Finding Unknown Biological Ancestors with DNA

This is a topic that comes up regularly in genealogy circles, because DNA testing often reveals cases of unknown adoptions, or what we call "non-paternity events" (NPE), when someone's father is not their biological father. Once there's enough suggestion that something like this has happened, the question then becomes, how do I identify this unknown biological ancestor? It can be done, although the further back on your tree it occurred, the more difficult it will be (far enough back and it might not be possible). Whenever possible, it's best to have someone from the oldest generation descended from this event to test. Like if you're looking for Grandma's unknown biological father, have Grandma take the test, or if she is unable or unwilling, have your relevant parent take the test. At the same time, if the person you're looking for is actually still living (like if you're adopted and looking for living biological parents), it will be difficult to research since lots of records on living people are private (that's a whole different ballgame and you often have to rely more on information and communication from your DNA matches). Additionally, if you're working with an endogamous population, you may be out of luck. With all that in mind, here's how it works.

Step 1: Look for your closest DNA match that you can't identify as being from another known branch of your tree. If they don't have a family tree added, that's okay because first you want to look at their Shared Matches, and open any matches that do have family trees (the bigger, the better).

Step 2: Compare the family trees of those Shared Matches, looking for ancestors any two or more (the more, the better) of them have in common with each other (especially if those matches also match each other) - ancestors who are not found in your tree. Yes, this may take some time because you have to manually compare the trees - I find it best to start with the surname list on the match review page and find surnames they have in common with each other, then see if those surnames actually lead to a common ancestor among them. If the ancestor is found in your tree, then you know this group isn't from the branch you're looking for and you can label them and move on.

Step 3: Build a descendant tree for the ancestor you found. Make a note of any descendants who were in the right place at the right time at the right age, but we're not done yet.

Step 4: Repeat this process with the next closest match you can't identify (who isn't a part of the first group).

Step 5: Look for a descendant who appears in both the trees you've built - so someone who descends from both the ancestors you've identified. This is probably either the person you're looking for, or a close ancestor of theirs, like a parent or grandparent. If you don't find one, keep repeating this process until you do.

Chart showing the two different DNA matches groups and their shared ancestors.
Click to enlarge.

For example (shown above - these names are made up but the situation is real and came from my tree): I was looking for my grandfather's unknown biological father, so I had my grandfather take the test before he died. I first found a group of his matches (who mostly all matched each other) who were all descended from a colonial ancestor named John Smith (I told you I changed the names, lol), so I built a descendant tree for John Smith. I then found another group of matches who all descended from another colonial ancestor called Christopher Jones, and built a descendant tree for him. By building those trees, I found a descendant of John Smith - named Isaac Smith - had married a descendant of Christopher Jones - her name was Carrie Jones. This suggested that the man I was looking for was probably a descendant of Isaac Smith and Carrie Jones, and based on the dates, it could only really be one of their sons, specifically one of their four oldest sons. Eventually, a close descendant of one of the four sons tested and confirmed which of the four sons was my grandfather's biological father (below).

Chart showing the closer matches that eventually showed up and allowed me to figure out
which of the 4 brothers was my grandfather's bio father.

Granted, there could have been another descendant of John Smith who married a different descendant of Christopher Jones, and that could have led me to the wrong family - this is why too much endogamy can throw you off. But as long as there's not too much of it, you can document each case of it and using your DNA matches and how much DNA you share with them, you should be able to figure out which descendants are the ones you're looking for. But a highly endogamous population might be too complex. If I was looking for an unknown bio ancestor on my mom's Mennonite branch, I'm not sure it would be possible. I can sometimes share up to about 5 ancestor couples with matches on my Mennonite branch. And the unknown father of my Italian ancestor who was from a tiny, highly endogamous town in Italy where everyone there is related to everyone else somehow? Forget it.

However, this is the same type of method that professional Genetic Genealogists like CeCe Moore employ to identify individuals from DNA left at crime scenes (either suspects or unidentified victims). It can be done (for the most part), it just takes work, and sometimes some patience for the right matches to come in.

Quaker Gibbs of Burlington County, NJ

My Gibbs branch has always been a brick wall for me. My grandmother had fairly extensively researched her and my grandfather's genealogies and over the years, I went about confirming most of it with records and expanding on several branches. But not the Gibbs branch. Here's what I know.

