The Mystery of Happy Jack

The journey began with my husband’s DNA results, utilized through ancestry.com, to track down his biological parents. Within 2 months time I had found them, and my husband was able to meet his mother and half-siblings. A few months after that, we spoke with his paternal uncle, and after a year he and his father started chatting as well, via email.

To find his biological family I researched all of the cousin's family trees that he was a DNA match with, and then started creating a family tree for my husband based on all the family members his cousins had in common. By the time I had confirmation as to who his parents were, I had a lot of his family tree already completed. However his paternal line proved to be more of an enigma.

It starts with a man named “Happy Jack” Walker, my husband’s Great-Grandfather. There is no family history that has been passed down preceding this man, as far as I know. So let’s begin this tale with the paper trail he left behind, and what I do know:
This man appeared on records for the first time in 1906, registering to vote in San Francisco, CA stating that he was 24, and worked as a “peddler”. I am not sure if they had to show proof of age during this time, and since issuing a birth certificate was not standardized in the United States until 1902, I am not sure how he could have proved it. This was the same year as the great San Francisco Earthquake, when “devastating fires broke out in the city that lasted for several days, destroying about 28,000 buildings. As a result of the quake and fires, over 3,000 people died and over 80% of San Francisco was destroyed. The death toll from the earthquake and resulting fire is the greatest loss of life from a natural disaster in California's history.” - Wikipedia

In May of 1907 he married a Portuguese girl named Therese Gomes. He put his official name as “Happy Jack” Walker on the marriage registration information. He doesn’t list his age. I am not sure if any documentation was needed during this era to marry. They had a son together, my husband’s Grandfather, Raymond, born the next year in September. On the 1910 US Federal Census, any record of them as individuals, or as a couple, are nowhere to be found, but their son is found living with her parents in Alameda, CA. She is found again in 1920 remarried, and the son, Raymond, is living with her under her married last name.

Happy Jack is next found on record in November of 1918 marrying a Russian woman, Martha Mohr, in Vancouver, WA. At this time he lists his age as 33, and his profession as a Theatrical Professional. I don’t know if, at this time, any documentation was even required to get married in Washington State. He lists his name as just Jack Walker on the marriage registration. He says that his father is from Ireland and his mother is from Scotland (and lists their supposed names). In 1920 Happy Jack and Martha are residing in Oregon, they have a daughter together born in 1919, but there is also a Happy Jack Walker Jr. living with them that was born in 1915 in Oregon. (Was Happy Jack Jr. born out of wedlock to Martha, or was he a son of Therese?) On this US Federal Census of 1920, Happy Jack lists his age as 33 (although it is 2 years later), born in New York, states that his father is from Scotland and that his mother is from New York. He is working as an Advertising Agent in a Theatrical Company, and says he never attended school.

This couple must have divorced before 1926, because she had remarried by then, and he had moved back to California. He is found residing in San Francisco, CA in 1927, and his occupation is a “Theater Performer”. In 1929 he is found living in Sacramento, CA working as an “Actor”, and that same year he married a woman from California named Georgiana. On the 1930 US Federal Census, the daughter is found with her mother Martha, and the son is found with Happy Jack in San Francisco (which makes me believe he wasn’t Martha’s son). On the Census he lists his age as 35 (even though it has been 12 years since he was supposedly 33 when he got married), born in New York, states that he was 16 at the time of his first marriage in 1907 even though at time he was saying he was 25. Under “military experience” he says “WW”, but I can find no record of him, under any variation of this name, even signing up for the draft. He also states now that his father is from England, his mother was born in the USA, and his occupation is working in Advertisement. By this time, his first born son, Raymond, who had stayed with his mother, Therese, has married and has 2 daughters of his own, and is still residing in Alameda, CA.

In 1932, after the beginning of the Great Depression, Happy Jack is still residing in San Francisco but his occupation is “Bill Poster”, which is far cry from the title of “Theatrical Performer” or working for a Theatre Company. It is a more humble description of how he made ends meet, and a statement of the hard times he was living in. His son, Happy Jack Jr., joined the Marines in 1935, and sadly died the following year at the young age of 21. In November of 1938 he applied for Social Security under the name Jack Walker Sr. (dropped the “Happy” officially), and gives his birthday as July 16th of 1891 in New York. He gives his parents names, but they are different than the names he gave in 1918.

On the 1940 US Federal Census his name is just Jack Walker. He is still residing in San Francisco, still married, and states that he was born about 1891 (49 years old) in New York. He is now listed as just a “laborer” for his occupation. He also says he only attended school up to 5th grade (putting him around the age of 10), which makes you wonder what he was doing from age 10 until he got married at the age of 16/17, started lying about his age to appear older, and had taken on the stage name of “Happy Jack”. 

From this point on it looks like he was taking odd labor jobs to make ends meet. He is found in 1942 filling out a draft card for WWII under the name Jack Walker Sr. He states his employer is W.P.A. (Works Progress Administration -was an ambitious employment and infrastructure program created by President Roosevelt in 1935, during the bleakest years of the Great Depression. Over its eight years of existence, the WPA put roughly 8.5 million Americans to work. Perhaps best known for its public works projects, the WPA also sponsored projects in the arts – the agency employed tens of thousands of actors, musicians, writers and other artists. ). He lists his birthday as July 16th of 1889 in New York (making him 53). 

