Tuesday, March 5, 2013

DNA and a Tombstone Help Break Down a Brick Wall


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. 

Evidence please! None of the trees provide evidence and one is private.  Next steps - contact the owner of the final tree and hope they will share their tree.  I'll also ask all other users if they have more information than is posted on their tree.  If, like me, their primary tree is in a database on their computer, there may be additional information available.  

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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