Divorce degree, or a deed book from another county.

These are unexpected gold mines that you’d never find otherwise.

Note that this search is literally an exact match, so Halifax County, VA, is NOT the same as Halifax County, Virginia.

However, adding a surname to the location narrows the results substantially.

While normal deed and other books are indexed by the grantor and grantee, the FamilySearch full text search reveals EVERY instance of that name, including when referenced in another document. This feature is an absolute game-changer!

I can hardly wait to revisit my earlier work to see what’s new, but that’s part of the Level Up process.

It’s important to note that FamilySearch is adding new types of records to the AI collection almost daily, so check back often. Not everything uses the full-text transcription feature today, and while it’s quite accurate, it’s not 100%, so read carefully for yourself.

FamilySearch Book Search

You can also search for books by location or surname.

Allen County Public Library

The Allen County Public Library in Fort Wayne, Indiana is one of the largest genealogy libraries in the US. You can search their site for locations, keywords, or surnames, here.

While these resources are generally not available online at this library, they alert you that they exist, and you may be able to find them elsewhere.

The one HUGE exception is the one-of-a-kind PERSI index.

PERSI

The PERSI, or Periodical Source Index is maintained by the Allen County Public Library as well, here.

You can search by location.

Click on a category that displays the results.

At the bottom of each page, you can open a form to request a copy of the article.

Ancestry.com Card Catalog

At Ancestry.com, you can search their Card Catalog by title or location.

Be sure to try different spellings and abbreviations, like VA for Virginia, or remove the word county, etc.

The results display a list of records for Halifax County in their collection.

You can click on the link to this book to search by surname or keyword.

These local histories are wonderful tools for fleshing out your ancestor’s stories because they tell us what was happening in their community during different time periods that would have affected and influenced their lives.

For example, in one of these histories, I discovered that one of the Revolutionary War generals and his troops marched right down the road in front of my ancestor’s home. It’s no wonder that he “contributed” brandy, food, and fodder for their horses.

Newspaper Sites

At Newspapers.com, you can see which papers were available and when.

You can also add a surname or first and last name.

Unless there’s a story about someone’s ancestors, there’s no point in looking for people who lived there in the 1700s and early 1800s. These are the publication dates, so an earlier ancestor could have been included in a 25 or 50-year history column in the local paper.

This same technique works with other genealogy Newspaper sites, too, including MyHeritage with a subscription and separately, their new OldNews site which contains newspapers not included in the MyHeritage subscription.

Also check out the Library of Congress digitized newspaper collection, here.

Newspaper Archive is available with an NGS membership, here.

Fulton County (not limited to Fulton County) and GenealogyBank are two additional newspaper resources.

MyHeritage

At MyHeritage, you can search by location or Newspapers as well.

MyHeritage has one book about Halifax County.

By clicking on the book, you can add additional search criteria.

Estes is mentioned 16 times in this book.

Library of Congress

Don’t forget about the Library of Congress, which has its own Historical Newspapers section, here.

You can also search by county or surname in the search box at the top. The images are all copyright-free.

State Archives

Don’t forget about your state archives.

Most have wonderful search capabilities and specific collections.

For example, the Library of Virginia has been indexing individual county chancery records dating back to the county’s formation. Chancery suits are where you find all the juicy stuff because people are asking for remediation and explaining why.

The index is here, and you can search by a combination of county and surname.

There are 59 records in Halifax County fitting this description, mentioning Estes in any capacity, reaching back as far as 1795.

Don’t neglect later cases because many times later cases tend to be lawsuits filed about much earlier estates and property divisions. They also tend to provide relationships in their narrative.

You’ll also notice that often, the plaintiff and defendant aren’t Estes, but they are clearly mentioned somewhere in that case, perhaps in a deposition.

Clicking on “View Details” displays the entire case file.

The resources at each state library are different and vast, so take a look and check back for new offerings and features.

Google is Your Friend

Google can turn up amazing resources, but it can also lead to some unsafe sites, so be careful and don’t just click without thinking.

Google “Halifax County Virginia genealogy society.” You’ll receive eight results that may have databases, members, or donated materials, but these resources may not be complete. For example, I wrote and donated a Moore genealogy to the local museum, which doubled as a genealogy society, and that “book” isn’t listed anywhere in any resource list.

You’ll often find multiple groups focused on the county of interest. These groups will likely have dedicated and interested volunteers and other researchers.

RootsWeb

Ancestry shut down the RootsWeb mailing lists, but they are still out there even though you can no longer add information.

If you Google “Halifax County, Virginia Rootsweb,” you’ll be shown several pages and entries, some of which may or may not be useful to you.

One link provides a list of the 1860 slaveholders compared to the 1870 African Americans on the census. This could be extremely useful!

Google Books

Another underutilized tool is Google books, found here.

Some of these resources you’ll not find elsewhere.

Also, check out the other Google features, such as Images, Maps, and more, which may lead you to other resources.

I love old maps where sometimes you’ll find old stream names, landmarks, or even settlers’ homes with their name.

Project Gutenberg

Project Gutenberg is an initiative found at the Internet Archive to digitize out-of-copyright books for public consumption.

You can read more here.

Genealogical.com and American Ancestors

Don’t forget about book publishers that specialize in genealogy books like Genealogical.com and American Ancestors. Both are searchable, offer both hardcopy and e-books, and American Ancestors sells used books too.

Facebook

Last but not least, Facebook has many groups, including county-focused genealogy groups.

Sign in to Facebook and then use the Facebook search for the county you want.

Some groups maintain a list of resources.

Be sure to check both “Files” and “Features,” then use the Facebook search function to search for your surname(s) or other relevant locations or keywords in the Discussions.

In Summary

As you step through this process, it’s easiest if you include links to the various sites so that you can extract names in the next step. Links make it easy to return in the future and quickly review to see if anything has been added.

Even if you don’t find anything relevant at the site, be sure to NOTE THAT. That way, you never have to wonder and replow that same infertile ground. For example, if you determine that none of your four surnames are in a book written in 1937, they will never be in that book. If you don’t record that you looked, you’ll be left to wonder a few years from now and you’ll find yourself looking again.

However, a new book about that county might be written in the future, so it’s important to continue to look for new resources.

It’s also important to know that you searched for Estes, Moore, Younger, and Combs in Halifax County because you might, someday in the future, need to search for a new surname, like Hart. This way, you know what you did and did not search for in the past.

Why might you need to search for a new surname? Brick walls fall. Sometimes, the FAN Club turns out to be an important key to unlocking relationships that may extend back in time to earlier locations. People did not live or move in a vacuum.

I’ve made every one of these mistakes and nothing makes me unhappier than having to look something up, AGAIN, because I failed to record what I did.

The same advice holds for hard-copy books in research libraries. If nothing else, I take a picture of the front or inside cover and the index so I know what to record and that nothing was found. I wish I had done that from the beginning. Live and learn.

The biggest lie I’ve ever told myself is, “Of course I’ll remember that!”

Your Turn

It’s your turn now. Happy hunting!

Our next articles in this series will discuss how to record data from these resources so that it is both useful and findable again.

_____________________________________________________________

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Genealogy Proof Series: Gathering Resources, Leveling Up, Using the Genealogical Proof Standard and DNA

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I am beginning a series about Genealogy Proof – in other words, how do you prove that your ancestor is actually your ancestor?

  • What tools are available?
  • How can you best utilize them?
  • What is leveling up? How do you do it, and why would you want to?
  • What is the genealogy proof standard, GPS, and how can you easily use it?
  • How does DNA play into this equation? How does DNA work with the other tools? Can DNA alone prove an ancestral connection? Can it disprove one, even in the face of other information?

I use these methodologies and tools when writing my 52 Ancestors articles that I typically publish on Sundays.

If you’re wondering how I compile the information for those ancestors, including multiple ancestors from the same region, I’ll address that.

If you’re wondering how I keep everything straight, or at least try to, I’ll share my processes and tools. I’ve made just about every mistake possible, AND I’ll tell you how NOT to retread that path.

If you’re wondering how to utilize the various forms of DNA to either confirm an ancestor, a hypothesis, or maybe disprove an ancestor, I’ll discuss that.

Lastly, we’ll talk about what to do if you made a mistake and got something wrong, or if previously unknown information surfaces that conflicts with earlier information. How do you correct and fix it? Trust me—I’ve been there and done that, too.

As I complete each article, I’ll update this article and post links here.

Articles in the Series

RootsTech 2024 – MyHeritage is ON FIRE with 13 Announcements

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I’ve got to tell you, MyHeritage has outdone themselves.

