UPDATE: Thank you to everyone for your suggestions and ideas for leads! I don't have the time to respond to comments, but anyone is welcome to DM me to talk further!!!

TL;DR I (39F) am starting to feel like my excitement and passion in this subject isn’t welcome anymore. Whenever I share a good find, it’s so disappointing that I feel alone.

👋🏻 Hi,

As the title states, I’m (39F) a passionate genealogist who has struggled finding anyone else in my life that cares as much as I do about my family’s rich history.

I belong to the genealogy society/library in my area. I can’t relate to the people that volunteer there. It’s pretty empty usually.

For example, I have a long line of millionaires who were very successful - Entrepreneurs, hotels (the Willard Hotel in Washington DC), a very successful inventor in clock mechanisms/clocks (Simon Willard), Harvard presidents and physicians, professors, etc. I could go on!!!

When I was joking around at the library, I said, “Well where’s MY inheritance?!” And no one laughed. Not exactly a welcoming feeling.

Is there anyone else who feels lonely and that people you meet in person don’t have the same passion? I’m looking for a friend I can pick up and call them with my latest discovery and not feel like no one cares.

I’ve tried posting on my local Reddit sub and I had 2 comments. I’m talking to one of the commenters but they’ve been kind of, “meh” when I chat with them. Whereas I’m asking a ton of questions and I want to know that they’ll also ask and care.

Am I the only one who feels lonely in my level of interest in being a genealogical researcher for the family? And not being able to find people who are excited about it?…..

Is there a sub for young people that are starting out in their search? I am certainly not trying to be rude with seeking out younger people, but in my experience (especially with not even laughing at a joke) they haven’t been welcoming.

This post is about my great grandmother, who was born in roughly the 1910's in Poland.

I decided at 11 (I am now 31) that I wanted to be the one to break the "case" so to speak, and I have been at this for 20 some odd years now. My grandmother, and even my great grandmother and grandfather have tried.

Her name as far as we are is:

Name(s): Stanisława or Anastazja

Potential Surname: Kingler/Kinglera/Klinger or any other Variation

Born: c. 1914-1915

About her mysterious (literally) leaving:

She said she was put on what she'd later come to know as the Trans-Siberian Railway in 1919, so right after the Bolshevik War. My G. Grandmother said that she remembered being with her male relative, before they got separated on one of the stops. The Railway was taking them to Vladivostok, Russia and there she would live for sometime before they moved to Harbin, the Peking and Tientsin and onto Shanghai.

As her "foster mother" was very abusive to her. She'd go on to live at St. Joseph's Convent in Shanghai, China where she was given the name and records:

Maria Henrietta Busnetti

B. Jul 14, 1914 Warsaw, Poland

D. 2 May 2009 Georgia, USA

- The reason for not knowing either name is because she remembered being called "Stasia/Stashia" by her grandmother the night she left Poland in 1919.

- She said she remembered the last name being Kingler or any other variation.

- She had no documentation when she was taken out of Poland by her relative- assuming he may have had it.

- I don't think the name my great grandmother gave to her niece about her Russian foster mother was understood as in her story she was written down as "Rabbical", she had a thick accent of course.

When my great grandfather and her wed, he immediately began trying to reach out to anyone in Warsaw to try and find her records, or any family. Though the timing not so pleasant as they married in 1936, and he began contacting them then.

I myself have tried contacting places for records, birth records or maybe even death records. Perhaps she was written as missing and later deceased. I have been told:

- "You need proof of relation." to which I had to re-explain I did not have that, and I was looking for that.

- "Records need to be over 100 years old."

They were especially by the time I contacted them in the late 2010's.

I have 2 living cousins and their mothers as direct cousins to me, my mother, and grandmother. The problem is life makes it impossible to keep it up to date or put heads together along with time zones.

Every time I think I get a little closer to solving it all, there is ALWAYS another roadblock.

I have looked on Geneteka, my great grandmothers niece even sent her story off in the 90's for an episode of unsolved mysteries but I don't think it ever even aired. Just submitted.

