Adopted War Babe - Part 7

     After I got the rejection letters, I let things lie for a bit.  I was pretty discouraged.  My angel, Annita, told me about then, that she thought she had done all she could and that I should maybe get a couple of extra Ancestry tests to keep in case I might find someone who seemed to be the child of one of the suspected men, or at least a close relative of someone I suspected. She again told me that she was almost positive that I needed to look at those two families and all the kids and their kids and their kids.
    So, I started writing things down.  You see, I hadn't really written anything down, maybe a few names here and there, certainly the names of the two families she was so sure about. I had been watching (binge watching) the shows Long Lost Family, Long Lost Loves, and also Finding Your Roots. I had previously watched Who Do You Think You Are? even before I decided to pursue my genealogy. I had seen one of the genealogists take each name and put them on a blue or pink sticky note and attach them to a large wall so as to be able to move them around. I liked that.  Most all of the shows were wonderful, soft squishy happy ending shows...of course, who wants to watch a show where you are rejected by your birth family or never found any relatives?  I KNEW because of my own experience with my Birth Mother, and through reading some of the heartbreaking stories on DNA Detectives that it was possible to either NOT find anyone, or that they would want nothing to do with me when found.  I was ok with that, I am pretty easy going.  But I think I said earlier, what is wrong with just ONE more person on this Earth that cares about you just because you are blood?  I just don't get it.
     So here is what one of the 7 or so pages that I wrote down looks like.  I didn't have a large wall that I could stick hundreds of stickies to! I wrote down EVERY high match I had on EVERY DNA site and what I might know about them, their kids, their parents, etc.

     You can see (can't you?) that I wrote down even the Centmorgans that were matched with me.  I was trying desperately to make some sense of everything I saw.  Again, I got dizzy and cross-eyed trying to find a connection to someone, anyone. I sadly put it aside.  This was IMPOSSIBLE!  I reached out to my angel again, feeling like I was certainly a number one pest.  Please please help me again, I just can't make sense of this.  She looked several times asked more questions and we didn't come up with much else.  She was just so sure about Thomas or Henry Tackett families. I tried a few more times, days apart to just no avail. 

     Meanwhile, Sandra's mother had passed, the one who matched me the highest. She had been mourning and trying to get all the arrangements together and get her mom's affairs in order.  She emailed me with some pictures of who someone (I don't remember who it was, sister? uncle? not sure) that was thought could be my father.  He was Reverend Richard Tackett. I had looked at him and looked at him, but according to the National Personnel Center, he was not in the military at the time.  So could they have gotten it wrong? Did he reenlist and they didn't have it recorded?  Someone on DNA Detectives told me that many of the military records of that time were destroyed in a fire... somewhere. So I tried to find names of Richard's children to try and contact them.  No luck, at least not that I could find.  Here is what she sent me: 

       My angel did find some folks that were children of someone we had looked at, honestly, I got them so mixed up I just went with it.  She had found three of them on Facebook and so I messaged all three of them.  Each day eagerly checking Facebook Messenger to see if they had even picked up my message.  They all three eventually did open the message, but nothing ever came of that.  SIGH.  NOW WHAT??

     I started hearing from some of the folks I had messaged on the several DNA sites.  One was someone from Ancestry, I matched her husband Paul at the 3rd cousin level.  They had tested his Dad and I did NOT match his dad, so, although his mom had passed.  I looked at her husbands tree (thank goodness he had one) and his mother's mom was Claudia Tackett, and her dad was Claude Tackett!  Ok, I think I may be on to something. That would make his mom my 2nd cousin, her mom as my first cousin? and her grandfather as my......? I get so confused!  Again, I say, I think of myself as pretty smart, I have a BS degree in Education, and a Masters degree in Education. I should be able to keep relatives straight, shouldn't I?  Well, I couldn't!!!!!  I have mad skills in some things... genealogy, not so much. :( 

     

     So I kept emailing the folks that I had heard from.  Sandra sent me some more pictures and I kept looking at my notes.  I am looking back at emails and I see that on one of them I said: "I looked at William Russell Tackett and he is the right age but if he didn’t have children then not sure who to test.  I also looked at Goldie Tackett White as maybe one of her sons could be my BF.  Maybe test one of her sons children?  Sometimes this DNA stuff just has my eyeballs swimming!  Haha. 

Do you have any suggestions for me?

Here is what she sent back: Russ Tackett had kids. He was my 1st cousin. He is dead. And Goldie White was my aunt. She had 9 kids and raised them in Columbus Ohio.

