Past four years a lot has happened, and I got a lot to catch up on telling folks, so these stories don't get lost but working with a newfound cousin on DNA matches I found what I call Gold Blood. They are the link that goes back in time to our earliest ancestors and women have MTDNA and men have YDNA. So to say a short story I finally found out who my birthfather was and if you look around online to can find my comments on that journey as well as any DNA testing site i hope in the future and online sites like the one I found WikiTree where our info is now being moved to as its FREE and ONE tree not millions and you all pitch in to solve the lines. But in my findings I found that he was a man named Charles Lewis Walker and he was older and married and may have known my mother's family in some ways since they all came to the USA in 1500s there is intermarriages between the two surnames in fact the very first couple was Richard Bowen his daughter married a Walker but I'm still trying to find out if it's the same family as they do intermarry many more times.
But back to my title story, Gold Blood. As I was tracing and trying to prove my mother's paternal line thanks to a DNA study I found a few years ago and an update I was able to prove we are from the same group and down to only a few branches left. Family Trees are huge and how your DNA is transferred varies even with same siblings you all get a different slice of pie when it comes to DNA or genetics most commonly known.
When I was finally able to get a way to test someone against a known descendant of my father of record meaning the man who my mother was married to when I was born. It was with my daughter to a half-brother of John. On her deathbed she had told her five children of 3 young boys who she had put for adoption in NY and she had fled to California to start a new life and we had to wait until DNA testing had advanced enough to test siblings to nieces since I was not in the country and could not at the time get a test from here. Zero match was the response, and I think I cried for a month. But I finally came to and started looking at my daughter's results, and you get this list of names and how much DNA you share, and it says, "Do you recognize this, Person?" Well, we did a few but there was a first cousin no one knew and many more odd people who seemed to match to my daughter, but we could not tie down how or which side and it didn't help that we found a few more surprises too. My daughter's father was Mormon and so was my adopted family it's how I learned all this stuff. But my Adopted Father was in fact a cousin to my oldest daughter, so Grandpa was Cousin and Uncle, my brother by marriage, and all the others were cousins to her.
Next, we hit a jumbo mess, her 2nd great grandfather on her dad's side was one of the largest polygamists in Mormon History and well sorting out wives and kids was FUN. But we had begun to get groups, and this one group kept adding and adding names until there was a surname I knew Bowen! One of the ladies should have been a 6th cousin but she was coming up as a 3rd and that was too weird. I spent a lot of nights and finally I was half sleeping on eve of Father's Day and I was like, "Hey, all I need is a Land/ Walker marriage and should find a male who fits the bill. I jumped up and looked at my wall yes literally three walls of my house had sticky notes with names and info on who they matched with and well I got lucky ONE couple was a LAND/WALKER marriage. They had thank goodness ONE and only ONE child so it was a no brainer and I was a bit hurt to see he was married too as I knew well momma was no saint at this point in time but I can't say exactly how they knew each other or the circumstances but I AM THE RESULT of that one night or maybe a few nights.
I had finally found a few who responded to me but once I said who I believed my father to be I was met with "He didn't have another daughter", yes, he did. Well, many stopped contact with me so hey I join the Bastard Kids group. I am pretty good at finding people and so many are on FB lol and well it was a few days, and I had found my one and only HALF Sister. She has four children and a few grandkids. It was during COVID, and I guess she had lost her husband to COVID and a man who was trying to be a go between said hold off contact. Well after a month how long do I wait? We both aren't getting any younger here. Sadly, my DAD had died also back in 2006, oh if momma had told the truth back then maybe I might have gotten a hello at least.