Hope's baptism confirms her parent's names but not
mother's maiden name

Hope Gibbs was born November 3, 1805 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania to Caleb and Isabella Gibbs. There is an adult Lutheran baptism record for her which confirms her birth date and parents names, and other records like her death record confirm her birth place. According to my grandmother, Isabella's maiden name was Peters but I haven't found any record of that and have only my grandmother's word to go on (and she is deceased so I can't ask her where she got it from). It's possible she got the name from her mother-in-law, or her grandmother-in-law and therefore the info is subject to the corruption of things being passed down the generations through word of mouth. Equally, I haven't been able to find any conclusive info on Caleb apart from the mention in Hope's baptism record.

What I did find was some Quaker records of a Caleb Gibbs in Upper Springfield, Burlington County, New Jersey and the timing is right that this could be my Caleb Gibbs, that he was originally in New Jersey and moved to Philadelphia before Hope was born. I can't find records of him in Upper Springfield after Hope's birth and to strengthen the ties between the two Calebs, I found a marriage record of Caleb Gibbs and Isabella Brannin (mis-transcribed as Browning) on April 29, 1799. Ancestry.com has the record of the marriage in Philadelphia, but this has been incorrectly indexed. Family Search has a copy of the record from the true location in Burlington, New Jersey.

Caleb Gibb's marriage without Quaker consent - lack of mention
of wife's name suggests she was not a Quaker

The trouble is I have no idea if my Caleb was a Quaker or whether he came from Burlington, New Jersey. The only links I have between them is that the Caleb from Burlington obviously married an Isabella, which matches with my info, and that there's no more Quaker records of him in Burlington County after 1800 (before Hope's birth), or seemingly any records at all of him in Upper Springfield after 1800 (though there are some Caleb Gibbs in neighboring townships). In fact, the reason for the lack of his mention in Quaker records after 1800 seems to be because there was a conflict with him and his marriage. It appears he married without the consent of the Quaker elders and he wasn't sorry for it. If this is my Caleb, this could be the reason he left Burlington (and perhaps even the Quakers) and went to Philadelphia.

Isabella's excommunication from the Quakers following
the birth of her illegitimate child

Interestingly, searching for Isabella Brannin in the Quaker records turned up a woman by that name who had a child out of wedlock in 1795 with Levi Webster. They were both excommunicated from the Quakers for it. This could be why Caleb's marriage to a disgraced woman and ex-Quaker was not approved. Isabella does not appear to have married Levi, which would have left her available to marry Caleb in 1799. Then all records of Caleb in Upper Springfield Township cease after 1800 - is it because they moved to Philadelphia, where their daughter Hope was born in 1805?

Quakers seem to be pretty well documented so I'm hoping someone who is researching Quaker Gibbs in the Burlington, NJ area might be able to help me link my Caleb Gibbs to them. It seems likely the two were one in the same, but I feel like I'm missing an affirmative link.

AncestryDNA vs FTDNA & What the Results Tell Me

My FTDNA myOrigins results

Earlier, I talked about the new myOrigins results at FTDNA and how I had zero results for my British heritage even though I have several known British branches in my tree and AncestryDNA puts my British results around 55%, a massive difference - which one do I put more weight in? On one hand, FTDNA's zero British results seems hugely inaccurate but equally, AncestryDNA's estimate of only 5% West Europe (German, for me) when I know I have several German branches and only a 2% "trace amount" of Scandinavian when one of my great grandfathers was Norwegian always felt a little off too.

My results from AncestryDNA, trace amounts are in outline

In my other post, I talked about how FTDNA was probably placing my British DNA into it's Scandinavian and German categories, because the British do have Viking and Germanic tribe influences and my results for those categories are much higher with FTDNA than they are with Ancestry.com. I've realized that what this may mean is that my British DNA is entirely Viking and Germanic, with little to no Celtic or Roman influence. This idea is supported by the fact that AncestryDNA give me only trace amounts of Irish results (less than 1%). At first, I though this was just because I have no real Irish ancestry - all my "Irish" ancestors were actually from what is now Northern Ireland, which means they are more than likely genetically Scottish or English (shhh, don't tell my half Irish husband). And this may still be the case. But it's also come to my attention that what AncestryDNA mean by "Ireland" is actually more like "Celtic". Additionally, FTDNA seems to suggest that their "European Coastal Islands" category (shown on their map as basically Britain and Ireland), may be their idea of "Celtic" too, because their description of this category says: "This group is typical to the British Isles, especially Ireland." So, I'm getting little to no Irish/Celtic results from AncestryDNA and I'm also showing no results for "especially Ireland" from FTDNA. Maybe the different results from the two companies aren't so different after all, if what they are both trying to tell me is "you're not Irish or Celtic."