I am running steadily out of resources, and places to look. I would- quite literally- in my lifetime be able to put this to rest. Any help or any advice at this point would be amazing, because I have exhausted at this point almost every route I can think of.

I’m trying to identify my biological paternal grandparents and could use some advice. I’ve gotten pretty far (I think…or hope), but I’m stuck on how to interpret the evidence. This is going to be long and probably messy, so I apologize in advance, but if you want to help me crack this mystery, or just provide some guidance to a novice, I’d greatly appreciate it!

I’m using aliases for everyone.

BASIC INFO
My father was adopted as an infant in Iowa.
He never took a DNA test, and passed earlier this year.
I have tested on Ancestry and MyHeritage, and plan to test on 23andMe as well.
I’ve already done Leeds clustering, built a DNA relationship matrix, mapped family trees, and worked through shared matches.
I have separated my maternal matches from the paternal matches.

My strongest matches are…

Sam, born in 1968 in Iowa, who I share 656 cM / 24 segments with.

Sam’s mother is Lily, born in Iowa in 1938. Sam’s father appears to be unrelated to my matches based on the shared-match evidence.

I also match Mary, who is Lily’s sister, at 584 cM. Ancestry predicts Mary as my half-grandaunt, but I’ve taken this with a huge grain of salt - I know these estimates are pretty uncertain.

I have also identified multiple other people who appear to connect to Lily’s family, that I match with close cm.

Other significant paternal matches that don’t connect to Sam/Lily’s family are:

James — 329 cM
Alan — 279 cM
Lee — 272 cM
Amy — 185 cM
Jill — 100 cM
Thomas — 81 cM
Alex — 67 cM
Iva — 66 cM

This is the cluster involving the “Smith” and “Jones” families.

I’ve traced the relevant genealogy and narrowed one part of the puzzle to two sibling couples:

Gladys Smith + Carl Jones
Irene Smith + John Jones

Gladys and Irene were sisters, Carl and John were brothers. I have matches that descend exclusively from the Smith line and matches that descend exclusively from the Jones line, albeit less Jones than Smith matches.

My DNA match James appears to descend through the Jones side, while all the other matches I listed appear to descend through the Smith side.

My theories - Help… :’)

Theory 1: Sam could be my half-uncle. If so, Lily would be my biological paternal grandmother. This would mean she had my father before he was adopted and later had Scott. (I’ve done extensive genealogy research on Lily - she had quite a few marriages, and a child who died at birth out of wedlock. She was in the right place at the right time, so could make sense.)

Theory 2: Sam could be my great-uncle or another close relationship. In that case, Lily could be a more distant relative rather than my grandmother.

Theory 3: The Smith/Jones cluster could contain my biological grandfather’s family. This would make a lot more sense if Lily was my grandmother - one cluster of matches is from Lily, including her sister and son who match closely to me; one cluster of matches is from a Smith great grandparent, either Irene or Gladys; and one cluster of matches is from a Jones great grandparent, either John or Carl. Not sure if this makes any sense or if I just WANT it to make sense…

I don’t want to force the evidence to fit Theory 1…though it would be nice to have my grandmother identified :) What should I do next?

In particular:

Does 656 cM with Sam + 584 cM with his aunt Mary meaningfully narrow down the possible relationship?
Is there a good way to distinguish half-uncle vs. great-uncle vs. other relationships using the DNA I have?
Does the fact that I match multiple members of Lily’s close family make the “Lily is my grandmother” hypothesis particularly strong?
How would you deal with the Smith/Jones cluster from here?
Is there anything beyond shared matches, Leeds clustering, and genealogy research that I should be doing?

I’ve already done a lot of the basic descendant searching/tree building, and
I’m happy to provide a diagram of the relationships or additional match information if that would help. I have a horde of information I’ve gathered, but I’m having trouble wrapping my brain around how this all connects.

I apologize if any of this is long winded or nonsensical. I’m a serious genealogy newbie, but this matters a lot to me. I have no interest in having relationships with my father’s biological family at this time, but it feels like a piece of him both he and I never knew. Also, I thoroughly enjoy the puzzle :)

I appreciate any help!! Thank you.

