52 Ancestors Week 5: A Breakthrough Moment

 From Amy Johnson Crow: Week 5:

The theme for Week 5 is “A Breakthrough Moment.” Every genealogist has at least one moment when something finally *clicks*. It could be breaking down a brick wall, discovering a long sought-after record, or seeing an ancestor in a new light. This is a good week to write about this discovery. 

You can hear that glass shattering.

    In the beginning, a lot of my breakthroughs were from finding a random ancestor here or a random ancestor there. Naturally, these would be ancestors on my father's paternal side. Everything else was easily discovered through sources or awesome cousins like Mary aka Gesualdogenie dig some serious digging and put all those documents online. I honestly don't know where I'd be without her! 

    Building up my father's paternal side has been taking a lot of time and now that records are finally on Antenati, the Italian government's repository for births, marriages and deaths, finding those ancestors and people I'm missing should proceed at a much quicker pace.

    These days, my breakthroughs tend to be more on the DNA side of things. Thanks to Ancestry's comparison tool and DNApainter.com's amazing "What are the Odds?" app, I've been able to figure out a number of DNA matches including one who was vexing me for quite some time. One of the biggest puzzles was a woman named Isadora. Remember her? This blog will get you up to speed.

    To sum up. Isadora was a woman who shared over 100 cMs with my mother and I. She was also in the 700s range with a known second cousin. She matched virtually everyone who descended from my second great-grandparents, Antoine Legault and Lucie Cadran. In 2023, I had no idea who she was and how she connected to me. It's now almost three years later and I can finally talk about this breakthrough moment!

    My second cousin Pamela and have I tried to contact her many times over the years because of the DNA we shared. DNA doesn't lie and it certainly doesn't lie at over 700 centimorgans! 

    The only clues we had about her identity was that she clearly descended from Delphine Legault, one of my great-grandmother Henrietta's older sisters. There was no denying it. She descended from Delphine. The problem was that Delphine had a ton of children with her husband Ovila David. It was a challenge trying to narrow down who she belonged to.

    Thankfully, Ancestry came out with their DNA comparison tool and it made life a lot easier. One of the first things I did  was compare my cousin's DNA match list with Isadora. To say I was floored with the results is a bit of an understatement!

    When you use the Ancestry Protools feature on Ancestry, you can set it so their top match would be on the top of the list as long as they matched you. I looked at the list and I saw that she shared a mighty 2,008 cMs with another known second cousin. Right away, I messaged Pam on Facebook and said "You're not going to believe this. Isadora's top match is "Paula"! Paula isn't her real name, by the way. The names have been changed to protect the innocent.

    Paula's father was a man named Roland David and he was the youngest of the David siblings. He married Greta Melville and had my second cousin. Isadora seemed to be Paula's half-sister!

That is *NOT* a small number!

    Pamela and I talked about how this was possible. What was going on here? Did Roland have an affair? Was there a mix-up at the hospital? We had no idea and Isadora still wasn't talking to us. Though, when I looked at her comparison chart, I can understand why. I get it. I really do.

    Isadora has a tree with a very Scottish man as her father and some random lady who isn't Greta as her mother. When she looked at her match list, she saw very little in the way of Scottish matches. She was seeing Legault after Legault in the triple digits from Pamela and her cousin Paula to my mother and I. Seeing all of these people you have a close relationship to and no Scottish people may have freaked her out and made her less likely to message anyone back.

    If I were her, I'd have been taken aback by the whole thing. But who knows what she thinks. It's easy for me to put myself in her shoes because the list of Legaults 

    I have no clue how she feels about the whole thing. I can only say that I understand why she hasn't messaged anyone who contacted her. At least I can say that this puzzle was solved and if she wants to talk to any of the cousins about genealogy, I'd be more than happy to help her out.  It's the least I could do. I mean she has a TON of Legault matches. She may need help figuring out who belongs to who.

So many Legaults.

    Naturally, when I discovered this connection, I put all of the Legault matches into "What are the odds?" and it confirmed what the match list showed me and as you can see from the image it's clear that she descends from Delphine and is a daughter of Roland.

    DNA REALLY doesn't lie here. If you say otherwise, you might be in denial and I honestly have no idea how to help someone in that deep denial. 

    Since Isadora isn't speaking to any of the Legault family, the only thing I can do is close the chapter on that DNA puzzle. Just say it's solved, call it a day and move onto the next one. 

    I do wish she'd talk to one of the cousins about her story. That way we'd get some kind of closure. As it is, there's not much we can do here. I solved the puzzle. I told Pamela. I connected her to the tree and that was that. There's nothing else I can do here. We can only hope that she responds to someone some day.

    I understand why she hasn't communicated with people and all I can do is hope for the best. The only thing left to do now is to move onto the next puzzle. Hopefully, those will have just an epic breakthrough moment as this one. It was a long time coming and I'm glad I finally solved the puzzle. Do I wish I could have celebrated with Isadora? You bet I do. But at least I celebrated with Pam and the other cousins who knew about this lady. Perhaps Isadora will come around and we can talk about the Davids. Time will tell.

See ya next time!