What it's also probably telling me is that because my British DNA is so influenced by Viking and Germanic DNA, it is almost indistinguishable from those categories. Depending on the control group samples each company used, my British, Scandinavian, and German DNA will therefore naturally have different percentages and it doesn't mean one is more accurate than the other. When you have two or more groups of peoples who are genetically too similar to one another to tell them apart, it's going to be difficult, if not impossible, to accurately place their DNA. It's probably never going to be accurate to say I'm "this much British and that much Scandinavian" - it will be more accurate to say that apart from my Italian heritage, I mostly come from Viking and Germanic blood, regardless of whether that DNA has more recently come from Britain or Norway or Germany.

At least both companies seem to agree that I am about 1/3 Italian - although with FTDNA, I am getting similar influences from the Middle East. According to them, I am 17% Middle Eastern but of course, I know there is no one in my tree from the Middle East. What's happening here is very similar to what is happening with my British DNA - that the Italians, particular southern Italians and Sicilians (which are a known part of my ancestry), have had genetic influences from the Middle East and therefore some of their DNA can be very similar. Even AncestryDNA identified trace amounts from the exact same regions of the Middle East - just one example of why you shouldn't always dismiss those trace amounts as statistical noise.

While it's easy to lump those Middle Eastern results into my Italian ancestry because I have no Middle Eastern ancestors, it's more difficult to distinguish my British, Scandinavian, and German DNA because I do have ancestors from all of those places. But if you take a look at the two maps above and ignore the percentages for a moment, it's interesting to see how almost all the circled regions are the same from both companies. They've both identified "West Europe" or in this case, my German heritage. They've both identified my Scandinavian - or Norwegian heritage. They both identified some small amounts from Finland/NW Russia which I think is coming from an influence on my Norwegian ancestors. And they've both identified my Italian DNA with it's Middle Eastern influences. The only thing missing from FTDNA is a circle around the British Isles, which I think I've been able to explain, and the fact that AncestryDNA's results has less than 1% from Asia South, which is essentially India, but I'm pretty sure this is just statistical noise or somehow again related to my Italian ancestry.

Still, FTDNA results like this can be very misleading for people who don't take the time to consider these possibilities. Equally, Ancestry.com's "trace" amounts of my Scandinavian DNA might be misleading too, when it may be higher than that. There is so much to consider and my varying percentages from these two companies just goes to show that DNA is not such an exact science yet after all.

Ancestry.com's City Directories

ACOM's City Directories aren't always the easiest records collection to use. Though they are improving, you'll probably find wildly inaccurate and nonsensical transcriptions - for example, a "1" instead of an "I". This is because they were transcribed by a computer with what is called OCR, Optical Character Recognition. The benefit is that it's quicker than having human beings index millions of names but the downside is that there can be lots of errors, especially depending on the quality of the original document or the scan. Basically, OCR is programmed to recognize the basic shapes of common characters in the English language on an image/scan and output it into text so when two or more characters look similar, it can get confused as to which one it is. This, of course, means that using the search function on the city directories is hit and miss but here's some tips to help you find what you're looking for.

• Restrict to location. Make sure you've got the advanced search open (in the upper right corner of the search box, click "show advanced"). Type in the city name in the "lived in" field and in the drop down menu below it which says "use default settings" select "restrict to this place exactly". Obviously, only do this is you want to restrict your search to one city - if you know the person you're looking for lived there and only there. Since this part of the search doesn't use OCR, it's very effective in at least narrowing down your search to one location so your results aren't cluttered with irrelevant entries.

• Enter a year. Similarly, if you have an approximate time period you're trying to search in, plug a year into the "any event" date. Only tick "exact" if you're looking for that specific year - if not, leave it unticked and you'll get results of or around that year. Use the +/- drop down to expand the year range further if you need to. There's also a "residence year" field at the bottom and in my experience, it works exactly the same so I don't know why there's both.

• Use the asterisk. First try entering the full name of the individual - you might get a few results with good OCR entries but it won't be comprehensive. To find more entries, keep in mind that you really need only find an entry of any name on the same page and then you can open up the original document to check the details of the specific person you're looking for. So let's say you're looking for James Bronson - leave the first name field blank and merely type in "Bro*" or "Bron*" with the asterisk after the first few letters of the surname. The asterisk tells the system to search for all surnames beginning with "Bro" or "Bron". Most results, though they may not be for James Bronson exactly, will open up the page where I can find him, if not the previous or following page.

