Check that tunnel vision - looking beyond what is right in front of you

This is, I think, good advice in general, in life, and also in genealogy, whether it's looking to the side - siblings, cousins - to try to work our way backward, or whether it's switching from an ancestor we've been scrutinizing unsuccessfully to another person or branch, or just thinking outside the box when it comes to what records or resources we use.

But I have a very specific reason for talking about this today.

This morning was my grandmother's funeral. If you read my blog, you know that my 99 year old grandmother, my genealogy inspiration, died May 15. Born in Brooklyn, we returned her there today to be buried with my grandfather, both her parents, Timothy Cronin and Ellen Casey Cronin, her grandmother, Nora Donahue Cronin, and three aunts and uncles who never married - Denis Cronin, Daniel Cronin, and Mary Cronin.

Just as a side note, I love cemeteries. Morbid? Maybe. But I feel very peaceful and at home whenever I go to one, even when I'm not there to visit anyone specific, but moreso when I am. I love seeing names on headstones that I've researched so well that I feel like I actually know them, so today it was nice to "visit" my great-grandparents, my great great grandmother, and some of my great great aunts and uncles.

Anyway, back to the whole reason for this post. My grandmother's family plot is in Holy Cross Cemetery in Brooklyn. In the course of my research, I've tried to visit all my family plots that I know of, and more than once if I am able, so I'd been to the plot in Holy Cross before. After the graveside ceremony, my family hung around for awhile, and somebody happened to walk behind the headstone and say, "Hey, there's another Cronin buried here. Maybe they're related!" So of course I was intrigued, and yes, right behind the big family headstone is a smaller plot with a smaller headstone, and while everybody was sitting there going, "I wonder if they're related. Could they be related?," I was sitting there thinking, "Oh, hi Aunt Julia, hi Aunt Kate." I never even knew that headstone was there but I knew the names immediately. I finally got to "meet" Julia Cronin, a fourth unmarried sibling of my great-grandfather Timothy Cronin's - I had seen her death notice in an old newspaper but never knew where she was buried. And she was in the same plot as her sister Katherine, or Kate I guess, Flannery, who died fairly young, somewhere in her 30s or 40s, as well as Kate's two children, who died heartbreakingly young - John, at less than a year old, and Julia, as a young teenager. Considering how sad the circumstances were of us being there, it was a fairly exciting discovery for me, and I wonder how much my grandmother had to do with nudging us toward that headstone.

Which brings me to the point of this post - don't be so focused and wrapped up in the one person or family you're researching or looking for; step back and look around. Specific to cemetery research, if you're visiting one grave, take a look at the surrounding ones - family was often buried near family, and even if the names are different, they still might be related. But in general, just step back and look around - you never know what you might find.

Thanks, Grandma. I'm looking forward to your genealogy help from the other side.

Passing of my grandmother, my genealogy inspiration

This morning my 99 year old grandmother, Mary Elizabeth Cronin Raynor, passed away in her sleep.

At the ripe old age of 99, you don't exactly mourn the passing of a loved one - Grandma lived a long and happy life, filled with love and surrounded by family, and that's all any of us can really hope for in this life. Of course, living almost a century comes with some heartache as well - she lived to see most of her friends and family go before her. She outlived her husband, my grandfather, Clifford Monroe Raynor, by almost 23 years, and she had to live through the death of her youngest daughter, my mother, Margaret, almost 14 years ago, so I know she was ready whenever her time came. But she also lived to see her grandchildren grow up, get jobs, marry, have children of their own. I am forever grateful that she was well enough to attend my baby shower last year, where she gave me one of my favorite gifts, ever - an afghan, hand made by her mother. And one of the best days was when I got to introduce my daughter, her first great-granddaughter, to her last summer, and I loved watching them laugh and play together every time we went to visit. I am sorry my daughter won't remember her great-grandmother, but I am so happy that I have pictures of them together and that I can tell her, "You always made Great-Grandma smile, and boy, did she love you!"

