The word “Curious” is an adjective meaning “Eager to learn something new and/or strange; unusual”. Not a single day goes by that I don’t get wrapped up in the curious pursuit of finding out something about one of my ancestors. On Monday and Tuesday, I am usually chasing after my weekly “ Tombstone Tuesday” ancestor. Often in the research phase of that pursuit I will find some unexpected fact that will spark my curiosity and off I’ll go on a tangent trying to verify my latest find. Genealogists are a curious group of people. You never would have started your research if you were not curious. The rest of the week is usually spent looking for clues that I may have stumbled on along the way.

I started my search rather casually. I bought my husband a Windows based software called “ Family Tree Maker “ in 1995 after he had been using a DOS based program to collect his data. His research was vary manual and long before Ancestry.com came along. I installed the software for him and decided I should open a Smith file for me and just put the people in that I know. I started out with about 100 people and it has grown to nearly 9000. That’s how my pursuit in genealogy curiosity got started.

My Smith ancestors have been my most elusive. They have all the common name of James, Joseph, William, John, Charles and Henry for the men and Margaret, Sara Elizabeth, Mary Ann , Martha and Susanna for the woman. Thankfully there was a Branson and a Kisiah thrown in there too! They were helpful. Every one of them has spawned a curiosity fueled research adventure deep into to the depths of databases full of dusty old records with chicken scratched handwriting. When the latest adventure ensues, I am often lost for hours in the depths of data. My husband often goes off to bed saying, “see you in a couple of hours!” and my reply is “no…I’ll just be a few minutes more!” The reality is several hours later I’ll crawl out of the database hopefully with a morsel of data that can accurately be placed in the family puzzle.

I had great hopes for DNA testing. (I still do) I tested myself and my brother in 2010 shortly after Ancestry offered DNA testing. It was an almost $600.00 investment to examine 48 YDNA marker and my maternal dna markers.! I had great hopes. I watched the database as it blossomed thru the years and to my shock and dismay there was not a single Smith match! How could this be? Of all the Smith’s in the US not a single one matched us? (No they just had not tested yet.) There were Musgroves, Stephensens, Adams….and many other surnames but not one Smith. All of this early data is no longer available due to Ancestry’s decision to standardize on autosomal DNA markers, two years after I did my tests in 2012. It was their determination that offering a single type of test would be a better fit for the majority of the public. The early test allowed you to pick between 12, 24, 48 and 64 marker test as well as YDNA tests which specifically trace male DNA which is passed down unchanged from one generation to the next or Maternal DNA which is a large stew of DNA from all the woman and men in your family. . With each test the accuracy of you data would increase when more markers were examined.

So after eight years of protesting Ancestry’s decisions and millions of DNA tests later , I redid our DNA test so that we were once again apart of the massive database that Ancestry.com has. Several third and fourth cousins from my Smith line who I had found thru general research have tested and show up as matches. As of today, I have hundreds of connections with relatives through this data for many branches of my family tree. BUT my Smith line is still very elusive. I have a few and I keep looking for new ones. I also have several hundred that I simply can not identify the line of my family that connects us. This presents just one more opportunity for me to regularly chase my curiosity.

Happy Hunting,

Jan