Up until this point the one consistent piece of information has always been that he was born in New York, and on 2 legal documents his birthday is July 16th (but again without a birth certificate I assume agencies in the early 1900’s were just taking people’s word for it?). The last known employment he had was in 1943, and he says he is a “Ship Dock Worker”. His death certificate lists the date as May 2nd of 1943 in San Francisco, California. His mother’s maiden name is listed but it is different than the two previous statements he’d given: his 1918 Marriage License, and his application for Social Security in 1938.

Based on the pattern he set, of making up ages and parental history his whole life and the lack of any evidence of his existence prior to 1906, I feel it safe to assume his identity was completely fabricated.

Per my husband’s DNA results he is 12% European Jewish. This came as a real surprise. He’d heard rumor growing up that his biological father might have been Portuguese, so his mind always identified with that area of the world. He looks Mediterranean. When we found out that his Great-Grandmother, Therese Gomes, was indeed Portuguese, it was great confirmation. Of all his 3rd to 6th cousins I had found related to the Walker side, no one listed any European Jewish ancestors on their tree. I did note, however, that the cousins that shared Happy Jack Walker in common with my husband all shared this European Jewish DNA.

The previous research I had done into all the versions of his name, versions of his parents names, and versions of his birth dates, had come up empty. So I decided to follow a different trail of information, the Jewish history of his cousins. This decision was as a result of finding that a 1st cousin had his DNA results show up for me to compare. This 1st cousin’s DNA matches helped me find even more cousins, some of which were grandchildren of immigrants with 100% European Jewish ancestry. This method proved to be fascinating, and because of this, a new theory of his true identity was emerging. There was pretty much no denying, at that point, that our mysterious “Happy Jack” Walker from maybe Ireland, sometimes Scotland, perhaps England… just wasn’t. The following section is my theory about the real identity of Happy Jack Walker:

Let me introduce now a man named Benjamin Elias Frenchman. His father was Elias Moses Fransman (changed to Frenchman) born in Holland, the Netherlands (an “Israelite” is what is listed on his documents), and his mother was Mary Pinto/Pinter, also of Jewish descent, born in Pozen, Germany (an area of Poland that was part of the German Empire from 1871 until 1918). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Province_of_Posen

Elias, along with his siblings, his mother Katrina Croost, his father Moses Benjamin Fransman (son of Benjamin Moses Fransman born in 1791), his uncle Jacob and his aunt Siphora, immigrated in 1864 from the Netherlands, through England, to America.

Through DNA I determined that my husband’s closest cousins share the same ancestor patriarch: Benjamin Moses Fransman (father of Moses Benjamin Fransman, grandfather of Elias Moses Fransman) born in the year of 1791 in Amsterdam, Holland, the Netherlands.

Based on this common denominator I started building a family tree, and traced each immigrant’s (Moses, Jacob, and Siphora) children and grand-children down through the years, until I was able to find someone who fit the profile of Happy Jack Walker’s stated time and place of birth.

Some of Happy Jack's Jewish cousins are descended from Moses, some are descended from his brother Jacob. The family group who fit the profile the best was the grandson of Moses, son of Elias: Benjamin Elias Frenchman.

Benjamin was born in the year of 1869 in Newark, New Jersey to Elias and Mary (Pinto/Pinter) Fransman. Elias was a Cigar maker, and died before 1892 in New York. Mary was last found on record in 1915 as an "inmate" in a home for the elderly and infirm. A descendant says: "Mom (Ruth, mentioned later) remembered meeting her Grandma once and said she was a little lady, sitting in a rocking chair dressed in black with a white shawl on who spoke in a language she didn’t understand or it was so heavily accented that she didn’t understand it if it was English." She died January of 1918 in New York.

Benjamin married a lady named Annie Hilfstein in October of 1888 in Manhattan, New York. She was the daughter of Jewish immigrants from Pozen, Germany (her father from the Krakow area, and her mother from Galacia, an area between Hungary and Austria - considered Poland now). They had a son named Henry who was born on July 14th of 1889 in New York, and another son Elias who was born and died in the year of 1891. Sometime before 1896 heand Annie had separated. She married a man named John “Jack” Nelson in October of 1905, and she listed herself as a widow on the marriage certificate. They stayed in New York, and had two sons by 1910. Annie died in 1921.

By 1896 Benjamin had made his way west, and married a woman named Grace Valker in Oregon. On the 1900 US Federal Census he has a new name he is going by, Benjamin E. Sterling. He claims he was born “at sea”, that his family is French (actually funny considering his given last name is Fransman/Frenchman but not actually being from France), and his occupation is a “Palmist”. The photo above shows him holding a Crystal Ball. On a Play Bill that one of his descendants has, it says that he is a mental scientist and a ventriloquist. Tagline: ”Ask Sterling, he knows!”

Grace Valker died in 1908, in Massachusetts, from heart failure due to exhaustion. I can’t find any of the other mentioned family members for the 1910 US Federal Census.