My grandmother was our original family genealogist. She is the reason I became interested in genealogy. She is the one who got our tree started, who handed me the information and tools I needed to continue on my own. She is the one who got me hooked, who introduced me to what has become one of my life's passions. She is the one who told me stories about her childhood and about her parents and grandparents and my grandfather and his parents. She is the one who asked how my research was going and who I could talk to about some of the exciting discoveries I made. I am heartbroken that she is gone and forever grateful that she gave me the gift of genealogy.

My grandmother was a devout Catholic. I don't know what I believe about the afterlife, but whatever it is, I hope my grandfather and my mother were there to greet her on the other side, and that all our ancestors - those she and I knew about and those I have yet to discover but who are hopefully introducing themselves to her even now as I type -  welcomed her with smiling faces and open arms.

Grandma, I am so thankful for all the years I got to spend with you. I will always continue working on our family tree, to pass down to my grandchildren like you passed it down to me - I will miss you always, till we meet again.

Great-Grandma and Elena meeting for the first time, summer 2013.


Baby me and my grandmther, 1979.





In honor of DNA Day, an AncestryDNA update

Today is National DNA Day apparently, commemorating the 1953 publication of papers on the structure of DNA. In honor of that, I actually have an AncestryDNA update - I got my first shared ancestor hint!

I have literally 150 pages worth of DNA matches on Ancestry, people I connect to genetically, but up until this week I had no idea how I connect to any of these people. Nowhere did we have any matching people in our family trees. But finally, FINALLY, I got a shared ancestor hint. And, of course, it's a Raynor connection (that's my most researched line). This person and I are seventh cousins. Our shared ancestors are Joseph Raynor and Elizabeth Lester, who lived in the 1700s on Long Island. So, yay, I DO have at least a tiny bit of Raynor DNA in me! But I can't believe this is my only shared ancestor hint so far - Cousin April over at Digging Up the Dirt on My Dead People has very genetically cooperative DNA...mine is making me work just a little bit harder.

But, that's exciting. That's what I've been waiting for, that's what I was hoping for when I took this test, not only hopefully adding to and extending some of my branches, but connecting to cousins in a definitive way where I can see the connection.

But it wouldn't be an AncestryDNA post without some complaints, right? So here they are:

  • I never got a notification that I had a shared ancestor hint. I found it by accident, when I was looking to see if I had any genetic matches with anyone with Raynor in their tree. If I hadn't checked that specifically, I have so many pages of matches, I might never have found him! I had actually, manually, connected myself to this person before, seeing we had Joseph and Elizabeth in common, but this was months ago and there was no shared ancestor hint at the time.
  • Which brings me to my second complaint - I was doing a Raynor-specific search because Cousin April's sister had matched with someone who had a Micajah Raynor in their tree. If you've read this blog before, you may know that April and I have been searching for a connection to Micajah Raynor in the hopes that he will shed light on one of our brick wall ancestors, Jacob Raynor. But this person April's sister matched to had Micajah as a brother to Jacob's wife Rebecca, the daughter of Joseph Raynor and Elizabeth Lester (yes, the same people who were my first shared ancestors hint). But I have a copy of Joseph's will, and he lists his children by name, and nowhere is there a Micajah mentioned. So Micajah probably is NOT the son of Joseph and Elizabeth. So while this DNA project is a great help in connecting us to people, some of those people we are connecting to are unfortunately doing shodding genealogy work. DNA doesn't lie - if you are a match to someone, you ARE related, but do NOT take their family tree at face value, especially if it is not sourced well!
  • And my third complaint - the person I have a shared ancestor with also has Joseph and Elizabeth as a shared ancestor with April's father (she is related to me through her father's side) - so how come her father and I don't have Joseph and Elizabeth as a shared ancestor hint? 
So many questions, so many things for AncestryDNA to continue working on. How has your experience been so far with DNA genealogy? Would love to hear what you're happy with and what you think could still be improved!

And on a completely unrelated note, have a wonderful weekend everyone!

Call for help: Who was Thomas Thomas' parents?

Hello all - it's been awhile! Spring is finally here - the perfect time to start adding new leaves and branches to my tree again, I hope!

