52 Ancestors Week 8: Power

 From Amy Johnson Crow: Week 8's theme is "Power." Does that mean physical strength, political power, power in the family, electrical power? Yes. It's a vague theme on purpose :-) It's whatever the theme sparks in you.

There must also come great responsibility.

    Readers of this blog and my Starbolts webcomic have known that Spider-Man is my favorite Marvel character for a long time now. What's not to like? The guy was funny before Deadpool became a thing, his villains are some of the greatest in the history of comics, his supporting cast is amazing and the lessons learned from the stories are very important. The most important lesson you could ever learn from the comics came from Spidey's first appearance in 1962. In the pages of Amazing Fantasy #15, his co-creator Stan Lee wrote the immortal words "With great power, there must also come great responsibility" after it was revealed that Peter Parker could have easily stopped the thief who ran by him just days before the man killed his beloved uncle Ben.

    Applying this to genealogy is not as hard as it might seem. Do I have a beloved uncle Ben who was brutally murdered? No. But, sometimes I feel do the need to help people when they ask for it. Call it a failing of mine if you want. I just feel the need to help someone out whenever possible. Here is a relatively recent example. The names have been changed to protect the innocent.

DNA doesn't lie!

    My great-aunt Nicolina has a DNA match. Let's call him Alex. As you can see Alex shares 144 cMs with her. That's nothing to take lightly because that puts you right in the 2nd to 3rd cousin bracket according to the fine folks at DNA Painter. 

    Alex naturally shares less with my father and I and when I looked at the cousins we have in common I found that they were all in the Coppola family group in one degree or another. This was later confirmed when I applied the Leeds method of cousin sorting to the match. Everything lined up with the Coppola family. It was time to send a message to Alex to see if he knew how he fit into the family.

    I messaged the manager of Alex's kit and her name was Julie. Julie was surprised to learn that her husband Alex was part Italian. That caused me to be taken aback a bit. Apparently there was some family drama and I am not going to get into that mess. She said she needed my help in figuring out who her husband's father was and where the Italian DNA came from.

     I agreed to help her out and told her all I knew about the family. She gave me some basic information as well. I told her about how Alex fit in with the Coppola side of the family and that he likely descended from my second great-grandmother's brother, Paolo. I came to that conclusion with the help of a friend of mine as we went through the children and grandchildren of Caterina's brothers and sister. Trust me when I say there were a lot of them and I wasn't making a lot of progress. 

    With little recourse, I asked Julie if she could let me see Alex's DNA matches so that I could see things from his perspective. It would greatly narrow down my search because Paolo had so many children. She agreed and I checked things out. Among the matches, I saw a lady with a last name that seemed familiar to me . Her last name was "Cheney". Paolo's daughter, Rose, married a man by the name of Everett Cheney and I already had him in my tree. I wondered if that was a coincidence. Cheney was a common last name and I put that fact on the back burner for a while.

    I created a Leeds chart and once again a Coppola group came up along with a Cheney group. Logically, Alex had to descend from those two families and that was my connection. Right away, I messaged the highest Cheney match he had and she told me all I needed to know about Everett and Rose's children. They had two girls and one boy. She also confirmed that Everett was her uncle and he had married a Coppola.

    The gears started turning in my head and to go along with the theme this week, my spider-sense was buzzing. It was looking likely that the son from that union was Alex's father. The closeness of his match with his Cheney cousin proved that much and just recently we both got a new DNA match to another Coppola descendant who descended from the same Cheney/Coppola couple! You know the old saying. If it looks like a duck, quacks like a duck....YOU'RE A DUCK!

Alex's connection to me. We are 3rd cousins 1x removed.

    I ended up finding Alex's place in my tree. There was a 95% chance that this was accurate based on DNA and the information Julie gave me. I had a choice to make and it was tough because of the drama involved. So, I ended up talking to some of the best genealogists I know and they all said the same thing to me.

    Everyone said I needed to be objective and not let feelings get in the way. Julie asked for help and I needed to give her some answers regardless of the consequences. It was basically a real-life version of Spidey's "With great power" adage. Only without the superpowers.

    I wasn't sure what to do and then I remembered I had went through a similar situation with my great-aunt Nicolina when I discovered that she had a half-sister no one knew about. I told her the truth and while she was shocked she thanked me for helping to figure things out. Drama or not, Alex needed to learn the truth. It was that simple as far as I was concerned.

    I sent a message to Julie and explained everything I knew. I told her to contact the Cheney cousin for verification and left it at that. Everything else was in her hands. I told her everything and went through my findings in exhaustive detail. What Alex and Julie do with that information is their business and their business alone. I did what needed to be done. They asked for help and I delivered. What else could I have done? If you have the ability to help someone find the answers, you should help in every way you can. 

    Every once in a while in this genealogical adventure I'm on, I am reminded of that old adage Stan Lee wrote almost sixty years ago. Even In the real world: with great power, there must also come great responsibility. Who says you can't learn anything from the funny pages? See ya next time, true believers!

Excelsior!