Monday, April 20, 2020

An answer at last?

We had snow late last week. I waited for the sunshine to take care of it, and went out grocery shopping.



I think this is a sparrow or some small bird hopping on by. This picture is just a small indication of filling boredom.



I have been tracking these little fellows. Every day it's "Come on! Come on!"



The same with these big fellows, too. There actually are three fat buds there, and I think they will be some sort of fancy, feathered tulips.



Today is just too lovely.  High in the mid sixties, light film of overcast, bright sunshine. And I've been rewarded. I believe these are ten petal anemone. And it seems today was the end of spring. The rest of the week if forecast forties and rain.

Some of you may remember I signed on with 23andMe  several years ago. I frequently get notices, "you have new relatives!", and I don't react to them because the generations aren't near enough to me to be excited. 

I am intrigued how further down they are drilling on all of us, me included. I now am incredibly Neanderthal, for instance. I have 293 Neanderthal "Variants", more than 83 percent of all the rest of their clients.

Recently I had an email from a young, new 23andMe client, asking me about her relatives. She probably didn't understand that 3rd or 4th cousins and pretty far down the ladder. I explained what I know about how it works and told her worst of all, she probably is part of my great-great grandmother Cox's family, maiden name Smith, and all my research dead ended with her. She is the grandmother who succumbed to the 1918 flu epidemic.

23andMe also tweaked me with a new clue, I have three close relatives. Of course, I must upgrade for more information. Or I could sort on the oceans of data they give me and see what I find. And by golly, I found several new relatives sharing my paternal grandmother's maiden name in their genealogy. One still lives in this state.

His info said he's 47 years old, and new to this game. A new generation looking back. I sent an email and had an answer in hours. We are related; his maternal great-grandmother was a younger sister of my grandmother!

I asked if he could throw out my question, why did my grandfather marry my grandmother, a teenager fifteen years younger. He answered  he would do that; "some of them are still alive and "Jay, who's ninety, is a real talker!"

So, another cousin has answered and I will ask him to go stir up his old aunts and uncles, too. I would love to know. And it won't hurt them to learn some ancestors were scoundrels.


40 comments:

  1. The good the bad and the ugly, they are what made us! I love this stuff.

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  2. And I have to ask...do you by chance have an Sweet in your lineage? My Sweets migrated from RI to NY to Ohio and that's about all I know.

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    1. One of my best friends in high school was Susan Sweet. We've lost track, but I could track her down. Her uncle was an attorney in Akron Ohio.

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  3. When you had snow it was 92 degrees in my part of the world. Fortunately, it cooled off some and now our highs are in the low eighties. We've gotten a lot of rain. I have a lot of cousins and have no idea where most of them are. Congratulations on finding some relatives.

    Love,
    Janie

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  4. You are lucky to find closer relatives, They send me notices as well but nobody that I care to get close to. My husband bought the upgrade and is pleased because it tells him things of such importance , like what color his ear wax is and how likely he is to sneeze after eating chocolate...I will just stick with what I have, it is enough info- too much in fact.

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  5. Did he want a young wife to give him many children? That's the reason that always occurs to me when looking at historical data.

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    1. As soon as he had children to support he skipped bail for child support, changed his name and went west.

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  6. I was relativeless growing up. Immediate family and nothing more. In my forties I discovered I have cousins half a world away. In the interim the family has expanded, and those cousins have more relatives than they can shake a stick at.
    Not certain about your tulips. The bud doesn't look quite right to me. Time will tell.

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  7. Ha, ha, it can be fun finding relatives. I don't do it through these DNA services though. Just the old fashioned way. I hope it keeps you well entertained while you are waiting for spring and summer to arrive.

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  8. It looks you got some of our glorious weather we had recently. You should be getting some more soon as it has been real nice the last few days. Nice to hear that you learned some more about your family and I look forward to hearing what else you find out.

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  9. I'm on 23andMe too and find it interesting at times. I know all my first cousins but I have discovered some second and third cousins with interesting connections. I don't bother with going any further than third cousins as there are just too many! I have tried to help a few younger cousins in learning about our family too. It's refreshing to find some that are interested. I am also on ancestry.com and can use the two together to find new relatives. I hope you get some answers to your family questions! Let us know if you find out.

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  10. Oh my goodness. What a great finds in that relative! I have questions that I am sure won't ever be answered since so many have already passed. Hope you get the answers you want!

    Betty

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  11. I posted a query on "Cousin Connect" looking for anyone related to me.. I am an only child of an only child of a child whose siblings had no children. And didn't know my German father at all. So relatives are few and far between. After 8 years I got a response... I have four 1/2 cousins - the illegitimate grandchildren of my grandfather.

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  12. Genealogy is such a fascinating study...Through Ancestry I found a first cousin who was able to give me a lot of information about my birth father. Very exciting.

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  13. 293 Neanderthal variants? Does that make you almost a cave woman? It would explain your toughness, your self-sufficiency and your weaving of sturdy clothing.
    I'm not going to look into my ancestors, I don't believe I'll find anyone close to me anyway. As far as I know, my nearest would be whoever is left on the great-grandmother side in Sweden.

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    1. Hari OM
      LOL - I was thinking along these very lines, River - Joanne fits the description very well!!!

      ...and Jo - that's said with Love and full compliment. Which you knew, right?!
      YAM xx

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  14. I think your tulips are actually Alliums. You will enjoy them when they flower. So will the bee's.
    Take care.