I do know that in 1909, in Illinois, Benjamin married a woman named Lydia Shore (see update below on how they met), and that he used his given name Frenchman on the document. They are found on the 1920 US Federal Census, under the name Sterling, in Kentucky, where now he proclaims to be a Psychologist, born in New York, and that his father is English. He has a daughter named Dorothy born in 1901, another daughter, Ruth, who was born November of 1912 in Illinois. On Ruth’s birth certificate he uses his given name of Frenchman, but she goes by the last name of Sterling until she marries and takes on the last name of Brauer.

 *UPDATING AS OF NOV. 15, 2019:
I have been in contact with Ruth's descendants recently and they have added some insight into this period of time. I had assumed that Grace and Benjamin had a daughter together, born October of 1901 in Utah, named Dorothy Sterling. I assumed this because she is listed on the1920 census as Ben's daughter born during the time he was married to Grace. Dorothy went by this last name until she married in 1924 and took on the last name of Miller. Apparently later on in life Dorothy learned she was adopted.
"The story goes that my Grandma (Lydia) was a nurse hired to take care of Dorothy as the family traveled around doing the Keith Theater Circuit. They lived in Newport, KY, Washington DC, Charleston, W VA, Chicago, New York city, etc. Grandpa Ben was at times a ventriloquist, mind reader, etc. His trunks said, "Busy Ben Theater" on them."


Under the name Benjamin Sterling he is found in the 1928 and 1929 city directory of Little Rock, Arkansas as a Psychologist. On the 1930 US Federal Census he and this family are still in Arkansas, he is no longer employed, and now he finally states that his father is from Holland and his mother is from Poland. He died this same year.

Some unanswered questions: Did he vanish on his first wife, Annie, and she presumed him dead because he had changed his name? Or was it easier to claim to be a widow than trying to track him down for a divorce? Did he change his name because he didn’t want anyone to know of his Jewish heritage, or was it more exotic to pretend to be French for his persona, even though he was using an English last name like Sterling?

So now let’s look at some side by side facts:

• Henry is documented as being born July 14th of 1889 in New York; “Happy Jack” Walker states he was born July 16th of 1889 in New York on the official documents of his later life. Pretty damned close.

• We can assume Henry accompanied his father west to Oregon, since he is not in any Census data with his mother, thus answering how “Happy Jack” Walker is found on the West Coast even though he was born in New York. There is no paper trail for either identity before 1906.

• We can also assume that Henry, being the son of a traveling entertainer, picked up tips from his father’s trade, and carried on in that industry – learning to take on a stage name, for example.

• Henry’s step-father went by Jack. Henry’s step-mother’s last name was Valker. Henry had just turned 16 when his mom remarried, soon followed by his dad remarrying. “Happy Jack” Walker showed up in records for the first time in Alameda, California at the end of 1906, age 17. So at least we have some hint as to where he came by the stage name. This is also too much of a coincidence to not be accurate.

• After he married Therese Gomes he disappears again from records, but shows up in Oregon/Washington to marry his second wife: A pattern similar to his father’s. I used to wonder what took him north, but if he lived there with his father in his early years then it makes sense that it would have been a home base of sorts. Perhaps he knew where to get work, because by this point he is saying he is an actor/entertainer/theater professional.

• A pattern of a nomadic life as a traveling entertainer, as well as a trail of relationships and multiple children, is shown by both men.

• Finally, the Jewish ancestor that the cousins have in common is the patriarch Benjamin Moses Fransman born in 1791. So based on scientific data, there is no other explanation for this family connection than to be descended from this man. Other cousins have DNA connections to the wives (Pinto and Hilfstein) as well, further cementing the relationship.

The evidence to support the relationship between Ben Sterling and Happy Jack Walker may not be enough to definitively slam the case file shut, circumstantial evidence at best, but I feel it is enough to hang my detective cap on.

Royal Ties pt. 1 - Maternal

If anyone reading this has been following my ancestral journey, you know that I've discovered that my mother and father are very distant cousins through a couple branches, and that my husband is also a very distant cousin to each of them as well. I suppose this isn't uncommon if any one has relatives who were among the early colonists, lots of families intermarried. I thought the process of unraveling those American roots was as complicated as it would get.

Recently, I took it upon myself to find my maternal uncle's biological father. He was adopted out at birth, and was only recently discovered when I had my DNA done. Using his DNA results I managed to find his paternal cousins, and once he made contact, they were able to identify the father. It's made for an exciting year. The irony is, in finding his father, I discovered that my mother's biological father, and his biological father share an early colonist ancestor as well. So I guess it makes them cousins as well as brother and sister? Ugh.

The good news, and completely unrelated to that story, is that throughout this process I stumbled across a lead that opened up an entire medieval world of nobility and royalty, both on my father's side and my mother's side.

On my mother's maternal side

My mother's 4th great-grandmother, Mary Crosse, is the daughter of Solomon Crosse and Mary Keith.

Mary Keith is the 4th great-granddaughter of William of Camculter and Rathen Keith, born 1584 in Pittendrum, Scotland. His parents were William of Pittendrum Keith, descendant of William 3rd Earl of Marischal Keith and Elizabeth Gordon, and Barbara of Troup Keith (his cousin). 