I had a hard time just keeping track of their announcements, which totaled 13 – a baker’s dozen.

You can watch the MyHeritage RootsTech keynote by Aaron Godfrey, here.

However, there are a few things not in the video, so let’s take a look at a quick summary of what’s new.

DNA Uploads with Free Advanced Tools Forever Extended Until March 10th

MyHeritage just extended their DNA upload that includes ALL ADVANCED TOOLS FOR FREE, forever, to March 10th so click here now to upload every kit you manage. This is a great deal. Hint – new ethnicity results are coming soon and you’ll be saving $29 on each kit you upload.

20+ Billion Records

MyHeritage has just passed the 20 billion record mark and is continuing to add. That’s billion, with a B. These records are available to customers with a MyHeritage subscription. If you don’t have a subscription, you can try a MyHeritage Subscription with a Free Trial, here.,

Additionally, right now, subscriptions are 50% off, but I don’t know how long that price lasts.

I love my MyHeritage subscription, and if you try it and don’t like yours, you can cancel and be charged nothing during the 14-day trial period.

I particularly like that the local newspaper where my grandparents lived is available on MyHeritage, and no place else. In addition, MyHeritage has integrated with FamilySearch, which is digitizing and indexing records like wildfire. That collaboration has provided me with information from European sources, including archives.

MyHeritage Wiki

MyHeritage has been working on their new Wiki, a community encyclopedia for genealogy and DNA, for almost a year now, although it was only recently released.

Photo courtesy of MyHeritage

I’ve been honored to write several articles for the newly announced MyHeritage Wiki, including the definition of DNA itself:

Take a look at the new Wiki, here.

You can filter in a number of ways, and you can even sign up to be a contributor.

Check out their blog article, here.

AI Record Finder

The AI Record Finder is the world’s first AI chat-based search engine for historical records.

I should probably tell you that, at this point in time, I do use AI, such as ChatGPT, very cautiously, and I’m inherently suspicious because AI tools sometimes hallucinate. It’s a new technology with lots of glitches and unknowns, so let’s see how MyHeritage is using this tool. It should be much more reliable since it’s in a controlled environment. I need to be convinced. 😊

The AI Record Finder is under the Research Menu. Just type your question about your ancestor.

I’m cheating and giving MyHeritage a tough one. I typed, “Please tell me about Solomon Ferwerda, who died in 1768 in Groningen, the Netherlands.”

MyHeritage returned three possibilities in their database, including their affiliated databases. One is a MyHeritage tree and two are records from FamilySearch.

Don’t limit yourself at this point.

I happen to know “my” Solomon is the first person, but I played around a bit before selecting the “right” Solomon. Why? Because there’s a lot that I don’t know about his life. It’s possible that the second and third records are ALSO the right person, so be sure to review everything.

Clicking on the middle or right record for Solomon shows that, indeed, this record from FamilySearch comes from the Dutch Archival Indexes, so it’s not “just someone’s tree.”

We do know the Ferwerda family is from Leeuwarden, but we don’t know when Solomon was born, nor if he was married twice. I only have the name of his second wife and one child, Jan, who was born the year he died.

The two FamilySearch Dutch archive records are from Leeuwarden, so maybe, just maybe, I’ve discovered something new about Solomon. How exciting!

I need to click through and check this out further.

I didn’t expect to like this tool, but so far, I really do. But wait – there’s more.

AI Ancestor Bio

You can click to have MyHeritage generate an AI bio of an ancestor for you.

The bio takes a few minutes to generate and will be available for download in the chat and will also be emailed to you. You can easily share with others. Getting other people interested in genealogy often encourages them to take a DNA test. DNA tests are still on sale for $39, here.

Solomon Ferwerda’s AI bio was completed quickly and arrived in pdf format. We know so little about him, I knew it would be short. I must say, I really enjoyed the “Historical Context” section that discussed the surrounding events that would have affected his life. That’s incredibly important and would have or could have influenced the decisions he made. Maybe the warfare and political unrest caused him to move from Leeuwarden to Groningen for some reason, where he died the year his son was born.

Here’s Solomon’s bio.

Here’s a link to the RootsTech lecture about the MyHeritage AI tools by Ran Snir, the VP of Product.

MyHeritage blog links for AI Record finder are here and here.

You can watch Telling Your Family’s Story with MyHeritage’s AI Features by Janna Helshtein at Legacy Family Tree Webinars, here.

I can’t wait to play with the MyHeritage AI tools more.

Updated Ethnicity Coming Soon

This is going to make a lot of people happy!

MyHeritage is in the process of updating their ethnicity results, increasing their regions from 42 to 80, with significantly optimized granularity in Europe. I initially misunderstood and thought the new results were available now, but they won’t arrive until summer.

I understand from talking to a Jewish friend involved in MyHeritage’s R&D effort that their own results are substantially improved and that they have now been placed in Armenia where their ancestors are from. They are no longer generically “Jewish.”

New Profile Pages with Hints

Daniel Horowitz said that everyone calls Smart Matches and Record Matches hints, so now MyHeritage has updated profile pages and is adding them to the profile page and officially calling them Hints.

You can still find Smart Matches and Record Matches listed separately under Discoveries, but on everyone’s profile, they are called Hints.

On Solomon’s profile page, scroll down to view his journey based on the information you’ve entered or accepted into your tree.

I did not yet add Leeuwarden, because I’m yet positive those records in Leewarden are his, but if I had, Leeuwarden would also be shown on his journey map. I’ll be incorporating these into my 52 Ancestors stories. I love maps! Maybe I can find old maps to include too,

You can read more about the new profiles and hints, here.

Tree Collaboration with FamilyTreeDNA

Aaron Godfrey announced tree collaboration with FamilyTreeDNA who pre-announced this at their conference in November.

I don’t have specific details about how it works, as this won’t happen for a few months yet, but FamilyTreeDNA customers will port their trees to MyHeritage which allows them to take advantage of MyHeritage’s record collections and such. Existing MyHeritage customers will simply connect their FamilyTreeDNA test to their MyHeritage tree.

FamilyTreeDNA has never been a “tree” company, so this means that users will have one less tree to maintain independently, and they can augment their research with records from MyHeritage.

I talked to Katy Rowe-Schurwanz, the Product Manager at FamilyTreeDNA to confirm that this is NOT a DNA transfer. FamilyTreeDNA matches still occur in the FamilyTreeDNA database, just like always, and MyHeritage matches still occur in the MyHeritage database. If you want matching in both databases, you still have to upload to or test at both. Only the trees are integrated, meaning when you click on a tree at  FamilyTreeDNA, you’ll see the tree displayed on MyHeritage.

The great news is that FamilyTreeDNA features such as Family Matching (bucketing) where you link your DNA matches at FamilyTreeDNA to their profile cards so that maternal/paternal bucketing occurs will still work the same way. The only difference will be that your tree will actually reside at MyHeritage and not at FamilyTreeDNA.

You’ll be able to enjoy the best of both worlds.

We will know more in a few months, and I’ll provide more details when I have them.

Invite Another MyHeritage User to View Your DNA Results

Aaron Godfrey said in the keynote that 2FA (two-factor authentication) at MyHeritage will become mandatory later this month, and with it, MyHeritage is adding the feature of being able to invite another MyHeritage user to view your DNA results. This allows people to collaborate more easily, especially if a different person is managing someone else’s DNA test.

Reimagine Multi-Photo Scanner App

This photo-scanning innovation is for your phone and allows you to scan photos and entire photo album pages – automatically separating and improving the photos. Then, of course, you just tag them to the proper person in your tree like any other photo.

Oh, and did I mention that Reimagine is free? I expected to have to pay when I downloaded the app, but I didn’t, probably because I have a full subscription.

Based on this article, Reimagine is not meant for other types of images, like pages of text or albums of clipped newspaper articles. But guess what? I downloaded the app, and it works just fine for those items! Hallelujah. How I wish I had this last week at the FamilySearch Library when I was finding pages in books I wanted to associate with a specific ancestor.

If you have album pages of photos to scan, this is golden and integrates with the profiles of people into your MyHeritage tree.

I really, really like the idea of having the ability to scan in the palm of my hand. That way if someone has a photo, you don’t have to try to take a photo of it. Gone are the days of literally dragging a laptop and scanner around with me when I’m traveling – just in case. Yes, I actually did and now I don’t have to anymore.

I cringe to think how many opportunities were lost to me before the days of laptops – but not now.

Thank you – THANK YOU, MyHeritage. What a great gift!

You can find the QR code to download the app, here.