But I reached out by messenger to her, and I had also found her daughter and a daughter in law who did respond to me, and I said I simply wanted to know more about who he was. NOTHING more but I had gotten a photo of him and boy there was no way to say I was not HIS DAUGHTER. The daughter in law messaged me and I shared my story and why I was searching and how I knew it was difficult, but we are the last and I hoped we could have some contact at least learn more of him as there was literally nothing about him online. The funeral book had 2 entries, and his grave marker was nothing of any information and an obit from the funeral home said hardly anything too. Unlike so many obits where they are goldmines of information. But my sister said, "He died 20 yrs ago, Crawl back where I came from and Leave her family alone". I said OK and posted her reply on my ancestry file for all to see one day. I did contact the daughter in law one more time to find out Cause of Death as that was important to me. She said she had recently married into the family and her husband rarely spoke of him. WOW that is odd too but hey what can I say. Since then, I have gone on to prove sufficiently that I am who I believe I am and got the work to prove it so only SHE can prove otherwise but I know she won't. But her response was a huge blow to my life, and it took me a yr to recover again and then I went back and started proving my lines and mostly my mother's lines and who ever I came across along the way.
Well now two yrs later I was going back and had friended a man who had left a message on a group board saying he was a COLLINS but didn't know how, so I guessed another Adoption and had said good luck as he was just getting started. I happened to hear from him and asked how he was doing, and he said he was at a dead end and stuck. I told him I wanted to help but can't subscribe from here, so he offered to pay a 6mo package for me to help out. I told him Father's Day was when I found my dad and it was a month away so that was my goal again as he was the LAST MALE of his family with no heirs. And we are both 65 so not many golden years left ha-ha. I did like I had done mine he gave me access to his account, and I could see all his matches and I slowly added them to my tree as well we would be Cousins too. I found a match that as I was tracing, I came to a photo, and he had shared a selfie with me and I was floored I thought for sure I had found his missing relative and of all things he was married to a woman with the same surname as the family he had been adopted by. We had a few possible options we knew the woman in question was young and had known the younger brothers of a Collins family and he had a lot of matches, but something wasn't quite adding up and it's hard when you have repeating names and kids born same time by names used over and over it's easy to mix lines up.
He believed it was a young fling and after the young lady had gotten herself in a mess well, she went off and got married to a young man really quick and the child was raised as that man's son. BUT it was the advent of DNA which finally proved what had long been suspected that son was NOT his. Matched to the mother but not the father. But even though we had the identical family members we had no common DNA not a drop at that level. We matched to some of the same people but not to each other. And the young man in question was one of my Great-grandfathers at that level. But he wasn't matching up correctly. All were saying he was a cousin not a uncle. Where did he belong? Finally, I went to the MALE ONLY Y DNA group and sorted out all the male links and he came up under a brother to the suspected man as a fit. This man had disappeared from records after a charge of Bastardy so well-well. And he had killed a man with a piece of wood too so juicy closet stuff here. But two days before Father's Day I solved him.
Now I'm going back and working on my mystery line Alsey and Delana are my bucket list grandmothers to find before I kick the bucket. I wrote about Delana in the past and Alsey is who started me on my genealogy journey. But last week I was looking at New Matches and I came across a GOLDEN BLOOD woman. SHE is a MTDNA match to Alsey on my side. So now we hope to sort her out. First, we have always assumed she was a BOWEN daughter but oddly she MATCHES to the MOTHER of my Great grandfather William Bowen. Now the wife shouldn't often match but it can happen with cousin married to cousins and in few cases like we found out with my parents a long family history of marriages between the two surnames. BUT she is at the same level as his SISTER on Ancestry and no sorry that won't do. SHE is NOT HIS SISTER, maybe a half I thought as his mom had remarried and had more kids, but her name doesn't appear as a child to his mother. SO, WHO IS SHE? A niece or a younger sister is also likely as they would share same DNA female wise, she does not MATCH TO LEVI his dad, so the line is MATERNAL linked.
But its folks like my two cousins who are the last or down to wire last lines of BLOOD and getting them into the system was a fluke I think but as I worked it was a cousin of his GG Grand Aunts who matched to one of my daughters who helped me sort it out and say YES, we are RELATED.
So, for now this is a story of what has been my past few years, but a lot more has happened, and I can't wait to share more with everyone, so these stories are not lost to time. ONCE we knew who she was and who her parents were. NOW all are dead and that historical info is lost to fires, war, floods and moving and Opps it went to the trash from a child who didn't know what those were papers, to the ones the birds in the church attic used for nest material.
See you soon and hope you are still finding my stories to read.