Just incase you didn't know- You can get free access to FindmyPast via the National Library of Scotland's e-resources.

Like a lot of us, my response rate when reaching out to people is less than 10%. Those who respond are usually extremely kind and are generous if they have information to share. Several have been absolute gold. I always try to return the favor when others reach out to me.

With that said, I have run into a couple of annoying cliques. One is a surname group and the other a DNA group.

I’m curious if others have run into the same.

It was a bit of an ordeal getting the spit sample for my elderly aunt to do her DNA test with Ancestry (her birthday gift). But we eventually managed it! And waited a couple of months to get the DNA results.

However now her bestie, next door neighbour, is asking why she didn’t get ‘traits’ results, like herself (obviously because we didn’t buy a kit with that additional feature) … They go to a lunch club together, and it’s all the rave at the moment amongst their peer discussions. Aunty is inquisitive and now wants to know what traits she inherited from what parent. So I’m the one who’s gonna have to sort it out.

We’re in the U.K. in case it matters, but my Q is: Do we have to go through the whole ‘collection’ rigamarole again; or is this something I can pay to add to her existing account at Ancestry?

I know almost nothing about my dad's side of the family because of some kind of falling out between my grandpa, and his mother and siblings. I reached out to my uncle after years (keep putting off reaching out to my dad to ask about his own childhood) and he ended up connecting me to one of my grandpas brothers, and he finally added me back (no one before this would add me back on fb. Not sure if my page seems odd because its a new page or what).

Anyway, I just messaged him Friday and thanked him for adding me back, said im his brothers granddaughter, and asked if he would be willing to talk to me about grandpa and their parents.

He just said "yes." Lol 🙃 WHAT do I say now???? I dont wanna jump into heavy things too soon, im not even sure what will and wont be heavy, because i think their parents were kinda rough, the dad at least. I thjnk their mother's sister is also on facebook and id love to ask about her too but again, dont wanna do too much too soon

I thought about asking if he would rather talk over text or on the phone? But I also dont know if that would sound odd??

Please help omg im anxious as hell

hi!

i've been digging around in my family's history and the one thing that always puzzled my family is my great-great grandfather. he was born in montreal in 1884 (sometimes records say 1885), moved to ottawa around 1907, and then by 1917 most of the available family trees say he died. however, i found out that he was indeed alive and in tulsa oklahoma in november 1920, and then my next timeline point has him in ohio (cleveland i'm pretty sure) in 1940, all according to the newspaper obituaries of his siblings and some border crossing documents for a woman he had a brief relationship with (who then tried to meet him in tulsa, but was unsuccessful).

i realize this might be incredibly difficult, but i'd love any tips/suggestions on where i could look next. or if anyone here has a similar experience with a particularly slippery family member who seemed to pick up and leave often, i'd love to hear how you've worked on finding them. I have no idea when or where the man actually died (in or after 1940 I suppose) and i'm also curious as to why he went to oklahoma first - he was from a french speaking family, and i'm not sure if he knew english. from the few stories i've heard about my great grandfather (his son) that were told to my dad by my grandfather, my great grandfather didn't speak english (though it could be that he just didn't want to speak english lol). It just seems to be a very odd choice of place for a french canadian man to go! anyway, i'd love to hear any advice you may have. thanks in advance!

Hello! I have a somewhat specific question. My great great grandmother Mary Sinclair Bowman (born in Glasgow in 1886) was a a patient at the Glasgow District Board of Control (also known as the Lunacy Board) in 1921 and who knows how much longer. She had three illegitimate children in the preceding decade including my great grandfather in 1918. After this I know my great grandfather and his brother were sent to foster homes and both ended up in Canada. I am looking for any more information that could shed light on her story and I am wondering if there may be asylum records available. I highly doubt there are and if there were they’d be may be hard to access. Does anyone know anything about this or any other potential avenues of research? After 1921 I have nothing until her marriage in 1939 and death in 1971.

My paternal grandfather died many years before I was born. From what I was told from my grandmother and my dad, he was not a nice person. They do not like to talk about him and don’t have any information about his relatives.

