Review of "The Stranger in My Genes" by Bill Griffeth

For Christmas I received a new book from my Godmother Jody. It was a title I requested; one that made my inner adolescent giggle. "Hee hee hee. A Stranger in my Jeans? Hee hee hee." But really it's a quite serious topic and one that I have sort of encountered in working with others researching their family history.

Bill Griffeth is a news anchor on CNBC's financial news program, Closing Bell. In his personal life, Griffeth is a genealogy enthusiast. He has seriously researched his family history for a long time. As many of you know, DNA testing is a new tool in the genealogist's toolkit. It helps to restore lost connections between other cousins researching family history.

In the past I have blogged about how my DNA test helped me to learn the maiden name of my 3rd great-grandmother, Mary Carillion-Henry. You can read that post called Spelling and Genetic here http://diggingupthedirtonmydeadpeople.blogspot.com/2014/12/spelling-and-genetics_13.html

In recent months, though, I have been working with a woman who is now in her 70s and just learned through a dying aunt that who she thought was her biological father was not. That is enough of a revelation to deal with but in Bill Griffeth's case he learn through a standard genealogy DNA test that who the man he knew as his biological father could not have been.

Griffeth never saw it coming. He had invested years in researching his Griffeth family history. Was this his family anymore? That question results in an entire exploration of how one defines family and the difference between genealogy and family history but I digress...

When Bill's cousin contacted him with the jarring news, the first reaction of everyone he shared the news with was complete disbelief. The first conclusion was that it had to be an error in the testing. His saintly mother could have never strayed from the man that Bill had never questioned was his father. Had his family been hiding this secret from him his whole life? How was he going to confront his elderly mother about this?

Griffeth explores all these questions and all the associated emotions that come with such a discovery.

I have gifted close to a dozen DNA testing kits to friends and cousins in the last few years and never have I every thought that perhaps I should prepare myself to confront such an issue but obviously it happens. In the 100 or so clients I have worked with through my part-time job as a genealogy librarian, many have come to me without any knowledge of their father, or mother for that matter. Several have been adoptees, orphans, or raised by a single parent. In one instance a client burst into tears when I found her uncle's Social Security Death Index record. I was taken aback by the emotional reaction. Despite that fact the man would have been close to 115 if he were alive, it hurt this 80 year old woman to hear her favorite uncle had died. Could you imagine if she had learned he wasn't her uncle?

If you are interested in the impact DNA testing could have one you or someone you love, read The Stranger in My Genes. I loved! I finished it in one day. And it brought to me an awareness of the emotional trials one might face in exploring their own genealogical truth.

Genealogy Goals for 2017

Happy New Year! 

Yes, beginning a new year brings a sense of renewal and hopefulness with all things possibly laid before us. Doesn't it?

Although, working in academia results in a strange sense of time. Life is lived in semesters. And to me, the year really begins in late August. So it is kind of like I have two new year's days every year; only one of which do I resign myself to pajamas though.

This past semester had me much busier than I had anticipated. Even though it was the first semester in a long time that I wasn't a student myself. I thought I would have more time to write but alas...

I took on more hours at my part-time job. Instead of doing just one 5-hour day doing one-on-one genealogy research with library patrons I tried doing two 4-hour days per month. I think it was quite successful and instead of just reaching 5 researchers I was able to meet with 8 people. I also took on several private clients which exposed me to a much wider variety of resources than I used in researching my own family history.

I would like to continue both my part-time gig and serving new private clients in the coming year. Additionally though, I am looking forward to teaching a genealogy course through my alma mater; that starts in June. 

Before then I have signed up to take a 6-week online course in genealogy through FutureLearn; an online service that offers a diverse selection of courses from universities from around the world. The courses they offer are free and often referred to as MOOCs; Massive Open Online Courses. This form of education has be a hot topic in academia for quite some time. So I am looking forward to giving it a try.

The class I am taking is called Genealogy: Researching Your Family Tree. It starts January 16, 2017. It's asynchronous which means you don't have to be online at a specific time. The materials are delivered one step at a time. This particular course is being taught through the University of Strathclyde in Glascow, Scotland.

I'm taking it for two reasons really. One, I want to see how others teach this topic online and, two, I'm hoping it will teach me more about UK resources. 

