Week 25: Unexpected (or what you never expected to find!)

I am still working on catching up!  This week's theme of unexpected provides a broad range of possibilities:  nearly everything that I've found on this genealogy journey has been unexpected.  I was casting around this afternoon for a suitable focus for this entry, and started down the rabbit hole of DNA matches on Ancestry.  And you know, there's a lot there that I really had not expected to find which today's discoveries confirmed.

My father's family has always been notably mysterious because he refused to talk about them, particularly the Howdeshell (mother's) side.  I still have zero idea of what happened there, and my uncle Norman, Dad's middle brother, also claimed to not know so I'm pretty sure that mystery will never be solved.  However, it turns out that the Howdeshells are Not Shy about getting their DNA tested.  Moreover, there are a lot of them.  One of the first unexpected things I found was a bunch of people who shared more DNA than you would expect from the relationship in the family trees.  A closer look revealed two sisters had married two brothers so their children were double first cousins, almost akin to being siblings I imagine.  Well, that brought us a generation closer in terms of genetics so that began to make sense.  There is a hint that this may have occurred further back too (dear Lord, couldn't they find anyone else to marry?) so things are a bit more tightly related than you might expect (but not too tightly, in case my children are reading this!).  

Well, this was odd enough, but I also occasionally find someone who shares DNA with both the Howdeshells (my paternal grandmother) and the Prewitts (my paternal grandfather).  This has happened several times today in fact.  I still have not found where these lines met earlier but the fact that it happened should not have taken me by surprise.  These families both started out in Virginia and migrated westward to Kentucky, then Missouri in similar time frames:  their paths were bound to have crossed and either marriages or less permanent relationships probably happened.  Onward, into the murky depths of family ties. 

Comments

  1. zemkatJuly 1, 2020 at 6:46 PM

    I also have older relatives who married cousins or where “double first cousins” as you put it. 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks has been a lot of fun. I found all sorts of weird unexpected family tidbits.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

52 Ancestors 2026: Week 6 Favorite Photo

Image
This prompt has come up in previous years which is kind of a gift really because there are a bunch of favorite photos in my possession and I'm happy to have the opportunity to share them!  This year I am especially happy revisit my photographs because just before Christmas a distant, previously unknown, cousin, sent me a bunch of pictures of people in my branch of our family.   These are amazingly high quality, high resolution, black and white, mostly studio portraits plus some more informal photographs.  The absolutely most remarkable thing about them was that nearly all of them were labeled with the names of the subjects.  Putting faces to names I knew, in some cases, since childhood or learned in the course of researching my family history was a true gift. I haven't scanned these photos yet:  I've just photographed a few of them with my phone camera, but I will try to share a couple of them here.  Thank you Cousin K! This adorable tea party is compr...
Read more

52 Ancestors 2026: A Record that Adds Color

Image
Well, I've already missed week one, An Ancestor that I Admire, so I'll just put do a sort of general musing here on the notion of records. Here in the United States, we are lucky that newspapers from previous centuries are full of the social news of towns, large and small.  My family in the U.S. has never exactly been prominent:  we are not good at getting wealthy or holding land or running for office, but one thing my ancestors did was participate in civic life.  My maternal grandmother, Grace McDuff Belknap, apparently registered to vote as soon as she was able (she was born in 1895 in Washington state, where women got the right to vote in 1910.  For many years, she served as an election judge.  But where I found her in the paper was as an officer in the PTA of the local elementary school, finally president.  No one ever mentioned a word about this and I would not have known if the Daily Olympian hadn't made it their business to report all the local news ...
Read more

52 Ancestors 2026: Week 4 "A Theory in Progress" and Week 5 "A Breakthrough Moment"

Image
 Yeah, I never got around to writing week 4, even though I had an idea, because we spent the week trying to stay warm in the middle of a very long, Arctic, cold snap (winter storm Fern) that started with snow that turned to ice.  Our front yard is still under ice, as are our sidewalks because when they ploughed our street they dumped that ice on the sidewalks, thus rendering them impossible to shovel.  We've left our faucets dripping, even during the day, hoping to avoid burst pipes.  I just looked at our energy (gas and electric) bill for the last month and let's just say I am grateful that at least it has no commas.  But, onward! For week 4, I was thinking of writing about my paternal grandmother, Olive (Howdeshell) Keeton Prewitt.  Olive was born in rural Missouri, maybe 30 miles from where my grandfather was living.  Her first husband was Charles Keeton, and from that marriage my 1/2 aunt Ione was born in 1904.  Ollie married my grandfather G....
Read more