My Favorite Find

Week 2 of 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks

My favorite find isn’t a thing. I don’t remember who discovered who first (probably she found me first since she’s the DNA Ace!). But somehow my find and I connected via a DNA match on Ancestry sometime before December 2018, which is when we first met in person. We had multiple e-conversations and a few phone calls prior to that…maybe Carol Anne Johnston Snow will remember exactly when we connected.

On a beautiful sunny Southern California day in late 2018, my sister Judy and I met Carol in San Clemente for lunch. When she walked up to our table, our jaws dropped. It was like seeing our Aunt Arlene re-appear in the flesh! I will let you see what I mean.

Perhaps you can see the striking resemblance! Their resemblance didn’t stop with body build, facial structure, skin tones, and hair. Carol and Arlene also share a similar personality. Like I said it was uncanny. Ancestry lists their relationship as third cousins once removed, but Judy and I swore they could have been sisters!

The siblings (Don, Marilyn and Arlene) are all gone now. I wish they could have all met Carol, who only lived about 60 miles away from where my mother was born and raised and lived out her life.

That said, I’m fortunate to have Carol as a genealogy buddy. We work together primarily on the Johns(t)on(e) family line. The reason for all of the parenthesis is related to a name change and is the reason that our Johnson line (our mother’s family) had no idea Carol’s line (Johnston) existed.

In the generation of Carol’s and my mom’s great grandfathers, there was a name change for some of the ten offspring of Stephen Johnson and Abigail Cobbey. Our family line remained Johnson. Carol’s family line changed their last name to Johnston. Other brothers changed their name to Johnstone. Some stories that Carol has collected say that Johnston was closer to the original family name. But it also meant that when my mother was researching her great-grandfather (pre-internet and DNA) she never found the Johnston line.

The family first shows up in Ross and Miami Counties in Ohio in the 1830s. Some census forms indicate that Stephen Johnson came from Virginia. Sounds like good information, right? We are here to tell you that there are a lot of Stephen Johnsons in Virginia and Ohio. That very real fact makes for a genealogical nightmare.

Carol and I are still working on getting further back on Stephen’s line, as we have been from the beginning of our relationship. I tend to focus on the story, researching things that fill out the world around our ancestors. Carol does that too, but she’s really a DNA whiz kid, so that’s what she typically revisits first, when we pick up the Johns(t)on search again.

What an incredibly special FIND for my entire family! Now I’m off to research the agricultural schedules for evidence of our farming Johns(t)on(e)s and Carol will revisit all of our DNA matches for new evidence. May the force be with us.

PS: Here’s Carol’s response to my post. Some of the detail can only be appreciated in all of its wonder, if you’re a GERD like we are! (Genealogy NERD)

“Truth be told, your post is SO wonderful and enthusiastic that I really don’t want to get deeply into edits or revisions. However, you sent me off on an interesting goose chase this afternoon, and I will comment on a few things.”

“I’ve been re-reading messages on the Ancestry system which go back to April 2009. It was I who FIRST contacted you on the system on June 24, 2014. At that point (actually, since 1969) I’d known about your great grandfather, but not too much beyond him. Both of our branches had men die young, and that AND geography might have contributed to the lack of branches staying in touch. It was only through my grandfather Sterling Johnston’s correspondence with other branches (Alaska, Utah, etc.) that I had considerable starting material, which didn’t come to me until 1969 (a number of years after my grandfather’s death in 1961). And when I saw your tree on Ancestry, I was sure we were related and we pieced things together after that, each of extending the other’s information!”

“By 2017 we were writing about DNA–and did the Y testing for my nephew and your uncle. That of course has lead us down some rabbit holes.”

“We first met IN PERSON when I took the bus from SF to Petaluma and stayed overnight–October 4-5, 2018. And YES, on December 28, 2018, there was the wonderful lunch in San Clemente with Judy joining us!!”

“Johnstone was reportedly the original family name and has been used exclusively by the Alaskan branch FOREVER. That’s where Jenny fits in (and I was first in touch with HER in 1970 though I didn’t meet her until my first trip to Alaska in 2011, and on other trips since then).”

“Bottom line–you are the FIND in my genealogy world! It seems ironic that you are a few years younger, but a generation removed!”

And that my folks is what genealogy is all about.