My DNA Journey (part 3)

So Im adopted (part 3)

I told my dad's sister about my thoughts of Lee being my real dad, and she stated, he was so happy when I came home from the hospital, and she had never seen him so happy.  It helped to add and bolster my idea of him being my real father.


I talked her into taking the DNA test.  I am the manager of her test and after 8 weeks at Ancestry, the results were in...

She and I were NOT related...Lee was just my adopted dad, and not my blood... square one again.

Now,  I've been doing genealogy since I was 17.   I have always loved puzzles and mysteries, and I was going to solve them. At 17 I had a few mysteries to find

1.  Who was my real parents
2.  Where are my adopted mom's girls (4 in all)

All I could research was my adopted line, and so I poured my heart and soul into it.  I used FTM, back when Broderband owned it.  I had all the disks, I used ancestry, roots web, message boards, etc.

I had a good tree at this point, and I had a major brick wall.  It was Margaret Schneider, wife of my 2nd great grand father.  Her marriage certificate had her name and my 2nd great grand father Jacob Debe on it. That was it.  No parents names no siblings, nothing.

So I searched, and searched and searched.  I looked through every single page of every census in Massillon, Ohio and there was no Margaret Schneider. This woman was my brick wall.

This became #3 on my list of mysteries.  I figured I would never find out about her or her family.  The line had stopped.  I searched for over 20 years and nothing.

 UNTIL.....

Remember my dad's sister who took the DNA test?  Well I got an email in 2016 from a DNA match on her DNA.  I looked at the DNA matches on ancestry, and found the only name they matched on was Schneider.  Schneider?  My 2nd Great grandma on my adopted tree?  So I looked further and all she had on her tree was a Philip Schneider, no Margaret.

We emailed back and forth, and I told her I had a Margaret Schneider, and that her last name was where the DNA matched.  She stated Philip had a sister named Margaret.  OK, my hope is building...

She looks through her handwritten papers given to her from a family member, and a few days later she tells me she has found an entry stating Philip's sister Margaret married a man named Jacob Debe.

The brick wall came tumbling down...I found my Margaret's family (adopted or not) I had been searching for her for 30 years, she was my family.

I only wish my dad were alive to know I broke down the brick wall.

So I continue researching in 2017, with a new found hope to break down more brick walls, as I build a list of other relatives to test to move further in my research.











will be linked after articles post


part 1
part 2

My DNA journey (part 2)

So I'm adopted (part 2)

Last week I talked bout being adopted and taking the ancestry test.

Here's the back story:

My adopted mom had been married prior to marrying my adopted father.  according to her (remember there are 3 sides to every story (his side, her side and the truth)  All I had was her side...

Her ex was powerful, and threatened her with all kinds of things, and to a young 22 year old, she was scared, so she let him take her girls (2 of them) and she never saw them again.  She would tell me stories all the time abut the girls and how she wanted to find them, well this was back in the 70s and 80s and searching for people was harder then than it is now.  But that didn't stop me.


While I looked for my real parents, I also looked secretly for her girls.  I had a few leads, but they were dead ends... My mom died in 1989, and I continued to look, scouring message boards on Ancestry, and roots web.  sending emails, and looking through records...NOTHING....


Fast forward to 2005 or so, and I get an email form a cousin who states she found the girls.  So I tell my older "sister" remember she is my adopted mom's daughter an probably no blood relation to me unless.....



Well in 2012 she offers to have us all (her, her sister and me) take a DNA test and she is going to pay for it.  This will prove if I am really part of the family or if I am just the "adopted daughter" of Jean.

So the DNA test was sent in, and 6-8 weeks later,  the results are in...no DNA match to my 2 sisters from my adopted mom.  So there goes the theory that I belongs to one of Jean's sisters.  But my "sisters" both said, we don't care what the DNA says, you are still our sister. 

I questioned my father, Lee, many times and he would just say I don't know, your mother handled the whole thing.  I believed him, as she was the one who handled everything in the family.

I questioned aunts on both sides, and every claimed to know nothing, so I was back to square one.

In 2011,  I lost my father.  He was my last hope of getting any info on my birth family.  But his determination to not tell me anything, made me question (at 48 years old) if he was really my birth father, and one of my childhood fantasies were really true.

Next week the continuation of my DNA story and what I find...







will be linked after articles post






part 1
part 3

2017 A new year and new stories

Where did the past year go?

2016 came and went fairly quickly it seems, as it is now 2017 (nine days in)

I didn't reach all of my goals, but that's o.k. as it is a new year, so I get to try and complete them.


I'm going to try harder this year to blog on a more consistent basis. At least once a month.


I'm back researching my genealogy and several family lines (adopted and biological lines) as I help my daughter trace her dad's biological lines and his step father's lines.

So I plan on being fairly busy this year.


please leave me a message if there is any topic you want me to talk about.  I have been researching for over 30 years, so I do have some tricks and tips.


also pop over to my you tube channel, where you will find videos I have done to help with tips and tricks on using tools with in your pc.