• Use the keyword field. If you know the occupation of the individual or the name of the company where they worked, try plugging it into the "Keyword" field. This doesn't always work since it's dependant on the OCR but it can help. Alternatively, if you're looking for a specific address, it can also be entered in the keyword field, though I suggest not entering the full address, just part of it. Like if it's 100 Main Street, just put in "main". Also remember the asterisk can be used in this field too.

This photo of an unknown young man
was probably taken in 1893 or 1894.

I've been effectively using these methods to find the time periods and addresses of which different photographers in or around Philadelphia operated in order to get approximate dates on when my "mystery photos" were taken. For example, one of the photographs says the photographer and studio information is "James Bronson 4721 Main Street Germantown" and I discovered James Bronson had a studio at this specific address only during the years of 1893 and 1894 so I was able to narrow down one photo to only a two year period. Of course, it's important to remember that the directories didn't update on the fly so it's possible for an individual to move addresses after the directory is published with their former address. Theoretically, that means it could have also been taken in 1892, though the directory says Bronson's studio was at 4946 Germantown Ave in 1892, he could have moved later in the year.

Even if your photos aren't mystery photos and you have identified the individual in them, finding when the photographer operated at the address labelled can still help narrow down when the picture was taken.

I also used these methods to find tenants of my ancestor's properties by putting the address into the keyword field. There are many various ways to use these methods.

Every Record Tells a Story

Recently, as I previously mentioned, a bunch of death certificates I'd ordered months ago finally arrived and as I gleefully analyzed them, I found them to be full of revelations, one of which was actually a little emotionally moving.

As I've mentioned before, my grandfather, known to me as "Pop", grew up without his own father in his life. According to Pop, after his parents divorced, his father (James Edward Bauer I) remarried to a woman who did not want anyone in her family or social circle to know her husband had previously been married and even had children. Divorce was still taboo in those days (the 1930s) so she forbade her new husband from seeing his children, at least in public. Pop recalls that he was told not to acknowledge his own father if he happened to run into him in a public place. Of course, James didn't have to go along with this, he could have told his wife that he was going to be a part of his children's lives whether she liked it or not. He chose to abandon them instead. 

By 1940, Pop's mother had remarried and moved to Philadelphia with her children. This probably made having a relationship with his father, who was still living in Reading, all the more difficult even after he divorced the evil stepmother sometime around 1950. It wasn't until after James remarried for the third and final time to a kindly woman named Alma in 1951 that the gap between father and son began to bridge. Apparently, Alma was the driving force behind their reconciliation but despite this, Pop and his father never grew particularly close and so we didn't know much about this branch of our tree. Some bridges just can't be rebuilt.

Some time ago, I discovered that James' abandonment of his family had deeper roots. Thanks to census records, I had found that James' own parents, Edward William Bauer and Anna Jane Russell, had separated but this time it was the father the children stayed with. This prompted all sorts of questions with unknown answers. Why did they separate? Why did the children stay with their father Edward? Did this somehow impair James' ability to be a good husband and father? I tried to remind myself that separation and divorce were not completely unheard of even in the very early 20th century and that it could have just been "irreconcilable differences" that drove Anna and Edward apart. It didn't necessarily mean Anna wasn't still involved in her children's lives. But in my experience it's usually difficult to find a woman who would so readily give up custody of her children unless something much darker drove or force her away. 

Today, I finally got a look at Anna's death certificate. I actually had to order two because I wasn't sure when she died and the Pennsylvania Department of Health Death Indices don't give you much information to go on. I was actually worried neither of them would be the record I was looking for but when I saw Anna's father clearly listed as Robert Russell on one of them, I knew I had the right Anna. 

And then, there is was . . . cause of death: Acute Alcoholism. She was 31 years old.

Acute Alcoholism as cause of death for 31 year old Anna.
A sad death following her sad existence living alone in a
boarding home for the last 4-5 years of her life.

