Remember the Ladies–CoronaLife Day 978

I am into genealogy, and I have been exploring DNA matches for quite some time. I was working on my husband’s DNA, and he matched three people in the same family: JLW, PW, and MP. JLW is the father of PW, and the grandfather of MP, who is not PW’s child. PW is MP’s aunt. (See tree below. Boxes with red outlines indicate people with DNA tested.)

This family matched my husband (JD) on his maternal grandmother’s Baldwin line. (See tree.) This family ALSO had shared DNA matches to descendants of my husband’s maternal grandfather’s Hedrick line. The three yellow boxes in the tree are Hedrick siblings.

JLW’s Baldwin connection was immediately apparent, as his mother was a Baldwin. So I went searching for the Hedrick connection. I didn’t find it. Which was frustrating, because it could not be that far back.

Then I noticed something. JLW matched with descendants of VH. His daughter and granddaughter, PW and MP, matched VH’s descendants, but they ALSO matched LH’s descendants. JLW did not, and since children cannot inherit DNA parents do not have, this could only mean one thing: PW and MP’s matches to LH’s descendants had to come through their mother, EBL. (See tree.)

Realizing JLW did not match both VH and LH’s descendants made me think that this Hedrick connection might not be real. So I looked at VH’s husband, CE. And lo and behold, I found the connection.

JLW’s great-grandparents were Abijah Baldwin and Elisabeth Payne. CE’s great-grandparents were Charter Mitchell and Elisabeth Payne. Elisabeth married Abijah after Charter died very young. JLW and CE’s grandfathers were half-brothers through Elisabeth! (See blue box path in the tree.)

Now I turned my attention to JLW’s wife, EBL, trying to find a Hedrick connection to explain her connection to LH’s descendants. Once more, it eluded me. Then I realized something odd: PW and MP matched LH’s descendants, but NOT LH himself!

Again, children can not inherit DNA the parent doesn’t have, so if they matched LH’s descendants but not LH, then the only answer was that they matched through LH’s wife, OB.

EBL’s mother was a Blankenship, and OB also had a Blankenship line. But try as I might, those two lines did not converge.

Which meant EBL and OB probably matched through EBL’s father. Trouble was, EBL was illegitimate, and her father seemed unknown. Then I found her marriage record, and saw she listed her father’s name as Lee Blankenship.

I tried to find Lee, and located him and his family. When I traced HIS Blankenship line, sure enough his line intersected with OB’s. EBL and OB were 3rd cousins. (See pink box path in tree.)

This explained their children and grandchildren’s matches.

So it turns out that the Hedrick connection was a phantom. It was just coincidence that all three sets of JLW, PW, and MP’s matches (my husband, VH’s descendants, and LH’s descendants) had Hedrick siblings in their lines.

The lesson is to always remain open to other answers, as the obvious one is not always correct. And remember to look at the ladies, even though they are often harder to trace–they might hold the key to your mystery.

Diving Deep–CoronaLife Day 971

I won my re-election bid for my local Board of Ed! In addition, I have been working on 2 projects this week that have been incredibly time consuming.

The first was revisiting some school policy based on sessions I had at the NJSBA conference. It is tedious work, and I am only halfway done.

I also got sucked into a genealogical mystery I have been trying to solve for ages. The process of unraveling it will be a blog post in itself, but I finally figured it out!

Add to all this that I spent about 5 hours in the ER with my daughter, who had hurt her ankle. Not the same ankle she broke last year. An x-ray showed no break this time, only a sprain. Whew!

So I have been diving deep a lot this week. I’ll be coming up for air soon.

I didn’t do NaNoWriMo this year, as I knew I would not have time. But good luck to all of you who are doing it!


Mid-October Breather–CoronaLife Day 943

It is hard to believe the middle of October is only a few days away. October is often hectic for me, and the next two weeks will certainly be, with meetings, a 3-day conference, anniversaries, a birthday,  Halloween festivities and Halloween itself!

This week, however, has been relatively quiet. Got some Board of Ed work done. I finally got around to cleaning my work area, which always feels good. This forced me to organize some things and reminded me of some genealogical mysteries I wanted to pursue.