 I asked Sandy if I could see her family tree, she said she didn't have one. DANG.  However, she did say she would do a DNA test for Ancestry.  So I sent her one.  We had some snafus with registering it but it is on its way.  Maybe now I could find out something more. If her mom was my Great Aunt I guess she would show up as my.... great cousin?  Humm, well unless her Mom was showing up as a first cousin once removed, then she would be my.... Heck, I just could not begin to make sense of this.   No one would give me any kids that I could test!  I am pulling my hair out by now.  (can any one reading this relate to me about now?) 

    Enter another angel, Patrick.  He didn't KNOW he was an angel, but he was.  He had appeared as a 2nd cousin match on Ancestry on December 20, 2017.  I messaged him with this message:  Hi Patrick,

My name is Pam. I see that we possibly share grandparents! You show as a second cousin to me. I would love to see exactly where we are related if you would like to.
Sincerely,
Pam Stephens

He actually messaged me back on the SAME DAY!!  First word was "fascinating"!  My heart skipped a beat. He says he doesn't have a membership but gave me names of his parents, grandparents, great grandparents, just a list of names. I saw one that I knew quite well, James Thomas Tackett!  I think he was a great great grandpa to me!! I then proceeded to give him a brief paragraph about being adopted. 

     Again, he says "fascinating"!!  (Did I ever tell you I love you, Patrick??!!)  He proceeds to tell me about his pawpaw and men that he thinks were in the military in his family.  Then, he says, "From your picture, my Mom says you remind her of her cousin, Vicki.

Be still my heart!!! and he gives me his mom's name and says she is on Facebook.  So begins what I hope to be the final  chapter of my quest. I will write more later about the things I think I have found out, and the person that WE think was my birth father, William Russell Tackett. 

Adopted War Babe - Part 6

Being new to genealogy, I looked at the literally hundreds if not thousands of cousins that showed up that matched me and wondered, what in the hell do I do with all this?  Generally, I consider myself a smart person and I am still not too old to learn new things, so I set about trying to make sense of all of what I had.  I am not afraid of clicking places and trying new things on a computer so I clicked around and back and forth.,  I posted on Facebook something about my DNA results and how confusing it all was (as seems to be my custom). I really don't think I knew anyone that had done their DNA.  I found that I could message folks right in Ancestry so I started messaging everyone of the cousins that were the highest on the list.  I think I had about 5 second cousins that showed up, maybe about 20 or 25 third cousins, and hundreds of 4th and 5th cousins!  I didn't document the numbers at the time but this is what they look like now, after building some "fake" trees.

I began to message starting at the top with something like this: You show to be a 2nd or 3rd cousin to me by my DNA results. I am a 63 year old German born female. I am looking to try and figure out who my birth father might be. I was born to a German woman in 1954. She told me that my birth father was an American service man, but that is all she told me. Do you know if anyone in your family was stationed in Germany (specifically Goeppingen or Augsburg) in 1953? Thanks in advance!!

Sincerely looking,
Pam Stephens ( birth name RoseMarie Schulz)

The title was: Searching for my Birth Father. I wasn't paying attention to when they last logged in and I also didn't understand that if you didn't have an account that was paid, you were unable to message. I discovered that I could click on the star to indicate something so I starred everyone that I had messaged. It was many, for sure.  I did get a few responses back from some folks (I won't name names here :) ) but it was all negative, meaning they could not help me.  So, again it seemed fruitless. I didnt know how to connect to these people that were supposed to be somewhat distant cousins.  So I waited. I then decided that maybe I could find a closer match on 23and me.  I sent off for that kit and spit when it came and sent it off (Oh, that was on I THINK Amazon for their Black Friday in June sale?  Not sure)  I checked ancestry every day, sometimes several times a day to see if anything had changed.  Occasionally I would hear from someone, but it was never a lead. 

     I started looking around again and entered in the message boards and placed my message there thinking maybe I would hear something.  I won't mention that again because I didn't!  I also noticed that there were dates as to when the people last logged in and realized that some of them that matched me had not logged in since 2016, or early in 2017 so they would not have seen my message anyway.  However, once I got back my results from 23andMe I saw that they had email addresses listed!  I started emailing some of the folks that were top matches, but no one  was very close there either. I got back a couple of replies and offers to help. I did hear from a lady on Ancestry who was managing an account for her husband. Her husband matched me as a third cousin. They had had his father DNA tested and I did NOT match him.  So I must match his mother.  Well, his mother's maiden name was Tackett. So I did have a crumb to begin with.  I THINK that it was one of those folks who asked if I had a Facebook account and if I had heard of DNA Detectives as a closed group on Facebook.  Of course I had not.  