OldNews is New News

MyHeritage has introduced a new website for old newspapers called OldNews which you can find here.

This addition doubles the number of newspapers previously available on MyHeritage.

Users can also subscribe separately to Old News for about $99/year.

MyHeritage customers use their normal credentials to sign in to either site, but accessing newspapers not previously integrated into MyHeritage will require an OldNews subscription too.

I had to try it. I entered my mother’s name.

Look, my Mom had a tonsillectomy. I never knew that. It was just a couple of months after she graduated from high school.

I didn’t know Mom spent the summer in Philadelphia, either. She was 19 at that time, and I had heard rumblings that she studied with a “prima ballerina” at the School of American Ballet. Guess where that is? Yep, Philly.

My Mom was a professional tap and ballet dancer before she became my Mom.

Understanding that Mom spent the summer of 1942 on the east coast sheds new light on this and a few other photos in Mom’s photo album, which I can now scan.

Ok, I can’t help myself. I have to enhance this photo at MyHeritage.

Much better. Another tiny piece of Mom’s life brought into focus.

I wonder what else is in OldNews that I don’t know about. Hmmmm…

You can read about OldNews here.

New All-Inclusive Omni Subscription

MyHeritage is launching a new Omni all-inclusive subscription plan that includes most of the MyHeritage products and tools, except for Filae, unless I’m missing something. Omni reportedly costs less than half the price if you were to subscribe to all of these individually. I’ve asked for a comparison chart which I don’t have yet, but I’m told will be coming soon.

Here’s what’s included:

Additionally, I asked MyHeritage about whether or not the advanced DNA tools are included with Omni, and they are. So, add advanced DNA tools to that list.

The following information about the Omni Plan is a screenshot from the MyHeritage blog article, here.

I have not been able to determine the price of an Omni subscription. At RootsTech, you were interested in the Omni plan, you submitted a Google form and a day or so later, you received this email.

I suspect MyHeritage needs to talk to you because how much it costs initially depends on your existing subscriptions, and how much time is left on those.

I reached out to MyHeritage and asked when Omni will be available to purchase, and the answer is “soon.” You can’t sign up just yet.

I have never subscribed to Legacy Family Tree Webinars, even though I’m a webinar presenter and have several webinars available there. My gift to myself is going to be Omni when it’s available because I want Legacy Family Tree Webinars, and I’d love a subscription to OldNews. I already have a full subscription to MyHeritage, and I’d probably use Geni more than I do as a casual user if I had the Omni subscription.

Artifact Testing – Maybe

Unfortunately, I was not able to attend CEO Gilad Japhet’s RootsTech session because his session and mine were at exactly the same time.

However, I asked Aaron Godfrey after Gilad’s session what I had missed that was not in Aaron’s keynote, other than Gilad’s wonderful stories.

Aaron and others told me that Gilad stated that he was personally submitting personal artifacts, such as stamps, to a third-party lab once again, to test the waters to see if DNA can now be extracted from artifacts successfully.

MyHeritage tried this a few years ago, ultimately unsuccessfully. Perhaps this time will be different, but I would not hold my breath, truthfully. Degraded DNA has quality issues, not to mention that the DNA extracted might not be the DNA of the person expected.

I would personally love this, but I am also skeptical at this point. Kudos to Gilad for trying again with his own personal items.

MyHeritage Online RootsTech Booth

MyHeritage has provided several educational videos in their online RootsTech booth, at this link. Be sure to take advantage of this free resource.

Whew, I’m finally done! I told you that MyHeritage had been very, very busy, and I wasn’t kidding. I hope I didn’t miss anything.

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Stop Risking Your Information: Facebook Games, Public Posts, Friend Lists & Hackers

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Are you unwittingly exposing yourself and risking your information on Facebook or other social media platforms?

Bad actors are becoming increasingly problematic on social media. There’s been a HUGE UPTICK recently, and we need to keep ourselves safe. Keeping yourself safe also helps keep your friends safe, and vice versa.

Please read this article and follow these steps. Share with your friends and family too.

Please don’t think you’re immune from this. You’re not. Everyone needs to do a checkup periodically.

Sometimes Facebook changes things, and hackers get more wily and cunning all the time. Bad actors are so deceptive now that you may not realize your choices and/or behavior have exposed your information.

Using lots of examples, here’s what this article will do for you:

  1. Identify and explain new threats and how they work.
  2. Show you how to modify your privacy settings to prevent unauthorized access.
  3. Determine if you’ve inadvertently let the bad guys in – and how to shut that door.
  4. Explain how to stop engaging in risky behavior that you don’t even realize is risky.

Risky behavior on social media is like the flu – people who don’t take proper precautions expose others.

You may think you’re already aware of what’s risky, and what isn’t. Hopefully, that’s true – but when the bad guys change their tactics, we all need to reevaluate accounts, settings, and behaviors.

How Does Exposure Happen

My friends, even friends who should know better, are exposing themselves on Facebook and other social media – and they don’t even realize it.

How?

Lax security settings, Facebook games, innocent-looking questions, and public posts combine to create a toxic slurry of exposure – and you have absolutely no idea that anything is going on beneath the water.

However, it’s absolutely infested with sharks!

Facebook games and questions ARE CRAFTED BY CYBERCRIMINALS.

FULL STOP!!!

You are the target, and your own emotions are the bait.

Yes, I mean you!

I’ve seen almost everyone fall victim to this in one form or another – so you’re not alone. We all learn – hopefully before we have or cause a bad experience.

Did you click on a link you shouldn’t have – before thinking? Have you ever answered any of these seemingly fun questions posted by someone you don’t personally know? Or, someone you DO know whose posting was public? Do you even know if the posting was public?

Here are some examples of bait questions?

  • How far away do you live from where you were born?
  • Name a song that takes you back to high school?
  • Where was your first job?
  • Your cowboy (rock star, stripper, animal, you get the idea) name is your middle name. (Then they show you a fun picture.)
  • Your first car.
  • Thirty random things about me.

If you enter any of that information, you’re doing multiple EXTREMELY RISKY and DANGEROUS THINGS!!!

  • Giving potential answers to security questions to cybercriminals who aggregate your data from many seemingly innocent questions.
  • Posting the results of those ” fun ” picture games gives cybercriminals access to your personal information, friends, and timeline.
  • Giving cybercriminals access to your friend list so they can be targeted too
  • Serving as bait for your friends who see your answers because Facebook shows you what your friends and family members answer.
  • Serving as bait for your friends who see your AI name or cowboy name or whatever “game” you’ve played. Facebook shows people that you’ve played this game, which serves as an endorsement, especially if people trust you.

Best case, you’re attracting attention to yourself as someone who is naïve and vulnerable. These bad actors are manipulating your emotions, which in turn leads to you oversharing.

You may be hacked, your account cloned, or even lost entirely, AND you’ll be responsible for your friends also engaging in risky behavior.

An even worse case scenario is identity theft.

Here’s the best article I know of that shows several examples. IF YOU DO NOTHING ELSE TODAY, READ THIS ARTICLE, PLEASE!!!

I can hear my mother saying to me, “If everyone else jumped off the bridge, would you too?”

This is the bridge, and I’ll show you why.

That Alluringly Dangerous Bridge

Let’s look at a couple of examples. Different scams work in different ways depending on the goal of the bad actor. We will look at a few so you’re aware.

First, they catch your attention and hope you click before you think.

DO NOT CLICK.

First, lots of professional criminals troll ANY PUBLIC ANSWER.

This post and all replies are public. That little globe means the world can see the post and any comments.

Second, if you click to take this seemingly fun test, you give them lots of information about you, and the results, which are always “wonderful”, post to your feed – which provides “positive feedback” to you and lures your friends. Let’s face it; they will never tell someone they are “below average” because who would play their data-gathering game?

How do they post results to your feed? You give them permission when you click to do the “test,” even though you don’t realize you did that.

Here’s another one.

This has nothing to do with AI. It’s all hooey! Don’t be a willing victim.

NameTests

One of the most popular “games” on Facebook is some derivative of Nametests.

Seriously, do you believe some application can tell you anything useful by selecting three colors? And, ask yourself why anyone would create these “games” and purchase Sponsored Facebook ads to do something “free” for everyone. There is no such thing as a free lunch.

If you’re thinking this is just harmless fun – it’s not.

Do yourself a favor.

Type this into Google: “What is nametests on Facebook?”

Read this article, courtesy of Comparitech, an identity theft prevention company to see what you just gave away. Literally, access to everything in your profile. And you did it willingly. They didn’t have to hack your account. They simply tricked you by luring you with something free that looked like fun.