Now that I have things in relative order, I hope to get a good bit of writing done on Thursday. There are about 75 pages of my original manuscript left to revise.

This revision is not the end, but I am pleased with it overall. The last revision left me feeling down and upset, so the positive feeling I have with this revision is a nice change.

I don’t expect to have much time to write the last few weeks of October, so I’m eager to see what I can get through before October hits the accelerator!

Work aside, I am enjoying the beautiful fall weather after the tremendously hot summer we had.

I hope you are also enjoying the autumn!

Enter August–CoronaLife Day 873

August has arrived, quietly, with little fanfare. It rather snuck up on me, honestly. It seemed so far off, and then…here it is.

This week has been pretty quiet on the writing front. I have been taking care of other business, mostly my Board of Education duties as a new school year approaches.

I have also completed the first (and hardest) part of a photo project I am working on. The rest will be both tedious and meticulous, but not really difficult.

I am digging into my Irish genealogy again, trying to put some pieces together. My current frustration is that people that have my supposed family in their tree are not DNA matches to my mother, while people who are DNA matches do not have that family in their tree.

I have tried a tool called Auto Clustering for my mom, and I will see if it yields any clues.

I am hoping to use this week as prep time, so I can spend the week my daughter is at camp focused on writing. Sort of a mini-writing retreat, only I have to drive her a half-hour each way every day.

The class before my daughter’s at swimming is the infants. They are infinitely adorable as they learn to navigate this new medium. They of course don’t swim yet (they can’t even walk), but they are learning not to be afraid and to have fun.

I see a metaphor for writing there. Most writers dove in because it was fun. As we slowly mastered the new medium, it became more technical, harder to float. The deeper we got, the more often we felt close to drowning.

Sometimes we need to stop flailing and take a deep breath. Fly through the water and trust all that we have learned will hold us up. Find the fun.

Happy August, everyone!

The Merry Month of May–CoronaLife Day 789

Last week, I was in the middle of several projects.

My genealogy book, The Campbell Family of New York City, New York, and their Ancestors is now available in both paperback and hardback! The cover thumbnail is still not showing up, but I have been informed that it can take up to 6 weeks for everything to show up on the retail sites properly.

I realized I had been procrastinating on editing The Curse of the Pharaoh’s Stone because I was reluctant to make the edits in the chapter I was facing. But I finally pushed through that chapter and the rest was easy. So I finished that and sent them off to my co-author.

It’s been a busy week for me, with multiple school-related meetings to prepare for and attend. I have also been deep into a genealogical puzzle helping someone locate their biological family.

It’s hard to believe that in just a few days we will be halfway through May. The end of the school year is always weird. Days can seem long, but the weeks often seem quick. It is a strangely “bumpy” feeling this time of year.

Bumpy or not, the weather is finally feeling like spring!

Onward!

At the Halfway Point—CoronaLife Day 782

You know the old saying, “She doesn’t do things by halves?” Well, apparently I do…at least this week.

I am halfway through my edits of The Curse of the Pharaoh’s Stone. I’m moving pretty fast because this is a polish of a manuscript that has been edited multiple times. A tweak here and there, but nothing major.

The first chapter had more issues, as will another later chapter, but even those are relatively straightforward. Hopefully I will send it to my co-author early next week to settle on the final form.

Then we will decide if we want to try the traditional route again, or go straight to self-publishing. We have submitted earlier versions of this book to agents before, but not this version. The last time we tried was several years ago, and it’s a much different world now.

My other half-accomplishment has been the  public release of my mother’s genealogy book, The Campbell Family of New York City, New York, and their Ancestors. The paperback version is available on Amazon and Barnes & Noble, if you search by title on their websites. I am hoping that after a few more days it will pop up on Google searches or under my author name. At the moment neither listing has the cover, either. So I will check back on that in a few days.

The hardback version of the book is not out to the public yet. I am having technical difficulties with the distribution. The algorithm is flagging it as a duplicate title, rather than a different version (paperback vs. hardback) of the same book. I have never had that issue before. The other issue is that I want it to be US distribution only, but it is insisting on being worldwide (which I do not want to pay for). I have also never had that issue before. I am working with their tech support, so things should be resolved soon.

