A Long Time Ago, in a Childhood Far, Far Away
My parents adopted P before he was born, after it became clear they couldn’t have children of their own. They brought him home in 1971, and my Ma promptly became pregnant with me. I like to freak people out when I tell them my brother and I are only 11 months apart in age (some of our more prolific breeders here in Glibland probably don’t think this is a big deal).
My immigrant patriarch
We were like any typical family in that we had many stories of family legend – the guy that “saved the Duke of Wellington’s life”; the planned horse farm that never happened because “all the horses died on the voyage from the Old Country”; my great-grandfather that “killed a man in a bar brawl”; the Sheriff in the Ozarks that chased after the Baldknobbers (if there’s interest, I’ll write about these stories later).
We even had some stories from my brother’s family – that he had a brother that was either a twin or an older brother. When Timothy McVeigh was arrested, my Ma and I said “do you think…?” because McVeigh looked so much like P. Thankfully, P is totally unrelated to McVeigh.
When I arrived in DC in 1990, I took immediate advantage of the easy access to the National Archives and the Library of Congress. Then along came the internet. I made myself into an expert family researcher, and helped a couple friends find out about their own families. A few years ago, I helped a friend of a friend find his long-lost siblings. Perhaps the universe was preparing me for what was to come…
My Brother’s Genealogy Keeper
P never expressed any desire to find his genetic family. He was fine with what he had and how he was raised. He did want to know where his neurofibromatosis (NF) came from, but it was never that big a deal. It obviously came from someone, and it was just a point of mild curiosity for him.
Then, in late 2018, I was shocked to find out P had taken the Ancestry DNA test. We talked extensively about whether he was prepared for the results. He was. He would take whatever information he could. So he turned over control of his Ancestry account to me, and the ball started to roll, very quickly.
The first results to come up for P were more distant (2nd -3rd cousins). Doing the math of genetic genealogy, a 2nd cousin shares a set of common great-grandparent with P. That comes out to 8 individuals. But which ones? There are a lot of combinations and possibilities when dealing with that much information. I had no idea whether these matches were on P’s mother’s or father’s side of the family. I contacted a few of the closer matches, but nobody knew anything.
Then a 1st cousin match appeared. I corresponded with the person for a bit, but it was clear that the person’s extended family was scattered and he didn’t even know the names of all his aunts & uncles. I researched the few names he was able to provide and still came up empty. But I was zeroing in. I had the names of one set of P’s grandparents, but I still didn’t know if these were maternal or paternal.
Enter Bob & Jim. These guys were distantly related to P, but they were also expert genetic genealogists. They taught me about centimorgans and how to interpret DNA data. We had several conference calls to puzzle out the data I was seeing.
I entered P’s information into GedMatch (something I wouldn’t recommend unless you need to do some serious genetic genealogy) and was able to use what I learned from Bob & Jim to finally separate P’s mother’s and father’s families. The set of grandparents I had identified earlier were clearly maternal. I also was able to take the names from P’s matches and identify his paternal grandparents and narrow down possible fathers to two men who were born around the time indicated in P’s “adoption lore”.
Long Lost Family
Then it happened. I was on my ski vacation and logged into P’s Ancestry account. Another first cousin. I contacted them and the floodgates opened. They provided P’s mother’s name and said P had a brother that had been looking for him for years. They also knew P’s father’s name, which proved my genetic genealogical calculations were right on the money.
Oddly, these cousins never informed P’s brother that they found him. That came a few weeks later when T’s (the brother) own DNA results were posted to Ancestry.
Here are the messages we exchanged:
T: Hi there. According to Ancestry we’re closely related somehow. Would like to know exactly how as I’ve not heard your name before and didn’t find you on a family tree project a relative of mine had started.
ME: I am P’s sister. He asked me to manage his Ancestry account for him.
Soooo…where to begin? P was adopted pretty much at birth by our parents. I was born about a year later: our parents are my biological parents.
Based on my research and now confirmed with your DNA results, I did determine that P’s biological mother was your mother.
I know this is probably a little bit of a shock. I know both P and I are excited to find out about his birth family.
T: You have no idea how much this means to me. I have been looking for P for 30 plus years and this has been one of the best days of my life. I can not express in words what this means to me to find you both. Do either of you watch the show Long Lost Family on TLC? I would always watch and wonder if you were watching too. I can’t believe this has finally happened.
T lives in Florida with his husband, not too far from all of us on the East Coast.
In September, 2019, all my years of genealogical research culminated in one of the best days of my life. Nothing could top this for sheer joy. I gained two brothers and our very small family expanded just a little bit.
First meeting at the airport
Family outing
Postscript: the NF came from P’s mother. She died in 2012, just one year before our mother died.
You are potentially snitching on your relatives. These genealogy websites need to be banned. How are serial killers supposed to operate in an environment like this where they don’t even have to be suspects in order to get found and caught?
Congratulations – that is your first good first.
There’s a first for everything.
Finding family is awesome. Great story KK
OK, I’m choked up.
Thanks, KK. This was a wonderful story.
I got some dust in my eye while reading too.
Good story, reminds me of those old updates on Unsolved Mysteries.
I’m not crying, you’re crying!
This.
Thanks, man
What Tundra said, KK. Good for you, your brother and new family
#metoo
Even though I always considered myself to be in the category of “don’t want to know” if that were me.
Yeah, great story.