If you are interested in joining me there is still time to register - - And again, it is FREE.

https://www.futurelearn.com/courses/genealogy/3/

In any case, it is my hope that this year I can spread my love for genealogy research to even more people whether they are relatives of mine or just other researchers. Whether you are just getting started in genealogy research or have been at it awhile, I hope this is the year you dig up some dirt on your own ancestors.

Happy New Year!!

Call for Genealogy Assignments

I feel like I start every entry with this statement but...

It has been so long since I have posted anything here. 

And here we are in the middle of Family History Month. I've got to write something...

...So I will give you just a little update on what I have been up to.

Often when I am absent from posting it means I am knee deep in family research; if not my own then someone else's.

I really am enjoying working with patrons out at the Mastic-Moriches-Shirley Community Library. I now go out there twice per month to work one-on-one with individuals researching their family history. I am surprised to see such a wide variety of individuals at this pursuit. I had this assumption that most of my patrons would be little old ladies...and some of them are but many of them are much younger than retirement age or have just recently retired. More than a handful have been younger than me. Additionally, I have a lot more male clients than I thought I would. 

In any case, they keep me on my toes and provide me the opportunity to explore resources that my own family history would not have led me to. 

Did you know Pennsylvania's death records on Ancestry? As are Alabama's...and Texas! Yeah, none of that applying to the state's Department of Health or sending in any identification. It's right there.

Anyway, all of this is helping me to prepare for a course I will be teaching this summer. Yup. I am slated to teach an online summer session course on Genealogical Resources through St. John's University. 

Since receiving notice of the opportunity I have been giving a lot of thought to how best to teach this type of research. I know how I learned. I worked on my own family history but it took a lot longer than 4 weeks...a lot longer.

I know I will be expecting my students to research their own family history using an array of online resources. In good conscience I can't grade anyone on their family tree as every family is different and not every individual left enough, quality resources. Nonetheless, they will have to learn how to fill in a family tree form, as well as family group sheets.

I think I am also going to have them watch and critique some of the popular genealogy based television shows as well as discuss the impact Roots had on family history research in this country.

Local history and resources related to specific ethnic groups play an important role in genealogy research as well. So I'd like to incorporate some aspect of that into my syllabus as well. Remember though, we only have 4 weeks.

Ultimately, I think I am going to have each student write a well documented biography on an ancestor. Ideally, I'd love to see each write a 3 or 4 generation family history narrative like those published in periodicals such as The New England Historical and Genealogical Register...but then again...we only have 4 weeks.

So if you have any ideas about resources, readings, discussions, or short activities that you think might help someone to learn how to find and use genealogical resources, I'd like to hear your ideas.

Keeping the Faith: Multi-Religions

This coming weekend my 5 month old niece is going to be baptized in the Catholic church. Now I am Catholic but my sister is not. Our mother is Catholic but my sister's father wasn't. We have different fathers. My dad is Catholic, though. Now my brother-in-law, the baby's father, he is Catholic too. And although my parents are both Catholic, neither of my grandfathers were. My paternal Grandpa eventually converted to Catholicism but maternal Grandpa never did. But then again, his father was a Catholic...but his great grandfather wasn't. 

:) Are you following any of this?

My point is simply to never assume that just because you are baptized in one faith that your ancestors were of the same denomination. The likelihood is that they were NOT all of the same faith. I truly think that in the past a family's particular brand of Christianity depended on the denomination of the church they could walk to. I'm really not kidding.


Just keep in mind while you are researching your family's history that all their baptismal records may not be in the same church...or synagogue. 

My grandma's brother-in-law is a priest. Her grand nephew...a rabbi. 

Review: Meet the Hitlers

I finally got the opportunity to watch the 2014 documentary, Meet the Hitlers. The film  examines the relationship between name and identity without much commentary. 

The director, Matthew Ogens, introduces the viewer to a variety of real life characters including several individuals with the name 'Hitler.' There is a man named Romano-Lukas Hitler, a European of some ilk who believes himself to be a relative of the Nazi leader. There is also an elderly gentleman, Gene Hitler, an American with no known connection to the infamous Adolph Hitler. One subject is a teenage girl who has the surname Hittler who explains that her peers do not react to the name quite the same way as grown-ups do. There is also the white supremacists from New Jersey who several years ago made the news for naming their son Adolph Hitler. Another subject is a name born in Ecuador named Hitler Gutierrez. Then there are those subjects who do not bear the name Hitler themselves but explore the image, identity, and ancestry of the Adolph Hitler. Their stories allow you to draw your own conclusions about name and identity.

