Right before the COVID19 Pandemic, I had PLANS.
The successful busting down of one of my genealogical brick walls led me to believe that following a similarly focused path would lead to another victory. So in the last summer of the Before Times, I made a goal and began to relentlessly pursue it.
That goal was to utilize DNA to figure out the origins of Sarah Tuttle, wife of Philip Hess Bender, Sr.
It’s been said that setting goals turns the invisible into the visible.
With a brick wall ancestor, it often seems like one is chasing a ghost, hoping one day for identity to materialize. The pursuit can last years – decades, even.
This is the story of how setting a concrete goal enabled me – nearly one year after I had set my goal – to finally busted one of the biggest brick walls in my family tree!
“He who calls what has vanished back into being, enjoys a bliss like that of creating.”– Barthold Georg Niebuhr
“
No I would not give you false hope
On this strange and mournful day
But the mother and child reunion
Is only a motion away…” – Paul Simon
Of all the DNA testing for genealogical purposes, mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) tests are the least popular and for good reason.
Still, I began to wonder… would a mtDNA test help in busting down a long-standing brick wall?
Every genealogist has at least one encounter with an ubiquitous myth in their family tree. When fiction takes over hard fact, it can be surprising how readily the fabled details populate scores of pedigrees.
One such example of this involves Hendrick Enloes, an early (17th-century) settler of Baltimore County, Maryland.
Hendrick is believed to have initially immigrated to Nieuw-Amstel (now New Castle, Delaware) from Amsterdam together with his brother, Pieter Enloes in 1657. These two brothers are the progenitors of the Enloes/Enloe families of colonial Delaware and Maryland.
My autosomal DNA test results are in.
Some scraping of my inner cheek promised to give insight on my ethnic background and a chance to find folks somehow related to me.
I wasn’t expecting any surprises or revelations about my ethnic makeup.
If you have a German-American ancestor who was residing in colonial Philadelphia, it might be worthwhile to check the Lord’s Supper guest register for St. Michael and Zion Evangelical Lutheran Church, 1755-1763.
It can be found online via Ancestry.com’s Pennsylvania and New Jersey Church and Town Records, 1708-1985.
A recently published NPR article ponders the connection between DNA and family history and appears to the be the first piece in what could be an intriguing ongoing series.
Writer Alva Noë makes the distinction between genetic (or DNA) ancestors and pedigree ancestors, and touches on some important facts and thoughts to consider when it comes to utilizing consumer DNA testing as a tool for exploring one’s genealogy.
Illegitimacy often poses serious challenges to tracing one’s roots. This is the roadblock I face with the third of The Three Sarahs.
Sara Rebold/Sarah Raybold, wife of Godfrey Bender, was born 6 Sept. 1765 in Germantown township, Philadelphia.
Her death date is listed in the church registers of St. Michael’s Evangelical Lutheran Church of Germantown. From the exact age in years, months and days recorded at her burial, I could easily calculate her birth date.
But finding a baptism record proved tricky.
A sketch of the Dramatic Hall as it looked circa 1880. [detail from newspaper sketch, originally published in The North American, Philadelphia, May 1, 1904]
Wheatley Dramatic Hall (so named for actor William Wheatley whose troupe, the Wheatley Dramatic Association, took up residence at the theater in the 1860s) was a building with its own impressive and colorful history. Its name was shortened during the seven years Peter was in charge.
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