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09/17/2009

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my research into my grandfather's hidden family began in Fall of 2006 and was entirely motivated by personal feelings. I missed my mother, who is deceased, and i realized that there would be no more chances to overcome the sense of separation i always - or almost always - felt from her. in october/november of 2006, I began to go for long walks through our neighborhood, past a local park, feeling a longing that was so deep it began to feel as if I were being pulled back in time. I began to wonder why my mother never spoke of her father's family, or even much about her father, when she clearly loved him very much. I felt excluded and wondered why. what was the secret? i remembered how soft and happy her eyes would get when she spoke of her father and how she had the same hazel eyes, and when she looked at a photo of herself as a child, she would say she looked like an indian princess. (sometimes people say the indians didn't have princesses, and they didn't, but the europeans referred to the chiefs and their families as kings, queens, princesses, etc, and that did become common parlance in the eastern states.) anyway, I would begin to ask the question of the night, was it because we were native american? when I would ask that question within myself, a bird would call out in the darkness in the most haunting, plaintive tone. To this day, I don't know what kind of bird it was. After I finally discovered the answer to that question, I never heard the bird again. But over that winter it often called to me.

I decided to take the autosomal dna test, not because i thought it would tell me i was native american - i was pretty sure it couldn't do that - but because i hoped it might help me find my way there. soon after i began my research, i learned of the close relationship between the french and indians in territories not far from ours. found out one of my friends had native ancestry via that route. (many of my friends throughout my life have been at least part native american). so, if, say, there had been a strong french influence, I might've started looking in that direction. the result i got turned my attention toward the efflux of the Inquisition, the era of sea-trade, piracy, maritime slave-trade, etcetera, which did in fact eventually bring me back around to the delaware moors, and finding my great-grandmother and her parents on an early delaware census, listed as mulatto (which, at that time, could equally mean a mix of any of the three main color groups of the time.)

So, this quest began because I wanted to feel closer to my mother. There were no guarantees that this search would bring about that result, but in fact, it has!

A wonderful story, Karen!
Thank you for sharing it with us!
John

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