Writer, David Gardner, is in pursuit of last known descendants of Adolph Hitler's half-brother. Gardner wrote the 2001 book, The Last of the Hitlers: The story of Adolf Hitler's British nephew and the amazing pact to make sure his genes die out. That British half-brother's child moved to America and settled in a town on Long Island called Patchogue; the same town some of my relatives settled in. This may not be surprising but the Hitlers changed their surname. The author protects the family's anonymity. My Patchogue relatives also changed their name. They changed it from Desjardins to Gardner; no known relation to the author introduced here though.

It is fascinating to see how each subject reacts to and connects with the name Hitler and how having such an infamous name affects them. It documents a wide variety of human responses; there are those who find it humorous, those who shrug it off as a mere coincidence of no consequence and take great pride in their ancestry, some subjects have a horrific admiration for the Nazi leader, and then others have buried their genetic relationship to infamous Hitler.

Two things struck me. One was when the director asked Gene Hitler why it was important to him to keep his name. why didn't he change it. Gene gave it some thought and said his name was important to him because his parents gave it to him.

The other moving moment for me was the ending. David Gardner, unable to interview the Hitlers of Patchoque, decided to interview a Holocaust survivor residing in Patchogue. At one point the author asks the man how he would feel knowing that descendants of Adolph Hitler live near him. The kindly Jewish man shrugs a bit and says that he does not hold the author responsible for the acts of his ancestors; these Hitlers of Patchogue are not responsible for the horrors their ancestor committed.

That is kind of the message I try to put across in this blog. 

I am the great granddaughter of a schizophrenic, a great-great granddaughter of a man who committed a murder-suicide, one of my 5th great grandfathers was a Colonel at the Battle of Saratoga which was the turning point of the American Revolution, and I'm a descendant of Charlemagne (supposedly, I can't document it just yet but aren't we all descendants of Charlemagne? We each have something like 131,072 15th great-grandparents.). 

Although I believe you should take pride in your existence and owe some reverence to those who came before you, I also do not think the sins of the father are the sins of the son. If you ask me, which I acknowledge you did not, those who wear their surname like a badge of honor ought to do something on their own to be proud of. Those people who came before you, those whose DNA you carry within your own cells, they were just people. Good. Bad. Ugly. And Beautiful. 

Home on the Road and Great Grandpa Albert's WWI Draft Registration

Every June I take a road trip. Well, if you aren't home for your birthday it doesn't count. This is how I get to stay perpetually 28. :)

This summer Cousin Peter and Godmother Joanne and I traipsed from Salt Lake City, Utah to Kansas City. Missouri and then turned south towards Austin, Texas, Our stop in Kansas City required a visit to the Kansas City Public Library where they were having an exhibit of the first Shakespeare folio; basically a very old rare book contained in a glass case opened to one page of the play Hamlet. Well.....

Okay....

We were there for me to look through city directories but its nice they had something out for Cousin Peter and Godmother Joanne to look at.

Despite my long seeded New York roots, I apparently had a few relatives on my mother's side who resided in Kansas City in the early 1900s. One of which was my great grandfather, Albert Gardner.

Great Grandpa Albert is intriguing to me. Born on September 21, 1891 in Queens, New York he was christened Almond Desjardins. His very French name is pronounced AL-mon-d Day-shar-dan but everyone says it like the nut, Almond and pronounces the last name Des-Jar-Dins. I'm sure he Anglicized the name not because of the course American pronunciation though but rather for employment opportunities. Desjardins means from the garden and Gardner is a very historic family name on Long Island where his family settled after coming from Montreal. The choice of Gardner for a surname makes sense.

Several years ago I came cross his World War I draft registration card. Curiously, though, he was living in Kansas City. That surprised me. Even though "Albert Gardner" is a rather common name, I am sure it is his draft registration card. The birthday matches other records I have, He was born in New York. I was told by his son that he was a painter. In 1917 when this registration was created his mother would have been a widow and it is likely he was helping to financially support her. He wasn't married yet.

But what is that bit there about having already served in the Cavalry for 3 years? And why is it stamped "Delinquent or Deserter"?

Has anyone else seen that on a draft registration card?

And what do you think it says between "Private" and "Cavalry"?