Since I began blogging about genealogy, I have connected with so many cousins near and far, old and young - many times I've been able to help them with a genealogy question or problem they've been having, but more often than not they have been invaluable in helping me break through my own brick walls and add to my branches. So I thought as a service to my genealogy clients, I'd offer them the opportunity to post their own genealogy problems, questions, or brick walls to my blog - you never know who's out there reading; you never know who's out there researching those same questions...or who is out there with the answers!

So today we have a question from K. about his great-great-grandfather, Thomas Thomas. According to K, Thomas Thomas is listed in the 1880 Census in Ellsworth, Kansas, where it says he was born in Pennsylvania and was married to Louisa A. According to his family's oral tradition, the couple lived previously in Lebanon, Ohio, where K's great grandmother, Rebecca Jane Thomas, was born. From there, the family moved to Ottawa (LaSalle), Illinois, where Rebecca married Loren(zo) Dow Pratt in 1866 - he was just home from the Civil War.

Soon after Rebecca and Lorenzo's marriage they moved to Marion, Kansas, and Thomas Thomas, her father, moved his family to Ellsworth, Kansas. In the 1880 census, Thomas is listed as a policeman, "which is interesting," K writes, "since Ellsworth was one of the wildest of the end of the trail cowtowns." Sounds exciting, right? Bet there are some good stories there! In addition to Rebecca Jane, Thomas and Louisa had a son, Joseph C., also of Marion, Kansas, and a daughter, Maria, who accompanied Louisa to Marion for the birth of Thomas V. Pratt (Rebecca's son and Thomas' grandson) in 1875.

So, to bring us back to the beginning, K wants to knock through his brick wall and answer the question: Who was Thomas Thomas' parents?

We have a lot of good info here - we have specific towns and locations, we have a few years, and we have a couple of siblings and in-laws, all of whom might have descendants out there researching these same questions or who already have the answers! So if anybody is reading this and just got that excited feeling of, "Oh my gosh - this is MY family, too!" whether or not you have the actually answer K is looking for (sometimes two people working together to search for the same answer is better than one), you can leave me a message in my comments and I will be happy to put you in contact with K and y'all can enjoy the fun of connecting with cousins!



Some random snowy Monday night AncestryDNA thoughts...

On a personal level, I have been very happy with AncestryDNA and especially since the results were revamped, updated, and made more specific...I mean, it's been thrilling. I can't wait till I get a job and can buy DNA kits for all my siblings and my father to see the slight variations and hopefully see something pop up in theirs that didn't pop up in mine...you never know. That's the fun thing about DNA.

On a connecting level, however... ::sigh:: It's been a total bust. I have tons and tons of matches. I have 30 4th cousin matches (4th-6th cousin range, usually) and I would say more than 100 distant matches, many of whom are "moderate" probability, not "low" or "very low." And yet, I have no shared ancestor hints. Not a single one. Nada. Zilch. I am super super jealous of Cousin April over at Digging up the dirt on my dead people, who has made several genetic matches on the family line that we share - but I don't connect genetically to her or any of her matches. Of course, until the database is overflowing with people, most people are going to be in my boat - the great and terrible thing about DNA connections is it will connect you to people you might never be able to prove a connection to with any records. I have several very well documented lines - my Raynor line, which is my shared line with Cousin April and dates back to colonial America, and several of my German lines, which immigrated more recently (the 1800s). I think a lot of my DNA connections are on my Irish lines, which I will never be able to prove with records - so that's a genetic dead end. And unfortunately, AncestryDNA is not yet available to many foreign countries, so I won't be able to connect to any of my well documented German lines unless their descendants came to America and also took the DNA test. Which basically leaves me with my Raynor line, which has proved useless so far.

Part of the problem is two of my pet peeves with AncestryDNA - the people who took tests who A), have a private family tree and B) the people who took tests who have NO family tree. At the very least, you can input you, your parents, and your grandparents. That would be enough for me to see whether or not there was a possible Raynor connection. And I understand people who want to keep their family tree private from the general public but it would be nice if Ancestry came up with a way to allow users to make their trees public to other AncestryDNA users, to see if there's a connection there.