This couple descend from: King Llywelyn of Wales; King Philip IV of France; King Henry I of Spain; King John of England; King Henry III of England Plantagenet through to Kind Edward III of England Plantagenet; King Robert of Scotland Bruce through to King James II of Scotland Stewart.

Through John Kimsey Miller's wife, Arenna Tabor there is another connection: her grandmother, Elizabeth Sharpe born circa 1742. She is the daughter of John Thomas Sharpe and Jemima Alexander, who are cousins, and the descendants of 3 immigrant families that intermarried: the Wallace's, the Alexander's, and the McKnitt's. 

Each of these families are descended in their own right from King Henry III of England through to King Edward III of England, as well as King Robert of Scotland Bruce through to King James I of Scotland Stewart.

Royal Ties pt. 2 - Paternal

On my father's paternal side

My father's 3rd Great-Grandmother, Elizabeth J. Browning, born in 1823, was the daughter of Williamson Browning and Sarah J. Alexander.

Williamson Browning's great grandmother, Anne Williamson, is a descendant of the Clan Fleming in Scotland. Her 4th Great Grandfather being John Earl of Wigtown Fleming, and his wife Lillias Graham. This couple is descended from King John of England to King Henry III of England Plantagenet; King Llywelyn of Wales; King Philip IV of France; King Robert of Scotland Bruce to King James IV of Scotland Stewart.

Lillias Graham just also happens to be a direct descendant of William 3rd Earl of Marischal and Elizabeth Gordon. Thus creating another "cousin connection" to my mother. I've lost count how many that makes.

Sarah Alexander's mother, Unity Murphy, is a descendant of: King Philip IV of France; King Henry I of Spain; King John of England to King Edward III of England Plantagenet. This lineage is through both her Great-Grandfather Sir George Neville,

and through his wife Lady Mary Stafford.

Solving the Gardner Mystery through DNA

I realize it has been over a year since I last posted something on my family, that is because I fell down a rabbit hole in Quebec, Canada after receiving my DNA results.

I was truly frustrated at the brick walls I kept running up against trying to find information on-line. I even spent a year in wait, when I finally had someone on the inside as a Free Mason look into Leonard Gardner's Syracuse Lodge connections. My friend managed to get the lodge books, the meeting minutes and was starting to compile some information for me. Month after month went by, he would tell me he couldn't get his superiors to give permission on sharing the information... everything was being redacted. Everything seemed to be a secret that couldn't be shared. Honestly I just wanted to know if they had any information on Leonard as far as a place of birth, the name of his parents, anything that would help-  they could keep their secrets. And in the end, they did.

So I took a DNA test through Ancestry.com. It was great fun attaching those DNA results to my existing tree and seeing so many DNA matches validate all the hard work. Shared DNA circles emerged, list upon list with DNA matches that shared hits on other people's trees, as well as new people I knew nothing about. Of course, the new leads are what intrigued me the most.

My first goal in this exercise was to weed out all the cousins from my mother's side. The next goal was to weed out the left over cousins who matched up to my father's Best family, Dahl family (Scandinavian), and Grimmond/Duncan family (Scottish). All I wanted to focus on was the Gardner side and the French connection. You would think with a bit of time, this would make for an easy task of solving the mystery of the Gardner's. I thought that too, boy was I naive.

I had my husband do his DNA test in October of 2016. I had mine done the following January. I had such good results finding my husband's biological family, with no information at all to go on, I figured this was going to be a slam dunk for me. It didn't make it easier, however, it actually got more confusing. First, in the mid 1600's there were a pair of Dutch sisters that each ended up being known as a 8x G-Grandmother to both my mother and my father, making them cousins.
Second, upon building my husband's tree with his new biological family's information I kept encountering families from my mother's family and my father's family, but not via this Dutch  G-Grandmother connection. It turns out that my husband's biological father has relatives in common with both sides. He and I are related via 6x Great Grandparents, as well through at least 3 other branches.

Thus, in the process of accessing my own DNA matches, I kept tripping over my husband's family tree whose branches were all in the way. I don't think starting another tree would have helped me, because I would still recognize common names and get confused as to whose trail I was following.
I figured if I just used my father's DNA it would at least help eliminate some of the confusion. In November of 2017 I begged my dad to get his DNA done. I had already spent that year trying to learn how to read French documents, once I realized I had cousins in French Quebec, Canada. I knew they had to be related to the Gardner's, but I just couldn't narrow down how. The year of 2018 was going to be about focusing on nothing but my father's DNA matches and Canada.

Turns out everyone in Quebec seems to be related to each other as well. *head slap and sigh.

If anyone is reading this, please tell me how you think Gardner would have been spelled in French Quebec documents: Gagne, Gaigner, Gagnier, Gasnier, Garnier, Grenier, Gagnon, Des Jardins, Desjardins? Phonetically the only one that makes sense is Garnier... but I can't find any close cousin connections who share this last name. I had also thought, well maybe the Gardner's just passed through Canada on their way to New York... or maybe started in New York before heading north after the American Revolution? That doesn't explain my relation to so many french cousins going so far back in Canadian history. I wish I could get a definitive from any living Gardner with ties to French Quebec as to what their ancestors went by. It would help so much!