My own brother did his Ancestry thing, and amongst other things, we found a 6th cousin, Cajun, and black. Our direct ancestors are from France (Mom’s side) and Wales (Dad’s side) and we’re all semi-funky corn-fed white folk. I can’t imagine the permutations that led to me having a 6th cousin who’s (I believe “mostly”) black, but it’s gotta be an interesting story.
If you go back to when interracial relationships were illegal and/or scandalous, you can see how some branches of a family can end up completely white and some completely black. If an interracial couple had a baby in, say, 1920, that baby would likely be labeled as black by both society & the government, so their pool of potential mates would be limited to other black folks. A couple generations of that, and it would appear one family is 100% black, while another branch is 100% white.
My brother has a few black folks he’s related to.
Pretty neat stuff.
Damn dust!
Wow. Wonderful story. Thanks, KK.
Baldknobbers – manscaping enthusiasts?
Good story. US ancestry is difficult…
That was my question also.
Cool story.
Not really, light skin = oppressive slave owner, dark skin = oppressed slave.
/prog
Vigilantes: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bald_Knobbers
They look horrifying. Makes the clan look like they were out trick or treating.
Heh heh. My 2x great grandfather is mentioned in that Wiki, though not by name,
I live about 60 miles from a town called Bald Know.
What a coincidence, I live about 60 miles from a town called Bald Knob.
Good deal KK. The girlfriend has been trying to find out some things about her history, as both of her biological parents (and her maternal aunt) were adopted. I believe she managed to track down the orphanage her father came from, but they wouldn’t release records without some paperwork.
KK – Great story. DNA tests, along with 23andMe, Ancestry, etc. have led to a lot of skeletons falling out of closets, including in my own family. I’m not sure if I want to share my family’s version because of how some have reacted to the news of long-lost relatives, but I’m always glad to hear when people manage to fill a hole in their history that mattered to them. Congrats.
My families response to that with ancestry.com: If we wanted to talk to you, we would gave done it 50 years ago when we first discovered you existed.
My brother and I were disappointed to find out we weren’t adopted. We can’t figure out how we are so different from the rest of them…
Still, go ahead and dish. Nothing quite like insane family drama.
Also, saw your hockey comment. The banter between refs and players has always been one of my favorite parts of playing the game.
I’m kind of glad that I don’t have access to my brothers’ DNA. Might be some surprises.
They’re lying to you.
Ancestry.com never lets one of the ‘Boys from Brazil’ discover the truth.
It’s not just ‘out there’ family… it’s family family. Notwithstanding my apathy about doxxing myself, I’m hesitant to air laundry, especially… er… undergarments, even if they’re *relatively* clean. The whole thing precedes me and so I don’t quite feel the kind of ownership as I do over events in my own life. Maybe I’ll crib something up. I can’t promise that it has the same happy ending as KK’s.
On refs: 70s linesman were the shit. Like NYC bouncers, really, back in those days. “There’s nothing worse than a ref who takes himself too seriously; and nothing better than a linesman who doesn’t take you seriously at all.”*
* – I just made that shit up, but would love to attribute it to some old-timey right winger who punched people out for a living in the 30s while playing for the Montreal Maroons**
** – That was actually the team’s name at one point, which I always used with my excessively-french and snobby Habs-fan friends
KK: are you allowed to identify who’s who in the pics?
Without names:
Top pic is my 4x great grandfather who was at, among others, Salamanca & Waterloo. He was in the King’s German Legion 2nd Light Battalion, which gained fame at Waterloo. He was the equivalent of an NCO.
Bottom left pic, from right to left: brother’s brother’s husband, brother, brother’s brother, moi
Thanks!
I allegedly have an ancestor who fought at Waterloo for the coalition against Napoleon. He either fought for the Dutch or the Prussians, can’t remember off the top of my head. I’ll have to dig into the family history journal my father compiled several years ago to see.
Anyway, nice article. It’s good to read something positive instead doom and gloom on occasion.
Could be the KGL as well as the Prussians. I thought my Napoleonic connection was Prussian at first, but discovered my ancestors were Hannoverian, and therefore part of the British Empire at the time.
Just going by clues of the airport pic:
Far left = T (looks closest to assumed P)
Next person = partner
Next person = P ( I base this on the backpack and being at the airport)
Yay! So glad that all parties were willing to share and then enthusiastic to meet.
Excellent work, Kristen.
I do a little genealogy, but had a good start since there were a couple of expert genealogy researchers in the extended family. I knew it was a privacy risk, but I took the Ancestry DNA test and have gotten a kick out of the results.
My stepson’s biological mother is adopted, so we did his DNA test too, as he was curious where she had come from. Since we his father’s (Mr Splosives) DNA results, we roughly “subtracted” them from the stepson and could see that his biological mom had a lot of East and Central European ancestry. No other close relatives have contacted him.
I took the DNA test to see if we really had A Cherokee ancestor as family lore claimed. DNA tests proved we had as much as Lizzie Warren. I told that to my family elders, and they just can’t accept it. They want the old lore to be the truth!
I always find it amusing that non-Indian-Americans want to have native ancestry so badly. My college roommate refused to accept her “100% wipipo” results and took additional tests to “confirm”.
LOL
It is to deflects blood guilt. People that don’t understand humans true nature need this.
These tests, when it comes to regional or historical valuations, also have to be taken with a grain of salt, as they are only weighed against pre-determined samples.