So, I'm taking matters into my own hands, as much as I can anyway. I have largely, on my public tree anyway, only gone backwards, never sideways. Well, my new goal is to add as many branches and cousins as possible, to widen that net and hopefully catch a few AncestryDNA cousin connections or even just normal genealogy researching cousins - if they won't or can't connect to me, I'm going to do my damnest to connect to them.

Now I also uploaded my DNA results to GedMatch.com after hearing that Cousin April was able to connect to a non-U.S. cousin through that website - no matter which DNA website you use, you can upload your results and connect to genetic matches - I got a ton of results (including one person with the last name Carman, who is, of course, somewhere on the Raynor line I'm sure - another old Long Island name) but I don't really understand how it works yet or how to contact these people or how accurate it is. What was kind of cool is there's a beta database that gives you a picture of what it believes your eye color looks like, based on your DNA results, and mine was DEAD ON. It was insane. I have a fairly unique eye color so the fact that it accurately picked out what my eye looks like makes me think the website is pretty legit.

Anyway, I have a lot of work to do - tons to keep me busy on these snowy days. Happy hunting, everyone!

My blogiversary!

I cannot believe it's been six years since I started writing this blog. Writing about genealogy has been such a blessing. I have had people find me through this blog and reach out to me for help. I have used this as an outlet for all my frustrations whenever I hit brick walls (which has been and continues to be quite frequently!). I have used this blog to celebrate all my genealogical victories, both big and small. I have used it as a record of my journey and of my growth as a genealogist. I have shared what I have learned in the hopes of helping others learn as well. But I think most importantly, I have found so many cousins (or they have found me), both close and distant, and many times I have been able to share with them things about our common tree that they didn't know, but more often than not they have been the source of invaluable knowledge - records, photos, letters - as well as kinship and friendship. So I'd just like to take a moment to thank everyone who has read me over the years. Hopefully six years from now, we'll all still be here - further along in our research and cousin networks, but still searching, always searching for more answers!

You can read my original blog post here.

Wedding Wednesday: Olga Butt & Lawrence Ferris, June 13, 1936 in Kew Gardens, Queens, New York

First, let's just put it out there: Olga Butt is an unfortunate, unfortunate name. But seeing as she got a fancy schmancy European education, lived in a beautiful neighborhood in Queens, NY and was well off enough to get a big write-up in the Society Page of the Long Island Sunday Press, I guess I wouldn't mind having her name after all...

Olga Butt (1913-1999) was my first cousin 3 times removed. Her mother, Margaretha/Marguerite/Margaret, was the sister of my great-great grandmother, Meta Ricklefs Haase. Olga was actually born Olga Cornelius but her father, Oscar Cornelius (who actually comes from a very old Long Island family, like my family on my mother's side of the family) seems to have disappeared pretty early on and I assume Olga was formally or informally adopted by her mother's husband, Sheldon Clayland Butt. Which makes things so much fun when you're trying to do a genealogy search for someone. We've all been there. You know what I'm talking about.

So anyway, this past week I found Olga's wedding announcement, which is fun, since I never even knew her married name, but I don't really know anything about her and finding side branches is fun but not the overwhelmingly exciting kind that is finding someone you're directly descended from. But this announcement actually emphasizes the importance of pursuing those side branches. Why? Because a few of my direct ancestors are actually mentioned in the article - you just never know where people are going to show up!

My great-grandmother, Helen Haase Stutzmann, who I know very little about, was the matron of honor (she and Olga were cousins, and apparently close ones at that). My great-grandfather, Frederick Stutzmann, was the best man - so my great-grandparents were the two most important people there besides the bride and groom themselves (well, & I guess the bride and grooms parents). But my favorite part was reading that Helen and Frederick's 2 daughters, Faith and Helen, were the flower girls. Helen Stutzmann Gorry was my grandmother. She would've been 4 years old as the flower girl. How I would love to see photos of that wedding!!


