Overview - My Story

If you didn't know this - we are ultimately all related to each other. At least this is what I think from my Judeo-Christian point of view. I have ended up creating what I term as an Ancestry.com "Super Tree," where I have tried to connect everyone that I know to my tree. I know this is not what Ancestry.com envisioned, but this is what my tree has become. I want to tell my story on how this "Super Tree" came to be.

Adopted

My name is Frederick Todd Beach. I was born in Washington, DC in 1966. I was brought to who I call Mom and Dad 7 days after birth. My mother told me I was adopted when I was 4 or 5 years old. It was a big event in my life, but I accepted it as fact. I think I asked her, "Are yous serious?" My older brother told Mom he wished he was adopted too. I later had a sister born about 3 years after me. This is often the case that people have natural-born children after they adopt. I grew up in the Maryland suburbs until I was 11 when we moved to rural West Virginia. I was and still am a nerd at heart, so moving from the "happening" DC suburbs to West Virginia was a big event. I can expound on that later.

The Family Tree

My father was from a very large family. He was the 12th of 13 children. He grew up very poor and ended up going in to the Navy at age 16. He became an electrician in the Navy and then came home and worked under some master electricians. He did well for himself and our family. I never saw any man work as hard as my father. 

When I was 9 years old, my mother had some butcher paper for me to draw on. I attempted to document my father's family on a family tree on the butcher paper. I don't even know where I came up with this idea - it was possibly from something I read at school. I spread the butcher paper out and put down all the people I could think of. I asked Mom for some confirmation on Dad's brothers and sisters. I think I forgot 1 or 2 of them. I asked her if she knew the names of some of my cousins. She knew some more, but I quickly exhausted her memory. When Dad got home from work, I asked him about some of his siblings kids - probably not a great time to ask him. He gave me a few names and then told me that's all he knew and that he was tired. I tried to fill in the paper with some of the names I got and I couldn't even fit those 30 or 40 people on the paper without going off the edge. Dad did fill me in on how many kids each sibling had. I counted up that I had something like 60-70 1st cousins. I gave up on the family tree project at that time because I did not have any way to find out any more information. My uncles and aunts lived too far away and I only saw them every few years or so.

Who Am I

I have always wanted to know who my birth mother and father were. I was a nagging thought in the back of my mind as long as I can remember. Maybe it is a common thing when you're adopted, but I always felt that I didn't fit in. My father was small in stature, but a very strong, man's man. He said that he once lifted two 220 lb generators, one in each hand, and carried them to the truck on the job. He also said he won a free tank of gas by lifting 250 lbs over his head. I guess they did promotions like that in the 1960's. Me, on the other hand, I was a scrawny runt. I weighed 47 lbs in the 3rd grade. I didn't break 100 lbs until 9th grade. My father would tell people, "We really feed him. He must have a tape worm." My Dad left school in the 10th grade. Dad was smart when it came to construction, but he had no time for books. My mother had graduated from high school and had a chance to go to college but I guess she wanted to get married sooner than later. As a child, I was always reading books - it didn't matter what it was. I read non-fiction, fiction, encyclopedias, almanacs, atlases. My brother's friends used to ask, "What's the professor doing today?" And my brother would answer, "Same as always, reading some book ..." I just wanted someone to say, "You're just like your uncle." or "You have grandmother's eyes." My Mom told me a story later in life. She was helping with the band concessions at the high school football game. A lady came up to her and said, "You must be Todd's mother. You look just like him." My mother said she was and then she turned away and cried tears of joy.

Ancestry.com

I always had a love of genealogy. But when Ancestry.com came along, it unlocked a firestorm of activity. I joined up in October 2014. I could only do my adoptive tree at the time, but I threw myself into it. It was so much fun! I spent hours looking for new ancestors. I would call my mother and tell her of some of the more important finds. I ended up finding my mother's first cousin who she hadn't seen since 1960. I also reconnected with her brother's kids. We hadn't talked to them in over 30 years because my uncle had died young at 37 and we never talked to anyone else after that. There were so many things I learned about my mother and father's families. After about 6-8 months, I had tapped out on the adoptive tree because I ran into a bunch of road blocks. But it left me with a burning desire to have my own tree. A real tree of people related to me.

AncestryDNA

My wife had been asking me if I wanted to find my birth parents. She kept saying that I needed to find out, so I decided to try AncestryDNA. I thought, "Hey, I'm a bright guy ... I can figure this out." I couldn't wait for the results. I got them back after about 4-5 weeks after I sent the sample in. Many people have thought I am part Italian because I had dark brown hair was very dark-complected. The results said I was 93% Great Britain. How can this be? How can you be American and be 93% Great Britain? I thought maybe my grandparents were from England. There had to be some kind of interesting story on how I was so British.

