Looking backward

I recently received a message from a distant relative that I had contacted back in December. She seemed to be my best way to link up to my maternal ancestors via DNA because not only did she share the genetic origin that was distinct to my mother (unrepresented in my father’s DNA), but she had access to a huge family tree of 2500+ members.

She only now got back to me about the research I had asked her to perform using her access to the extensive family tree, having given her my grandfather’s name (assumed or otherwise), his approximate age (from court records), and possible residence or port of entry.

As a bit of a refresher, my maternal grandfather is a bit of a mystery. He was often in trouble with the law from what little I was able to uncover and he was disinterested in the birth of my mother — who was quite possibly a product of rape. While statutory rape laws did not exist in Montana at the time that my mother was born, he was approximately twenty-nine years old while my grandmother was 16 or 17 and in high school. They knew each other from their common workplace, a hotel near my grandmother’s high school.

He also appears, aside from court reporting in a local newspaper and a brief series of entries in city listings, to be a non-person. There are zero records of a man who fits his age and known location, although he claimed to have fathered three other children in the reporting — which makes it hard to conceive that he was who he claimed to be, as he shows up neither as father or as the subject of any birth certificates, wedding records, military records, or census lists. I was coming up empty-handed no matter how I searched for the man. And finally gave up hope a few months ago of being able to unlock that secret part of my heritage.

Anyway… This woman messaged me over the weekend to say that she may have found a relative that she thought might place him as older than I had thought — 15-20 years older, in fact. While also just happens to be old enough to have been my great-grandfather. She found two male relatives that had immigrated to the Americas and one even emigrated to Montana.

While I was surprised that she followed up with me, I was glad to hear that my hunch about contacting her might bear some fruit. While I wish she would have given me the names of the two common relatives that might fit our linkage, I understand that she might be hesitant to divulge them for privacy reasons without contacting someone about it (I assume that is her motive for keeping the names to herself).

She had also previously linked us potentially upstream of her to people who lived in Alta, Norway and in an inaccessible fishing village in the fjords north of Alta. It that still holds true after her most recent discovery, that would go a long ways towards identifying my ancestral roots on that side of the family, provided we can find the missing link between us.

I’m cautiously optimistic, but wary of getting my hopes up too much that I can stick a fork in this mystery. As I have said in the past, this is purely a matter of wanting to know about my ancestors, not to be a pain in the ass for anyone associated with my grandfather — and certainly not to “find him” if he is still alive (unlikely); I have zero desire to make that connection with someone I have grown to find fairly repellent as my research has progressed about the man.

Fingers crossed that this is the connection I need to link to my ancestral origins.