Ok, now that you’ve done it, Nametests and other similar apps have access to your account, so you need to rescind that permission.

You Just Gave Them Access to Your Friends List

I’ll step you through how to remove anything like this at the end of this article. You’ll also want to change your password and possibly enable two-factor authentication (2FA). You’ve just given some scammer the keys to your kingdom – plus your friends’ too.

That’s not the end, either. In fact, it’s just the beginning.

There’s more.

Questions, Challenges, Feel-Good and Outrage Stories

Emotions are powerful. They cause you to want to comment – or click. You throw caution to the wind. Actually, you simply forget about caution altogether. That’s the goal.

What you need to do is put the brakes on and…

STOP!

Some fishing questions may make you want to reminisce and relive the good old days.

Some look like fun. But ask yourself – why does ANYONE care about that?

Some scare you and trick you into clicking before thinking. They create a sense of either tragedy or urgency.

“Look who died.” “I can’t believe he’s gone.” And before you think, you’ve reacted with “OMG” and clicked and literally given away the farm. Not just your Facebook farm, either. Here’s how this works, with a short video from the Indiana State Attorney General.

What does the Attorney General say? “I don’t click on anything.” Me either! If you see these frightening tagged links from a friend, it means that friend’s account has been hacked or cloned. Contact them but do not message or reply to the account that sent this because you’ll be talking directly to the hacker.

Nostalgic or Emotionally Motivational Postings

Some scams are wonderful stories that make you want to share something affirming.

Some make you nostalgic.

Some make you angry or sad.

Have you seen those found dog scams where the individual claims to have found an injured dog, taken it to the vet, are trying to find the owner and need assistance with the vet bills. There’s an entire Facebook group devoted to identifying fake “found dog” posts, here.

These posts are meant to evoke strong emotions that cause you to forget about safety and just react. It’s called motivation, and these criminals are pros.

Then, because you’re a good person, you share with your friends, or maybe they shared with you so that’s even more encouragement to engage.

Sometimes, the posts don’t even ask you anything directly.

This next post had been up for less than one day, and look how many shares and comments it had.

A couple of weeks later, it had more than 4000 likes, 884 comments, and 559 shares. Just think how many comments it actually has now, scattered around the internet on various people’s pages.

It looks so innocuous and safe, but it isn’t.

You’ve just given these people, whoever they are, an approximate age, and you’ve told them you’re vulnerable to this type of trickery. Hackers gather every tidbit they can about you so that you can be targeted on this and other platforms.

Everything on this account is public, which you can tell by the little globe, meaning everyone anywhere can see what you say and what everyone says.

The recent 23andMe data exposure is a good example of how information can be aggregated and used to breach other accounts. Furthermore, with your age and city location, which may well be available on your Facebook profile page, anyone can use standard internet search tools to find an address, a phone, family members’ names, and more. Much more!

Questions Lists

You may see these question lists posted by your friends and asked to be passed on “for fun.”

Just don’t!!! Remember, your friends and (sometimes) their friends can see responses too. You have NO IDEA who is consuming this information.

Many police organizations have warned against this. Here’s an article.

Anytime you see anything that sounds or smells like these types of posts, OR posts that are public, the first thing that should pop into your mind is STOP – in a bright red neon danger sign.

Yes, I’ve used this exact same image three times now, because you need to remember to STOP. Stop and think before doing anything.

I WANT YOU TO THINK ABOUT THIS IMAGE EVERY SINGLE TIME YOU SEE THINGS LIKE THIS ON FACEBOOK!

How does this toxic material spread like wildfire anyway?

Public Posts Paint a Target on You

The most common danger is fully public posts. Hackers take advantage of public posts when unwary people post or reply publicly.

Public posts, identified by the little globe, open the post up for the entire world to see.

It also opens you up to friend requests and comments from anyone, anyplace.

Scammers troll for anything public and scrape the contents into huge databases organized by name. They know that if you’re naive enough to fall for one scam, you might well be naive enough to fall for another. They’re hoping, anyway.

Not all public posts are scams, but replying to public posts makes you a target.

Here’s an example.

My friend, Sam, reposted this link on his page to be helpful and made it public, meaning everyone can see it from any place. Sam has his security set to “require one friend in common” before you can send them a friend request. Clearly, “Shirley” doesn’t have a friend in common with Sam, so “Shirley” can’t send Sam a friend request. So “Shirley” replied with something “nice,” hoping to entice Sam into sending “Shirley” a friend request so they can gain access to Sam’s account info and friend list.

“Shirley,” who is scantily clad, isn’t “Shirley” at all, but someone trying to gain access to as many people and profiles as possible to scam people.

Comments on Public Posts

I have adopted the policy that I DO NOT, EVER comment on or reply to public posts – even if they’re posted by my friends. Here’s why.

One of my friends has a wonderful history page where he makes several public postings daily. Unfailingly, every single person who replies to his post has one of two things happen:

  • If the people who reply or comment (Linda and Douglas here) accept friend requests without a common friend, or if they have a common friend, they get friend requests from scammers (Holman and Amanda here).

If you automatically think you’re safe to accept a friend request if the requester shares a friend with you – think again. Maybe your friend has fallen victim and doesn’t realize it. It can happen to anyone.

  • If the commenter does not accept friend requests unless the requester (scammer) and commenter (i.e., the target) have a common friend, then scammers replies to their posting with a compliment and invitation to friend them.

DO NOT REPLY or add them as a friend, and DO BLOCK these people immediately.

Here are some clues to spot fake accounts:

  • Extremely attractive or enticing photos
  • Single or divorced
  • Professional, military or wealthy-looking if male
  • Sexualized or seductive if female
  • No friends or scads of friends
  • Non-substantive public posts
  • New account
  • Pictures with puppies or animals
  • Things to instill confidence – like references to God

Hackers are so “Helpful”

My friend, Pam, had her Instagram Account “hacked” and announced that to the world in a public post on Facebook. She meant to warn her friends, of course.

Truth be told, Pam had not actually been hacked, as her password would (probably) have been changed if she were truly hacked. This recently happened to another friend and he lost his entire Facebook account, including all photos accumulated over more than a dozen years.

Pam’s password was not changed, because she could sign into her account. Her account was actually cloned, meaning a second account was set up using her profile information that looked exactly like her original profile. Then her friends were messaged from the cloned account with links to click that led to malware. Her friends also received friend requests from the cloned “fake Pam” cloned account.

Unfortunately, cloning is very easy to do. Facebook photos are, by default, public. So the bad actor takes your photo, sets up a second account that “looks like you” and then sends your friends friend requests and malicious links. Your friends accept your friend request, not realizing it’s a fraud.

I wonder how a scammer might have obtained access to Pam’s friends’ profile information to determine whom to target.

Any ideas, anyone?

Let’s see:

  • Maybe public posts.
  • Maybe games
  • Maybe answering “questions”
  • Maybe Pam’s friend doing one of those things and exposing Pam’s information, too
  • Maybe accepting a friend request she shouldn’t have
  • Maybe making “too much” public, including her friends list

Let’s see what happened when Pam publicly informed the world that her Instagram account had been hacked! Just in case you think this might be no big deal.

ALL 64 REPLIES WERE FROM HACKERS!

In fact, it’s possible that the original hacker is one of those who responded, offering to “help.”

Here’s the list of all 64 comments, with my commentary in red. Notice that all 64 arrived within two hours. Many of these profiles may, in fact, be the same bad actor.

She went to work and didn’t notice any of this. However, everyone else in the world had the opportunity to reply to one of these hackers, seeking “help,” and her friends might have been lured.

If you comment, you’re at risk too.

Then, someone with a name that includes the word Cyberspy messaged my friend directly.

Oh yeah, this instills confidence, alright.

Unknown people may directly message (DM) you.

Do not reply.

BLOCK THEM ALL!!!

If someone you know messages you with a link, DO NOT CLICK ON IT. Verify another way that they actually sent you something – meaning that their account has not been cloned or hacked. Regardless, I still don’t click on unsolicited links.

Reporting to Facebook

If you know that your friend’s account has been cloned, report to Facebook by clicking on the little three dots on the cloned profile, then “Find support or report.”

Unfortunately, there’s little to be done about the hacker/scammer replies and postings. Reporting any of these fraudulent accounts to Facebook (Meta) is worse than useless – and Facebook is the only one who can take care of it. I have yet to see them take any of these accounts down.

Block all scammers or shady postings or replies.

Your best bet is to NOT fall for any of this.

Bait

This is supposedly a food page, but if you look at the postings, they are all “bait” of one sort or another.

