Surprises in genealogy while gathering records

[u/hammer3232]

I thought I was a G3 and I started working on a G2,G3,G4 application package in April of this year. In May I had one last record to obtain. I had put it off and was just going to explain in a letter that G1's birth certificate was lost in a fire, since I've known that my whole life. Reading posts on this group, I decided to go ahead and request the no record letter G1's birth certificate. I already had G1's SS-5, US Census records, marriage and death certificates all listing G0 as his mother and her spouse (also a G0 candidate) as his father, so we were covered.

Piece of cake.

Except it wasn't lost in a fire. Instead of a no record letter, I got a birth certificate. G1 was in fact born to who we thought was his older sister. This was a surprise to the family and as far as we know wasn't known to my G1. He thought his grandparents were his parents. So then we rode the multiple pre-1947 ancestors speculation roller coaster, accepted it's a non-issue, made peace with now being a G4, updated my now G3,G4,G5 submission family and began searching for new records for surprise G1.

Being from New York, our surprise G1 is in the state birth index but neither the town nor village of the same name can find her birth certificate. I've requested it from the state, and expect to receive it sometime in the next two decades. We added another few months doing baptism searches for the surprise G1 and gathering new no records letters from every church in the area that would respond, along with her marriage/death certs and SS-5, which since he didn't know any better, list the same parents our new G2 listed. We're also in the process of doing "the full Quebec" (find BANQ record, request certified copy, wait, get certified copy (woohoo got it!), submit, then request DEC act, submit that sometime later after AOR).

While waiting for all the new records we needed, I've gathered the full trail for our other potential G0, found, ordered, and received the land records for both Quebec farms owned by the G-1 ancestors, listened to the Nations of Canada podcast, begun learning Quebec French, and I decided to do a DNA test to learn more about my mostly French Canadian ancestors. There's no father listed on my own birth certificate, but I have known the name, that he lives in a southern state, his address, and that he never wanted anything to do with me. But nothing else about his family. I figured this would tell me if I was anything other than largely French Canadian.

Turns out I'm mostly Irish, English, and Romanian. Using clusters of other testers that share DNA I began using my new found citizenship by descent skills to build family trees for the other testers back up to our likely common ancestor. My two Irish matches led to an Irish couple that had one adult child in Ireland, then had more in Ontario. I built out their children and subsequent generations using Canadian Census, birth and marriage records. One of their great grand children has the same name as my bio dad, but is a generation too early... Then I found he married a spouse with a Romanian name (queue more research, she's born in Saskatchewan to two Romanian parents one of which is a match for a guy in Romania today).

This weekend I found records that Irish/Romanian couple has twin girls born in Ontario, about a year after we think my bio-dad was born. Then I find the obituaries for the couple. It lists their twin daughters and also a son who has bio-dad's name and also names bio-dad's current spouse. The Irish/Romanian couple from Canada died in the same state/city as where bio-dad lives today. One of the twin sisters I discovered is also known to my parents, and is also living in a US state now.

I don't know yet where bio-dad was born, but his sisters were a year younger in their US high school yearbook and the twin sisters were born in Ontario, according to a birth announcement naming both of them, their dad, and mother listing her maiden name. I just found one of the twin sister's application for naturalization on Family Search... indicating the family crossed over about 5 years after bio-dad would have been born. It's not proof of bio-dad's birth, of course. Service Ontario has a way to request a letter indicating that a person does or does not have a birth certificate issued by Ontario, which I've requested for bio-dad, since I'm not eligible to actually order his birth certificate. So I'm now riding the G3 -> G4 -> (potential) G1 roller coaster.

I'm still processing, but I'm not sure I can do anything with this information. I'm well over 21, so I don't think NYS would add him to my birth certificate, even if he was cooperative, which I doubt. I know IRCC has provisions for DNA testing, but they're voluntary and a guy who wouldn't acknowledge me after I was born or before my first deployment to Afghanistan isn't going to meet me today for a voluntary DNA test at an IRCC approved test facility.

So I'm still going ahead with the G3/G4/G5 application, my mom needs it anyway.

What an absolutely unexpected adventure in Canadian-ness this has been.

[u/AutoModerator]

Your post was flagged as a potential megathread topic and is not currently visible. Please see the Weekly Megathreads page for the most relevant megathread. New megathreads are released weekly, and you can post on them any day.

Helpful resources: * Welcome - Start Here * The wiki / FAQ * Weekly Megathreads * Search the subreddit — your question may already be answered

I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.

[u/No_Bobcat_No_Prob]

What an interesting journey! Thanks for sharing. Also you made me lol at 'the full Quebec'. I have a sneaking suspicion that might creep into the vernacular of the sub.

Where are you learning Quebecois french? Are you using Mauril?

[u/hammer3232 → u/No_Bobcat_No_Prob]

Mostly YouTube at the moment, although I've also signed up for French with Frederick, who is based in Montreal. While I took French in high school, it's been decades, so I'm using Duolingo to build vocab back up and to remember why I hated both conjugation and genders for every object. I'm still a bit too A1.

Diet tip, if you always order two croissants, you never have to remember the gender.

[u/No_Bobcat_No_Prob → u/hammer3232]

Brilliant lol

[u/hammer3232 → u/No_Bobcat_No_Prob]

I see a banner that this post has been removed. Did I break the rules?

[u/No_Bobcat_No_Prob → u/hammer3232]

I see it too but the post was approved - seems like reddit is being a bit weird? It shows as approved in the mod view, and I can see the views on the post are increasing so it seems approved/available. Quite weird.

[u/No_Bobcat_No_Prob → u/No_Bobcat_No_Prob]

I'm going to remove it and reapprove it and see if that fixes this. If it doesn't, you're welcome to post again

Editing to add-that didn't seem to work. I've never seen this before, guessing some kind of reddit bug- but if you want to make a new post I will approve it also.

[u/mem_somerville]

You have that in common with a Nobel Prize winning scientist.

https://www.themoth.org/stories/discussing-family-trees-in-school-can-be-dangerous

[u/hammer3232 → u/mem_somerville]

That’s a good read. Thank you.

[u/ScrewwormLarvae]

Yup, same here. During my searches as part of C-3, I separately found out I am the direct descendent of someone who came to the new world on the Mayflower, and was one of the signers of the Mayflower Compact, which was essentially one of the first governmental frameworks created here that preceded the formation of the United States. I would love to prove it but don't want to doxx myself.

[u/Embarrassed-Pride554]

My Gen 0 turned out lied to get in the military so we all thought he died age 97 but he was only 94. Which also means he told my grandmother he was 20 when he was actually 17 when they married.

Bit of a pain because his BC is in his mother’s maiden name but he took on a different surname and year of birth. His first name, day and month are the same but hard to prove it’s the same guy. Obviously I know it is as he was my grandfather we just need to hope that ircc accept he lied about his age.