     Immediately, I went to Facebook and asked to be admitted into the DNA Detectives group. I was pretty quickly given membership and began reading some of the most incredibly wonderful and heartbreakingly sad stories of people looking for lost families. It was through that group that I learned so much about  centimorgans and shared DNA segments.  I downloaded charts like this in every configuration to help with assigning relationships: 

I finally posted something of my delima of not knowing what to do next and several people answered me with charts and suggestions for uploading raw data into other locations to find people.  Then, Annita Cox found me.  You see, they have folks in this group that they call "search angels".  These are just ordinary (well extraordinary in my opinion) folks who love the search and have helped many folks find loved ones.  They take their own time to research for someone that they do not know. She was truly an angel.

    She started by asking me to give her access to see my DNA and any tree I had started.  I only had a tree with my birth mother and a few of her family members, but I let her see that one. Then she asked me questions about what I might have found on other sites that I had uploaded data to. GEDMatch is one that gives a "boat load" of information that still confuses me, but I know that it connects folks that DNA test from all the different places and tells all sorts of information about them. I told my angel that I had my closest match on a site called My Heritage.  I had a match at 550 centimorgans, she showed as either a Great Aunt, a First cousin, or a first cousin once removed. I had messaged her there but could not do much as I was not a paid subscriber. 

   After talking with Annita, my angel, she set to work. Meanwhile I heard from the daughter of the woman that I matched with, Sandy. She said her mom had Alzheimers and wasn't doing well so would not be able to help me, but she would try and give me information. 

     I am pretty sure I am going to get the timeline of things here mixed up because things happened fast and furious about then.  With the information I gave her, and the information i had from the few folks that had answered me, and looking at the trees in Ancestry of the folks who had actually BUILT a tree, Annita had some names for me.  WOW!!  

     I knew from the ethnicity chart that my birth father must be from Kentucky or very close to there.  Anita used her skills and told me that she was almost positive that I came from a line of people who were from two Tackett brothers who married two Barber sisters.  Thomas Tackett who married Sarah "Sis" Barber, or Henry Tackett who married Lettie Barber. They each had like 20 kids who would all be double cousins so we certainly had our work cut out for us!!  She told me that she was sure one of these couples was my Great-Great Grandparents. 

     I started building trees for every one of their sons that could be anywhere near my father's age.  My BM was born in 1929 so he would have to be sort of near her age, wouldn't he?  I had about 8 "fake" mirror trees built with each son being my birth father. Then, with a bit more understanding, I started looking at my DNA matches (who had trees) to see where they might line up with my trees. I would work so long sometimes I would go cross-eyed seeing so many Tacketts!!!  Then I would forget which tree or which person I may need to look into. It HAD to be one of their sons. (ok some of you reading this who are smarter than me will quickly see that one of those couples would be Grandparents x 2 not x 1)  I wasn't looking at the sons of their kids at the time, it didn't occur to me. 

     One day, my angel messaged me to let me know that someone had told her that if I was a "War Babe", meaning I was the result of an American GI and a girl from a country where he was stationed while serving, there had been an act passed that I could write to an agency with some information on my part and get the service records of that GI!!  I was so excited!  All I really needed to know was if there was a man stationed in Goppingen Germany, probably in the army, who was there late spring early summer of 1953.  Before I had EVER done DNA testing, I had googled, and yahooed and tried everything I knew to find out a list of service men stationed there at that time.  I did find the name of the barracks, Cooke Barracks.  I also found the division of the army that was stationed there at the time. 

     So I downloaded the form they supplied, filled out about six sheets with what I knew of the men I wanted to look at and sent it off to the National Personnel Records Center 1 Archives Drive in St Louis, Missouri. Flash to about 3 weeks later, I received several emails from the man preforming the searches for me. Each was a short letter about how this man wasn't in the military or this man was in from 1942 to 1946 or the like.  Talk about being disappointed!!!  Ok so, if these six, who were close to my BM in age were not there, it must be another brother.  I filled out i think 8 more forms, not regarding age (unless there was a boy maybe 10 in 1953 ) and sent them off.  Surely......but alas, this time I waited about 6 weeks, almost forgetting I had sent them off.  Here is one of the "REJECTION" letters. At least that is how I felt!!