It is kind of interesting. My last name started showing up in the UK right around the time of the Norman invasion. A healthy (63%) chunk of correlation shows up in those areas, with another 26% from Germanic Europe.
We have been able to trace back a long way, so this does actually jibe with where my family was from.
It will be interesting to see how it gets refined over the next 20 years as more tests are done. I hadn’t logged in for more than a year, so I was a little shocked at how many matches are there.
Yeah, the current tests test against the current genetic makeup of a given population, so say in the case of Angeland, that can still broken down between Britains, Welch, Scots, Romans, Germans, Norse, Normans…
The nice thing about Ancestry is that they continue to update their database of DNA results, and they do give Origin “maps” with Various sized blobs depending on how narrowed down they can get it. They also get permission to sample older gravesites and archaeological digs.
NOTE: when you get a DNA test, you have to specify if you’re testing to find matches of family members (highly specific matches that can easily find siblings, parents, etc) or more of a “distant origin” test, looking for markers that are from a particular region or ethnic group. I took both types.
Congratulations.
I’ve shared this in the late night threads. Last year my niece did the ancestry thing and convinced her mom, my oldest sister, to do it to. They were confused no one on my dad’s side showed up and there were these other people who did. When confronted my mom admitted that my sister was the result of an affair while my parents were broken up. I, being closer to my parents than my other siblings, new they had broken up for a while before they married, and when us younger siblings started to understand math figured out my sister was born before my parents were married, she and I were quite shocked at this revelation and it damaged our relationship with our mother, while our other siblings shrugged it off. To his credit, my dad went to his grave without giving any clue and being as loving and protective of her as she was his own.
It’s often painful to find out that people you love and respect do stupid human things, too.
+1 grandpa’s service entry medical screening
He got that syphilis from an outhouse seat!
CPRM/Tundra – I think I may have shared this on that same thread, but I can’t remember, so pardon the possible repetition. I had a colleague who found out in his 50s that his mother had been married to his dad’s best friend right at the beginning of WW2. Best friend was killed at Pearl Harbor and mom wound up re-marrying my friend’s dad. nothing “wrong” with it, but it’s one of those “approaching scandalous” kind of things – (I’ve seen it happen in the military on several occasions and I watched it bust up one helo squadron into two camps over wife’s decision to take up with best friend and fellow pilot after dude’s death). In my friend’s case, it didn’t come out until mom and dad had been married for something like 60 years. I guess not even the older siblings knew. Shame is such a powerful emotion.
Somewhat similar, but without the military side. My uncle was married, went to Vietnam and shortly after returning home got divorced. We were at a family gathering a few years ago and someone said to his daughters “you dad’s first wife Terry . . . .” and they looked shocked. They didn’t know there father was married before, everyone else knew. I guess it wasn’t a secret per se, but just wasn’t talked about.
That’s what im guessing it will be like with my wife. I don’t think she’d ever try to hide the fact that she was previously married from our kids, but it’s something that feels like it was 1000 years ago and 1000 miles away at this point.
I have no idea when/if my sister’s two kids found out their mom had a previous husband, other than the fact that my dad mentioned the ex-husband’s name at at the wedding of my other sister’s daughter.
That niece’s marriage lasted all of four months (don’t ask me for more details; I don’t have any and don’t want to know).
You know, I was thinking about you the other day and wondering how that turned out. Thanks for the update.
Oh, you was thinkin of me, eh?
The last line about your father is touching.
/\/\/\ I have much respect for your father for this.
Absolutely. A real man.
Yup, the upside of toxic masculinity: stoically protect the family, especially women and children. The showing live part is optional, but sounds like your dad had the “love the kids” part figured out. 🙂
As an over the road trucker he could have easily fallen into the ‘absentee father’ realm, but he made it a point to be there when was home. He was a good man, and I miss him every day.
Good dads are GREAT.
Congratulations, KK. Great story, thanks for sharing!
Woweee! Unlike the others, I didn’t shed any tears, but there was a big stupid grin on my face.
Congrats!
Through census data, I determined that my brother’s father’s people were German-speaking Catholics from Galicia. Given that Germans were such a small % of the population, I want to do more research on how they got there (my guess would be some kind of colonization effort at some point in history).
I also found a record where they were denied entry to Canada from the U.S. to visit family. I’d love to track down the reasons for that. I do know they came from Ontario to central Canada and somehow just whoopsied into North Dakota (i.e. I couldn’t find any actual immigration records) and just stayed there (to this day).
I’m not in any kind of contact with the father’s family, BTW. My brother does have siblings on that side, but they haven’t shown up on Ancestry, and I’m not going to cold-contact them. I assume if they take the Ancestry test they are prepared for the results, so I would contact them if that were the case.
“my guess would be some kind of colonization effort at some point in history,” yep: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galician_Germans
Really cool that your brother got to meet his brother and make a connection. Technology is giving us knowledge that nobody could have guessed about 30 years ago.
My older sister is huge into documenting our ancestry (but doesn’t quite catch some of the logical fallacies we’ve been told – ancestors who supposedly were Spanish but had obvious English names, etc.) did the 23andme search. We’re not sure how to interpret the slice of “Melanesian” in there – I expect it was a small Amerind band which didn’t leave any living DNA to be identified currently. We are pretty well documented back for 4 generations – names and places – with one orphan in there from the US midwest who, from photos, probably accounts for the “Melanesian”.
