hey genealogy peas

I don't have a TV right now, so I can only watch shows once they are online. I haven't even heard of the new one, so no help from me on that. YES! - exactly right.

I'm from a pretty densely populated suburban area. It was once the rural area of a small city. Almost all area births were at the hospital in that city or at the next hospital much further out in suburbia. (Probably still are, actually.) Absolutely the births at the city hospital were in the city newspaper and I'm pretty sure the ones in the next local hospital were too.

You might get a clue which larger area to check in (if you don't know already) by looking at the city directories. See which areas your Dad's birth town was grouped under. Mine was combined into the city directory with initials of the different boroughs after the addresses. (In other words, they weren't separated out by town within the city directory.)







I had my DNA tested as well as my mother and my son. I'm looking for my father's grandmother, especially. 

I'm from 1/4 Colonial stock on my mother's side (going back to the 1680's) with the other 3/4 British. What I know of my father's is Colonial & British as well.  

I've been matched to a ridiculously high number of people (from all the Colonial matches) and I've been working really hard trying to figure out how their Colonial ancestors are somehow mine as well. The locations are way way way off for the ancestor spots I'm trying to fill. 


I just found out about a Google extension that scans all your matches for you and then you're supposed to be able to compare them??? I'm not quite sure what the results will show. It's taken several days to scan my results and my mom's and it just now finished. 



Anyway..... Until I got Mom's results back, I was doing surname searches in my matches and plotting out the different matches by hand from common names. It's more than a bit disturbing to see how I must be somehow related to Daniel Boone and other famous people without finding out about my ggrandmother. My standard comment has been "Oh, come on!"    

After several DECADES of search by my cousins and my late father, I *may*, just possibly might, finally have a connection with my ggrandmother.

And how did I get a clue of where to look next, you might ask? Through all that DNA, right?

Nope.

I manage some family pages at FindAGrave. I took photos of family stones and put them on the correct pages and linked everyone together. The family is scattered in different cemeteries, so it is very confusing. My Grandfather is buried with his mother, my GGrandmother, and their combined stone is in the lot belonging to another family of the same Lastname surname that I've been told were cousins. (I only have an educated guess how, at this point. Nothing definite.)

The stone has a distinctive inscription. It reads like it was done by my grandmother when my grandfather died. (GGrandmother died when Grandfather was about 10, and Grandfather died when my Father was about 10.) 

Inscription:  Mother - Jane Lastname, Died Mar 1, 1879
Husband - George S Lastname, 1869-1931

Anyway, simple but very distinctive.


What turns up in my hints for my GGrandfather? This photo. (Mind you, he's not even buried in the same state, but there you have it.)

Somehow, I was able to follow the link back to another tree that is set on private! at Ancestry and there it is attached to what just may be my GGrandmother's family!

That family with her most probable surname was in a close enough area to be realistically possible - which is FAR different from all the results I've so far come up with from DNA.

I think I overwhelmed the poor woman who's tree I seem to have had access to without her knowledge when I wrote to her. She has worked the history from my GGrandmother's family surname side, so that is fantastic - BUT - she didn't tell me how she linked her person to my GGrandmother. So, it's no more than a hint to me at this point. 


My GGrandmother is listed as Jane. My cousin thinks her name was Mary Jane but she went by Jane. I'd be a lot more likely to believe that if my GGrandfather hadn't remarried after her death and this second wife was named Mary Jane.

Mary Jane Lastname is buried with her first husband in an unmarked grave in the same cemetery as my GGrandmother & Grandfather, so there's no denying that there were two distinct women. (Something I wasn't sure of at one point.)

This other tree has a Mary Jane MostProbableMaidenName as married to my GGrandfather. No documentation on a marriage.

She also has listed as their children my grandfather, his brother and their step-brother from the second wife. 

So.... really. Not much more than a clue at this point. BUT - it's the opposite direction that I had been looking to. They were to the west and I was looking to the east without finding anything. The areas and dates actually fit in quite well.


I don't know how much sense any of this is making, but if this turns out to be true, it is a HUGE answer to the main question we've had as a family since the 1980's!


And all because I took a photo and posted it at FindAGrave.


I know these photos are supposed to remain the property of the person who took them. Ancestry gives thumbnails of these photos and then links back to the various pages where people copy the photos at will. (I do the same thing and it's a big reason why my main trees are private at Ancestry. Publishing them on a public tree without permission at Ancestry is breaking copyright law.) But I put these headstone photos up at FindAGrave with no expectation that they would remain mine.  Frankly, I think they need to change the policy at FindAGrave so that publishing photos at that site is agreeing to give the public free access to them. 

One more thing, while I'm so talkative at the moment.... 

It's kinda nice and kinda eerie to see the screenshot of a page you've made at FindAGrave turn up in unknown trees at Ancestry.

It's really weird when they take your information and still get it wrong in their tree. It makes me want to ask them... "Didn't you read how these people are connected? Whatsa matta you?"



OK. I'm done. You can all go back to talking about TV shows now.