Poor James. The poor family. Anna's drinking must have been so severe that either her husband banished her from their home or she left on her own accord, knowing she was no longer fit to be a good wife or mother.  Of course, it's possible her drinking began after the separation, in her loneliness and anguish over the loss of her children. During this time period, it would not be unusual for the courts to rule in favor of the father regarding custody, which is probably why so many women stayed in unhappy marriages, so they wouldn't lose their children. And acute alcoholism I believe refers to alcohol poisoning, not organ failure due to long term consumption of alcohol, so she may not have necessarily been drinking for very long. However, a key factor is in the contributing cause of death on Anna's death certificate. It's hard to read but my mom and I worked out that it was probably menorrhagia nonpuerperal and that she'd be suffering from it for 42 days. Menorrhagia refers to menstrual bleeding and nonpuerperal means it was unrelated to pregnancy or giving birth. In other words, she was having a 42 day period which my mom, an RN, explained could have been happening because the alcoholism was making it difficult for her blood to clot. This supports the idea that she had been drinking for some time.

Another supporting factor on the record is that the informant was Anna's stepmother. By this point, her father was still alive and she was technically still married to Edward. Legally, he was her next of kin and often it is the next of kin who reports the death. Yet neither her husband or father were willing to report it. Could it have been that they were too grief stricken to serve as the informant? Yes, it's possible. But combined with the fact that Anna had been living on her own in a boarding house for the last 4-5 years of her life, it is certainly indicative that neither of the men in her life wanted anything to do with her.

This was further supported by the fact that I later discovered there was never a headstone erected at her burial place in Homewood Cemetery (it was not stolen or deteriorated, it just never existed). Her family were not so destitute that they could not have afforded a small, humble headstone so it must have been that they simply didn't care enough to pay for one. It's clear that by the time she drank herself to death alone in a boarding house, she had already been dead to her family for some years and it seems mostly likely the reason for that would be her drinking.

And when I realized all this, I think I sat here for a good five minutes and just contemplated what that meant for each member of the family and how it can't be a coincidence that the child of an alcoholic mother who abandoned her children by drinking herself into an early grave would grow up to abandon his own.

I have never thought very favorably of my great grandfather for his utter failure as a father to my Pop but I do now have some sympathy for him. It doesn't excuse what he did but it does make it a bit more understandable. He wasn't just a deadbeat dad, he was also the child of a deadbeat alcoholic mother and the two are inseparable. However, I don't think I'll be crying him a river anytime soon. After all, my Pop was also the child of a deadbeat dad and he turned out to be such a devoted husband and father, he was actually in danger of smothering his family!

Every record tells a story. Though not every record tells a story with quite the impact of one like this, it will give you some insight into your ancestor's lives and sometimes perhaps even of those closer to you. 

Confirming Hunches

Don't you just love when you find a record that confirms a hunch you've had for a while? I had one of these moments last night when my mom messaged me to let me know that the death certificates we ordered from the Pennsylvania Department of Health back in July/August finally came in. Anyone who has ordered anything from the PA DOH knows how slow they are to fill requests but I can't really complain considering they're only $3 a piece. When I ordered an Alabama death certificate, it had cost something like $30 but it arrived within a week. So "you get what you pay for" is obviously at work here.

Death certificate for Caroline's son showing her maiden
name as something looking like "Wahr".

Offline genealogy isn't easy for me since I live in England but only have one branch that came from England. Getting records sent to England isn't cheap so I always have them sent to my mom in Pennsylvania. Last night, she sent me a message saying the records had come in and started rattling off some of the details on them. When she said "George's mother's maiden name Wake or Wahe" I got excited and asked "Wahr?!" She replied "could be!" and I knew I'd struck gold. Let me backtrack and explain why.

The Bauer branch of my tree hasn't been easy to research. My grandfather had effectively been abandoned by his father when he was a child and though they reconnected later in life, I don't think they ever got particularly close. So my grandfather didn't know a whole lot about his father's ancestry. On top of that, I've tackled obstacles like the family being missing from the 1910 census and my second great grandfather sharing the exact same name as someone else roughly of his age with two sisters who have the same names as his sisters (more on this later).

I'd found that my third great grandfather, August Bauer, had been from Germany, settled in Butler County, PA as a child and then in his 20's began moving south into Pittsburgh. In 1860, he was living unmarried in Allegheny City near the post office of Perrysville and by 1870, he was married to a woman named Caroline, had a few kids, and had moved deeper into the heart of Allegheny City, which has since been incorporated into Pittsburgh. Caroline then died before 1900, meaning I can't find her on the PA DOH Death Indices which start in 1906. So how was I going to find out more about Caroline? Ordering the death certificates of her children might tell me her maiden name but while I waited for the PA DOH to take it's time merry retrieving them, I did some browsing of census records.