Edit July 2019: On Leonard Gardner's declarations on US Federal census, his birth year ranged from 1809 to 1813. Last year someone found his grave and uploaded a picture to Findagrave.com. It says 1815 as a birth year. Based on this I redid my search for birth parents, and how this would connect to the family information I had been able to gather from the cousins in my DNA match. I believe his parents could be Francois Gagnier and Marie Louise Duquet. His paternal grandparents could be Joseph Gagne dit Gagnier and Marie-Josephe Landry.

For the full family narrative: https://ancestraltides.blogspot.com/p/blog-page_3.html
 

Lost family found through DNA results

I have been married to my husband for 27 1/2 years, and in all that time we have not known a thing about his biological parents. When my two sons grew old enough to wonder about their heritage, I have only ever been able to provide ancestral history based on MY family. Ethnic and cultural history aside, it was bothersome not knowing medical issues that could impact our children's future as a result of genetic inheritance, or who they may look like or take after in their physical traits.

My husband had wondered about his biological parents, as any adopted child would. He loved his "mother" though, and never wanted to upset her, especially because his "father" was tragically killed when he was 9 years old. It wasn't until his "mother" passed away in 2002 that he finally felt open to pursuing some answers. These answers were not easily come by, however, because closed adoption records are a tricky thing, and Catholic Charity adoptions are even trickier. He looked into hiring a private investigator that specialized in this sort of thing, but it was very cost prohibitive. He placed himself on a registry (date of birth, place adopted out of... etc) of children looking for their biological parents, hoping that if anyone had been looking for him, they would know he was there.

Fast forward to 2015.

I decided to launch my own investigation, and I began with the Catholic Charities. We thought that somehow the Catholic Charities had been involved in the brokerage of his adoption, because that was who his parents had used for the adoption of his other two siblings. He had already tried to contact the hospital he had been adopted out of, but "conveniently" all those records had burned in a fire. So with the only lead remaining, I began to read through dozens of entries on the Catholic Charities adoption forums. There were hundreds of testimonies from the once young unwed mothers and what they went through, plus there were hundreds of stories from the children looking for their mothers, sharing their stories of stone walling and deceptiveness they experienced in their search for answers. In all cases, the Catholic Charities methods of adoption during this time period made it almost impossible for anyone to reunite (records were purposefully altered so that they could stay hidden). Sadly, I had stumbled upon a long sad tale of baby selling for church profit, and it was something they did not want to answer for anymore. Every letter of inquiry I wrote and every phone call I made to any existing Catholic Charity, the response was the same: they denounced anything to do with adoptions, and claimed ignorance of this past practice.

Long story short, by the end of a frustrating year I finally found a promising lead. It was an agency that handled closed adoption records from this era that could provide access to non-personal information. I contacted the agency with his information, and they confirmed that they did have access to my husband's records. However, they could only disclose medical history that was provided at the time of the adoption, not personal history, and only for a FEE. So for Christmas that year, I asked my husband not to spend money on me, instead I wrote out a coupon in the price of this fee, wrapped it up in a box with the paperwork he needed to sign off on, and placed it under the tree for him.

Fast forward to summer of 2016.

As a dutiful wife, I was nagging him for never having signed off on the paperwork. His defense was that he felt that just getting medical information wasn't enough - it wouldn't really tell him anything. However, a couple months later he came to me saying he'd heard on the radio that some people had found success finding their adopted relatives through DNA results. He said he would you feel more comfortable putting his Christmas present money towards a DNA test, so I immediately went on to Ancestry.com and ordered a DNA kit. In October of 2016 we got back his results.

 He was extremely surprised to get these results back, not only because it says he is 38% Scandinavian, but also because one family rumor had been that his biological father was possibly Portuguese. Looking at the above results you would think... no.

*2019 Ancestry.com updated their results and changed it to: 65% England, Wales, Northwestern Europe/ 12% European Jewish/ 11% France/ 5% Portugal/ 3% Ireland, Scotland/ 2% Baltic/ and 2% Sweden, Norway

Another feature of the DNA results is who you are matched with. Mind you, these are people who have family trees already created on Ancestry.com, or have taken the DNA test themselves. If you (the reader) don't already have a tree, you can take advantage of their free 14 day trial and create one, all it takes is entering what you know: yourself, your mother, your father, and your grandparents. Once you've done this, you will begin to see the number next to "shared ancestor hints" increase. These will be hints shared with the cousins that you've been matched with, and you will be able to see how you are related.

The world suddenly becomes a lot smaller when you realize how we are almost ALL related to each other in some small way.


As far as an adopted person goes, with no idea who your parents are, the DNA matching could seem pointless. You ask yourself, "How can I take 400+ cousin matches and figure out how I am related to these people without even knowing who I actually am?" My answer: scientifically, methodically, and with a great deal of patience.

My husband had no idea how to use Ancestry.com, but I did. I had been working with this site since 2011 digitizing my maternal grandmother's life's work, as well as doing my own research into my maternal grandfather's family history, and my father's entire family history. However, I was completely new to this DNA thing, and going at a family tree from this perspective was unknown territory.
*Question: what do you do when you don't know something?
*Answer: you start educating yourself on that subject one bit of information at a time.

