I have stepped into the world of DNA. About 3 months
ago, my husband's uncle (age 83), (a.k.a. Uncle Donny or Chick) took a Ancestry.com autosomal DNA test.
Yesterday I was alerted to a "new match." The new match was
bernadette*** on ancestry.com
A close DNA Match. Bernadette was reportedly a 3rd or 4th cousin. The closest match so far. The common
surname with Uncle Donny is "Beaver." OK -- I've seen that before, almost as
often as Brown and Jones show up. I've yet to find a Beaver family match. The Beavers are a brick wall for me. I've confidently traced back to James Beaver
born about 1816 but can't find his parents.
Beaver/Bieber is a very common name among German settlers in
Pennsylvania.
Julia Beaver. So, skeptically I looked at Bernadette's tree.
Burnadette's tree shows her gg-grandmother was Julia Klotz, nee Beaver
b.1812 and died 1887. She doesn't have
much evidence; no place of birth, marriage, or death. Slowly I read through Julia profile until I
get to the last item - and it's a gem.
Julia is buried in Bunker Hill Cemetery, in Franklin Township, Carbon
County, PA. Just last year, my husband
and I took photos of James Beaver's tombstone in the same, small cemetery.
Is Julia in other family trees? Armed with this information I search for other public trees
on ancestry.com. I immediately found a
tree with more information, including a photo of Julia's tombstone. The shot shows enough background that I can
identify it as Bunker Hill.
Interestingly, this image is not on findagrave.com.
This second tree list Julia's brother as James Beaver. It
also provides names for their parents. Now we're really getting
somewhere even though there's no evidence for the other family names. The image of Julia's tombstone was originally posted by another
user and has been saved to three other trees.
I follow the image from tree to tree looking for additional
evidence.
Clearly there's more research to be done, but I feel that DNA and the tombstone have knocked down a brick wall -- or at least put a crack in it.
Till next time, keep the blue side up ... Lynn
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