Great story! A few years ago, a woman contacted my aunt asking if she had given up a baby for adoption in a certain year, saying that after a long search, she thought she might be my aunt’s daughter. Turns out she had (long story about Catholic family omitted), and my aunt and she had a great reunion, and she’s part of the happy family once again!
Fantastic!!
I love my family history and finding it, skeletons and all, has given me a sense of where we were to where we are.
We recently found out my grandma was quite thr baby making machine and we have a whole sub-set of half uncles and half aunts that up until a couple of years ago, never knew about.
That’s awesome!
I have to admit to some relief when my two kids – and ONLY my two kids – showed up in the parent/child section.
My results at first had very very very few, and only very distant, matches that could have been from my father’s side (i.e. the matches were too distant to research, but I suspected they were my dad’s people).
Then my dad’s cousin showed up and I was, like, “whew!”
If only your kids could petition the admins of the site to remove your hurtful posting!
Finding out Tundra really is their Dad?
My nephew had a relation pop-up that came up as a first cousin, so he was quite curious about which of his uncles had a child otherwise unknown to the family. Turned out it was actually my cousin, not his, and the match-attribution was off.
My family is similar due to my great grandmother remarrying twice. Which is probably odd for the 1950’s.
https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/36190/b-52-bombers-fly-unprecedented-patrol-along-edge-of-russian-controlled-territory-in-ukraine
Good thing Obama meddled in Ukraine’s elections to support an unconstitutional coup which led to Russia invading Crimea; who knows where we’d be without his enlightened leadership.
Soft. On. Russia. ///Putin’sPuppet
Very cool Kristen!
A good friend of my Mother could not get pregnant, so they adopted a baby boy. Then she immediately got pregnant and had a son. They were a somewhat screwed up family. When the adopted son was about 20 he managed to discover he had a sister, when they met is was an example of instant Z”genetic attraction”, quite the scandal. They quickly just disappeared, no one ever heard from them again, or had any idea were they went (California was always suggested). This was about 50 years ago.
Finding out the family secrets is always interesting.
I was 35 before I found out my great aunt is actually my aunt. My great aunt had to wait until her husband died to let the rest of the family know her youngest sister was actually he’s daughter.
She got knocked up while her husband was killing Nazis in Europe. Her mom and 8 other brothers and sisters kept their mouths shut for 60 years.
That is freaking incredible and wonderful.
I love my families surnames names. Lots of old women names that are not heard of outside of bingo parlors and movies from the 50’s and 60’s.
Lillian, Hellen, Arlene, etc.
My grandma was Effie. Her best friend was nicknamed ‘Toots’. It was like a sitcom.
We have a family full of dude nick names like Lefty, rummy, sonny, shifty, etc.
My grandfather was called “Whitey” due to his platinum blonde hair.
Problematic.
Heh
My mom was ‘Bernice’ and her mom ‘Grace’. All the men have boring names like ‘Dick’ or ‘Joe’.
I had a great aunt named Zerna.
Heh. The fairy godmother in my Cinderella story (told from stepmom’s POV)–her name is Zelda. She is quite the legend.
Stepmom: Please don’t.
Lawyer: Sorry, couldn’t help it.
My great-aunt was Jackie Robinson.
OK, really Sr. Jacqueline Robinson, SU (70 years as an Ursuline nun before she died aged 90), but everybody called her Jackie.
I think she was technically Grandma’s first cousin so not a great-aunt, but calling her Aunt Jackie (and Jackie’s siblings and their spouses Aunt and Uncle whatever) was easier for us kids.
My aunt’s maiden name is Helen Keller, if you can believe that.
My grandma was “Edna”. Can you imagine a toddler named Edna?
“Gladys” . . My uncle wanted name his daughter after her, my grandmother threatened him and he used her middle name instead.
Too bad. I like “Gladys”.
I always got a kick out of the fact that Tracey Ullman named her daughter Mabel.
My four nieces from brother and his wife –
Agatha -7
Eleanor-6
Louisa – 4
Beatrice- 2
Outstanding. I love old names.
Yeah, Methusaleh is a great name.
My grandmothers were Hallie and Myrtle, and I had an aunt named Edna.
Maternal grandmother is Elsie, Paternal is Mildred.
You don’t get those names anymore.
My grandmothers were Ruth and Lillian. Kinda ol’ timey, transitional names if you like.
Doris (“Dot”) and Alice.
Alice looks to be making a bit of a comeback:
https://www.babynamewizard.com/voyager#prefix=alice&sw=both&exact=false
Doris, not so much:
https://www.babynamewizard.com/voyager#prefix=doris&sw=both&exact=false
Two of the more interesting ones I’ve heard from my grandmas’s family….one of her grandfathers was murdered in a dispute over land, shot in the back while out fishing with his wife. I only have a few of the details from two Atlanta Journal-Constitution stories from 1906 – one about the crime and the killer being a fugitive who was hiding out in the swamps, and the other about his capture. I later found a prison record for the killer that said he was only convicted of manslaughter, not murder, and sentenced to 12 years (he died in prison though).