*And what DO we know: that this is genetic matching, thus every clue is not speculation or coincidence but an actual fact.

*Step 1-3:

• See what information you can gather from the first cousin on the list by seeing how closely related this cousin is to you, and then figuring out what that means in terms of generations.
• Click on "view match" where you can make note of shared "surnames" that you have in common within your family trees.
• Click on "shared matches" to make note of who else this cousin is related to within your list. This will aid in the task of "grouping" (I will explain this in the following paragraphs). 
• Repeat with each person on your list.

*Step 4:

• When you find the cousins who HAVE made family trees, and there are shared "surnames" listed, keep doing steps 1-3 until you start to see obvious patterns of names. Making your own visual aids or flow charts is helpful to keep it all straightened out. It can easily get confusing. Stay organized.

When all pathways are uncertain, you still have to start somewhere; you have to see where that path leads, and see what you learn. Then you take the next path, and see what you can find.  In this case, each pathway was a cousin, and the patterns that emerged were common grandparent pairings. Although 400+ cousins are related to my husband, the cousins themselves are not ALL related to each other. I had to find the commonalities among the cousins and put them into groups. In most cases the relationship to my husband was a 4-6th cousin, which meant the closest common ancestor was a great-great-great grandparent (putting the birth dates of that couple in the early 1800's).

Think of this DNA thing like a mountain range that runs for hundreds of miles, and at the top of the mountain range are lakes. Each lake is not related to the other lakes, as they are separated from each other by miles, but a river runs from each lake down the mountain, and all the rivers converge into a singular reservoir. We are the genetic result of 16 sets of great-great-great grandparents (that is the equivalent of 32 lakes with 32 rivers merging into 16 pairs, then 8 pairs, then 4 pairs, then just a set of 2 draining finally into the single reservoir).

At the end of this "grouping" exercise, I had to remind myself that if this group has a set of great-great-great grandparents in common that means they are definitely my husband's great-great-great grandparents as well! So I input that couples' information into the tree maker, as well as all the information for each cousin that was related to them, and started creating his family in reverse by following each river down the mountain.

The Ancestry.com Family Tree Maker algorithms work quickly, and by inputting the tiniest bits of what you do know it will help you fill in the blanks of what you did not know. The advice I gave myself daily: follow the clues, confirm the information as best you can, and fill in all the blanks (the whole family group, including husband and wives of the brothers and sisters to the relative you are matched with), eventually all the rivers will lead to the reservoir.

We were fortunate with his results because four people turned up as 2nd cousins. Of the four, however, only two had family trees that I could look at. I attempted to contact all four of them through Ancestry.com. One cousin got back to us eventually. I had made some progress in finding a connection from information off of her partial family tree, but with her help I was able to narrow down this family connection to a possible parent. Not everything can be gleaned from Ancestry.com, especially if you are looking into records for individuals who are still alive. Thus, contact with a real person who was willing to answer questions and help us figure out how she was related to my husband, was an invaluable source of information in the detective work. Together we finally worked out that one of her two male cousins was indeed my husband's father. This was backed up with the DNA results from other cousins.

All the pieces of the puzzle fell into place when I had mentioned to her that we'd heard the father could possibly be Portuguese. It turns out that the brothers' grandmother WAS indeed from the Azores Islands, Portugal. Her family had come to America in 1888.

As you can see by the charts on the right, when you click on the individual ethnicity it breaks it down in more detail. Turns out that the 3% northern African encompasses Portugal, as well as the 19% Italian/Greek.

After that huge breakthrough, I was able to put aside all the cousins that had anything to do with this side of the family, and concentrate on the others that had NOT fit into place yet. I had to assume that these other great-great grandparents would be his mother's side of the family.


What I knew: 1) where he had been adopted; 2) who his father's family was and where they lived during that time; 3) that the mother had been around 16 (what he'd heard from his adopted sibling), and 4) that the mother would have had to have been living in the same town as the father during this time, if not going to the same high school.

I continued to follow all the rivers down the mountain... day after day... dead end after dead end... until one week I had narrowed it down to a single family group: two brothers with two possible sets of daughters. The four young women were the right age, and they were in the right place. I focused all my attention on just this family, until I was able to eliminated one brother and his daughters out of the equation.

It was the 23rd of December when my husband came home from work and I mentioned these two remaining women as candidates for his mother. As I was rambling on about everything I learned, I mentioned a name. I said this person is either your sister or your first cousin. He repeated the name out loud questioningly, and then said "I know her! She is on my Facebook friends list! I went to high school with her!" I was absolutely dumbfounded, flabbergasted, astonished, blown away (insert all other synonyms here)! I excitedly urged him to contact her. "Go online right now", I said, "and ask her if her mother or her aunt knew these brothers!"

Over the course of the rest of the evening, via Facebook messenger, he discovered that not only was this woman that he had gone to high school with his sister, but that the whole time he had lived in that area, his biological family had been there also. He may have passed them by at the grocery store on a daily basis and never knew. It also turns out that the sisters and mom had been searching for him for awhile. It was a very emotional evening, but even more so over the next couple days as all the relatives from this family fell out of the woodwork and welcomed him lovingly into their lives. Friend request after friend request blew up his profile, and his phone never stopped beeping notifications or ringing. It was a very Merry Christmas!