Wedding Wednesday: Timothy Cronin & Ellen Casey apply for a marriage license, 1912

When it comes to our recent family history (think the last 100 years or so), there can be many pieces of evidence out there revealing or supporting a family tree fact...of course, we're lucky if we can find just one but it's always a good idea to keep looking for more, something that can support or back up (or sometimes, refute) what we think we already know. In the case of marriages, you can have a church record, a non-religious record, a wedding announcement in a newspaper or church bulletin, and in my case here, a record of application for a marriage license. This would be for my great-grandparents, Timothy Ambrose Cronin and Ellen Marie Casey. And as you can see, not only does this blurb in The Brooklyn Daily Eagle from Oct. 11, 1912 give notice to that marriage license application, it also provides my great-grandmother's maiden name, both of their ages, and the addresses at which they lived. All information I already have, as it were, but if you didn't have it already, there it would all be in one short, tiny announcement. And as I already stated, it's nothing but a good thing to find other sources to back up what you already know. Timothy and Ellen were married four days later on Oct. 15, 1912 at Our Lady of Perpetual Help, a Catholic Redemptorist parish in the Sunset Park section of Brooklyn. Timothy was 33 and Ellen was 19. They had 2 children, including my grandmother, and remained married until Timothy's death in 1948.


Military Monday: Dan Cronin reports for draft, St. Patrick's Day 1941

This picture and caption are from the Long Island Daily Press. Daniel F. Cronin reported for the draft and was inducted into the Army at the Jamaica Armory on St. Patrick's Day, 1941. He was 27 years old and a Freeport, NY police officer. Dan was my grandmother's brother and my grandfather's best friend. My grandfather, Clifford Raynor, was also a Freeport police officer, so I guess they did that together. Uncle Dan died before I was born - I think he was also my mom's godfather. He's the man pictured on the left.


A Happy New Year's & a little bit of family history :)

Tomorrow might be a new year, but tomorrow is always another chance to start anew. 2013 was a wonderful year for me, but here's hoping 2014 is even better, for us all! Here's a little throwback to New Years' past...have a fun but safe time tonight everyone! Happy New Years!

From The Queens County Sentinel from Jan. 6, 1898, a short story about a New Year's party thrown by my great-great grandmother, Delia Dauch Berg. My 3rd great grandfather, Thomas Dauch, was the guest of honor, and my great-grandmother, Amelia Berg Raynor, (listed in the story as Mildred E. Berg - her nickname was Millie) was also there. She was 13 years old.


Baby's first Christmas

Just a few photos of my daughter's first Christmas. We bought her a stocking, took photos with Santa, put up her special "Baby's First Christmas" ornaments, sang Jingle Bells over and over again just to see her dance, traveled to New Jersey to spend Christmas Eve with her cousin and the hubby's side of the family, and traveled far away, well just upstairs, to spend Christmas day with my side of the family. The holidays can't help but be about family and as genealogists, we all know the importance of family. And everything we did with my daughter to celebrate - well, that's how family traditions get started and handed down from generation to generation.

It's still the Christmas season, so a only somewhat belated merry Christmas and happy holidays to all of you and all your loved ones, both living and dead! :)
Christmas Eve in New Jersey

Opening gifts Christmas morning
 And probably my most favorite photo of the day - visiting my grandmother, my daughter's great-grandmother, at the nursing home Christmas day. My grandmother is 98 years old and the original family historian in my family - love seeing her light up when my daughter comes to visit!

Visiting with Great-Grandma Raynor on Christmas, 2013.

Sunday's Obituary: Hannah Gorry, June 4, 1930

From the Brooklyn Standard Union, June 4, 1930:

Hannah Gorry was the aunt of my great-grandfather, Elmer Gorry Sr. After Elmer's father and siblings all died, his mother continued to live and work in Manhattan and Elmer went to go live with his bachelor uncle, Michael, and his spinster aunts, Mamie and Hannah, in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. Hannah is a bit of an interesting character. She didn't want anyone to know how old she was, so anything we have of hers that used to have a date, the date has been scratched out. She's listed in several census records so we can approximate her age, but even there, she's a different age in every one - meaning, even though each census is 10 years apart, she does not age 10 years in subsequent records. She's listed as 9 years old in the 1870 census and there's a family legend that she was alive when Abraham Lincoln was assassinated. As an adult, she worked as a seamstress, and she lived with her brother and sister her entire life.