Do Over -Week one Round 3

This week starts the third round of the Genealogy Do- Over.

The Do- Over is where you look at how you have been researching, your habits both good and bad, and the research documents you have.

Each week you have a list of "to do" items for you to think about, review, then evaluate how you can make the items more effective in your research.

A foundation is always the most important thing to establish so I decided to create a webinar to help us understand why designing the filing system is paramount before adding/renaming and filing our documents and photos for our genealogy proof.

Feel fre to have a look at the webinar, as it also will apply to any organization task you set out to "do over"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZIz0y_9f0L4

Genealogy Tool Box

Genealogy Tool Box

Week 5 (I think) was about building/creating a genealogy tool box.  A virtual place to store all your websites (outside of the top sites like ancestry, fold3, family search)

Well I've dabbled in all of the options mentioned in this week's topic.

First and the most difficult (IMO) is the external list method.

This is where you keep a separate sheet in excel /or word or worse on paper to keep all of your links.

For me, this method is cumbersome way to keep track.  One would have to take the spreadsheet with them (or have it online somewhere) and if storing it online is the goal, there are much easier ways than a spreadsheet or document. Another thing to think about is, does the computer you will be using somewhere else, have the software to open the document/spreadsheet. Even with Google docs, some public computers are blocking the use of google docs, so now we have this wonderful list of places to search, but alas, we don't have access.

Now let's move on to what most people would say is obvious, a browser's bookmarks.  While they work great for a one computer use, however with the new updates coming out for browsers, bookmarks may be portable.

One of the suggestions was to build a weebly site, which I tried, and even with my website building background, I found it cumbersome and hard to manipulate the book marks I already had. So I scrapped that after about a week of beating my head against the wall.

Way back in the day I came across a website I absolutely loved.  It was called back flip.  It was a site you logged into and you could log the sites you visited with the click of a button.  There was a place to give the site a name, a description as well as the link.  This was any computer you went to, all you had ot do was log into back flip and poof! there were all your links.  I loved back flip and promoted it to everyone, this was "cloud computing" in its infancy.  I'm sad to report, back flip fell by the wayside.

So fast forward a few years and we now have Icrumz.

 

This setup is similar to back flip.  It is a website where you set up a free account, and then you drag a icon to your toolbar.

Icrumz icon

Any website you visit, can be added to Icrumz, by clicking on that icon. So I can be on face book, see a link I want to save, click on the link, then click on the icon.  The links in Icrumz can be moved around with in a folder, or across folders.  If you are at another pc, just log onto Icrumz and your links are there, drag the icon to the top of the tool bar, and you can save additional websites you find.


So if you want something easy to use, with no learning curve, Icrumz is the answer.

Is this a BSO (Bright Shiny Object)?

The movie "UP!" was about a spastic dog who couldn't focus....Squirrel!

So Ive been working on my genealogy Do over...learning a lot, and sharing with my daughter who is now 18, but has always been there to help me since she was 10-11. She would go with me and help look up obituaries I received from the RAOGK requests in my area. She was bitten early. She loved helping me find people, and she loved finding and reading the old newspaper articles on the microfilm readers. Now she is tracing her dad's side of her tree CORRECTLY with the Do Over project, but I digress!!!!! Squirrel!

On our Facebook  page, there has been many discussions about the infamous"Spreadsheet" made by Thomas MacEntee, offered for free here.   Thomas has even allowed us to edit and modify it to our liking. But many of our genealogists are not used to Excel, or how it works, so the teacher in me comes out, and I start creating short videos and posting them to youtube.

I am seeing a theme here, I love to help people.  Is this my BSO?  I guess it will depend on if I can still do my genealogy and assist others in theirs. 


Time will tell......Squirrel!

Interviewing myself

I think this went back to Week 2 (ya I am a bit out of order...lol)  

So today, I decided to start my interview after watching a webinar on timelines.  I use FTM, and couldn't for the life of me remember seeing a timeline.  Well there is one, but it is not as cool as the one in Legacy 8.

So yes I down loaded legacy, and started my timeline.

I did basic things, like where we lived and where I went to school.  Dad was in the military so we moved a lot.  I then added my military career moves.  I can tell you future generations will have a tough time tracking me, from Alaska to North Carolina and every where in between including overseas tours.  WHEW!!!!  Now I don't have all the details (like exact dates, or addresses) but mom was good about keeping up my school memories book, so I will dig that out to finish off my interview.  And well there are a few more highlights of my life I want to add, like when I graduated college, got married, had my babies, to name a few.

What I don't like about Legacy (or haven't found yet) is when I type in a city, the software doesn't give me the county automatically, where ancestry does.   Mind you I am using the FREE version. 

However I LOVE the timeline in Legacy, mainly due to the historical events it has.  It seems to be more complete than the one in Ancestry.

My challenge to everyone is to sit down and interview yourself...and not just for dates and names, and places, but memories and stories too.  There are programs to record your voice to dictate these stories to be attached to your family tree.  What a legacy that would be for your grandchildren's grandchildren.