Another coincidence is that we all migrated to the same neck of the woods in the Pacific Northwest. The adoption had been out of central California.  The city where he lived and went to high school was a very separate location from where he was adopted, yet they were all there at the same time.  Then decades later everyone moved north. They ended up living only an hour north of us. On New Year's Day we all gathered at his biological mother's house for the first meeting. He met his mother, his step-father, one of his two sisters, a brother, their significant others, three of five nieces and two of three nephews. Suddenly his life was very full.

As for his father, we got confirmation from his mother as to which of the two brothers was his father. The cousin we had made contact with took it upon herself to contact the father on behalf of my husband, and told him everything. As one could imagine, the father was quite overwhelmed. He knew there had been a child put up for adoption, but he had never known if it was a boy or girl. He said he'd need some time to process it, and wasn't sure how to respond. We've respected his privacy.

*2019 update: in August he finally met his father and uncle. They had a great visit.

For my husband he just needed to know where he came from and what made him who he was. He had questions, as did all the family involved, and now everyone has the answers they needed to find closure, and if needed, start a healing process so they can move forward in their lives. Along with a roller coaster of emotions, it has been a very introspective time of pondering the "what ifs", and the theory of nature vs. nurture.

The long winding twisted branches of the world family tree have shown one thing... we are all related. When researching my mother's family I discovered that my 9th great grandmother (born in the mid 1600's - from the Netherlands) had a sister who is also my 9th great grandmother. Turns out one sister's line is my father's family, and the other sister's line is my mother's family, making them cousins.

I ALSO discovered through this process that my 6th great-grandmother on my father's side is my husband's 6th great-aunt, thus making us cousins as well.

It's a small world.

The "Best" Family

In the mid 1990's I remember doing my very first internet search. The internet at that time was not the huge engine of information that it is today. I came across a Civil War roster of names, and decided to try looking there for the last name Best. Much to my surprise hundreds of names came up. Not knowing a first name for an ancestor that might have been in the Civil War left me feeling pretty overwhelmed, but one thing I did come away with was that most of these men were listed as Colored. This then led me to the only conclusion possible, the Best's were slave owners. This was not at all welcome news to my father, who had come to identify so strongly with this Native American in the photograph. Because my father was an ex-hippie, a musician, a surfer, a pacifist, and a nature lover, being a slave owner's great great grandson was not a pleasant idea to wrap his head around.

 
It wasn't until I decided to accept the genealogical torch passed on to me by my late maternal grandmother, that I thought why not start with my dad's family first; the one family with the least amount of information. I gave myself a goal of Father's Day the following year to present to him his family history. So the journey began.

My father's parents divorced in the early 1960's. His father remarried in 1966 then died the following year. He was only 47. My father and his brother do not have great memories of him, and this side of the family had always been a huge mystery to everyone. They knew their grandfather, but that was the extent of the history. There were rumors of Freemasonry in their lineage, but no one was a member in their immediate family. My father had once seen an old sepia photograph of a Native American man that bore an uncanny resemblance to himself, and decided he must have Native American blood. He and his brother had also thought that perhaps the name "Best" had originated in Germany spelled Besste. Pretty random things to have as your starting point for genealogical research.

With the Family Tree Maker on Ancestry.com I was able to begin the process by starting with the first name I knew... myself. I added my father's information, and his father's name, and his grandfather's name. I didn't know any birth dates or death dates at that time. It was during the Free Trial period of Ancestry.com, and when the trial ended I was still able to access other people's family trees for clues (this is now only available with a subscription). Finding "cousins" who had also entered data into the Family Tree Maker was like finding chocolate filled Easter eggs.

The Christmas presents were the little green oak leaf that would pop up indicating new information had been linked to my tree. I made my way back through history quite quickly, because there is a lot of historical documentation of the Best's leading back to the mid 1600's and Tobacco Plantations in Jamestown, Virginia.

First Lighthouse in Virginia

When I had reached the first ancestor to sail over, it turns out it was an Englishman, not a German, and I discovered a long fascinating history in England as well.


A link to the full Best Family narrative:
http://ancestraltides.blogspot.com/p/blog-page_25.html
A link to the Gardner Family narrative:
http://ancestraltides.blogspot.com/p/blog-page_3.html

A link to the Grimmond / Duncan Family narrative:

 http://ancestraltides.blogspot.com/p/the-grimmond-duncan-family-narrative.html

Pugsley Family Tales

Before my maternal Grandmother passed away in 2010 she had been doing some research into her ex-husband's family tree. She had already spent decades of research into her own family, and wanted to do this for my mother and myself.


His name was Tom Pugsley. It seemed that neither he nor his brother, Joe, knew much about their heritage other than what had been passed down word of mouth from their father, Samuel. So my Grandmother interviewed Tom and his brother to try to glean as much information from them as she could, as all three were getting up there in age.