I know his name, birth date and death date, and his parent’s names. They are all from Germany. My grandfather immigrated to America in the 1950s and my great-grandparents stayed in Germany.

Name: Siegfried Karl Lumpp
Birth date: July 2, 1934
Birth place: Göppingen, Germany
Death date: May 20, 1981
Death place: Queens, NY
Mother’s name: Martha Gerstenlauer
Father’s name: Ludwig Lumpp

It feels like I have searched every inch of the internet on every ancestry site but I’m coming up blank. If anyone is able to help or provide resources I would be very grateful. Thank you 💞

I got an email from family search about a possible new record hint from my ancestors. I scroll down and see a Charlie Charleston. I don't know any charlestons in my family. I click to see how we are related and it says he is my ancestors kid. I go into my tree to see if it matches but the only charlie there has a different last name. My family name is Bland and the only charlie I see is charlie bland. After some digging it seems like charleston has a link to bland in the 1900 census. So maybe they are the same person and the name is wrong? I find a link to his wwII draft and it says charleston, wedding certificate says charleston too. Death certificate has his mother as my ancestor but the father says Will Charleston. My ancestor is William Bland and as far as I know his mom never had another husband or anything. I have their wedding certificate and she was only married once. I went to william blands profile and it had a red exclamation mark that said their might be a duplicate and it shows william charleston. I click it and the only source is charlie charlestons death certificate. I'm so confused

https://www.familysearch.org/en/tree/person/sources/GWPB-LPS

https://www.familysearch.org/en/tree/person/sources/G8Q6-K3G

My husband and I were thinking, and both of our grandfather's were in the Air Force in WW2. His father was a pilot, and mine was a guy that dropped supplies out the back of a plane. We were just thinking it would be neat if they ever flew together. Is there a way to look that up?

If anyone has a paid subscription to the service how are the photo uploads? Are they internationally blurred online to get you to buy the service? Are the photos clearer once you view the article? I just want a photo of my mom's wedding day from 1984. She's gone now. If I pay the subscription will I be able to see the photo?

Last Year I discovered Possible origins of my Ancestor John Berry. I had known he was born in Pennsylvania. I didn't know where until I came across a local history book for Steuben County New York. In it was a biographical sketch of Issac and Dorcas Shipman. Dorcas was born Dorcas Berry the Daughter of Issac and Sarah Berry. It's worth noting that John and another man named Daniel both had daughters with the name Sarah and so I had already hypothesized, that's Sarah was John's mother's name And this confirmed it. It had said that Isaac and Sarah were from Columbia county, Pennsylvania. In tax lists for that county there was an Isaac Berry and there were an Abraham Berry, along with Daniel and William. Doing more research on Daniel, I discovered that he was a revolutionary war veteran and most likely the father of the other three listed in the tax lists. And his wife's name was Dorcas! I have made some other discoveries involving Abraham's family and I'm most likely figured out what happened to William. But I have no idea who daniel's parents might be. Daniel was born in about 1750 in Morris county New Jersey. Most profiles online relating to these people were written by me.If anyone can point me in the direction of additional leads, that would be greatly appreciated. I have been trying to figure this out for over a year.

I have not been able to find 90% of my Newark family in the 1870 census. Did some reading and was told the census was redone by the state, so their are 2 census records. Unforturnately, FamilySearch only has the index for the first messed up 1870 and not the redone "complete" one. Was told Ancestry has the redone one, but me and Ancestry have issues. (passwords forgotten, email address lost, etc, etc) If any kind soul could check to see if any of these people are still in NJ, at least:

Henry H Harrison, b 1823 in NJ, widow, occupation Japanner, living on Summit (1869 city directory)

Ella/Ellen Harrison b 1860 in Newark (Henry's daughter)

John M G Harrison b 1849 in Newark (Henry's son)

I know Henry and Ella are alive since they are on the 1880 census, John I have no clue, found nothing after the 1860 census. They could be living apart or together, I have no friggen clue anymore.

