Since I last posted about my own DNA results, a number of my family members have participated in our family DNA project. The results are fascinating and surprising. On my mother's father's side of the family we continue to be bewildered by the significant ratios of British, Irish, and Scandinavian DNA, and the lower than expected ratio of Europe West. Here's why we expected higher percentages in Europe West. The Foxes came to Michigan from Pennsylvania where it is strongly s

The deeper I dig into DNA genealogical study the more convinced I become that race is an artificial construct of the human imagination, created by imperial powers to justify social and economic oppression. There is no scientific basis for racism and to continue to believe in it is a symptom of ignorance. Strip away external physical appearances, and one can be very surprised by what may be found in one's DNA. Exploring the tradition of Cherokee blood in my husband's family is

Old College View Seventh-day Adventist church about 1945-1946, corner of South 49th Street and Prescott Avenue. Today I feel compelled to preserve the memory someone I never met and few people in the College View community even remember anymore. The story starts in June 2015 when this picture, in water color with pencil, of the old College View Seventh-day Adventist Church shown above was given to the Union College Library Heritage Room. The donor claimed the picture was dr

Often just identifying ancestors back to the 1600s or earlier is a major achievement. Understanding something about the time period and culture in which they lived provides context for the bare genealogical facts. To actually discover specific details of their lives, to have a window on their relationships, thoughts, feelings, and the detail of their daily lives is exceptional. In the case of my Cornell ancestors, a tragic set of circumstances left a record preserved by the R

After all of the time I spent on my Nantucket Origins post, I hadn't planned to write again so soon about my New England ancestors. Instead I planned to return to my Medical Cadet Corps research. As I develop my theoretical foundation for the MCC project, I'm exploring the roots of many Seventh-day Adventist pioneers and this research led me back to my own family in a surprising way. My great-great-grandfather, Daniel Cornell Wood, was the nephew of Ezra Cornell (see Nantuck

For the month of November I had thought it would be fun to revisit the Puritan origins of my family. But the process of reviewing the information I have on this part of the family led me in an entirely new direction and necessitated considerably more research than I had anticipated. I started my investigation by revisiting Bessie Eunice Packard's The Edson and Eunice Cornell Packards, a manuscript distributed to family members for Christmas, December 1945. While family histo

This week I received an inquiry requesting information about Mary Elizabeth Anderson (1887-1982) from a gentleman who believed she served as a missionary in Africa for about 35 years. He said she is buried in Wichita, Kansas. It appears he has been searching for more of Mary Elizabeth's history to no avail. He also thought there was a book about her, but he couldn't remember the title or author. This is the type of challenge I find irresistable and most satisfyingly, I turned

Not long ago my cousins Karen and Errol (whose paternal grandmother, Blanche, was a sister to my great-grandfather, Clint Fox) had the difficult task of cleaning out their childhood home, an old farmhouse purchased by their grandparents and where their father, Irwin Mang, was born. Among the clutter and many antiques, a few treasures surprised the family. These treasures include the portraits of three women which were the subject of much speculation at a family gathering last

A couple weeks ago I had the privilege speaking at the monthly meeting of the Lincoln Lancaster County Genealogical Society. While my topic was not copyright, toward the end of my presentation, a question about copyright was raised which I didn't have time to address. But it has prompted me to think more about the copyright issues faced by genealogists, both as owners and users of copyrighted material. Ultimately my contemplation brought me around to the question of what and

Fact checking family traditions can be pretty simple, especially when they are related to well-documented events.

Although I've been interested in the contributions DNA testing has made to history and genealogy ever since DNA testing proved that Sally Hemmings' descendents were related to Thomas Jefferson, I didn't think it was something I'd ever do myself until last fall when I was contacted through Ancestry.com by someone else researching the Monheit family. That is because my family's relationship to the Monheits bears some similarity to the relationship between the Hemmings and the J

Let me start by saying I'm not an expert on DNA testing for genealogy. In fact, I've only recently started to get into this new world. This blog post represents my first attempt to really formalize my thoughts and communicate what I've learned from my test results. I used Ancestry.com's autosomal DNA test. Autosomal chromosomes are those we inherit from both parents as opposed to mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) which is passed down from mothers only and Y chromosome DNA (Y-DNA) wh

Orason Lee Brinker with the author. Photo by Ryan Teller. A few weeks ago I, along with Union College Director of Public Relations Ryan Teller who came along to record the interview, had the very special privilege of visiting with 98-year Orason Lee Brinker. As a teenager attending Campion Academy in Colorado, Brinker had planned to continue his education at the United States Military Academy at West Point. But a conversation with Dr. Everett Dick during a Union College recr

My research on Gus Youngberg (see January 24, 2015 post) went a little deeper this past week when I discovered that golden cords were hung for both his brother, Alfred, and sister, Ruth. According to his wife Norma, these three siblings left home at an early age and supported each other through their teen years and into college. They all attended Union College at the same time, graduating in 1915. As I searched Ancestry.com looking for documents to support Norma's version of

Reading and collecting information widely allows one to make surprising connections sometimes.