The other was about one of her sets of great-grandparents – the husband was the son of a fairly prosperous and respectable family of timber merchants who used to float down the Oconee River with their logs to the market town of Lumber City, where there was a big sawmill. In these travels, he met a “dancing girl” whom he married over his parents’ strong objections – the implication being she was a woman of low reputation. Reading the old stories, it always seems like they’re implying that she was a prostitute, but they never come out and say it, so who knows. They were dismayed enough about his choice of bride that I know next to nothing about her, not even her actual name, only a nickname. Anyway….after the Civil War broke out, he joined the Confederate army in 1862 but died suddenly soon after of an unknown illness, never having been in any actual battles. So his widow was left alone with two young children. In 1864, when the rampaging Union army had stopped to make camp for a bit in Telfair County near her home, she took up with one of the hated Yankee soldiers, no doubt making her in-laws hate her more. After a few weeks, the Union soldiers were packing up to move on, and her Yankee beau suggested she leave with them. She agreed, and went home to pack some things and follow her boyfriend on the march with her children. Apparently, her mother-in-law got wind of this, grabbed a shotgun, and went to the farm to confront her. Leveling both barrels at her head, ol’ Jincy (this was a common name in that family, a diminutive of Jane) told her that she was free to go, but attempting to take the children with her would get her brains splattered all over the walls. So she ran off and left her children with their grandmother, and that was the last anyone in the family ever saw or heard of her.
There are a lot of loose women in the family trees around here. Hm…
And they’re all your mom, you’re the milkshake.
I never particularly cared for my mother.
That makes it even creepier that keep her desiccated corpse and dress up like her.
something something voice box down the garbage disposal
KK,
Great article by the way. Every adopted kid in my family came from one or two shit heel cousins.
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About two months ago on a Saturday afternoon my sister calls me on the phone. Says “Where are you? I need to come tell you something. It’s going to blow your mind.” About ten minutes later she shows up and hands me a photo copy of a hand written letter. I start reading it and before the end of the first paragraph I have figured out this was written to an adoptee describing her parents. It was describing my parents. I have another sister I had no clue existed. This was about two months after my mother had passed. Neither Mom or Dad ever said a word.
Are you making efforts to find her? It’s always a risky venture and you never know what you’ll find.
Yes. My already known sister did a DNA test. It was a match. She still lives very near so we had a cookout and met her husband and one of her kids. Nice people. When we were clearing Moms house out we were looking in every book, file, drawer and everywhere else we could think of. Never found any documentation.
It did bring one thing into focus that I had never considered. They were always very generous with single mothers and counseling services that served them. I think I know why now.
SO glad you got to meet up!!
Speaking of genetics….
LOL!
Ha!
Stupid seasonal allergies/wildfire smoke/covid.
Thanks KK! Was just thinking about your canceled trip after this morning’s comments. There’s several flights I’ve missed out on but I remain hopeful that there are others yet to come that will be as good.
Nice article, KK.
Never knew my biological father, who disappeared around my first birthday (was subsequently adopted by mom’s hubby #2). Via Ancestry, have traced his family way back to Olde England, they arrived in Block Island in the 17th century. Turns out I am probably distantly related to an interesting individual:
https://www.blockislandtimes.com/article/bird-lady-block-island/24229
A visit to Block Island is on the bucket list.
Part of my Pa’s family comes from Monongalia County in WV (VA at the time they lived there). I haven’t been up to Clarksburg to do research in my 30 years in the DC area. I should remedy that, though I have very little experience researching non-digital records.
I’m currently stuck on part of my Pa’s family that cropped up out of nowhere in the Lexington, KY area in the late 1700’s. I know KY was pretty much the frontier back then, but I can’t seem to find anything other than a marriage record from ~1790.
I’m sure you will find what you seek. Something something 90% perspiration, and you appear to be quite determined.
Also, odd things turn up along the way. I found my mom’s divorce record recently (she traveled from NYC to ALABAMA in 1958 to get it, which explains how I wound up living with an aunt and uncle for far too long). No one in my family seems to know anything about this for some reason.
Great place! Take the ferry over from Narragansett or a 10 min plane hope from the airport at Westerly, RI, the last stop in the state before CT. I don’t know if Capizzano’s Pizza is still there, but my buddy was one of them and we used to get pies flown over from his family’s restaurant once in a while. Still hot if you meet the plane at the airport.
Thanks, Ozy! Probably do the ferry when the time comes (which will be after the current BS is replaced with different BS), I have serious issues with air travel.
My dad’s side of the family also came to Block Island in the 17th century
Y’all may be cousins!!
Hmm… That is interesting. The gene pool on that island appears to have been very limited until recently (my family tree has the same 3-4 surnames appearing repeatedly over multiple generations).
First name was Tormut
I love Block – very mellow, laid back little place. Family aside, it’s worth a trip.
Great story, Double-K!
Your brother is lucky to have you in his life. I’ve known several people who have been adopted and it seems like a crapshoot on how they turn out. Some seem fixated on being given up for adoption and are very needy. Others seem to be just like normal people who love the family who adopted them.
One of my friends and his sister are black and were adopted and raised by a white farm family in southern Minnesoda. He acts like that was the family he was born into. When we first met he said that his brother had married someone from my hometown. I knew his sister-in-law and was very surprised because my town is small enough and white enough that news of her marrying a black guy would have made the rounds of the gossip mill. Then I found out that his brother was white and he was adopted.
On the other hand, we know several Korean adoptees and they have a hard time. We are good friends with two adoptees who are sisters who were basically sold off because their family couldn’t feed them anymore. The Korean family kept the boys and 2 older girls (because they could work) and sold the two younger daughters. They have since reunited with the family back home, but it is a weird relationship. They are happy to find the old relatives, but also aggrieved that they were dumped.