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  15. I have signed on to ancestry and forces war records...hoping to help my daughter who is now the main researcher..but she is busy with working at home plus her own business plus my lovely 9 year old grandsons who are on the Asperger's scale....
    The more you research the more you want to do, and filling in more than just the bare details is fascinating. Meeting more relatives us fascinating!
    It isn't boredom watching those small details..it is fine observation.
    Stay well xx

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  16. Everyone wondered what happened to the Romans left here when Rome collapsed, leaving the far outposts stranded. They just blended in. It took about 300 years but eventually they turned British. It took the Neanderthals longer I think, but there are still plenty of them living a life in DNA.

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  17. Looked into my ancestry for a while a few years ago - your post has jogged my memory and makes me think that if we are in lockdown for a long haul, as seems likely, I may take it up again.

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  18. I didn't realize there was so much to that website. Years ago, I had my dna done and was disappointed at the dearth of info. It seems that it has changed -- for a price, I suspect.

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  19. A few years ago I got interested in my ancestry but after getting a lot of requests from people, I decided to shut it down. Like you, I was more interested in the secrets in my immediate family (two generations) and third or fourth cousins were too distant. My niece and cousin are much more interested and have put together a nice family tree and have gotten an answer to some of the questions we have all had.

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  20. I did the 23&me thing, too, but I ignore all the follow-up. My parents weren't very curious about their ancestry and so I had no idea, really, where they came from other than England. Turns out, Scotland, also, and I have a small dose of neanderthal as well. And some Native American, as well. We had gorgeous weather on Monday but snow on 4/18. It only lasted a couple of hours but it is the latest, I think, that we've had snow in this area.

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  21. Everytime I read about genealogy searches I put it on my list and forget. How very interesting Joanne. I think mine will be judging from the "scandals" I heard from an elderly aunt years ago.

    XO
    WWW

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  22. I always wonder if I have some half-siblings somewhere that I don't know about. My father was a rogue. How interesting that you may finally get some answers about your ancestors!

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  23. my sister does pur genealogy research. she sent off for the dna testing but I don't think it was the one that delved into neanderthal. if so it didn't report us as having any but I can't imagine that any of us don't. there was on girl in junior high that definitely had neanderthal genes and they threw her back that far. poor thing. she had the heavy brow and jaw and she was teased unmercifully by the other kids.

    and yeah, that looks like 10 petal anemone to me but perhaps a commercial version as the leaves look stouter but that could just be the cold.

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  24. That is interesting about family research. A lot of research has been done quite far back on my father's side. As far as I know, my mother's side has never been researched. Daughter started on the task recently. She hasn't got far. Many Irish birth records were lost in various fires and my mother had the Irish equivalent of a John Smith name. On top of that it seems that genealogical records are filled in very carelessly. We have come across at least 4 versions of her surname so far. It would be interesting to find more relatives. I think they are scattered all over the world in droves.

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  25. I have a friend who enjoys genealogy, she's always wanting me to spit in a tube. However, I'm just not that interested, so I don't. It's frustrating for her, she wants to know where my maternal grandfather came from, he sort of sprung into being, fully formed. If they would do something useful, like test for the Alzheimer's gene that would be a different story.

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  26. Oh, you are in for some fun now!

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  27. Joanne, genealogy is interesting. Families have stories that many of us will never know. I have questions that will probably never be answered. But we have done the ancestry DNA thing... and it does help. I hope you get your answers.

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  28. Finding a not so distant relative is a bonus with that testing for sure. I think I’ve exhausted the available info in my lines now too.

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  29. I'm not particularly interested in researching relatives, particularly since the last name of Smith is in there a lot, and nobody before my generation owned property of any kind, which is where a lot of records are found.

    A friend of my sister found out some info on my father's family, too funny, she was keener than we were. But I see how fascinating it is for some people.

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  30. Now that is fun having close relatives living so near! I never heard of 23andMe, perhaps they didn't advertise it here. 40 deg sounds pretty miserable I have to say. I hope you get proper spring soon.

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  31. Old men married young women in the faint hopes they would survive child birth better. It will be interesting to hear what your 'new' relative finds out.

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  32. I also research genealogy. Its fun, interesting, and very frustrating at times.

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  33. I had a cousin who did a great deal of research into my dad's side of the family. There are quite a few skeletons in that closet.

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  34. My sister's been delving into the family tree. Don't know if it was 23&Me or Ancestry, but somebody was looking for relatives of my Aunt. Turned out to be a descendant of my Aunt's dearest friend. The woman had died, and this niece was going through her possessions and had come on all these letters written by my Aunt in the 1930s. We'd always been told that my Aunt had gone to business college. Turns out that was a lie. She'd been a member of All-American Red-Heads, the first pro women's basketball team that began touring in 1935 and kept up until the 80s. They were like the Harlem Globetrotters - before the Globetrotters had been invented! But my Aunt had written his women as she had toured the country her year with the Red Heads, and she had kept those letters all those years. Guess our conservative Baptist family felt the business college story was more respectable than admitting she was a darn good basketball player. But if you knew her, the basketball player story was a far better fit.

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  35. There are dozens of us, on both sides; far too many to keep in touch with everyone.
    That's where Christmas letters come in handy and luckily there's always a few most years, some even with photos. It's fascinating to see how some traits are carried through generation after generation!

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  36. My husband learned a lot from his membership in Ancestry.com. So far he's found out that my uncle had two daughters we knew nothing about and that his (my husband's) older brother had two daughters we also knew nothing about. We've met one of my new first cousins in person, are exchanging e-mails with the other cousin and one of the older brother's granddaughters. Brave New World of Hidden Relatives.

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