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