My projects are halfway done. Hopefully by next week both of these will be complete and I will be on to something new!

April 2022 Wrap Up–CoronaLife Day 775

Spring Break is over, and we are back to the hustle and bustle of life. For me, that means moving forward with a few writing projects.

I finished going through my co-author’s edits on The Curse of the Pharaoh’s Stone. It wasn’t hard, since I agreed with virtually all of them. Now I am doing a read-through, to see if there’s anything I see that needs polishing. After that, I will make my suggestions for the first chapter, and we will make final decisions on that.

I am also eagerly awaiting the print copy of the public version of my genealogy book, The Campbell Family of New York City, New York, and their Ancestors. It was mailed this weekend, so I expect it any day. Once I make sure it looks good, I will open it to distribution channels. My proposed On Sale date was always May 1st, so it seems it will be right on time.

With April coming to an end, several of my projects are also coming to the end of their current phases. But as with every ending, there are also new beginnings, and the progress continues.

A Willy-Nilly Week–CoronaLife Day 761

I’m having one of those weeks where I’m doing a little bit of everything. Makes it hard to focus.

Attended a Township meeting.

Visited the library.

Went grocery shopping.

Got my daughter a new passport.

Was close-contact exposed to Covid.

And I still have a ton of things to do.

Why do my to-do lists never seem to get smaller?

I did manage to approve the online proof of the public version my genealogy book. I ordered a printed copy, and if that looks okay, the book will be available May 1st.

Next week should be quieter (spring break), and my intent is to get through the edits of Pharaoh’s Stone my co-author sent me.

Hopefully I won’t have Covid!

What have you accomplished this week?

On the DNA Trail—CoronaLife Day 754

The long awaited day has arrived! My mother’s DNA successfully processed, and her results are in.

I dove into them the last few days, sorting and organizing. I was particularly on the lookout for my Sutton line, as I have not yet found any matches to it.

After the initial sorting, I tried the Leeds Method, which sorts matches into your four grandparent lines (except in cases of endogamy). As you can see, the first pass generated 3 clear lines…and one blank one.

The Sutton line.

This is not a surprise. As I have said before, matches to this line will be farther out, since my great-grandfather was the only one of his 5 siblings known to have children, therefore any matches will be generated by brothers and sisters of my mother’s maternal great-grandparents.

I was not deterred. I went down past the recommended lower threshold, and finally found 2 matches that were maternal but did not match the maternal grandmother matches (the yellow highlight). Could these be the elusive Suttons?

Maybe. After working through the cluster map of these matches (below), I now have 42 maternal matches of unknown origin. Some may be other Hayden matches that simply don’t match our known Hayden matches. But some are undoubtedly Suttons.

The next step is trying to build trees for these matches. This may prove difficult, as Irish records are sparse. But I will give it my best shot!

The Madness of March–CoronaLife Day 747

The weather here has been crazy. Nice and warm and spring-like, then BOOM! Snow squalls and below-freezing temperatures. Is it any wonder that I am having trouble finding my rhythm, when Mother Nature herself is out of sorts?

In spite of it all, this has been a fairly productive week. I have completed the interior file for the public version of my genealogy book. After cutting out the living people, it was 5 pages shorter.

Next, I will get the cover templates for the hard cover and the paperback, and create those. With only a 5 page differential, the cover template size may not change. If that is the case, I can use the same files I used for the family version. Either way, it is not much work.

Then, all that remains is to order the print proof and then have it go live once I approve it.

I also received the latest edits to my middle grade novel The Curse of the Pharaoh’s Stone from my co-author. We have been trying to find a home for this book for years, but it is not in a “hot genre” so it has been a hard road. We are going to try the traditional route once more after this clean up, and if we cannot get traction, we will self-publish. We believe deeply in this book, we want to get it out to the readers.

So getting to those edits is the next project after the genealogy book is done.

Speaking of genealogy, my mom’s DNA sample is “processing”. Fingers crossed our unorthodox method of collection doesn’t cause problems!

How is March wrapping up for you?

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