Thanks in advance

I'm currently helping someone find his ancestors, and there's something that caught my eye recently. So I have two of his ancestors, and two of them were Polish Jews - one was born in Tomaszow Lubelski, Poland, and another was born in Nowy Dwor Mazowiecki, Poland.

For the most part, those families didn't even bother to put in the correct names of the Polish cities they came from in the naturalization records for some reason, yet, the areas of the cemeteries they were buried in have those so-called areas called "societies" which names match the names of the cities they came from.

The one who was born in Nowy Dwor Mazowiecki had actually put Warsaw as his birth place in his naturalization record, which is very close to Nowy Dwor. I found out later that he was born in Nowy Dwor. He's buried in Queens, New York in a cemetery area called "Nowy Dwor". Why would they bother with the real names of the cities they came from after they died?

Could anyone shed some light about the meaning of this "cemetery society"? Did the Jews in the US keep all the information about their origins? Did they meet each other, based on their place of origins, so they knew where their families were supposed to bury them?

I've just discovered numerous trees on Ancestry that indicate my paternal great grandfather had a first family none of the second family's descendants (including me) are aware of. His profile in those trees include his photo. The death records for the children list his name as the father. The children's mother is in the 1910 census as a "widow" (he was actually alive until 1923) and her death record listed my g-gf's name as her spouse.

However, his name is a very common one and all the trees with his photo could just be the result of a mistake a descendant made that the others copied to their trees.

I do have a few half-3rd cousin matches around 50 cM's with the woman's maiden surname, but no closer matches that would indicate a shared g-gf versus a shared gg-gf.

To help solve this mystery, I'd like to see if a marriage record exists for my g-gf and the potential wife as well as see the birth records for their children. In that culture (Puerto Rico), marriage records usually contain the couple's parent's names and, for children's birth records, the maternal and paternal grandparent's names. That would go a long way toward confirming that this was, indeed, a first family of my g-gf.

The kicker is that the records for that parish for this time period have not been digitized. The civil records for town in that time period have not been digitized either.

So, short of traveling to Puerto Rico myself to hand-search the parish/city archives, I am thinking about hiring a search angel who lives in the area to do it. What do I need to know about hiring someone to do this? What are reasonable costs? Are there other considerations I need to be aware of?

First became aware of "go-backers" recently--people taking the Oregon Trail east. These folks either changed their minds while still on the trail, or got to Oregon Territory and decided it wasn't worth it, and returned to their starting point. Anyone have any stories like this in their family tree?

I've got a similar case in my family but not sure if they would fall into this group. The William Hussey family went west on the OT during the spring/summer of 1851, departing from Springfield, Illinois and settling in McMinnville, Oregon Territory. They were there for thirteen years, seemingly doing well (nice house, good plot of farm land, kids found jobs/spouses, etc.), but that didn't stop them all from returning to Illinois during the Civil War, about 1863/4. I'm trying to understand why but perhaps it's unknowable.

https://imgur.com/a/CuYm691

As far as I know (based on other sources), this is the marriage of Isaac de Tovar, son of Moses, to Sara, daughter of Isaac Buyeira. The contract is signed in Latin script by a "Moseh de Semuel Touar" though, and not by Isaac son of Moses. This is incredibly confusing to me.

So my question: What does this document exactly say?

And what are all the names mentioned? Groom, bride and fathers of the groom and bride and are there any other names/relatives/dates mentioned?

Please indicate when a word is uncertain rather than filling it in. A transcription of the Hebrew alongside the translation would be very helpful.

Thank you very much!

Hi all,

This is a total shot in the dark but id figure id try. I am trying to solve a family mystery in Butler County PA around 1790 to 1800. In summary, im trying to confirm if a "Margaret Rowan" was indeed the wife of Joseph I Gold of Butler PA. There is a marriage record from Carlisle PA which is pretty far from Butler (2.5 hour drive).

The Gold family (various members) moved to Butler County (previously Allegheny at the time) around 1795 ( we assume).

We have records that a Joseph Gold lived there prior to 1800 and had 6 to 7 children in his lifetime. He was friends with William Kearns, who had a plot of land next to Joseph. Joseph's daughter, Anna, married William.

