Oh, Ancestry DNA (insert shrug). I've learned some unexpected things, but the things I think DNA will HELP with, not so much. It doesn't help that the youngest person involved has been dead for about 150 years.
About 2 years ago I found out some unexpected news regarding my many-times-mentioned great-grandfather Clyde Chamberlain. He is well known among all of his grandchildren and great grandchildren as a serial skirt-chaser. Since DNA testing became popular, many of us have expected to find a few people descended from him in addition to his 7 children with his wife. I mean, all of that activity, most of it before 1970, one would expect...
But no. As I've written about previously, Gramps was not the biological son of the man who raised him, and I'm reasonably certain he didn't know. His biological father's family is both well-known and well documented, as the bio-dad in question had 9 children with HIS wife and in turn, several grandchildren and great grandchildren interested in their heritage.
The mystery that I want to talk about, however, is that man's mother and his maternal forebears.
Armilda Parker was born in Nov 1853, her son born when she was about 19. She is assumed to have died in childbirth as she does not appear in 1880 or after (if your're looking, she had a cousin with the same name - it's not her. Her little son also was living with his grandmother in the 1880 census. Grandmother Parker in turn lived an exceptionally long life, both for the times and considering that she gave birth to at least twelve children. Elizabeth Sheppard (the preferred surname spelling at the time) lived until probably about 80-85 years of age (her death date between 1900 - 1910 is assumed but not known at this time. She does not appear to have left much, if any information regarding her family of origin for posterity. In the same vein as my cousin's statement, if you're not a genealogist you may wonder why I care about the identity of my 4th great-grandparents, but there it is. Mystery Mr. and Mrs Sheppard, perhaps of Kentucky, perhaps of Illinois. No one seems to know for sure, although there are a variety of guesses. The information that I find especially perturbing is that there are quite a few Sheppard marriages in the immediate area, around the same date as Elizabeth's marriage to Thomas Jefferson Parker, making many of them likely siblings, but I have been unable to determine parents for any of them!
It's my hope, at the moment, that if I chose the "shared matches" option and hit "refresh" enough times, the answer will pop from my computer screen, because not only are we dealing with burned courthouses, but some major flooding as well (insert fist shaking this time!)
No comments:
Post a Comment