Thanksgiving Thursday: What I'm thankful for

Today, as with every Thanksgiving, whether we spend it surrounded by family or on our own, we remember whatever it is we're thankful for - our loved ones, a job, a home, our independence, the peace and quiet. This year I am especially thankful for my daughter, who is celebrating her first Thanksgiving - we already watched the Macy's parade together (as much as an 8 month old will sit still to watch a parade) and being the sap that I am (and because of my new parent lack of sleep), it made me cry, just a little bit. And as always, I'm thankful for my health and the health of my loved ones, a roof over my head and a home filled with love and laughter, and of course, family - whether it's family by blood or the family we choose, whether they're here with me in person or here with me in spirit. If you do genealogy, I don't think you can NOT be thankful for the gift of family - and we remember all of them today. And it's nice to know that even if you're alone on Thanksgiving, a genealogist knows that you're never really alone - our family is with us through the generations and through the years.

They don't bring dessert, but they also don't overstay their welcome ;)

Happy Thanksgiving everybody!

The dead person whisperer

That's how I feel. A lot. Not for nothing, but I think dead people (well, most of them anyway) want me to find them. And not just me, but all of us who do genealogy. Some people, like the Long Island Medium, can speak to or channel people who have (recently) passed but when it comes to grandparents or great-grandparents or fifth cousins twice removed, I am like a fricking Nancy Drew detective, Jennifer Love Hewitt ghost whisperer. I just get these hunches or gut feelings about documents or records I come across and I just know it's those spirits nudging me in the right direction. Unless you're Jacob Raynor or John Meinberg, in my particular family tree anyway. There are just some ancestors that didn't want to be found while they are alive, and now that they're dead, that's certainly not going to change. You know what I'm talking about. We all have them. And we hate them. And they're the ancestors that keep us going when we have nothing else to prod us along...

Anyway, I had a really great experience, obviously, with a recent client. She wanted some more information on her husband's father but she was also hoping to find some evidence about the identiy of her husband's father's parents. I looked for the more than 2 hours she hired me for. I couldn't help it. Once my curiosity is piqued, I can't turn it off...and those dead people know it! This guy, her father-in-law, was an elusive S.O.B. I found a few things to supplement her own research, but not the names of his parents, and decided to finally call it a night. I was in bed but I couldn't shut my brain off. Had I checked this database? What if I framed my search with different information? So I got up and kept looking. And you know what? I found a marriage certificate for this guy for an earlier marriage my client hadn't known about, and on the back of that document? The names of his parents.

Boo-yah.

I feel like this particular dead person didn't NOT want to be found...he was just testing my worthiness and dedication. And once he saw I was committed and was going to keep going, he gave it up. I know it sounds crazy...but if you're somebody who has found herself immersed in genealogical databases and a variety of search terms at 3 a.m. (which I'm sure all of my regular readers and many more of you are), then you know what I'm talking about, and I don't sound so crazy. Sometimes it's about thinking outside the box - don't search with a name, use just a date and place of birth instead; do a boolean search instead of a soundex search; when all else fails, just Google the darn thing...and of course, realize you may have to rely on real life cousins for help or take your whole search off the Internet into the real world instead. And when you come across that elusive record that might be, but might not be, what you're looking for, trust your instincts. If something is saying, "This is probably it," go with it. It might be your gut. Or it might be a supernatural nudge from the other side, somebody who's glad they're not going to be forgotten.

So when you get discouraged, remind yourself that you are a dead person whisperer. You've done it in the past. You'll do it again. Put your work aside and come back to it with fresh eyes in a day or so. Go to sleep and come back to it at 3 in the morning. Our ancestors WANT to be found. Well, most of them anyway.

