52 Ancestors Week 25: Fast

 From Amy Johnson Crow: Week 25

The theme for Week 25 is "Fast." I feel the need... the need for speed! (Yeah, the coffee has kicked in.) This theme might make you think of cars or horses, but it could also be an ancestor who didn't take long to find. Don't forget about names like Quick and Race! Have fun with this theme!

I got time to think about my past as I dodge between the bullets...

      Building a family tree upward into the past is a very important part of your genealogical adventure. However, building a tree down toward the present can have its advantages ,too, because doing so will quickly solve various questions you might have about where certain DNA matches belong in the grand scheme of things. That's why descendency research is just as important as going back in time.

    Just today I quickly put a DNA match my mother and I have into the family tree. The match, let's call her Jessie, shares a hefty 179 cMs with my mother and shares 46 cMs with me. Not bad, right? I believe 179 cMs can get you into the second cousin bracket according to the shared cM project.

I looked at her tree and saw that her mother passed away in 2019. On a hunch, I checked my tree to see if I had her in there and lo and behold there she was. She was married to a Senter and that Senter was the grandson of my second great-grandmother, Gertrude Stevens.

    If you remember from my previous blogs, Gertrude here was married to three men over the course of her life: Wilfred Felker,  Walter Howard Senter and Charles Melvin Berry. I descend from Wilfred and Jessie, it seems, descends from Walter. This is a pretty slam dunk case because it took all of five minutes to actually solve. I find I may be a bit disappointed.

    However, you know this will not work for everyone. You need to do the work and build that tree down. It makes finding your DNA matchs SO much easier. That and it helps if a DNA match has a tree which clearly shows the way forward! You know, this isn't the end of the story. Sure I've found a half second cousin once removed and everything. But, there's still something else that may connect us.....on the French side.

That's a lot of French ya got there, Jessie.

    Whew. Jessie has quite a bit of French in her doesn't she? What could that mean? Well, her mother is clearly of French-Canadian descent. How do I know this? Her name was Marcelle Justine Lambert. That's a pretty French-Canadian name, guys. Marcelle, anyway. 

    When I did a search for her, I found that her parents were Armand Lucien Lambert and Jeannette Bernadette Martel. If that doesn't prove a French-Canadian connection, I don't know what will. Tickets to a Montréal Expos game? Poutine?

    She was clearly French-Canadian and this means that I likely have a connection with her mother waaay back on those lines. We're talking 8th and 9th great-grandparents as common ancestors here. Too far back for DNA, of course. But, not too far back for a paper trail. Gotta love Québec.

    Jessie's closest relation to me is still obviously Gertrude via her son, Lawrence. After sorting it all out, I sent a message to her and I really hope she replies. I tried my best to explain that I descend from Getrude's first husband and that my mother has stories about the Senter clan. It's true. I believe a few of them were invited to my parents' wedding. 

    So, that's it. Now I wait for a reply from Jessie and see what she has to say about everything. Will I get one? I'm not too sure. The returns on people responding to private messages on Ancestry are pretty low.  We'll see, I guess.

    The one thing I am sure of is the connection I have with Jessie and it's a pretty strong one. There's little chance that it's a false match. I may have a paper trail to her mother and I already did the research down to her parents. All I had to do was put in her name. It was that quick and easy.

    Do keep in mind that this may not work for everyone. It only worked here because I already did the legwork. I put in the hours of research and everything into the Senters and documented who descended from who. Finding Jessie's mother was easy because I already had her in the tree. 

    This is why it pays to do descendency research in your tree. You get to build the tree down toward the present and quickly solve any DNA related puzzles. However, this may not work if someone's tree is private, not connected, there's no tree at all or if someone uses a screenname on the site that you tested. Still, it's a good idea to build the tree down to the present because you'll never know who you'll find. Building trees up is good. Finding those cousins by building it downard is even better. Terms and conditions may apply!

See ya next time!