Met a new to me cousin. Actually, met a bunch! I just love it when someone emails and says that they think we're related. That happens a lot, at least once a month. Then it's off to the races, exchanging info back and forth. It never takes but a couple of messages before we have our connection nailed down. Mom's cousin on her Whetstone side turned out to live in the same town so we met and exchanged documents an old photos too. That was terrific. Kelly cousins popped up too and we remembered that we played together as children. How about that? Eckhart and House cousins appeared out of no where! The House cousins even had a House Family Reunion and after receiving my invite I made sure that they knew about their new cousin who was adopted. He went to the reunion! A woman who held him as a baby sat and chatted with him!
So maybe Delilah wasn't a Porter after all? After an extensive DNA project handled beautifully by a guy who matches me, presumably on the Porter line, Delilah's parentage is even more in doubt. He and I were confident that she was a Porter and that perhaps her father was Samuel Porter. But then once the spreadsheet was filled in, I don't seem to match anyone else in the Porter group. Still scratching my head because Delilah's son's death certificate states that his mother's name was Porter. And, her son was names John Samuel, John being his father's name and leaving Samuel as presumably Delilah's father's name.
They say quite commonly that DNA doesn't lie but getting it to tell the full truth can be difficult. There's a truth to the DNA the Porter descendant and I share but it might be a while before we get at it.
X DNA won't lead me to Delilah's parents. In this blog post, you can see how the X chromosome is inherited. The Porter cousin (whom I match when I don't match any other Porters) tried to prove Delilah's parents by using the X chromosome but if you take a look at the charts at the link you'll notice that the father's fathers ancestors don't hand off the X in such a way that the 3rd great grandmother on the fathers father's side would give that X to the main person. Yeah, too bad. I don't have Delilah's X. Now if this were on Mom's side, no problem! Lot's of X chromosomes there.
Our Book of Life. I set out at the beginning of last year, no make that 2016 because 2017 is gone, to write up what I know about each of the ancestral lines. For Christmas 2016 both my brother and sister got Dad's side in about 250 pages. And then this year another 250 pages on Mom's side. Honestly, I could have written more but realizing the reader can only handle so much, I trimmed. The next step, should there be one, will be to add what was left out. That should be fun, actually!
Frostburg Mining Journal Indexing Project. The geographic center of my genealogical work on my own family is the Western Maryland mountain town of Frostburg. It's a coal mining town where the big coal boom was during the years that the Journal was published, 1871 to 1913. It's available online at the Maryland State Archive. It's great that it's finally online but there's no search feature, and not even an index. About a year ago I got so frustrated that I got the idea that I should make up an index. Yeah, so that's what's going on. I've index quite a bit for FamilySearch so I have a good idea of how this should go. I've done 2 and a half years so far and love doing it. Oh, sure, it's taking me longer than it might take others because I read it too!
Dad's father -John Lee Kelly- is standing center top, and his mother is center front.
Her grandmother was Delilah Porter.
The search continues! Good luck to you this coming year breaking down all of the brick walls!