That bait is for you – you’re what they are hoping to snag.

First of all, this post has nothing to do with food. Several posts are of the “who remembers this” type of nostalgia bait, which is particularly attractive to older people who may be less tech-savvy.

Second, they try to make you feel guilty if you’re a grandparent and DON’T “let the world know.”

Third, they are clearly targeting older people, and if you share or post on this, you’ve given them information. Some people actually said how many grandchildren they have and where they live.

Sometimes, older people are more susceptible to scams because they are more trusting.

Stop and Think!

  • Why would anyone you don’t know be interested in this information about you?
  • Why would you willingly give something this information?

Anyone hear of grandparent call scams? “I’m in trouble. Send money.” Some even go so far as to say they’ve been kidnapped. Here’s what the FCC says about “grandparent scams.”

Scammers who gain access to consumers’ personal information – by mining social media or purchasing data from cyber thieves – can create storylines to prey on the fears of grandparents.

Often the imposter claims to have been in an accident or arrested. The scammer may ask the grandparent “please don’t let mom and dad know,” and may hand the phone over to someone posing as a lawyer seeking immediate payment.

Unfortunately, according to a recent Washington Post article, bad actors can now use artificial intelligence technology “to mimic voices, convincing people, often the elderly, that their loved ones are in distress”.

The article reports that scammers can replicate a voice from just a short audio sample and then use AI tools to hold a conversation in that voice, which “speaks” whatever the imposter types.

I know someone who was targeted this way. They said they could barely understand their granddaughter because she was both crying uncontrollably and hysterical. My friend could make out the word rape. It was terrifying and paralyzing at the same time. Fortunately, her granddaughter happened to walk into the front door as this call was taking place.

What Have You Done?

Are you wondering if you have inadvertently given access to your Facebook page to scammers without realizing it?

You need to check.

Here’s how, step-by-step!

Start by clicking your profile picture, then Settings and Privacy, then Settings, then Apps and Websites – as outlined above and detailed below.

On the left, you’ll see this menu. Scroll towards the bottom.

You can click any image to enlarge.

You’ll see this information at the top, with the following apps that you’ve given access to below.

Click on “remove” to remove unwanted apps. I clicked on “Remove” for Yelp, which displayed additional information. You can remove future access, but you can’t remove any information already shared with the other application.

When you look at an app and see the ability to log in through Facebook, this is actually what you’re doing – sharing a variety of information with that application.

Under “Preferences,” disable the ability to use Facebook to log into third-party apps.

What does signing in through Facebook or Google do? How does it work?

What actually happens when you sign in using Google or Facebook? It’s convenient, but you’re giving away data about yourself that you’re unaware of.

Here’s what LifeLock has to say.

Here’s a list of Facebook privacy settings that you should change now.

Whatever you did in the past can’t be undone, but you can remove the access and prevent anything in the future.

Stop the Thieves – Lock It Down

If you’ve done something risky, you’ll need to take additional precautions.

  • Change your password. Don’t reuse passwords.
  • If your account has been cloned, change your profile photo so your friends know which account is actually yours.
  • Restrict postings to friends only.
  • Check for and disable any applications, including games like Nametest.
  • Consider implementing 2FA. It’s under “How to keep your account secure” in the Privacy Checkup.

What are your settings?

Let’s check and see.

Privacy Checkup

Facebook makes it easy to do a Privacy Checkup.

Just click on your profile photo, then “Settings and Privacy” and “Privacy Checkup.”

I recommend stepping through every one of these topics and adjusting your permissions.

I recommend locking everything down on your profile.

Begin with “Who can see what you share”.

Scroll to the bottom, where you see “Friends and following.”

CRITICAL

To protect your friends list, and disable anyone else from seeing it, select ONLY ME.

Your next selection under “Who can see what you share” selects the default audience for your Facebook posts, Stories, and limits who can see past posts. This is a critical selection because it determines who can view your posts unless you change this setting on individual posts.

Step through each of the “Privacy Checkup” tabs and do the same for People, Pages and Lists you follow.

Next, check “Profile and Tagging” under the Settings and Privacy Menu on the left-hand side.

Step through each of these sections, especially Posts and Stories, and adjust your privacy.

It’s VERY important to prevent others from viewing your friends list which you’ll find under “Profile and Tagging.”

Some people don’t let anyone post on their profile. I currently do let my friends post, or tag me, but I’m also torn about this setting.

Next, select who can see what others post on your profile?

Make sure to check the rest of the information and if it’s displayed.

I don’t provide any information, such as where I live or went to college – nor do I display my phone number. I get enough spam calls the way it is!

See What They See

Check to be sure your account displays only as much as you want.

On the dropdown menu from your profile picture, go to the Privacy Center and Click on “Manage Your Accounts,” then select “How to clean up your profile.”

Click on “View as” to see your account as someone who is not your friend. Ensure everything is locked down, and you’re not providing information to unknown people.

Best Practices for Safety

Two types of actions are necessary to keep your Facebook account and your friends safe. Both are important – some are account settings, and others are behavioral.

Think of this like driving a car. You need safety equipment like brakes – but you must also know when, where, and how to apply them to keep from crashing.

One alone is insufficient. You need both. You also need to stop and think.

  • Lock your account down so that people you don’t know can’t see your information.
  • Lock it down so that others can’t see your friend list, so you’re not inadvertently making your friends targets.
  • Do not accept friend requests from people you don’t know.
  • View everything skeptically.
  • STOP every single time you even think about replying to something. Stop, then think. Is the post public? Who wants to know this information, and why would I give it to them?
  • If it’s public, DON’T REPLY.

Selecting Privacy for Your Posts

You select a default privacy setting for your own posts. You can also override the default and select a different privacy setting for each post if it differs from your default.

Default settings are found in the “Privacy Checkup,” under “Who can see what you share.”

You can change the privacy selection on each post as you create them. You can also change them later.

Facebook used to retain your selection for the next post, but I don’t think they do that anymore. For example, if I lost my mind for some reason and selected “public,” for this post, the default would have been “public” for subsequent posts too.

I tested this, and it appears that’s no longer the case today. That’s a good thing! You can change any individual post, but your selected default remains in effect.

It’s Time for Spring Cleaning

If your friends have their friend list exposed, they are exposing you to hackers who may want to target you. If your friend’s account is cloned, this is exactly how bad actors know to target you next.

It’s time for spring cleaning on your friend list. Let’s take stock and evaluate.

  • Are they your actual friend?
  • Why are they on your friend list?
  • If you’re undecided, check to see if their friend list is exposed. That’s the tie-breaker. If it is, they are exposing you.
  • If someone you know and care about is exposing their friend list, please send them a link to this article.

Let’s Practice

You notice a question on your friend’s feed about the name of your first-grade teacher.

You smile with warm remembrance.

What’s the first thing you’re going to do?

STOP!

THINK!

Public – Look to see if your friend’s posting is public.

If the answer is yes, STOP.

If you answer, you just gave someone information about you that can be combined and aggregated with other information from all of those types of questions you’ve inadvertently answered. Many are security questions and can lead to identity theft.

Games – Next, look to see if it’s one of those games.

If the answer is yes, STOP.

Groups – Next, check to see if the posting is from within a group that you’ve joined. If the the posting is within a restricted group or a non-public Facebook page or group, that may be a more controlled environment, depending on the join criteria and how closely the group is monitored by administrators. I do participate in several closed groups.

Non-public groups are designated by an icon of three people.

Friends Only – If the posting is “friends” only, the two-person icon, the threat is reduced, unless, of course, your friend has inadvertently given access to one of those scam games and, in doing so, has granted access to their entire profile. There’s no way to know. I evaluate the friend and the topic at hand when deciding to reply.

My “go to” response now, on social media, is simply “don’t reply,” unless someone has asked me a direct, non-public, question that makes sense and doesn’t relay any information that even might be useful.

So, if your friend who visited last week asks for a pudding recipe that you made for dessert, and the posting isn’t public, that’s probably just fine.

If your cousin can’t remember your daughter’s middle name and wants it for genealogy, I’m sure that’s fine to answer too, just not in any kind of a public forum. To some degree, Facebook is always public. It’s social media, after all. Message, email or call your cousin with the answer. Don’t post it.

Vigilance as a Way of Life

I know you’re going to hate me for a bit when you see that red STOP as you scroll through your Facebook feed. Right about now, you’re saying, “Roberta, please stop!”

That’s OK. Getting you to see and do that is my entire reason for writing this article. I want it to pop into your mind! I’d rather you be irritated with me than have your account compromised or lost entirely and expose your loved ones in the process. 😊

We must be ever more vigilant as scams and scammers become increasingly sophisticated. Your “scam antennae” should always be up and on high alert.