I’m glad you and your brother are from a family that loved each other. It is also great that your new family is great too.
I didn’t go into detail, but NF causes a lot of problems. P’s bio mother could not have handled his upbringing. We had two parents and a very good IBM engineer’s salary, so P’s needs could be provided for without question (ex: my parents sued the school district where we went to high school just so he could get a decent education with accommodation to his needs.)
My immigrant patriarch
The old man from Home Alone?
Okay, I’m kidding. Nice article!
Heck of a story! I LOL’d at the bit about being born 11 months apart; my mom had me and my brothers (5 in total) in the span of 6 years and it’s funny to see people’s reaction when they hear that. But wow, glad you made that connection with his sibs and gained two brothers! Also:
the guy that “saved the Duke of Wellington’s life”
+1 grandson of the Hero of Solferino
I have been looking for P for 30 plus years and this has been one of the best days of my life. I can not express in words what this means to me to find you both.
*turns on fan to clear out the dust in the room*
5 kids in 6 years?
*Looks at commenters name*
Named after your mother huh?
I think my folks really wanted a girl
Alright all, enjoy the long weekend. I’m on my way out to potentially hit up Cedar Point for two days.
You suck.
…
I like roller coasters….
….
I wanna go to Cedar Point
#metoo
There are advantages to being in Cleveland. It’s an hour away, probably going to get season passes (which will include next year), and this year reports are there are no crowds.
Thanks for putting it into an article. I remember you posted about the meeting around the time it happened but it’s great to get the background. Just checked my 23andme account: except for my mother no relatives closer than a third cousin.
the guy that “saved the Duke of Wellington’s life”
You’re related to Richard Sharpe?
I thought that was Jack Ryan
Ok, politics…
If you have not heard about Biden’s press conference today, go check it out. It is the questions that are of interest. They are a parody of what questions would be if the campaign staff wrote them.
But here’s the big issue. The one that I have not seen anyone talking about yet.
That big Atlantic story? The one where Trump calls dead soldiers losers?
Biden has an advertisement out with testimonials from the parents of dead veterans saying they are insulted and “my son is not a loser”.
Stop and think for just a moment.
To run that ad on MSNBC this morning you had to have done those interviews days ago…. at a minimum.
But the story came out late yesterday.
So…..
Where’s my independent press?
Where are the people who are wondering if it isn’t a campaign finance violation for a for-profit company to coordinate publicity with a campaign?
There’s no way there wasn’t coordination.
The ads came out within 12 hours or so of the story. Without coordinating with the campaign in advance, how is that possible? How do you shoot video of testimonials from parents, edit it, vet everything and get it into an advertising buy? In hours? Those things take weeks.
The very first question at Biden’s press conference was from The Atlantic asking about what that story says about Trump’s soul. Called on by Biden’s staff.
https://mobile.twitter.com/dailycaller/status/1301935527592169474?s=10
Uffda. Biden goes on an on about how parents and loved ones of troops now stationed in Afghanistan should be super mad at Trump now? That is a bit cheeky given that Biden was part of the administration that escalated the war there and Trump has tried to pull them out several times (but keeps getting talked out of it by his generals).
…and both Biden and Trump avoided the draft and VN with “deferments”… as well as Bush Jr, Cheney, Clinton. Bush’s Nat Gd service doesn’t count. A lot of Nat Gd’s today are or have been activated and did ME service. (Not Gov Walz though, he ‘retired’)
if the article is true and it appears to be based on the things he’s said
Such as? Trump does nothing but fellate the military (and law enforcement..). I don’t even believe these cynical fucks.
https://mobile.twitter.com/curtishouck/status/1301934544086499328?s=10
“…I’m a smart fella… I listen to scientists…. This is not a game…”
His answer, expressions, and tone are very much like Michael Scott from The Office.
It is bizarre. That was one of his better performances. Presumably all questions were vetted and prepped.
And yet he still comes with a scattershot of sentence fragments that come and go, often with little or no correlation to each other.
How much water do they expect the media to carry?
100% coordinated hit job, and very transparent. Makes me think they have bigger coordinated hit jobs coming down the pike. Or am I being too generous?
They have spent a couple of months setting up
“Trump is not going to leave office peacefully”
“Worries about mail in votes are conspiracy theories”
“Trump is destroying the post office to supress the vote”
“Votes that are not postmarked but come in after the election must still be counted”
“Trump may appear to have won in a landslide on election night, but the mail in vote will turn that to a Biden landslide over the next few weeks. ”
They could not be more clear about their intentions if they left a map of the entire plot laying out.
You’d think they’d be less obvious about it. I guess they just assume they don’t have to be. They’re probably right.
https://mobile.twitter.com/byronyork/status/1301938519070461955?s=10
12) Would you support more Muslim countries normalizing relations with Israel, even though it might undermine Palestinian leverage for a two-state solution?
WTF?
Seriously, the press worry about the ME getting more peaceful?
So over the top partisan that they want to make sure Biden craps on Trump’s peace deal.
Or so antisemitic that they object to peace.
The woke do see Isreal as the oppressor and murderer of Palestine. So they oppose any peace with Israel.
#10… just, wow.
I don’t even know what the basis for the claim of Russia attacking mail-in voting would be.
I haven’t heard that anywhere. Could it be they’re making it up??
Just a knee jerk reaction? Trump bad for {fill in reason here}! The Russians are involved too!