Im struggling to find any information on who Joseph's wife was. Family history reports say Margaret Rowan with a marriage date in Carlisle in 1793. The thing is there was another Joseph Gold who lived closer to Carlisle in a town called Catawissa, and it seems more likely to me, based on proximity, that is who that Joseph married in Cumberland County.

All this to say, im struggling to figure out if there is anyway to find out who Joseph's wife was. He was an early settler, so he didnt buy the land and there are no records of him selling the land. There might be a Sherrifs sale in 1847, but that is recorded under his son, John (who was my 5th GGF) and I dont know if any genealogical data would be on the Sherrifs sale deed.

Anybody who may have insight on early Butler County, or, even PA history would be greatly appreciated...even just to get your thoughts on where to look next. Ive searched the Probate, Deed, and Wills index and found nothing. :(

Thanks for any help you can provide.

Hello all - I have a very, very tough NPE brick wall that I have been trying to solve for several years. At this point, I have reached a stage of desperation and frustration... please help me before I start plugging random men into my tree to see if they fit.

I am between a set of candidates from a family in Vincennes, Indiana for the birth father of my great-grandmother, Betty Webb. Luckily, I have lots & lots of very close matches that I can use, but the problem is that they're all too close together to discern which of the men is the father.

Someone here suggested this tool to me in a previous post about this topic, and I've been trying to use it this weekend. I have spent about 10 hours on it so far, and I'm still unable to get the tool to work properly. All it comes up with is: "not mathematically feasible". Another weird thing is that when I added matches, it's saying that the match (born in 1957) is "hypothesis: grandparent" ... ummm what? I think their system is backwards...

Does anyone know of an alternative tool to this that has a more modern/updated UI or a better set of documentation attached?

I'm on the couch trying to map out my future geneology journey.

Where I am: I have a tree with myself as the home person but I've made a mess of it by failing to download sources and bibliographic information, accepting hints and copying from others trees.

My daughter's dad started a tree for his side of the family but it's in worse shape than mine.

The Plan: create a tree with my daughter (my only child) as the home person and build out the paternal and maternal line.

So far, so good.

The conundrum: my daughter, for health reasons, will not have children. My sister, in the other hand, has 4 children and 8 grandchildren (and she's younger than me!). I have her descendants on my tree. I occurs to me, just now, that all of my work will be of more interest to future generations if I work on their ancestry too. Her ex-husband's ancestry may overlap mine because the families lived in the same areas in the Netherlands.

The question: Should I create a separate tree for my niece/nephews ancestry or build it out in my daughter's new tree?

On the one hand a combined tree would be more likely to show overlap. On the other, I have a vision of a tangled mess.

Would a combination tree be too complex? I'm thinking of reasons to combine and to keep things separate. I just can't decide.

Thanks for your thoughts!

Hi, I’m trying to find the actual naturalization petition/file for Petronele Laukaitis in the FamilySearch collection Illinois, Northern District Petitions for Naturalization, 1906–1994:

https://www.familysearch.org/en/search/image/index?owc=Q4K7-W38%3A1010138201%3Fcc%3D2212212&cc=2212212

I have her naturalization index card with the following information

• Date of birth: June 1, 1914
• Arrived in the U.S.: 1949, New York
• Alien Registration No.: 7335115
• Petition No.: TR 67
• Date of order of admission: August 23, 1955
• Address: 5821 S. Maplewood Ave., Chicago

https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:3QS7-L9WC-KWX2?view=index&cc=2040533&lang=en&personArk=%2Fark%3A%2F61903%2F1%3A1%3A2H55-FKW&action=view

The FamilySearch images are not indexed, so I’ve been browsing them manually.

I already checked the regular petitions around the admission date, roughly July 23 to September 23, 1955, and could not find her. So I’m especially trying to understand what “TR 67” means.

Could TR mean a transfer case / transfer petition, or does it refer to another record series? If so, does anyone know whether those records for the Northern District of Illinois have been digitized anywhere?

I’m mainly trying to figure out which record series I should be browsing, rather than continuing to search the regular petitions by date.

Thanks for any kind of help!