The prompt for 52 Ancestors, Week 11 is Flowers, and I don’t have any flower-centric family stories to share. I thought that, instead, I would talk about my Mayflower lines. When DNA testing revealed my maternal grandfather’s paternity, I “lost” some Mayflower ancestors, but 56 lines remain. My Mayflower ancestors are: John Alden Isaac Allerton Mary (Norris) Allerton John Billington… Read More
This week’s topic is going to be a little all over the place for me, because religion may have played a major role in the lives of my distant ancestors, but I have few stories to tell. My father is somewhere between Atheist and Agnostic, so I grew up without any knowledge of religion until I was in fourth grade… Read More
I’ve spent so much time writing about my paternal side of the family for 52 Ancestors that this week offers the perfect topic to shift the focus to my maternal side. When DNA testing first emerged as commercially-available, I got an mtDNA test from Family Tree DNA. The autosomal testing was less of a thing, so I thought this was the… Read More
For Week 8 of 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks, the topic is courting. Well, I have to say I’m not sure I have any romantic stories to tell. Many people in my family seem to do better the second (or third or fourth) time around in partnerships. That includes me. I am currently in a polyamorous relationship with two wonderful… Read More
When we break through a brick wall, it’s not always one “Ah-ha!” moment that leads to the discovery we’ve been seeking. It’s often a trail of clues that helps us find the one we need to prove a hypothesis, and that is what I would like to talk about in Week 7 of 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks. When I… Read More
I was a little stumped for 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks, Week 6. The only idea that came to mind was how much I loved looking at maps as a child when we went on our annual summer vacation, usually to a campground in New Hampshire or Vermont. But I couldn’t think of a genealogical context until my mother and… Read More