Where’s my independent press?
Doesn’t exist.
There’s no way there wasn’t coordination.
Of course. This is probably just the beginning.
TMITE
?
Not familiar with that one
the media is the enemy
Heres what I guess happened :
1) A poll came out a week to 10 days ago showing Trump’s military support softening
2) Either they completely made this allegation up, or they had it sitting in wait
3) As soon as the opportunity in the poll presented itself, the campaign coordinated with the Atlantic to set a schedule that maximizes the impact
4) The campaign got to work on the narrative and the campaign ads while the Atlantic sat on the story for a few days
5) boom, it all gets released at once.
Here’s what kicked all this off.
It’s coordinated. The Pentagon is shuttering Stars and Stripes and the media is saying that this is because the Stars and Stripes ran the story that Trump made those remarks. This is all a coordinated attack to try to winnow at Trump’s supporters, just as he has done to them with blacks.
“It’s an election year, folks! Step right up and see the nonsense!”
Any time people express shock I always remind them of middle school elections. Do they really think elections suddenly get more “honorable” and “decent” when real money – trillions – and real power over others are at stake?!? “Election” with Reese Witherspoon is perfect on this subject.
I see we are going “holier than thou” Biden. Also, Trump is “deplorable” (presumably likewise for his voters)
Masks are “life and death”. Sure…mask to virus is like chain-link fence to mosquito…plus it can be damaging to your health for many reasons. So I guess you are right but not how you mean. Just say the word science and be overly concerned.
And what is this about getting intelligence briefings? Dude ain’t in office no more.
This is next level bullshit.
Hey, remember PostOfficemageddon? Me neither. No one gave a shit about that, so on to the next manufactured scandal
As I intimate above…. that was laying the groundwork.
That story is not for now. They do not believe any of it. It was to set a marker for November.
When election day passes and Biden has not secured victory, then this story comes back. Trump held back the post office. Votes must be counted. We told you this would happen.
Then suddenly big boxes of votes show up in just the right districts to flip key states and key congressional races.
This is your smoking gun. They have a plan. They would not have been doing this story otherwise.
Probably, but it had a dual purpose IMO. Both to lay the foundation for attempts to steal the election if/when they lose, but also as part of the kitchen-sink approach they’ve been using to try to find something, anything, to damage Trump. They’re flailing around at anything – there are no riots, only peaceful protests, to…..riots are being provoked by supposed “white supremacists” and boogaloo boys and Qanon and whoever the hell they can think of….riots aren’t a big deal because it’s only property being destroyed……whatever the hell Mary Trump’s supposed bombshell was supposed to be (I don’t even remember at this point)….riots are terrible and all the fault of Trump supporters…the Post Office freakout….Trump had a ministroke or whatever….Trump insulted dead soldiers and Marines….etc etc etc.
It’s a constant, nonstop barrage of bullshit. Each one of these gets the full outrageous-outrage treatment from the press for a week or two, then they realize no one actually gives a shit, and it’s on to the next one.
This is also true.
4 years of noise… all BS… but 4 years. People get tired of it and start not caring about the details .
In the Little Rascals preschool abuse case/hysteria there was a juror who echoed this sentiment.
Frontline asked the juror about each allegation, one at a time. “Do you believe this happened?”
No. The answer to each specific allegation was “no, I do not believe that this ever happened.”
So why did you vote to convict?
“There was just so much! We felt like we had to err on the side of the children”
Life in prison without parole. And not one person on the jury ever believed that a single one of the allegations was true.
But there was just so much…
Exactly. They know it works. It’s the whole premise and raison d’tre of advertising and propaganda.
If it didn’t fucking work, they wouldn’t do it. It works too well.
But it works best with minds which are disposed to latch onto platitudes over complexity and that constitutes a significant enough portion of the electorate to be worth doing, truth be damned. They’ve made it clear for decades now that they’re all “ends justify the means” kinda people. No one who claims to be a student of humanity could fail to connect these dots. The zealots will continue their zealotry and it’s all about dragging along as many as possible to win.
Not a praying man, but please God, let Trump deliver an October surprise to end all surprises.
Couple this with the constant patter about right-wing stupidheads being susceptible to conspiracy theories. “Oh, the Dems stole the 2020 presidential election with a bunch of found votes? Another right-wing fantasy.”
Thanks for the story, KK. Glad it worked out.
When my sister and I were visiting my relatives in Mississippi during the mid 90’s we saw this older boy who looked a lot like my older brother. We thought it was a mere coincidence and told my grandmother and aunts that we saw a kid who looked exactly like my older brother. They all gave each other a look and told us that my father had a kid a year before he married my Mother.
We told my Mother and she was pissed that her family revealed that information to us but never said anything else to us about him.
I have a 3pm meeting. I hope the person that scheduled it knows she’s a cunt. Double cunt, because it’s a holiday Friday and we’ve been given the go-ahead to knock off an hour early.
We’ve been encouraged to do “No Meeting Fridays”. I approve.
At my work, people laugh about the “Jimbo Rule” that I created about meetings not being able to be more than an hour long, but they all agreed to it and our work is so much better because of it.
When I first started working here, they would regularly try 3 or even 4 hour meetings. And no one ran the meetings with any sort of agenda or discipline at all. After 4 hours of a mind numbing meeting that had gone completely off the rails nothing would have been decided. It was horrible.