And yes, I know some of you will tell me that you don’t want to live like that. I understand. Neither do I, but if you want to stay safe – and for your friends and family to remain safe, too – you must be ever-vigilant, alert, and chronically suspicious.

If you see family members acting unsafely on social media, they probably aren’t aware, so please feel free to share this article.

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Which DNA Test Should I Buy? And Why?

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Which DNA test should I buy, and why?

I receive questions like this often. As a reminder, I don’t take private clients anymore, which means I don’t provide this type of individual consulting or advice. However, I’m doing the next best thing! In this article, I’m sharing the step-by-step process that I utilize to evaluate these questions so you can use the process too.

It’s important to know what questions to ask and how to evaluate each situation to arrive at the best answer for each person.

Here’s the question I received from someone I’ll call John. I’ve modified the wording slightly and changed the names for privacy.

I’m a male, and my mother was born in Charleston, SC. My maternal grandmother’s maiden name was Jones and a paternal surname was Davis. The family was supposed to have been Black, Dutch, Pennsylvania Dutch, and Scots-Irish…only once was I told I was 3/16 Indian, with Davis being 3/4 and Jones being full Indian.

Do I have enough reasonable information to buy a test, and which one?

Please note that it’s common for questions to arrive without all the information you need to provide a sound answer – so it’s up to you to ask those questions and obtain clarification.

Multiple Questions

There are actually multiple questions here, so let me parse this a bit.

  1. John never mentioned what his testing goal was.
  2. He also never exactly said how the paternal line of Davis was connected, so I’ve made an assumption. For educational purposes, it doesn’t matter because we’re going to walk through the evaluation process, which is the same regardless.
  3. John did not include a tree or a link to a tree, so I created a rudimentary tree to sort through this. I need the visuals and normally just sketch it out on paper quickly.
  4. Does John have enough information to purchase a test?
  5. If so, which test?

There is no “one size fits all” answer, so let’s discuss these one by one.

Easy Answers First

The answer to #4 is easy.

Anyone with any amount of information can purchase a DNA test. Adoptees do it all the time, and they have no prior information.

So, yes, John can purchase a test.

The more difficult question is which test, because that answer depends on John’s goals and whether he’s just looking for some quick information or really wants to delve into genealogy and learn. Neither approach is wrong.

Many people think they want a quick answer –  and then quickly figure out that they really want to know much more about their ancestors.

I wrote an article titled DNA Results – First Glances at Ethnicity and Matching for new testers, here.

Goals

Based on what John said, I’m going to presume his goals are probably:

  • To prove or disprove the family oral history of Black, Dutch, Pennsylvania Dutch (which is actually German,) Scots-Irish, and potentially Native American.
  • John didn’t mention actual genealogy, which would include DNA matches and trees, so we will count that as something John is interested in secondarily. However, he may need genealogy records to reach his primary goal.

If you’re thinking, “The process of answering this seemingly easy question is more complex than I thought,” you’d be right.

Ethnicity in General

It sounds like John is interested in ethnicity testing. Lots of people think that “the answer” will be found there – and sometimes they are right. Often not so much. It depends.

The great news is that John really doesn’t need any information at all to take an autosomal DNA test, and it doesn’t matter if the test-taker is male or female.

To calculate each tester’s ethnicity, every testing company compiles their own reference populations, and John will receive different results at each of the major companies. Each company updates their ethnicity results from time to time as well, and they will change.

Additionally, each company provides different tools for their customers.

The ethnicity results at different companies generally won’t match each other exactly, and sometimes the populations look quite different.

Normally, DNA from a specific ancestor can be found for at least 5 or 6 generations. Of course, that means their DNA, along with the DNA from all of your other ancestors is essentially combined in a communal genetic “pot” of your chromosomes, and the DNA testing company needs to sort it out and analyze your DNA for ethnicity.

DNA descended from ancestors, and their populations, further back in people’s trees may not be discerned at all using autosomal DNA tests.

A much more specific “ethnicity” can be obtained for both the Y-DNA line, which is a direct patrilineal line for men (blue arrow,) and the mitochondrial DNA line (pink arrows,) which is a direct matrilineal line for everyone, using those specific tests.

We will discuss both of those tests after we talk about the autosomal tests available from the four major genealogy DNA testing companies. All of these tools can and should be used together.

Let’s Start with Native American

Let’s evaluate the information that John provided.

John was told that he “was 3/16 Indian, with Davis being 3/4 and Jones being full Indian.”

We need to evaluate this part of his question slightly differently.

I discussed this in the article, Ancestral DNA Percentages – How Much of Them is in You?

First, we need to convert generations to 16ths.

You have two ancestors in your parent’s generation, four in your grandparents, and so forth. You have 16 great-great-grandparents. So, if John was 3/16th Native, then three of his great-great-grandparents would have been fully Native, or an equivalent percentage. In other words, six ancestors in that generation could have been half-Native. Based on what John said, they would have come from his mother’s side of the tree. John is fortunate to have that much information to work with.

He told us enough about his tree that we can evaluate the statement that he might be 3/16ths Native.

Here’s the tree I quickly assembled in a spreadsheet based on John’s information.

His father, at left, is not part of the equation based on the information John provided.

On his mother’s side, John said that Grandfather Davis is supposed to be three-quarters Native, which translates to 12/16ths. Please note that it would be extremely beneficial to find a Y-DNA tester from his Davis line, like one of his mother’s brothers, for example.

John said that his Grandmother Jones is supposed to be 100% Native, so 16/16ths.

Added together, those sum to 28/32, which reduces down to 14/16th or 7/8th for John’s mother.

John would have received half of his autosomal DNA from his mother and half from his non-Native father. That means that if John’s father is 100% non-Native, John would be half of 14/16ths or 7/16ths, so just shy of half Native.

Of course, we know that we don’t always receive exactly 50% of each of our ancestors’ DNA (except for our parents,) but we would expect to see something in the ballpark of 40-45% Native for John if his grandmother was 100% Native and his grandfather was 75%.

Using simple logic here, for John’s grandmother to be 100% Native, she would almost assuredly have been a registered tribal member, and the same if his grandfather was 75% Native. I would think that information would be readily available and well-known to the family – so I doubt that this percentage is accurate. It would be easy to check, though, on various census records during their lifetimes where they would likely have been recorded as “Indian.” They might have been in the special “Indian Census” taken and might be living on a reservation.

It should also be relatively easy to find their parents since all family members were listed every ten years in the US beginning with the 1850 census.

The simple answer is that if John’s grandparents had as much Native as reported, he would be more than 3/16th – so both of these factoids cannot simultaneously be accurate. But that does NOT mean neither is accurate.

John could be 7/8th or 40ish%, 3/16th or 18ish%, or some other percentage. Sometimes, where there is smoke, there is fire. And that seems to be the quandary John is seeking to resolve.

Would  Ethnicity/Population Tests Show This Much Native?

Any of the four major testing companies would show Native for someone whose percentage would be in the 40% or 18% ballpark.

The easiest ethnicities to tell apart from one another are continental-level populations. John also stated that he thinks he may also have Black ancestry, plus Dutch, Pennsylvania Dutch (German), and Scots-Irish. It’s certainly possible to verify that using genealogy, but what can DNA testing alone tell us?

How far back can we expect to find ethnicities descending from particular ancestors?

In this table, you can see at each generation how many ancestors you have in that generation, plus the percentage of DNA, on average, you would inherit from each ancestor.

All of the major DNA testing companies can potentially pick up small trace percentages, but they don’t always. Sometimes one company does, and another doesn’t. So, if John has one sixth-generation Native American ancestor, he would carry about 1.56% Native DNA, if any.

  • Sometimes a specific ethnicity is not found because, thanks to random recombination, you didn’t inherit any of that DNA from those ancestors. This is why testing your parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, and siblings can be very important. They share your same ancestors and may have inherited DNA that you didn’t that’s very relevant to your search.
  • Sometimes it’s not found because the reference populations and algorithms at that testing company aren’t able to detect that population or identify it accurately, especially at trace levels. Every DNA testing company establishes their own reference populations and writes internal, proprietary ethnicity analysis algorithms.
  • Sometimes it’s not found because your ancestor wasn’t Native or from that specific population.
  • Sometimes it’s there, but your population is called something you don’t expect.

For example, you may find Scandinavian when your ancestor was from England or Ireland. The Vikings raided the British Isles, so while some small amount of Scandinavian is not what you expect, that doesn’t mean it‘s wrong. However, if all of your family is from England, it’s not reasonable to have entirely Scandinavian ethnicity results.

