Hunting History - Finding Family

This past week Ancestry has, quite controversially (at least in my Italian Genealogy Group) "updated" our DNA story.  I have previously done a blog entry about mine, but to compare here the old analysis: Great Britain: 69% Southern Europe: 10% Scandinavia: 7% Western England: 3% Caucasus: 1% Ireland >1% Russia >1% And the new analysis: England, Wales, Northern Europe: 77% Ireland/Scotland: 11% Sweden: 9% Germanic Europe 3% Now, at first glance this actually does seem to fit my own research better.  But there's something really important missing, and that's my Northern Italian DNA.  Before, it was in there, you just had to expand on the tabs a bit, but that 10% Southern Europe is my Northern Italian.  Now, it's gone.  Many in the group have said their previous Italian DNA matches have been replaced with French.  Now luckily I didn't have that happen, but just disappearing altogether isn't much of a consolation prize. If you're inte...

My maiden name is Heigert, (in English; Hi-gert, in German; Hee-kert) and on that side I am a third generation American.  I feel pretty strongly about immigrants, if we hadn't been allowed in I wouldn't be here, although both my Italian and German immigrant ancestors came here via Ellis Island.  I won't get into the political debate, that's not what this blog is about.  Instead, lets get into my immigrant's stories. My great grandfather, Roman Heigert was born 8th of August 1867 in Waldulm, Baden-Wurttemburg, Germany to 27 year old Benedict Heigert and 22 year old Paulina Schmelzle.  Benedict and Paulina had married the 29th of May 1865 in Waldulm, and had one child before Roman, brother Gottfried Frederick born in 1866.   Benedict & Pauina's Marriage Bann Roman's Birth Record I won't even pretend to know how someone from Alton Illinois got in touch with the Heigert's in Waldulm, but family record has it that the Springman Distri...

A census record can either be your brick-wall busting best friend or a migraine inducing annoyance.   I'll be using a clients tree as an example, as I've recently had a very bad census as well as a very good one. Debbie's (my client) third great grandfather is Felix Stacey, born in Kentucky in 1823.  In 1880 we find him in Perry co, Kentucky with his wife and children.  Now I have a marriage license and multiple other census records, so I know for a fact who his family is.  Felix married Cynthia Couch in 1850, and they had nine children: Polly Ann, John, Farmer, Peter, Granville, Nancy, Rachel, Alford, and Lucinda.  On the 1880 census, not all are living and not all live at home, but here's what the census reads: Felix Stacy (suname spelled wrong) wife: Sinthy Stacy (not even close) children: Former, Loucinda, Granville, Rachel, Nancy, and Alford. (Well they got 4 of the 6 right anyway....) If I hadn't known the names of the children from previous ...

So today I was going to talk about census reports....but instead I'm going to talk about Marilyn Monroe! Lovely, tortured soul that she was, Marilyn was my 8th cousin 2x removed.  That means that she's eight and I'm ten steps away from a common ancestor, Robert Rivers (1701-1792.)  But unlike my relationship to the Queen of England, this one isn't through marriage, it's through my own line.  And I rather like Miss Monroe, so I thought I'd share this one. Robert Rivers is my 8th great grandfather on my Weller (mom's) side.  I actually hadn't gotten that far, so it was news to me and now I have lots of new ancestors to work through on that line.  This info all came through an app called We're Related, and I'll get back to that in a minute. Robert Rivers (1701-1792) My 9th great grandfather John Rivers (1736-1774) - Robert's son, my 8th great grandfather John Rivers (1757-1820) - John's son, my 7th great grandfather Susannah Rivers (...

I have been searching for a client's grandmother FOREVER.  OK maybe that's not entirely true, but she's been a big focus of our search since we started.  Debbie (client) was told grandma's name was Valentine Poole and she came from England. That's all we knew. Now this family doesn't share secrets.  No one talks.  It's all a big ol mystery.  I love those. I knew "Valentine" was married to Debbie's grandfather, David George, and I knew he had a son, Edward David George.  We knew David had died around 1980 and was buried in Florida.  Let the search begin. I searchedandsearchedandsearched..... I found a record hit that was a maybe.  You'd be surprised how many David Bryants there are.  One married a Dorothy Valentine, and I wasn't even positive enough to save the record onto his file, but I kept it in memory, just in case. I searched ancestry many times for Valentine Poole, David Bryant, Edward David....all nothing.  I hit family...

It's been said that everyone on Earth is separated by just six degrees of separation.  Now, this is referring more to the fact that people are connected to everyone else by these degrees, in other words, in terms of who you know, each person is connected to every other person by an average of six degrees.  Say I know 100 people.  If each of my friends also know 100 people, then I'm now technically connected to 10,000 people.  Give each of them 100 friends and you've got 1,000,000 people.  Now that the internet and Facebook and networking sites have come along, that number has actually shrunk to 3.5 degrees. In genealogy though, it's a little different.  I've heard that everyone, EVERYONE on Earth is separated by fewer than 100 degrees, although of course I now cannot find that fact to validate it.  The way to determine connection or separation is to take a person (any old person will do) and find a common ancestor.  Trust me, they're there. Then...