Yeah, overlong meetings are no laughing matter!
Ahem, that would be “double cunte…e” I think?
It may work to your advantage. If things don’t go your way, threaten to filibuster on the issue. People will cave immediately because they all want to go home for the weekend too. Just remember that it is a bluff and if they call it, you need to cave for the same reason.
Back when I was a consultant, I had a client that had an old guy that was basically working for something to do. Coot loved to tell stories about his time working in Europe and other corporate escapades. The other people from the client company disliked Coot as much as I did. I’d normally do my best to cut Coot out of meetings where we were making important decisions. I used the threat of looping Coot into decisions if the clients were getting unreasonable with their demands. “Sure, I’d love to update every page of your web app to use some new technology buzzword you guys just heard about for a measely 10 hours of billable time. But before I can do that, we better get Coot looped in and get his blessing”. The other clients would cave immediately at the threat of an afternoon listening to more Coot stories.
Pictured – a meeting with Coot.
Sorry, KK. Definitely a C move. We have. GM that likes his Friday afternoon meetings. Several times I have answered calls from my boss while driving home because the GM was having a crisis of some sort. I would always finish up with, “What have you managers been doing all week anyway?”
Get up and leave during the middle of the meeting.
my brother and I are only 11 months apart in age
a.k.a., Irish twins. Pretty common among my people (or it was, at any rate – closest my generation got was 14 months for my nieces).
Yep. Mom’s family is Irish and she was one of nine. The four oldest were mom and three of her sisters – four kids in five years. The two youngest were 11 months apart, with the youngest being seventeen years younger to the day than their oldest sister.
My uncle’s folks were off the boat – he was one of 13 (15?). Just cranked them out…
Wonderful story KK. Thanks for sharing.
I really enjoyed doing genealogy a few years ago, but there really wasn’t too much I could do for any of my family lines except my paternal grandmother. Her ancestors have all been here for some time, with the most recent arrival to America I could find being the 1730s and the earliest being 1610. They’re mostly documented extensively online so there was much to find. For the others, I can go back to the original immigrants – Irish and German in the 1870s and 1880s, Italian in the 1910s – but can’t do much to trace families in the old countries without actually going there.
I will say that it was interesting how different my sister’s ethic breakdown was from mine. Hers is overwhelmingly Irish with a smattering of the English and German and just 1% of the Italian. It makes sense though because she looks Irish as hell, with red hair and very pale skin and freckles. Mine is split pretty evenly between the Irish and English with a bit (11%) of the Italian and a small soupcon of the German. We both had the same tiny bit of European Jewish, 3%, which is interesting. No idea who our Jewish ancestor would be, other than that it was on mom’s side, since she has it too but at a great (but still tiny) amount.
I’m not one of those people who uses this as a springboard to style themselves as Irish or Italian or whatever – I’m an American mutt and proud of it. It’s just a natural extension of my general fascination with history. I enjoy trying to find out as much as possible about what their lives must have been like as a young Italian immigrant trained as a furrier, or an Irish bricklayer, or even as an indentured servant in early colonial America, which is how one of them got here. I didn’t find any royal ancestors or famous ones as many people hope so fervently to do, but there were some interesting ones. One was a leader of Bacon’s Rebellion in 1676 Virginia. Another was branded with an H on his hand for stealing horses in 1700s South Carolina, and generally known as a ne-er-do-well. Some, I was sad to discover, were members of a loyalist militia during the Revolutionary War, while another was a hatter supplying the Continental Army. The earliest immigrant to America was on the Sea Venture, the ship that wrecked off Bermuda in 1609 and led to the first inhabitation of that island, before the survivors built a new smaller ship from the wreckage and continued to Jamestown the next year. That story was Shakespeare’s inspiration for The Tempest. It’s all quite entertaining to me.
I have an Ancestry World membership. Let me know if you want me to look up any international records for you. Obviously, Europe is easiest, with UK and Germany being the most robust.
Sure. My email is grcavalli@gmail.com if you care to drop me a line, and I could provide a few people I wouldn’t mind you searching for.
she looks Irish as hell, with red hair and very pale skin and freckles
Go on…
Before I say more, I will mention that my brother in law is a huge guy, 6’4″ and probably in the 230-240 range.
You know what they say – the bigger they are, the harder they hit.
heh
There is a youtube video with identical twins who sent off tests to all the ancestry services. Its amazing the differences different services said about them AND that the services gave them different results. They had separate test done and their dna is as identical as you would expect.
Basically the testing of dna regions is mostly crap.
Loved reading the story, thanks! Also, as mentioned up thread, I live close to the Ozarks and the town of Bald Knob, so I’m interested in that story.
I’ve managed to track down the “real” stories for all of my family lore.
For “saved the Duke of Wellington’s Life” would be related to the old guy in the photo with the medals. I’m sure at some point he regaled his kids/grandkids with stories of the Napoleonic Wars and maybe said something along the lines of “we really saved the Brits’ asses that day”, which turned into “saved the Duke of Wellington’s life”
The horse story is the most mysterious, as my family’s immigrant ship manifest doesn’t include cargo, but I think I know what happened. Just can’t really verify it.
went to pick up a suppressor at my LGS yesterday. bought my item in early March so it was barely a 6-month wait to get my tax stamp approval. this is with an F4 trust. this must be what winning the lottery feels like.
Sweet, whaddya get?
Kristen, I liked this write-up and I’m happy things worked out.