I knew August was unmarried in 1860 while living near Perrysville which meant he probably didn't meet and marry his wife Caroline while still in Butler County. I knew when and where Caroline was born thanks to census records of both her and her children. The main thing I didn't know was her maiden name. What if I did some searching for any Caroline (before they were married) born in either France of Germany (she had been from Alsace-Lorraine, an area of France that bordered Germany and switched ownership several times, therefore her birth place is alternately recorded as either France or Germany) around 1842 and living in the specific areas August was probably living in during the years they must have been married? I thought it would make perfect sense if August had met Caroline and married her in Perrysville before moving further into Allegheny so I narrowed my search to post office Perrysville first. And to my great surprise and pleasure, there weren't many Caroline's that fit the bill. One by the name of "Wear" stood out (other records of the same family revealed it to be more likely spelled as Wahr) because some records said she was from France and some and Germany, just like the later records for my Caroline said. And after finding her parents in 1870, it showed she was no longer a part of the household, which meant she either died or had married and moved out. And the man she married could have been August.

It made sense but of course I couldn't confirm it. There was no way I was going to add this to my tree based on purely circumstantial links. I had a clue or a hunch but nothing more.

So when this death record of one of August and Caroline's sons came in with a maiden name that looks like "Wahr", I knew I had confirmed my hunch. While the last letter doesn't look much like an "r", according to censuses, there are no other Caroline's of the right age living in the right area(s) with a similar maiden name. So having already found the census records for Caroline Wahr before she was married, I now can confirm her parents names too and that they were born in Württemberg. I was literally doing a happy dance last night and this morning, I had email attachments of the scanned death records (thanks, Dad!) so I can now add them to my tree.

Additionally, I was thrilled to find out one of the other records that came in is the wrong record for my ancestor. Yes, that's right, I'm happy that it's the incorrect record. Why? Well, remember when I said that another individual (not in my tree) shared the exact name of my second great grandfather, Edward William Bauer, and was born roughly around the same time? Well, it appears there's been some confusion regarding them. I had a Freemason record of him saying he died in 1921 and so I also found him on the PA Death Index. But then I found him on the 1930 census! I knew it was him because he was living with one of his daughters, who was present on earlier census records that link them to my great grandfather too. So I knew it was the correct family which could only mean the 1921 death was for the other Edward William Bauer but I wanted to order the record to be sure. And that is why I was pleased to see Edward's parent's names listed as Charles and Rosina, not August and Caroline.

It does mean I now don't know when Edward died and that the Freemason record is not his. I had thought that it was because I knew his son (my great grandfather) was indeed a Freemason and so I thought it made sense that he might have been too. At the time, I had no idea there was another Edward William Bauer around the same age living in the same area! At least I've got it sorted out now and everything is more clear.

It just goes to show that sometimes you definitely need to go offline to confirm your hunches or find new information.

In light of all this, I haven't had time to do my daily Family History Writing Challenge but it will be back tomorrow.

Interesting Clippings #9: Jimmy Logue - Infamous Thief and a Murder Mystery

Read the rest of the
Paterson Daily Press
article from Oct 19, 1893 at
Google News Archives.

Jimmy Logue was born around 1837 in Philadelphia and began stealing when he was only 17. In his own words, thievery was "born in him" and he "couldn't help it." It's believed that over the course of his criminal career, he stole an accumulative of over $300,000. He began by sneaking into homes where he found himself adapt at finding the owner's most valuable possessions quickly, and eventually graduated to bank robberies. He spent time in and out of jail but got away with many of his robberies.

In 1860, Jimmy married a widow with a son by the name of Alphonso Cutaiar, though he had never formally divorced from his first wife, Mary Jane Andrews (I guess bigamy is no worse than theft). After the death of his second wife, he married her sister, Joanna (her maiden name is cited by different sources as Gantz, and Gahan so it's unclear which is accurate), in 1871 and thus making him both Alphonso's stepfather and uncle. Alphonso was a barber and Jimmy had set him up with a barber shop and with Jimmy as the legal owner, it provided a partial cover for his stolen income, though it was obvious he spent above what the shop made. Immediately after marrying Joanna, Jimmy was tried for one of his burglary jobs and sent to jail. Released in 1877, he could finally be with his bride.

Read the rest of the
Baltimore American
article from Apr 29, 1895 at
Google News Archive.

