Here's My Story

Storytelling is a big part of my life.  Not my stories instead it is the stories that earlier family members left behind.  If you are not into genealogy then you might not see the value in them.  I just wish that some had been left behind for my elusive ancestor that I have look for for many years.

Through the Y-DNA test, I found out several years ago who was our ancestor who came over from England in the 1600's.  Connecting to him was the problem. Now with the autosomal DNA test, I have found our 2nd great grandfather's brothers and now I  can connect to their father and all the way back to the 1600s.  I also found lots of new cousins.

A few years ago, I wrote everything I could remember about the family members that I have know in hopes that it will help some future generation.

Here is my story of how I got interested in genealogy.  When I was a teenager, I helped my grandfather put together family reunions.  He made family sheets with the linage of the ancestors and wrote down what he knew about them.  I so enjoyed helping him that I fell in love with finding out all about my ancestors, not just the ones we worked on.

My favorite storyteller is Louis L'Amour.  His works are known as westerns though in my liking, he writes about fictional family history.  His Sackett Series is an example. Google says " After the Civil War, Tennessee brothers Orrin and Tyrel Sackett are herding cattle out West while Tell Sackett is prospecting for gold in the hills."  The series is so much more as it takes his readers all the way back to the 1600s in a series of many books. This quote is a favorite of mine "There will come a time when you believe everything is finished. Yet that will be the beginning."

In a way, when we write something here on permies we are telling a story which gets published. I hope these videos will explain why I love storytelling.

In this short video, L'Amour describes how he went about creating the series and how he'd felt the collection, as a whole, provides context to the growth of the American West.




Family History expert Darius Gray about the power of storytelling




Discover what your DNA stories can tell you

My mother was doing the genealogy of her familly. This is how I know I am descending from Charlemagne and St Louis for example. But I have learned a bunch of more stupefying things!

On my mother mother's mother's side.... she had to stop at my great grand mother. Why so short? Protestant familly, and papers that have been burned by the catholics!

My grand mother's maiden name was in 3 parts, a veeeeeery common name + "called" + "beautiful tree"
There's a story there!
I have an ancester that was very tall and serving in Napoleon's army. Who you might know was a short man,,,, One day all soldiers had to kneel in chruch and Napoleaon asked to make him kneel too, but as he was, Napoleon exclaimed "What a beautiful tree!" and then he was called like this and it was added to his official name.

It was like giving nobility to a simple man. You are going to see the incredible coincidences... It cannot be something  else than trans-generational stuff.
As I said, some sides of my familly were indeed from the nobility, but there was a loss of lands and prestige through time. I think there is  a form of regret and that it shows in coming in the familly a simple familly made more prestigeous. But ONE case would not be enough to guess ! It just happen that the story repeated with ALL my female cousins. That's only 3 but....

- one married a guy with also a veeeery simple name, with a meaning close to our famous ancester's.
and his 1st name is long and double and was one of an emperor.
- one married  a guy with also a veeeery simple name and a double 1st name that sounds from a duke.
- then I thought it was not the case of my 3rd cousin, until I considered that it was a contracted name that started with the root of "beautiful" and meant "being noble"!!!

And by simple and short names, I mean like sock, bud or pawn, something worth little.

It is stories like yours that keeps me fascinated on a daily basis.

I am spending a lot of time since I have "time on my hands" going through all the DNA matches (1000's) trying to figure out how we connect.

The funny thing is most of the people I thought we were related to have turned out to be those brothers.

DNA is so fascinating. Even in the plant world.

My DNA knowldge is absolutely ridiculously poor! I cannot even understand how you could use those tests to find your ancesters or your cousins!

I have some more that comes back to me. I went to a course about psychogenealogy. Stood out that a member of the tree was a woman called Blanchard who married a Blanc, which means white. i was asked what it meant.... I answered a bit shocked that it showed very obviously: She had been amputated from the last syllable of her name! The wise teacher gave me a good lesson because he found other 2 possible arguments. i remember one, that it was emphasising the meaning of her name, as Blanchard would be a bit pejorative like "whitish". So he told me to ask all that the familly knew, as it was not that far away.

What did I say "amputation"? i did not even say "cut" nor 2suppressed"!. Well how couls I have "felt" this? This young lady had a father who got amputated during war! i think WW1. So I concluded directly that she felt a lot for her father and found a way to show her familly belonging.

I also think it had to do with whitish turning white, and restauring the family image.

The funny  bit I realize only now: this blue blood stuff seriously has to do with hierarchy, and as I have Asperger's, I am the further you can imagine from understanidng the concept of hierarchy! If droping this concept has repaired something in my familly, well all good!

Xisca Nicolas wrote:My DNA knowldge is absolutely ridiculously poor! I cannot even understand how you could use those tests to find your ancesters or your cousins!

Understanding how DNA works could be like describing the branches on a tree.

Let's use Charlemagne as an example.  So a child is born to Charlemagne.  This child grows up and has a child of their own. Each generation spreads that bloodline. This is similar to a pyramid with the two parents at the top. Male DNA goes down one side of the pyramid and female goes down the other side.

This is how the Y-DNA test works.  It goes down the Males side of the pyramid.  The mt-DNA goes down the female side.

Each generation adds more pyramids.within the first pyramid.  Autosomal DNA is all these tiny pyramids.

Like this:



Source

Companies like Ancestry, 23 & Me and others offer tools that make your search easier.  It is all done by Computers matching your DNA with other DNA in their files.

I hope this has explained.

Anne Miller wrote: Autosomal DNA is all these tiny pyramids.

Companies like Ancestry, 23 & Me and others offer tools that make your search easier.  It is all done by Computers matching your DNA with other DNA in their files.

I hope this has explained.

I will look for autosomal... Up to Mendel, I understand genetics...

The point I did not get was HOW they test, ok so  many people do it that they can see who matches, but only if the person is in their files. So how do you find about an ancester, who is dead and had not left any DNA test!?

and lol, I have Charlemagne even moer than once.... Same for some others, so a "tree" is literally never as this design but very tortuous! My mother had covered a long wall with the down side of wall paper rolls!

Xisca Nicolas wrote: The point I did not get was HOW they test, ok so  many people do it that they can see who matches, but only if the person is in their files. So how do you find about an ancester, who is dead and had not left any DNA test!?

Charlemagne's blood has been carried down through every generation since that child was born.

It is not uncommon that the bloodline can be carried down when two related people marry even if there are several generations apart. These people will have a larger percentage of the bloodline then others.

I know nothing about how the lab part of the samples work.

So my ancestor who came over in the 1600's left his DNA in all of his descendants just like Charlemagne's is in all of the descendants.

I was only interested in finding the descendants of the one who came in the 1600's so I took the DNA Matches and separated them into folders by last name.  I would do a search of all the matches for that last name. Then I concentrated on the ones I was interested in. These were people who had relatives in their tree who were born prior to my ancestor and not from the descendants of mine.

One of the tools that is used is called Triangulation.  It is a complicated process but that is what I used to narrow the "playing field" down to the people I was looking for.