Jacob Raynor & John Meinberg - I'm coming for you! :)


The 50th anniversary of JFK's assassination

The Kennedy assassination is just a moment in history for me and my peers - a tragic moment, yes, but just another historical moment such as World War II or the assassination of Abraham Lincoln for that matter. For my parents' generation, however, it is probably a defining moment. Like 9/11 is for me, but won't be for my daughter. It wasn't the first time an American president was assassinated, but it was the first time in modern memory that Americans felt that vulnerability and in a very scary Cold War era to boot. And I think the mystique continues because 50 years later we still don't have answers to what happened. But 50 years later, I know everyone who lived through that moment can still remember where they were when they heard the news November 22, 1963.

This picture was taken earlier in Kennedy's term and I've posted it before, but I'll post it again. My grandfather is in it, and it's just one example of how our own personal histories are intertwined with world history at large, History if you will; that the family members we look for and remember are not just names and dates or part of our own personal stories - they are people in a larger time and place.

President John F. Kennedy and my grandfather, Elmer Gorry (second from right)

Follow-up to my AncestryDNA results: Connecting with cousins (or not!)

As you all know, I had taken the AncestryDNA test last year and the results for those tests were recently updated to reflect more specific ethnic populations. Cousin April took the test about a month ago and just got her results (yes, they do tend to come that quickly, though if you're thinking of ordering one for the holidays, I would expect there to probably be a bit of a backlog) - you can read her wonderfully written blog post here - unfortunately, our tests failed to link us genetically. Boo :( - very disappointing. But as April points out, that doesn't mean we botched our research and that we're not related - it just means we didn't inherit the same DNA. As I try to explain to my siblings and anyone else who (doesn't) ask, we have so many ancestors, we couldn't possibly inherit DNA from every single one of them. Just look at how different you might look from one of your siblings - even though you are super close genetically, you each inherited different bits of DNA from your parents, your grandparents, your great-grandparents, and so on. Which is why, if you can afford it, it's totally worth it to get even close relatives tested, because they might show results for something totally different than what you got. And even though that piece might not be a part of your genetic ancestry, it's definitely a part of your genealogical ancestry. Just because it doesn't show up in your results genetically doesn't mean it's not there genealogically. That's what I tried to tell my fiance when he was disappointed that he didn't get any Middle Eastern ethnicity in his AncestryDNA results. DNA is proof of what IS there. It's not proof of what ISN'T there, if that makes any sense.

So anyway, Cousin April and I did not show up as being genetically matched at all. Interestingly enough, though, she did get matched to someone on our common Raynor branch. So it seems that even though I'm closer to the Raynor name than she is (my mother was a Raynor), she's closer to Raynor DNA (at least on that branch - I have, like, 3 other Raynor branches)!! 

I did find my first criticism of AncestryDNA, though, thanks to Cousin April's results. One of the things you get, in addition to your results and your matches, is a common ancestor hint, the infamous green leaf. It shows up, I assume, when your tree and the tree of one of your genetic matches has a common ancestor. Duh. Because, for the most part, your matches are at least fourth cousins (meaning you have 3rd great grandparents in common), unless you have a well documented tree, like the Raynors do, you might not get one of these hints. Cousin April got one. I got none, even though when I narrowed my matches search down to people who had Raynors in their tree, somebody showed up. We both have Joseph and Elizabeth (Lester) Raynor in our trees, and we were connected as 5th-8th cousins, yet I didn't get a hint. So, that leaves me wondering how many other people I can actually genealogically connect to who showed up as genetic cousins, because it's kind of annoying that I had to do a manual search for this person. Has anyone else come across this problem?

So, if you want to read a little bit of a more in-depth analysis of inheriting DNA, please check out April's post. And any one of my immediate family members should expect the possibility of getting AncestryDNA kits as Christmas presents, even though it's more a present for myself than for anyone else! :)


Wordless Wednesday: The littlest Raynor in Raynortown

My daughter on the corner of Raynor St. & Main St. in Freeport, NY (formerly Raynortown)

Took this picture on Halloween as we were walking past Raynor St. My daughter's grandmother (my mother) was a Raynor and we still live in what used to be Raynortown, Long Island. She might not be the absolute youngest Raynor living in the town her many-times great grandfather founded in the 1650s, but at 7 months, she's got to be one of the littlest. It's been 350 years since Edward Raynor came to this place and we're still here! :)