Only a couple years later in 1879, Joanna disappeared. 14 years go by and in this time, Jimmy became so distraught over her disappearance that he eventually left their home at 1250 N 11th Street and gave it to Alphonso. Alphonso wound up selling the place and when the new owners were having some floor boards fixed in 1893, a skeleton was found. It was confirmed to be Joanna by the personal artifacts left with the body, particularly her wedding ring with a specific inscription.

At first, Jimmy was the prime suspect, his motive being to steal Joanna's diamonds. But these were diamonds he bought her himself and when he turned himself in, his alibi was proved, in a bizarre twist, that he had actually been involved in a burglary at the time of Joanna's disappearance. Suspicion turned to Alphonso. Initially denying it, Alphonso was faced with the fact that he was the only one with access to the house at the time and he began to confess - multiple times. Multiple stories. Most were spun to make Joanna's death look like an accident and his improper disposal of her body done out of fear but Joanna's missing jewelry and bonds were likely his motive. And so the mystery was finally mostly solved.

Alphonso went to jail in the Eastern State Penitentiary and in 1904, a pardon for him was attempted but thankfully denied. The judge who denied it said that Alphonso should be considered lucky to have not received the death plenty. (The Philadelphia Record, Jan 7, 1904 - Google News Archives). In 1910, he can be found on the census still in prison but by 1920, he had apparently been released and living with his family again. He eventually died in 1940 at the ripe old age of about 80 (Find A Grave).

Read the rest of the
Philadelphia Record
article from Oct 5, 1899 at
Google News Archive.

Jimmy had lost his appetite for stealing and died penniless in an almshouse on Oct 4, 1899 after repenting his sins. He seems to have genuinely loved Joanna and grieved her disappearance and death greatly. He held onto his anger for his stepson/nephew and never believed it to be an accident.

One article, which is not available for free, suggested that Jimmy's real name was William Casey. This would explain why Jimmy seemingly can't be found on any census record, even prior to his criminal carrier, under the name Jimmy or James Logue.

For more details on this story, check out the clippings and links. The articles were too big to clip fully and there were too many to clip all of them but you can read the articles in their entirety for free if you follow all the URLs. I was so intrigued by this story that I even created a Wikipedia page for it. Maybe others will continue to add more details.

Many years later, in 1951, a paper in Milwaukee picked up the Logue story as one of their weekly "mystery" true stories. It's the longest article but therefore included the most details, however embellished they might be (some of the information conflicts with the other articles). It was printed in the Milwaukee Sentinel on April 1, though it's no April Fool's joke. Below is a clipping but if this story interests you, definitely click through the link to read the full article. It is broken up over a few pages so I will link to each one, just in case:

Page 1
Page 2
Page 3

More Mystery Photos

Following on from previous posts. If you recognize anyone here, please contact me by commenting below or  sending me a message on Ancestry.com.

Do You Know Me?

Carrying on from my post about the mystery photos found in one of the boxes of ancestry stuff passed down from my grandmother, here are a bunch more. They seem to all have been taken in Philadelphia, sometimes the Chestnut Hill area, in the late 19th century. And I'm pretty sure they are friends or relatives of my Fallows and/or Rorer branches. If you recognize any of these people, please contact me by commenting below or sending me a private message on Ancestry.com.

Mystery Photos

Among the plethora of photographs and documents of our ancestors that my mother inherited from my grandmother was a bundle of photos mostly from around the late 1800's of unknown individuals (frustratingly, no names written on them). Since I have pictures of all my direct ancestors on my mom's side going back four, sometimes five generations, it's safe to say none of them are of my own ancestors. So I suspect they were either extended family/distant relatives or friends of the family, most specifically, the Rorer and perhaps Fallows branches. How do I know this? Well, it's partly dumb luck and partly an educated guess.

Two of the photos in the pile are of the same guy (shown above) who also happens to be in a tintype (below) of a group shot containing my ancestor Mary Anne Rorer (far right in the photo) when she was looking particularly like a young woman (based on other pictures I have of her), probably before she was married in 1887. So probably sometime in the 1880s.

Mystery guy has very distinctive lips, right? Hard to miss. Definitely the same guy in all three images, though in the first one he might be a little older. And by the way, Mary Anne had no living brothers and her only known uncle was childless (no known aunts) so mystery guy is probably not a first cousin either. He could only be a distant cousin or friend.

