Identifying a person’s ancestors isn’t always easy even with records and DNA. I have worked a quite a few confusing lines in my own families and other people’s families where family information, records, and DNA didn’t all align. And, in some cases, almost no information seemed to exist.
Louisiana
One of those cases was my great-great grandmother Louisiana Matteer. My part of the family always believed that her name was Louisiana Johnson and I spent many years researching that name without success. One day I came in contact with a researcher that said that another researcher that he had a lot of confidence in had found that her name was Louisiana Mattser. Well, there was no one with that last name in any record in the area where she lived leading up to the time she married. However, it got me looking at records differently.
With some digging I found the record that the person read as Mattser. Based on the handwriting, that appeared to be the name. Yet, Mattser did not match anyone. Eventually, I found more records and determined that her name was really Louisiana (or Louisanna) Matteer. Once I searched with this name, I was able to piece together more of her story and find DNA matches to people in that family line.
Adoptions & More
Despite the research on Louisiana taking several years, it isn’t the most complex cases of identity that I have worked. Helping people who have been adopted or do not know an ancestor for some reason has presented me with far more challenging circumstances to research. Imagine people that don’t know who their parents are and no paperwork was ever filed on their under the table adoption. Imagine cases that take you coast to coast and even to multiple continents. And, others are at a known locale, but there is lots of intermarrying in the area and separating family lines becomes difficult.
The Extreme
I am still working on an extremely difficult case. In this case, not only is the person adopted, but so is the father. Add to that at least two other close ancestors whose birth was the result of an affair. The case Includes multiple countries, multiple languages, and many of the families intermarried over and over. Now, that makes identifying ancestors a challenge!