To her first inquiry, Joe responded with:

"My dad was Irish/Welsh Catholic, my mother pure Irish Catholic, Katherine Flynn. Grandfather Pugsley was a good Welshman. I know my dad had relatives (generations back) in Westchester County and a "shirttail" relative who owned a duck farm in Upper New York State. We checked it out on one of our family trips to the east (1939 or 1940) when N.Y. World's Fair was showing. My dad had two sisters that I know of... Aunt Anna Peloso, in the Bronx I think... or maybe it was Aunt Emma?"

Tom responded with:

“My father, Samuel, said his people in Wales were weavers, wool wrights and farmers. Grandfather Pugsley {Samuel’s father} may have made Carriages or Carriage Wheels. The family raised ducks on Long Island - well known for their fine quality of ducks. Grandfather Pugsley was poor, but the "family" owned a lot of land. Grandmother Kate {Katherine Flynn} was quite elderly when we visited her in 1939 or 1940 (World's Fair). She lived in the Bronx at that time, and she was small and determined. She had outlived 2 husbands, maybe 3.”

Neither Tom nor Joe knew their Grandfather Pugsley's first name. They thought maybe Samuel, or George?

Tom had written me a letter in July of 1991, a few months after the birth of my first son. In this letter he wrote:

“Now that you are a mother, perhaps some background from the Pugsley family would be of interest? The first Pugsley in America was an ex-officer in King George’s Army; given land north of New York City by the King about 1765; a country squire. My grandfather was a loner; very athletic; climbed church steeples for exercise, and did daring things. He would get “moody” and sail off on his sail boat for long periods. He was said to have been quite the drinker (wasn’t everyone in those days?). My father was aristocratic, Victorian, of good intelligence, and self-educated. He went from a fisherman (as a boy), to top Salesman with American Stove Co. (Magic Chef). My mother (Margaret Tuohey) was as Irish as Paddy's Pig."

My Grandmother wasn't used to using the internet; she worked the “old school” way with her genealogical investigation: writing letters of request for Census Data, visiting historical societies, ordering historical books, and finding old maps of the areas she was studying.

With these clues from Tom and Joe she was left with combing her way through copies of Census data based on only the proximity to where she thought Grandfather Pugsley may have lived and a combination of possible family names. This was no easy task, and almost impossible to verify without an actual first name or birth date.

In 2012 I decided to pick up where she had left off. I took the information that she had already compiled and started entering all the data into Ancestory.com’s Family Tree maker. This has proven to be an invaluable resource, as today most of these historical books, legal documents, census, wills, and gravestone inscriptions have been digitized. I have been able to cross reference the information she found, and dig deeper than she was able to. Happily I answered many of her questions, filled in the empty pages, and can now say I am 90% satisfied that I’ve unraveled the Pugsley puzzle.

The other 10% is finding the Counties and Parishes of my Irish ancestors. If there is anyone reading this that can assist me with Ireland... please, help!

Of course, I won’t be 100% satisfied, as very important bits of the puzzle are still missing due to: the lack of proper documentation of births, deaths, and marriages during the early settling of America; the city government buildings being burnt down during the civil war; and, the fire of 1921 destroying the 1890 US Federal Census housed in the Commerce Building in Washington, D.C. Historians have been going to great lengths to find other sources of information to fill in these missing pieces of time (City Directories), but sadly, some things are just lost. There will not be an answer to these questions, and that is hard to accept when you get to that dead end.

When I was entering the data into our family tree, I started with Tom, and worked my way back in time from there. At first I didn’t get very far, because that black hole of missing information of the mid-to-late 1800’s put up a road block.

I was able to purchase a couple existing documents (birth and death certificates) from the New York Archives, which helped, but even with that, I eventually was forced to give up. I had to start a new tactic of going back to the beginning of America’s history, with the first Pugsley on historic record (just as Grandma Jean had attempted) and hope that would help. The information I found, however, was a messy bramble of twisted branches.

Each generation of Pugsley men named their children the same, as did their brothers. So that by the third generation it seemed an insurmountable task of deciphering sibling from cousin from brother from father. A lot of the historical accounts have proven to be inaccurate due to this very confusion. The only way I could find to get around this was following the family branch of each wife. Thankfully, during the 1700-1800’s, the Pugsley men married "well" and those affluent families have been better documented than our own.

Before I was able to share with my Grandfather Tom the information I had found, he passed away July of 2013. I was not able to truly untangle his family tree until December of 2015, and that was just the American history.

As far as the “Pugsley Tale” of being Welsh, the Pugsley's have been in America since the mid 1600's, coming over from Devon, England. In Devon their history goes back hundreds of years, with nary a Welshman to be found. So I am completely perplexed as to how that family story even got started.

Click here for full family narrative: http://ancestraltides.blogspot.com/p/blog-page_6.html






Pugsley Farm in Warkleigh, Devon

Origin of the Pugsley surname: It is believed that it is from a now "lost" village or hamlet believed to have been situated in the Barnstaple area. This belief is because of the great quantity of early recordings of the name in local parish registers. There is a Pugsley Farm in Warkleigh, Devon still in use today. John Pugsley was the name of three of the early mayors—namely, in 1355, 1468, and 1474. The name occurs in the annals of the town for the 17th century. Barnstaple is still the home of the name, although some fifteen generations have passed away since the stirring days of Cressy and Poictiers, when John Pugsley was mayor.