To help confirm the time period, I decided to look up the photographer named on the print of the mystery guy when he was looking about the same age as he is in the tintype. I did this by using the directory records on Ancestry.com. Year by year, I looked up a photographer by the surname of Applegate in Philadelphia at the address Vine and 8th Streets and found James R Applegate worked there from 1871 to 1904 (he'd worked as a photographer prior to this but at a different address so I ruled that out).

I was lucky that the print of mystery guy had the photographer's details on it, not all do. I was also lucky to find him in a group shot with my ancestor so I could get a good idea of who he was associated with in my tree and when. Though I'm still investigating the individuals and photographers of the other images in the pile, many of them are of the same style and therefore probably around the same time period. And knowing that the Rorers and Fallows were something of socialites (and therefore had friends with the money to purchase multiple prints of a photo and distribute them to friends and family) and what appears to be enthusiasm for photographs, it seems likely that they received pictures of friends or family members, perhaps even swapping them with ones of themselves.

I will be posting more of the mystery photos in hopes that someone with a copy of the same picture, who knows who they are, will do a reverse image search like Tineye and find my blog and tell me who they are. My hopes aren't high but if I never put them out there for people to find, they'll never be found.

Cemeteries

Recently, I made a trip home to PA (I currently live in England), in Bucks County. I try to use the opportunity when I'm there to do some offline family history research and organization I can't do in England. Right now, it's mostly visiting cemeteries and helping my mom scan all the old photographs of our ancestors. This last trip, we found a bunch of photos of people we don't know. I think they were friends of our ancestors but there's no names on them so sadly, I may never figure out who they are.

As for the cemeteries, we visited several, most were successful but I had some unclear records that led me astray. One death record told me the individual was buried at "Chestnut Hill Cemetery" and I found some reference that suggested a place called Ivy Hill Cemetery (where several other of my ancestors are buried) was once called this. But the individual wasn't buried there. Her husband's death record just said "Methodist Church" so I thought maybe we'd have luck at the Chestnut Hill United Methodist Church. I wasn't even sure they had a cemetery. We pull into the parking lot in the back and sure enough, there is a very small cemetery of old looking headstones. My hopes weren't high - old headstones can be too eroded or damaged to read and what were the chances my ancestors were among this very small group of headstones? But sure enough, my mom spotted the family we were looking for.

As you can see, they are hard to read. And you may also note that there are four graves in the plot but only three close-up shots. The fourth is not a part of our family and yet, we were missing a family member too. There was a husband and wife and then the mother of the husband but where was the father? Many of the headstones were broken, fallen over, grow into the ground, etc, but no sign of one like that with the same style headstone in the plot. We went to the church office and there found a very friendly and helpful pastor who was enthusiastic about restoring the cemetery. He explained that sadly, there are no records of who was buried there so they are at the mercy of being able to read the stones. He also explained that originally, the individuals were buried in the front of the church but when the building was rebuilt, the headstones had been moved to the back (but not the bodies). I suspect that during the move, someone wrongly associated the unrelated individual because it had the same style headstone so they were all lumped together. I also suspect that my missing ancestor was buried there but at some point, whether before or after the move, his headstone was lost or grown over.

The church is certainly lucky to have a pastor there who is dedicating his time and efforts to restore what is left of the cemetery. He showed us some of the gravestones he'd already carefully restored and they looked very good. He even encouraged us to come back with some shovels to remove the first few inches of grass and dirt to see if we could find the missing headstone! Unfortunately, we didn't have time for that during this trip but maybe someday.

Also interesting was that I found another one of my ancestors buried at Zion Lutheran Church aka Union Cemetery of Whitemarsh (not to be confused with Whitemarsh Cemetery) but he had previously been married in the Presbyterian Church of Chestnut Hill. Wikipedia tells me that some Presbyterian churches have "entered into unions with other churches such as Congregationalists, Lutherans, Anglicans, and Methodists." So perhaps it was not so strange for my ancestor to make this change of religion. He was, after all, born in England and a member of the Church of England before immigrating so it wasn't his first switch. It will make an interesting tidbit in my family history writings.

At another cemetery at the First Presbyterian Church of Springfield, we found two of my ancestors buried there and behind them were four headstones with the names of (some of) their children but no date.

I'm kicking myself for not thinking about that more at the time and asking the office about it. Especially when I came home and looking at my tree, found I had records of some of them buried elsewhere. Did the parents buy the plot and headstones in preparation for their children but later the children decided to be buried elsewhere? Or were some of them just never paid to have the dates added? More investigation is needed on that. If anyone else has come across something like this, please let me know what you found!