No other county in Kentucky (a state notorious for its feuds- Hatfield-McCoy, anyone?) was as bloody as Clay County.  An extended feud called the "Cattle War"is thought to have been the reason for forming Clay co in 1806, created so legislators could have more jurisdiction over the area of the so-called "war", which was the headwaters of the three forks of the Kentucky River. Clay co in early 1800 was also famous for their salt.  General Hugh Lowry White was not the first to open a salt works there, but with his slaves, money, and entrepreneurship he certainly conquered the business.  Hugh came to what would eventually be known as Clay co in 1804 from Pennsylvania, after his already wealthy older brother James bought bought the Outlaw/Collins Salt Works.  Daniel Garrard showed up in 1806, and the two quickly made Goose Creek salt famous.  Hugh not only produced copious amounts of salt; he and wife Catherine Cain also produced a "remarkable family of over-ac...

The only thing I really wanted for Christmas was the Ancestry DNA test. Could I afford it myself? Absolutely. Is it more fun to receive it was a gift? Yup. So I'm sure by now everyone knows the premise: Spit in a cup, send it in, and wait. AndwaitandwaitANDWAIT.  I actually had some kind of error happen the first time around, so after waiting six weeks or so I got to wait AGAIN while they tested a new sample.  But let me tell you, when that email comes in telling you it's ready, the excitement is totally worth it. My Ancestry DNA results came back as follows: Great Britain: 69% Europe South: 10% Scandinavia: 7% Europe East: 7% Europe West: 3% Caucasus: 1% Ireland/Scotland/Wales: <1% Finland/Northwest Russia: <1% European Jewish: <1% At first these results threw me a bit.  I know my Nona was 100% Italian, and my grandpa was 100% German. I also know we're heavily German/Dutch on my mom's side.  So first I learned a few things. Apparently even ...

I once asked Nona if we had any mobsters in our family. I was young, and all I knew about Italians where what I saw in the movies, and I was all about the 20's.  Mobsters were cool.  We lived in the Midwest, Al Capone had his hands all over our state, even in our little part of it.  We had the "Moo-tel" and the Coliseum.  We had rum runner tunnels under the town streets.  I would have loved to have a member of the family be a member of a family. She told me that she was told that "Uncle Tony" wasn't necessarily a mob member, but that she'd heard quite the story about him.  Tony lived in Detroit, and the story I was told was that there was a parade, and Tony reached out an touched an American flag and was shot for it by an officer or a guard of some kind.  Cousin Louis Barra (fellow researcher) remarked that Tony was a "very fancy dresser" and a "strong member of the Italian-American society" in Detroit.  Truth? We didn't know.  ...

I'm going to start this one off a little different, because it's starts in the present, instead of the past.  Last week or so, in this very small world of ours, I, hailing from Central Illinois and only recently moving to Sarasota Florida, met a young woman about my age who's last name is Weller; my mom's maiden name and the most extensive branch on my family tree.  We got to talking, and her family is from Maryland, one of the first places 'we' settled.  Eventually she and I will connect not just with each other, but also the dots from her lineage to mine.  But that's later.  I said, "Did you know there's a Weller pottery? It was pretty famous." She replied with, "Did you know there's Weller whiskey?"  I did, in fact.  I also know it's founder is my second cousin six times removed (although I can't tell you what that means.)  I told my mom (the official Weller, haha) and she wanted a picture with said whiskey.  Picture,...

This post will go hand in hand with my last, 'Louis Barra in Saipan.'  I concentrated more on Lousi himself on that one, but this is my search to find the owner of the other photo, of a Phillip Rey.  I know only a few things; he woud have been in the same Army unit as Louis (my cousin) and Jerry Olivera's (owner of the photo) dad.  On the photo Mr Olivera scrawled Phillip Rey - KY Killed in (?)  We assumed he was killed in Saipan, but his name isn't on any of the records of KIA there, nor could Mr Olivera find his name on the Wall. I've taken to facebook for help searching, and today I'm doing some digging.  Just on the offchance I find something, this will kind of just chronicle the methods I use. I started with a search on the WWII KIA/WIA list and found nothing under army. I went to ancestry.com and searched, finding a Phillip Ray on a 1940 census, living in Detroit but being born in Kentucky 1922, in his Freshman year in high school living with parents Ga...

It would be an understatement to say that Louis Barra launched my genealogy obsession.  At some point, probably some fifteen years ago, I was handed a paper book, the Barra family history.  You'll have to forgive me if this post is not as descriptive as I'd prefer it to be, I've recently moved and said book is buried in a stack of unpacked boxes. It wasn't the most comprehensive of family histories, but considering that Louis had built it in an age before ancestry.com, familysearch, or even the internet, it's a pretty impressive piece of work.  He did what I can't do, went to the source and talked to the older generations of relatives. I bring this up not just to reminisce on my own introduction to the time suck that is family history research, but because I received a rather random email from a Jerry Olivera at the beginning of January about Louis; "I have a photo taken in early 1940s of a Louis (Lou) Barra. My father had the photo from his Army days i...