Ancestry.com Continues to Blow My Mind

My Family Tree!

I started a private family tree on Ancestry.com a while back.  My paternal grandfather was listed on a detailed public family tree.  Because he died a few years back, his information is available to anyone.  I was able to trace him back pretty far, but could not find anything on my grandmother because she's still living and never married my paternal grandfather.  My other grandparents are dead ends as well because they are too young to be listed on census data (so far) and I don't have a lot of information about them.

I could ask about them, but I'm not sure what sort of answers I'd get and if they'd be accurate or not.  In the past, I haven't been given the full story and my first parents have been a bit evasive.  They give me the general idea, but never the full story.  It could be because they don't know it, or maybe it's because they don't know that I want all the juicy details like names, but either way, I'm not willing to risk ticking them off by asking too many nit-picky questions right now.

A few weeks ago I started to seriously track down my paternal grandmother and kept hitting brick walls.  I had a last name in theory from my first mother but couldn't find anything.  I asked for help and a few people gave it an honest go but nobody was able to make any headway.  So I walked away for a bit.  After a friend mentioned the site last week, I logged back on for the heck of it the other day.  And I had a little green leaf on one of my sisters.  That shouldn't happen because my sister is still very much alive and under the age of 18 so not on many public documents.  Weird.  Because I'm me, I followed the leaf to another public profile.  It would seem that one of my aunts decided to make her profile public.  My sisters are private, but because I used their names in mine, it still matched to the tree.  Naturally, I'm not on it.  But guess who is?  They may all be marked as "Private" but it was pretty easy to figure out who my grandmother was (the only person connected to two men and having children with both of them).  I've done enough research to know that the tree matched up perfectly with my own.  I even found a few photos!

For the first time, I have information on my paternal grandmother.  She's always been the biggest mystery.  My other grandparents are all Portuguese (in theory).  However, I was told my maternal grandmother was Portuguese, French, and English.  I thought, cool.  Growing up in an Irish family, it was sort of cool to hear that I was "English".  I quote that because if I'm English, it's not really though her.  My maternal grandmother was French, but by way of Canada.  I've traced my linage back to France.  Did I mention the year was 1469?  I haven't found the English line yet, but there's a lot of people to go through and I do have one other great-grandmother that's "Portuguese" I suspect may be English on my maternal side.  Oh, and did I mention that some my ancestors were in Massachusetts pre-Revolutionary War?  And then they moved to Canada.  And somehow I ended up in Massachusetts.  This is mind blowing for the girl who used to listen to classmates tell stories about how their ancestors were on the Mayflower.  While this isn't quite the same thing, I remember thinking "How cool would it be to trace my ancestors back that far?  Oh well, I guess it's just not meant to be..."  I now know further back in my first family tree than my adoptive parents know of their trees.  Wow.  For once I have more information that they do... Who would have thunk it?

You'd think I'd feel connected to these people, but I don't.  Not yet anyway.  It's so new to me, that I'm connected to these people with names and in some cases, faces.  They were here.  They lived.  They survived.  And I come from them.  And what's interesting to me is that they were dead before I came along.  They never would have known about me anyway even if I hadn't been adopted.  I'm working on feeling connected to them.  It's going to take me a while.  I need to let it all sink in.  I'm just glad that I'm learning more and more about my truth and my history every day, with or without my first father's help.  I'm so excited that if I have children, they'll have this information too.  And honestly?  If I had grown up with my first parents, I probably wouldn't have known this either.  Because I doubt my first father knows his family history the way that I do now.  I doubt he's traced it back to France or Pre-US Massachusetts.  Another reason why I love technology...

My mind = blown.  Thanks Ancestry.com!