back to Family Stories, Fall 2021
by Daniel Mabes
Everyone grows up with a different type of family. Some people have large families and when the holidays come around, they have dozens and dozens of people to gather with and celebrate. Other people have smaller families that have equally fun and loving gatherings with less people. For the most of us, we probably fall somewhere in between a large and small family. The one thing that most families have in common, both large and small, is that we probably cannot trace our ancestry back generations and generations past our oldest living members. While some people do have a good idea of where they come from, others who may be adopted or not have large families may not really know much about their background.
This was the case for my family, and especially for my mother. Raised by her mother, who was a single mom, she was brought up in an Italian household. As my mother got older, she would always try to ask about her father (who he was, where he was from, where he went?), but she always received basic answers that never gave her any real clarity. After the death of my grandmother, the last real relative other than my mom on her side of the family, my mom sort of gave up with her desire to know anything more than what she knew (her father’s name and birthdate). When I began with Ancestry DNA, I didn’t really think about it, but I realized that this could help me find out more about who my grandfather was.
After my sample was taken and the results were returned, I was stunned when I discovered more about my mother’s father than any of the other sides of my family. I was able to find out that he was born in 1911, died in 1994, served in the military, and did in fact work as a pilot for Pan American Airlines (what my grandmother told my mother about how they met because my grandmother was a flight attendant for Pan American).
The more surprising thing is that I was able to trace his side of the family back further than any of the other sides of my family. I was able to get back to my 11th great grandfather and 9th great grandmother. I was able to trace his side of the family back to England and the Netherlands, two places I had no idea I was from. I was also able to discover members of the family who fought in both the Civil and American Revolutionary Wars. While it was very cool, like it was with every side of my family, to discover more about my ancestors, my favorite part was being able to tell my mom about what I had found. I was able to discover more about myself and help my mom learn more about her missing past in the process.