Thrilling Discoveries

My most thrilling moments in genealogy research

It is not very hard to develop an impressive family tree on Ancestry. It is enormously satisfying to be able to add several generations of ancestors in an afternoon sitting. However, it cannot compare to the excitement of breaking through a brick wall, solving a family mystery, discovering a fascinating story, or connecting with a person or event of historical significance. 

I have had quite a few memorable break-throughs in my research. Reflecting back on the last ten years of working on my family tree, here are some of the highlights:

1. Discovering our Mayflower connections on both sides! My paternal Mayflower ancestor is Stephen Hopkins (there may be a maternal connection to him as well). Also, on the maternal side is John Howland and Elizabeth his wife and her family, the Tilleys. John Howland is remembered for falling off the ship in the middle of the ocean. There is a famous painting about it. 

2. Learning that there are many religious leaders in our direct line, including some famous ones like Roger Williams, founder of Providence, R.I., and Joseph Bosworth, a leader of the Mormon church under Joseph Smith himself. My 3rd great grandfather, Orrin Bishop Judd, was a respected theologian and Bible translator (until he caused a divorce scandal), who founded the American Bible Society. Some of my ancestors established churches in the colonies that still exist today. 

3. Connecting to significant historical events. In addition to fighting in all the major wars in America (1812, Revolutionary, and Civil), my ancestors fought Indians in Colonial times (in both Virginia and New York), fought Indians during the pioneer days out west and as first settlers in the Dakota Territory, survived the Grasshopper Plague of 1874, befriended General Custer before the Last Stand, knew the Marquis de Lafayette personally, and assisted a famous paleontologist to dig up the first dinosaur bones discovered in America. My ancestors established towns like Hartford, CT, and governed colonies in New England. My closest Confederate Army veteran, George Powell, was taken POW three days before the end of the Civil War at Farmville where 100 years later I went to college. 

4. Solving old family mysteries tops the list of thrilling moments. I have written about these extensively in this blog. A recap:

The biggest mystery concerned my grandmother who grew up in an orphanage in Texas and knew almost nothing about her family. All she knew about her parents were their names (which turned out to be inaccurate) and faces - she had two small photos of them which she carried with her all her life. 

There were several big AHA! moments in the process of finding my grandmother's family:

• Mom remembering that her mother had changed her name! As a teen in the orphanage, she changed her first name from Ethelyn to Teresa. I had puzzled over this discrepancy for months.
• finding her father's business address on Douglas Avenue on a map of Wichita - explaining why my grandmother had incorrectly remembered her father's middle name as Douglas. It was actually Dozier. 
• finding her mother's gravestone on Findagrave, at an asylum cemetery in Woodward Oklahoma.
• digging up many news articles about her father, including a caricature in the newspaper that unquestionably matched the small photos she carried. There was a newspaper paragraph that revealed his fate as an inmate in an asylum. 
• finding a photo of her cousin (whom she never knew existed) who could have been her twin. 
• tracing her grandfather back to his roots in Virginia (full circle!). 
• Discovering a connection to Chemokin, a farm located near our family's beloved farm in Mechanicsville where I spent summers as a child.

The second mystery was concerning "The Rift" between my great grandmother Ida and her twin sister Addie. This was a longstanding source of curiosity in my family - everyone knew there was a rift, but no one knew why. That mystery was solved by the discovery of newspaper articles about their mother's death. A lawsuit was filed by Addie against her mother Margaret, which ultimately led to Margaret's death after she had a stroke on the train coming from Richmond to Norfolk to answer the lawsuit. 

Using a variety of methods

Deciphering handwritten letters and U.S. Census abbreviations, providing context by using maps and historical resources, and zooming in on locations using Google Earth have all been methods of solving mysteries and providing these thrilling moments of discovery. Actually visiting cemeteries, and especially the sites of family homes has added a recent new dimension. Standing on the ground that my ancestors walked centuries before is a profound experience. 

There are still mysteries to be solved.