It’s also less likely as each generation passes by that the information about their origins gets handed down accurately to following generations. Most non-genealogists don’t know the names of their great-grandparents, let alone where their ancestors were from.

Using a 25-year average generation length, by the 4th generation, shown in the chart above, you have 16 ancestors who lived approximately 100 years before your parents were born, so someplace in the mid-1800s. It’s unlikely for oral history from that time to survive intact. It’s even less likely from a century years earlier, where in the 7th generation, you have 128 total ancestors.

The best way to validate the accuracy of your ethnicity estimates is by researching your genealogy. Of course, you need to take an ethnicity test, or two, in order to have results to validate.

Ethnicity has a lot more to offer than just percentages.

Best Autosomal Tests for Native Ethnicity

Based on my experience with people who have confirmed Native ancestry, the two best tests to detect Native American ethnicity, especially in smaller percentages, are both FamilyTreeDNA and 23andMe.

Click images to enlarge

In addition to percentages, both 23andMe and FamilyTreeDNA provide chromosome painting for ethnicity, along with segment information in download files. In other words, they literally paint your ethnicity results on your chromosomes.

They then provide you with a file with the “addresses” of those ethnicities on your chromosomes, which means you can figure out which ancestors contributed those ethnicity segments.

The person in the example above, a tester at FamilyTreeDNA, is highly admixed with ancestors from European regions, African regions and Native people from South America.

Trace amounts of Native American with a majority of European heritage would appear more like this.

You can use this information to paint your chromosome segments at DNAPainter, along with your matching segments to other testers where you can identify your common ancestors. This is why providing trees is critically important – DNA plus ancestor identification with our matches is how we confirm our ancestry.

This combination allows you to identify which Native (or another ethnicity) segments descended from which ancestors. I was able to determine which ancestor provided that pink Native American segment on chromosome 1 on my mother’s side.

I’ve provided instructions for painting ethnicity segments to identify their origins in specific ancestors, here.

Autosomal and Genealogy

You may have noticed that we’ve now drifted into the genealogy realm of autosomal DNA testing. Ethnicity is nice, but if you want to know who those segments came from, you’ll need:

  • Autosomal test matching to other people
  • To identify your common ancestor with as many matches as you can
  • To match at a company who provides you with segment information for each match
  • To work with DNAPainter, which is very easy

The great news is that you can do all of that using the autosomal tests you took for ethnicity, except at Ancestry who does not provide segment information.

Best Autosomal Test for Matching Other Testers

The best autosomal test for matching may be different for everyone. Let’s look at some of the differentiators and considerations.

If you’re basing a testing recommendation solely on database size, which will probably correlate to more matches, then the DNA testing vendors fall into this order:

If you’re basing that recommendation on the BEST, generally meaning the closest matches for you, there’s no way of knowing ahead of time. At each of the four DNA testing companies, I have very good matches who have not tested elsewhere. If I weren’t in all four databases, I would have missed many valuable matches.

If you’re basing that recommendation on which vendor began testing earliest, meaning they have many tests from people who are now deceased, so you won’t find their autosomal tests in other databases that don’t accept uploads, the recommended testing company order would be:

If you’re basing that recommendation on matches to people who live in other countries, the order would be:

Ancestry and 23andMe are very distant third/fourth because they did not sell widely outside the US initially and still don’t sell in as many countries as the others, meaning their testers’ geography is more limited. However, Ancestry is also prevalent in the UK.

If you’re basing that recommendation on segment information and advanced tools that allow you to triangulate and confirm your genetic link to specific ancestors, the order would be:

Ancestry does NOT provide any segment information.

If you’re basing that recommendation on unique tools provided by each vendor, every vendor has something very beneficial that the others don’t.

In other words, there’s really no clear-cut answer for which single autosomal DNA test to order. The real answer is to be sure you’re fishing in all the ponds. The fish are not the same. Unique people test at each of those companies daily who will never be found in the other databases.

Test at or upload your DNA to all four DNA testing companies, plus GEDmatch. Step-by-step instructions for downloading your raw data file and uploading it to the DNA testing companies who accept uploads can be found, here.

Test or Upload

Not all testing companies accept uploads of raw autosomal DNA data files from other companies. The good news is that some do, and it’s free to upload and receive matches.

Two major DNA testing companies DO NOT accept uploads from other companies. In other words, you have to test at that company:

Two testing companies DO accept uploads from the other three companies. Uploads and matching are free, and advanced features can be unlocked very cost effectively.

  • FamilyTreeDNA – free matching and $19 unlock for advanced features
  • MyHeritage – free matching and $29 unlock.for advanced features

I recommend testing at both 23andMe and Ancestry and uploading one of those files to both FamilyTreeDNA and MyHeritage, then purchasing the respective unlocks.

GEDmatch

GEDmatch is a third-party matching site, not a DNA testing company. Consider uploading to GEDmatch because you may find matches from Ancestry who have uploaded to GEDmatch, giving you access to matching segment information.

Other Types of DNA

John provided additional information that may prove to be VERY useful. Both Y-DNA and mitochondrial DNA can be tested as well and may prove to be more useful than autosomal to positively identify the origins of those two specific lines.

Let’s assume that John takes an autosomal test and discovers that indeed, the 3/16th Native estimate was close. 3/16th equates to about 18% Native which would mean that three of his 16 great-great-grandparents were Native.

John told us that his Grandmother Jones was supposed to be 100% Native.

At the great-great-grandparent level, John has 16 ancestors, so eight on his mother’s side, four from maternal grandmother Jones and four from his maternal grandfather Davis.

John carries the mitochondrial DNA of his mother (red boxes and arrows,) and her mother, through a direct line of females back in time. John also carries the Y-DNA of his father (dark blue box, at left above, and blue arrows below.)

Unlike autosomal DNA which is admixed in every generation, mitochondrial DNA (red arrows) is inherited from that direct matrilineal line ONLY and never combines with the DNA of the father. Mothers give their mitochondrial DNA to both sexes of their children, but men never contribute their mitochondrial DNA to offspring. Everyone has their mother’s mitochondrial DNA.

Because it never recombines with DNA from the father, so is never “watered down,” we can “see” much further back in time, even though we can’t yet identify those ancestors.

However, more importantly, in this situation, John can test his own mitochondrial DNA that he inherited from his mother, who inherited it from her mother, to view her direct matrilineal line.

John’s mitochondrial DNA haplogroup that will be assigned during testing tells us unquestionably whether or not his direct matrilineal ancestor was Native on her mother’s line, or not. If not, it may well tell us where that specific line originated.

You can view the countries around the world where Y-DNA haplogroups are found, here, and mitochondrial haplogroups, here.

If John’s mitochondrial DNA haplogroup is Native, that confirms that one specific line is Native. If he can find other testers in his various lines to test either their Y-DNA or mitochondrial DNA, John can determine if other ancestors were Native too. If not, those tests will reveal the origins of that line, separate from the rest of his genealogical lines.

Although John didn’t mention his father’s line, if he takes a Y-DNA test, especially at the Big Y-700 level, that will also reveal the origins of his direct paternal line. Y-DNA doesn’t combine with the other parent’s DNA either, so it reaches far back in time too.

Y-DNA and mitochondrial DNA tests are laser-focused on one line each, and only one line. You don’t have to try to sort it out of the ethnicity “pot,” wondering which ancestor was or was not Native.

My Recommendation

When putting together a testing strategy, I recommend taking advantage of free uploads and inexpensive unlocks when possible.

  • To confirm Native American ancestry via ethnicity testing, I recommend testing at 23andMe and uploading to FamilyTreeDNA, then purchasing the $19 unlock. The free upload and $19 unlock are less expensive than testing there directly.
  • For matching, I recommend testing at Ancestry and uploading to MyHeritage, then unlocking the MyHeritage advanced features for $29, which is less expensive than retesting. Ancestry does not provide segment information, but MyHeritage (and the others) do.

At this point, John will have taken two DNA tests, but is now in all four databases, plus GEDmatch if he uploads there.

  • For genealogy research on John’s lines to determine whether or not his mother’s lines were Native, I recommend an Ancestry and a MyHeritage records subscription, plus using WikiTree, which is free.
  • To determine if John’s mother’s direct matrilineal female line was Native, I recommend that John order the mitochondrial DNA test at FamilyTreeDNA.
  • When ordering multiple tests, or uploading at FamilyTreeDNA, be sure to upload/order all of one person’s tests on the same DNA kit so that those results can be used in combination with each other.

