For almost 30 years, I’ve puzzled through the descendants of a HUFFORD man who was born in 1903. He was orphaned young. His life was never easy. He was a distant cousin to me — 3rd cousin twice-removed, with our most recent common ancestors being Casper HOFFERT (1762-1825) and Catharine STIHLI (1767-1840), my five-greats-grandparents.

This is a “get a cup of tea” post. I’d like to share some of the 30 years of puzzle-solving that resulted in a long, friendly phone call about a week ago. I’ll attempt the telling without revealing identifying bits and pieces:
In about 1995, an email came from a woman who wanted to know about her HUFFORD lineage. This was in the early days of email. She had found a “tree” that I had submitted in gedcom file format to the LDS (Latter Day Saints/Mormons).

AN ASIDE: At the time, LDS Family History Center maintained a database, the name of which I no longer recall. It was a collection of submitted ancestral trees. There was no attempt by LDS to verify the submitted data. Back then, I helped at the local LDS Family History Center library and would teach others how to do research in the library. When I would explain the database of submitted pedigrees, my description was, “The info you’ll find in this collection may be correct, or it may be incorrect. It’s a collection of submitted info. Someone could submit info saying that Mickey Mouse married Minnie Mouse and their children were the Seven Dwarfs.” That database was, however, a way for a genealogical researcher to put his/her work in public, with the hope that years of research might survive. I was using an old software program called “PAF” (“Personal Ancestral File”). The software was a DOS program. (Ask an old person what “DOS” was.) My entry into the computer world was that old PAF software. Until then, I kept data on stacks of individual family group sheets, arranged in paper file folders that were then filed in plastic milk cartons, along with accompanying ancestral charts. Keeping track of many people with such a system would border on the impossible. These days, my main database (“HUFFORDS AND OTHERS”) has over 85,000 individuals. And I have another 120 trees/databases, created for specific research purposes. That level of genealogical research could not be done with paper and pencil.

Back in the mid-1990s when I submitted the gedcom file created from my personal database, I included my email address. And that is how a granddaughter of the HUFFORD man born in 1903 was able to contact me back in 1995.

Her message was simple: “My maternal grandfather’s name was such-and-such HUFFORD. He lived in this place in this time period. Married to so-and-so. Had these children. Can you tell me if/how I connect to the HUFFORDs whom you research?” It was a typical request. And, no, it was not unusual that she did not know the names of the parents of her grandfather. Many people do not know the names of their great-grandparents. I gave her the information, providing info on her HUFFORD great-grandfather, her two-greats grandfather, her three-greats-grandfather, her four greats-grandfather (Casper HOFFERT), and her five-greats-grandfather Christian HOFFARTH (1716-1788), the immigrant who arrived in Philadelphia in 1729 when he was 13 years old.

This woman and I are 5th cousins once-removed. I’ll call her “Ann.”

After learning how she connected to the HUFFORD tree, Ann did research using the usual documents. She filled me in on some family details of those more closely related to her. Our communication was usually by email, but occasionally by phone. About two years in, she explained that she was adopted, that her HUFFORD mother had given her up for adoption within days after her birth in 1953. Ann had learned the name of her mother when she was about 20. She’d hired a lawyer and sued to have the court release the names of her parents. She learned her mother’s name. Her father’s name was not on the records. She said she had hesitated sharing that she was adopted because some genealogists will not help adoptees-in-search.

In those days, the only thing genealogists had to work with were records, recorded history: wills, land transfer records, birth/death/marriage/divorce records, military records, church records, grave stones, cemetery records, court records, Social Security applications/claims, school records, city directories, newspaper stories, local histories, handwritten records in old family Bibles, handwriting on the backs of old photos, census records.

That changed in about 2010 with autosomal DNA tests, available for purchase by anyone and affordable for most. By 2015, test prices had dropped to about $100.

Ann first did an autosomal DNA test in about 2014. She allowed me to see her results because she wanted help in trying to figure out her biological-father. (I finally solved that puzzle a year or so ago.) Ann’s DNA allowed me to solve more HUFFORD puzzles.

In January 2019, DNA showed that Ann had a half-1st-cousin, the son of a son of Ann’s grandfather’s 2nd marriage. This newly found man was born in 1977. I recall when that revelation jumped up at me from Ann’s DNA test results, and I remember some of the early communication with that man. That story is HERE.

In April 2020, Ann’s DNA matches showed another surprise. This surprise involved a woman born in 1974. Her father was another son of Ann’s grandfather’s 2nd marriage. As a child, the woman born in 1974 had believed that her father was a HUFFORD, but when she was 20 years old, faulty lab results claimed he was not her father. They lost 26 years because of a failed test. That story is HERE. Her HUFFORD father was 74 years old when I phoned and explained that the woman he’d believed was his daughter for the first 20 years of her life really was his daughter.

In February 2023, I phoned that man again with some more surprising news. He was 77 years old when he learned that he had a 57-year-old daughter. He’d had no idea: High-school lovers conceived a child. Soon after, they broke up and never again saw one another. She married another young man and passed off the baby as the other man’s child. That marriage did not last long. The little girl grew up, and, eventually, the man she had believed was her father told her, “I’m not your father. Talk to your mother.” The mother would not talk, but the DNA talked, and I could hear what the DNA had to say. The 57-year-old woman was by then a grandmother. She sounded like an excited little girl to hear that I knew who her father was and that I was pretty sure that her father would respond appropriately, which he did. I made sure that he was safely seated and had no heart problems before I gave him the news. He was stunned, but his response was all positive.

Then, in December 2023 there was another new match among Ann’s DNA matches. It was another daughter of one of those two brothers. This woman was 43 and the half-sister of the man whose DNA appeared in January 2019. She had been adopted by loving parents. When an adoptee wonders about “roots,” it does not mean that the parents are not loving or that the child does not love them. It just means that we all search for our “roots.”

Finally, the woman born in 1965 who learned who her father was when she was 57 years old took the lead and got all of the siblings, half-siblings, and first cousins talking via social media. And, after a few months of talking, the chance presented that they could gather at the home of the woman born in 1965. I’d had no idea they were in regular communication or that they planned to gather. When they got together, someone said, “Let’s phone Alice and thank her.” It was a delightful and surprising hour-long conversation with people who have connected, in part, because of my genealogical research.

These words are framed and on a wall in my dining room:
“Before you this day there is set good and evil, life and death.
Choose life, that both you and your descendants may live.”
Deuteronomy 30:19