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