Both males and females can take autosomal and mitochondrial DNA tests.

  • To discover what he doesn’t know about his direct paternal, meaning John’s surname line – I recommend the Big Y-700 test at FamilyTreeDNA.

Only males can take a Y-DNA test, so women would need to ask their father, brother, or paternal uncle, for example, to test their direct paternal line.

  • If John can find a male Davis from his mother’s line, I recommend that he purchase the Big Y-700 test at FamilyTreeDNA for that person, or check to see if someone from his Davis line may have already tested by viewing the Davis DNA Project. Like with mitochondrial DNA, the Y-DNA haplogroup will tell John the origins of his direct Davis male ancestor – plus matching of course. He will be able to determine if they were Native, and if not, discover the origins of the Davis line.
  • For assigning segments to ancestors and triangulating to confirm descent from a common ancestor, I recommend 23andMe, MyHeritage, FamilyTreeDNA and GEDmatch, paired with DNAPainter as a tool.

Shopping and Research List

Here are the tests and links recommended above:

More Than He Asked

I realize this answer is way more than John expected or even knew to ask. That’s because there is often no “one” or “one best” answer. There are many ways to approach the question after the goal is defined, and the first “answer” received may be a bit out of context.

For example, let’s say John has 2% Native ancestry and took a test at a vendor who didn’t detect it. John would believe he had none. But a different vendor might find that 2%. If it’s on his mother’s direct matrilineal line, mitochondrial DNA testing will confirm, or refute Native, beyond any doubt, regardless of autosomal ethnicity results – but only for that specific ancestral line.

Autosomal DNA can suggest Native across all your DNA, but Y-DNA and mitochondrial DNA confirm it for each individual ancestor.

Even when autosomal testing does NOT show Native American, or African, for example, it’s certainly possible that it’s just too far back in time or has not been passed down during random recombination, but either Y-DNA or mitochondrial DNA will unquestionably confirm (or refute) the ancestry in question if the right person is tested.

This is exactly why I attempt to find a cousin who descends appropriately from every ancestor and provide testing scholarships. It’s important to obtain Y-DNA and mitochondrial DNA information for each ancestor.

Which Test Should I Order?

What steps will help you decide which test or tests to take?

  1. Define your testing goal.
  2. Determine if your Y-DNA or mitochondrial DNA will help answer the question.
  3. Determine if you need to find ancestors another generation or two back in time to get the most benefit from DNA testing. In our example, if John discovered that both of his grandparents were enrolled tribal members, that’s huge, and the tribe might have additional information about his family.
  4. Subscribe to Ancestry and MyHeritage records collections as appropriate to perform genealogical research. Additional information not only provides context for your family, it also provides you with the ability to confirm or better understand your ethnicity results.
  5. Extend your tree so that you can obtain the best results from the three vendors who support trees; Ancestry, FamilyTreeDNA, and MyHeritage. All three use trees combined with DNA tests to provide you with additional information.
  6. Order 23andMe and Ancestry autosomal DNA tests.
  7. Either test at or upload one of those tests to MyHeritage, FamilyTreeDNA, and GEDmatch.
  8. If a male, order the Big Y-700 DNA test. Or, find a male from your ancestral line who has taken or will take that test. I always offer a testing scholarship and, of course, share the exciting results!
  9. Order a mitochondrial DNA test for yourself and for appropriately descended family members to represent other ancestors. Remember that your father (and his siblings) all carry your paternal grandmother’s mitochondrial DNA. That’s often a good place to start after testing your own DNA.
  10. If your parents or grandparents are alive, or aunts and uncles, test their autosomal DNA too. They are (at least) one generation closer to your ancestors than you are and will carry more of your ancestors’ DNA.
  11. Your siblings will carry some of your ancestors’ DNA that you do not, so test them too if both of your parents aren’t available for testing.

Enjoy!!!

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Journaling June – Are You In?

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I have two things for you today. First, a bit of housekeeping, followed by a fun challenge for June.

Housekeeping

I try to stay a few articles ahead, with a few in process at all times. Right now, I’ve burned through what I had in reserve. For the next month or so, I will probably be doing shorter-than-normal update articles.

I was fine through the filming, but I managed to catch some ugly crud that has been kicking my butt. No, it’s not Covid, according to four tests, but it’s long and stubbornly hanging on.

Who has time to be sick???

Later in June, I have a planned trip.

Plus, I’m still working. My backlog of emails is daunting and growing.

Then, Sunday happened.

I now have a completely unplanned trip that has not been firmed up quite yet.

It’s a funeral. I lost someone near and dear to my heart, with no warning.

I’m reeling.

I’m struggling between gratitude for having her in my life and grief for all of the things left undone.

I will write about this blow, eventually, but right now, I have to get past the crud and process some of this grief. It’s a beautiful story, truly, but I at least need to get through the funeral first. Being sick has complicated everything, as has distance.

As genealogists, we deal with birth and death every day. But when the Grim Reaper sneaks one in on us like this, it’s entirely different.

One of the hardest things to do is enter that death date in our genealogy software. It’s just so final and always speaks to what might have been – but can no longer be.

If anything, this death has brought home even more succinctly how important it is to make spending time with family members a priority. Just being together and talking.

What stories do they know that you don’t? Or maybe the same stories but from a different perspective, with missing details. Do they have photos that you might not? Or documents? Don’t presume that you have the same memories or perspective about the same event or family member. You’ll be surprised!

What is your favorite thing about that person? Your most cherished memories?

Here’s my absolute favorite memory with Cheryl. I’ll tell you this story soon.

You don’t have to wait until you get that call to write those stories – or tell them.

Journaling June

My friend, Appalachian storyteller Stephen “Doc” Hollen has been writing and publishing a numbered chapter of a “book,” here, every day for more than three years – at about 3:15 every morning. Actually, by now, it’s several books, but I digress.

Ole Doc Hollen is an amazing author, and by now, his loyal readers know all of these characters who live on Limestone Ridge. We can hardly wait for each morning to read the next chapter – and he often leaves us hanging despite our whining and cajoling. Sometimes we forget those “people” aren’t “real,” yet they are in a sense. The Carpenter family and neighbors are a mashup of his ancestors and people in his ancestral neighborhood.

In Doc’s recent chapters, journals of the Carpenter brothers, the original settlers, had been found in a trunk. Aunt Bess was reading and transcribing them, expanding the family genealogy. Then, miraculously, another cousin appears out of no place and…

See, now you’re hooked too.

Journaling June

Let’s just say that Doc Hollen suggested that we all participate in “Journaling June” where everyone journals during the month of June.

That’s not a huge commitment, right!

And you can do it on your own terms, in your own way.

Ironically, I was already working on an article about recording experiences.

Let me give you some ideas.

Journaling Ideas

A journal can be something as easy as a few notes every day, or something in-depth where you share your deepest thoughts. If you can’t write about yourself, write to yourself or to someone else.

Or maybe tell a story from the perspective of someone close to you.

Or focus on a favorite or specific topic.

You can also compare and contrast your life to that of an ancestor. Your upcoming June plus a June in the life of your parent or grandparent.

Or your early life and life now. Expectations versus where life’s path took you.

Here is a list of a few ideas:

  • Food
  • The kitchen
  • Chores
  • Home
  • Work
  • Mealtime
  • Hygiene
  • Utilities
  • Clothes
  • Laundry
  • Education
  • Teachers
  • Weather
  • Transportation
  • Your First Car
  • Performances
  • Passions
  • Passtimes and hobbies
  • Religion
  • Health
  • Challenges
  • Charity
  • Best Traits
  • Legacy
  • Births
  • Family Members
  • Funeral Customs
  • Heartbreak
  • First Love
  • Weddings
  • Pranks
  • Inspiration
  • Pets
  • Turning Points
  • Gratitude
  • Travel
  • Vacations
  • Secrets
  • Advice to others
  • Advice to your younger self
  • DNA
  • Holidays

I’m sure you can think of more topics to add. What would you enjoy?

What do you wish your ancestors had written about and left for you in a journal?

Will you join me in Journaling June?

Find your favorite pen and something you would enjoy writing in for a month. I use either legal pads or, sometimes, on a trip, I journal in a nice little leather portfolio binder with a removable pad. It makes me feel like an explorer!

Of course, you could photo-journal, collage, blog, paint, simply type into a document or just about anything else you can imagine.

You can even start with Memorial Day and share your family customs along with what you’re doing this year. What was the funniest thing that ever happened at a Memorial Day event in your family?

Tell me in the comments about what you’re doing for Journaling June.

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