Well, I went to work on the matches - the other people I was related to. My closest match was a lady from Pennsylvania who was half Italian (from her mother's side). Her father was from Kentucky. I figured I had to be related to her father. She was a 3rd to 4th cousin. I looked at the other matches. After several weeks, all I could come up with is that I had a lot of relatives from Kentucky. I had Excel spreadsheets full of data on who was related from what chromosome (thanks to GEDMatch.com). I had two or three lines from the lady in Pennsylvania that I could have come from. I did some math and found that I would have to look at 600-1000 people 3 generations back to find my birth mother or father. I started looking but I came up with a sense of doom because I thought, "What if people made mistakes in these family trees?" Then I would be going down rabbit holes I didn't need to go down.

I spent another 2 months investigating a few universities around Washington DC, because my mother said my birth mother went to college there. She thought she went to American University. I poured through the yearbooks and through the student directories. This search was going nowhere fast. I would need some direct methods to find my birth mother and father.

State Reunion Registry

My wife prompted me to look for some other ways to find my birth families. I found an Maryland State Reunion registry program online and I filled out a form. I got some information back and it said I needed to send in a big chunk of money to them and then they would appoint a search assistant who would help me find more information. I didn't have anywhere near that money to send to them. There was a hardship waiver you could fill out and I did. I got a reply back saying I could send in about 1/3 of the money and that they would accept my case! I sent in the money and I got a call from my Confidential Intermediary (CI) shortly after that. She was a wonderful person who helped me so much in the process! About 24 hours later, she called and said that she had the names of my birth mother and father. They knew who my birth father was! I could not believe it! I thought that the slot would be an N/A. My CI said that my birth father was an Army guy who was stationed at Fort Meade, MD in 1965-66 and he was from Kentucky. Well, that solved some questions! About 2 days later, I got a call from my CI and she said my birth father called back to her in record time and said he wanted to talk to me! What a shock! He wanted to talk to me!

I got the number and I waited about 45 minutes to calm down enough to talk. I made the call and I was talking to my birth father. He was so excited to talk to me! I could hardly understand him though because he spoke very fast and had a twang to his speech. I held the phone close and started writing down the things he was telling me. He told me who my birth mother was and a few things about where she grew up. I took all of this information and used google and Ancestry.com to have a working, real family tree in a few days. In a week I had about 7-10 generations worth of a family tree. It was exhilarating! I knew who I was!

Marcie is my 7th Cousin 4x Removed?

My wife and I were over at our friend Marcie's house one night. Kim was telling her how I loved genealogy and how I was into Ancestry.com. Marcie said she wanted to know more about her family and asked if I could help her. I got her mother, father and grandparents information and I went to work. When I got to one of Marcie's great grandmothers, I saw that her last name was the same as one of my 2nd great grandmothers. I said, "Hey, I wonder if Marcie and I are related." Probably not, but what if? Well, I followed her great grandmother's line back and I checked my 2nd ggm's line and lo and behold, I found a common ancestor. Marcie and I were 7th cousins 4x removed! How is it that my Kentucky roots and Marcie's South Carolina roots met back to Virginia in 1663? I figured if Marcie and I were related, then a lot of people had to be related. As you go back in time, the pool of people get fewer and fewer. I am sure that America in 1700 was a different place than it is now with maybe 300,000 people in the whole country. As you go back in time, there is a greater and greater chance that you will be related to the same people. From this point on, I decided I was going to find out how people were related to each other. I was going to do the genealogies of friends and coworkers to find out how they were all related and especially how they were related to me. For 48 years, I did not know any true relatives of mine except for my own children. I was going to connect as many people as I could to me.

My "Super Tree"

There was a guy at work with the same family name as Marcie's ggm and my 2nd ggm. Surely he was related to me to. I didn't want to ask him for his mother and father and his grandparents. So I went to find that online. I found the old city newspaper online and it had a wealth of information about marriages and obituaries. I was able to piece together my co-workers family by finding his great grandparents from google and the online newspapers and then I put that information into Ancestry.com and I was able to track his family line back to the same common ancestor that Marcie and I shared. He ended up being a 9th cousin 2x removed. What a small world! I told my co-worker and he was intrigued but was not really impressed that he was my 9th cousin. I could understand that, but I still thought it was exciting! I found more and more friends and co-workers to investigate.Soon, I had a tree of people who were connected in some way. I went to people at church and at work and told them how they were 4th cousins to so-and-so and 5th cousins to another. It gave me a perspective on who these people were and how their past shaped who they were. Some people were freaked out that I could find this information, but it is out there on the web. It is historical information. Soon, I was getting really good at tracking the initial information down to find people's ancestors. I imagine that I am maybe half of a private eye - I don't do the stake outs in parked cars and such.

Conclusion

There must be other people like me who want to see these 5,000 and 10,000 foot views of genealogy? Maybe I can find others and find out some of the interesting stories that they have to share! I live in a community around a city of about 100,000. A lot of people in this community had ancestors who came into the area around 1820-1850 and they are related. I find it fascinating.