That aside, while in KC, MO, I did try to find Great Grandpa Albert's residence. Sad to say that 619 Troost Ave. no longer exists. Troost is still a street but 619 is now where the U.S. Interstate 70 and I-35 come together. In some sense that feels right. His home is now on the road and personally, I feel quite at home on that road.

REALLY Related to Aunt Jeannette

It is with heavy heart and teary eyes that I share with you the news that my great aunt, Jeannette, passed away on Friday, June 3, 2016 at the age of 83.

My Aunt Jeannette is the reason I got started in genealogy research. Not that she was into family history, she really wasn't. It was her connection to me piqued my interest. Aunt Jeannette was both my great aunt AND my second cousin twice removed.

Oh you know when that removed word get thrown out there that things are complicated. Stay with me...

When I was about 16 I went to a family reunion for my paternal grandfather's mother's side of the family; the Losee Family. My father's side has always been very close. I know most of my father's first cousins (who would be my first cousins once removed because we are one generation apart thus, once removed. Follow?). My father grew up across the street from his mother's sister and her 8 children. He attended grade school with them as well as with other cousins from his mother's side; the Cramers. The Henry sisters, Clare Henry-Earle (my grandma), Great Aunt Jean Henry-Drew, and Aunt Ann Henry-Cramer, were tight.

But if you asked my Grandpa Earle about his family, he would've told you he didn't have any. None. His parents were both dead and his older brother, Allen, died of a heart attack at age 40 and left no children. We were it. His wife, five kids, and 10 grandchildren were Poppy Earle's whole family.

So here we are at the Losee Family Reunion and in walks Grandma Earle's brother Uncle Richie and his wife, Aunt Jeannette. I didn't think it odd at first to see grandma's side of the family at grandpa's family reunion. Earles are pretty infamous for extending the family to friends and distant relations. Every census record I find for this branch of the family has someone else living with them; a cousin, a friend, an in-law, a boarder, what have you.

So in walk Uncle Richie and Aunt Jeannette. At some point I utter something to my grandmother like, "It's nice that your side of the family made it to this."

"Oh no," grandma said. "Aunt Jeannette is grandpa's cousin."

"WHAT!!?!?! I thought she is married to your brother. And hey, grandpa doesn't have any family!" Yet, here we are with close to 100 people gathered around from Poppy's side and yet, he has no family? Confusion and the recognition of misinformation starts to set in. "WAIT, Poppy sure as heck has family. Who are these people? And how is Aunt Jeannette his cousin?"

Grandma tried her best to explain. "Jeannette is his second cousin." At this point I had no idea what the hell a second cousin was. I just had cousins, period.

After a few minutes of coming to terms with the fact that I didn't know what the heck was going on around me, I made the assumption that Grandpa must have introduced his brother-in-law, Richie, to Jeannette.

"Oh no," grandma said, "They didn't figure out that they were related until after Richie and Jeanette were engaged." This was getting more and more confusing by the minute. Grandpa didn't know Jeannette was his cousin. It was then that I had then decided I needed to figure out for myself how Aunt Jeannette was related to my grandpa.

I also learned at this reunion that the Losee Family had long standing roots in Freeport, NY, and so this gathering was followed by a trip to the Freeport Memorial Library with grandma. This was a time before the Internet existed and so the library was the only "go-to." 

Freeport Memorial Library is a public library that was built as a memorial to the 13 men from Freeport, Long Island, NY who died in the Civil War. The original library building is still part of the current, greatly expanded FML. The Memorial Room, as the original library has come to be known is a small yet impressive room covered in plaques commemorating the individuals who have served the community through military and public service. 

Standing beneath one particular plaque, my tiny little grandma pointed upward saying, "Would you look at that!" Among those 13 Civil War soldiers names was a Benjamin F. Losee. And from that point on it has all been one long mission to unpuzzle my family's history. 

Thanks, Aunt Jeannette. 
Although, I did not get to see her much, I already miss her.

By the way, I did ultimately figure out how Jeannette and my grandpa were related. And they were actually double second cousins. :) They had more than one set of great-grandparents in common. Two Losee brothers married two Smith sisters. Grandpa was the grandson of John Losee and Flora Smith-Losee. Jeannette was the granddaughter of Oliver Combs Losee and Melinda Smith-Losee. Their great grandparents were [John Losee (Sr.) and Susan Amelia Combs-Losee] AND [Gersham Smith and Sarah Garvey-Smith].

Plus, she married my grandma's brother.

We were REALLY related, Aunt Jeannette, REALLY related.