u/bakerfredricka

This papa was a rolling stone indeed! Even though this truly vile nasty piece of work didn’t make an appearance in this episode and I wouldn’t know this man if I saw him, I genuinely can’t get over his despicable behavior.

What we know from this episode is that he #1 lied to Dajanay by saying Maritha isn’t his daughter and #2 lied to Maritha by telling her Sparkayla isn’t his daughter (all of which got debunked by DNA testing).

I understand that sometimes marriages and relationships fail, sometimes condoms and birth control fails, sometimes children result from casual relationships.... life can be very messy like that sometimes, so I am not out here trying to cast judgment on those things.

But what I can’t wrap my head around why this "dad" is out here lying to and about his daughters like that! This just feels malicious to me....

Nearly every parent of 2+ kids I know of usually WANTS their offspring to unconditionally love and support each other throughout their lives, whether those kids are full siblings or half-siblings or stepsiblings to each other. I of all people would definitely know that that outcome is far from guaranteed for a large number of reasons (many of which do fall on parents, say if they consistently favor one child over the other/s) but it is truly disgusting to just deny that you have another child to your kid while knowing that you’re lying through your teeth. This isn’t telling someone "I love your cooking!" while your intestines scream....

I am very happy that his nefarious scheme seems to have (mostly) backfired and I hope all of his children stay tight with each other.

Something tells me he has more kids out there....

I honestly don't think that I have ever posted about my maternal ancestry in here before. My mom is known to be 100% of Nordic descent (primarily Finnish as she actually has known ancestors who immigrated here from Finland a century or two ago) and unfortunately most of her family tree in general is a brick wall because of this.

My maternal grandpa's mom is Anna Ottillia Rein. She is a daughter of Emil Anton Rein and Carolina “Lena” Ottillia Rein (and according to Anna's marriage certificate Lena's maiden name is Strodholm, however prior to this I have seen Lena's maiden name being referred to as Hendrickson online which tosses out the idea that she possibly could be the daughter of a man named Hendrick based on my understanding of how Scandinavian surnames work). Sadly I have no knowledge pertaining to the parentage of Emil and Lena. My maternal grandmother's mom is Anna Irene Nyquist, daughter of Charles Nyquist and Johanna Rein. I actually do know the parentage of Charles and Johanna thanks to documents that I have seen pertaining to them. Johanna is a daughter of Josef Anders Rein Sr. and Beatra Sofia Qvick. Rein was such a common surname in Finland during that time that several of Johanna's brothers were legally required to take their wives' surnames upon marriage and pass it on to their resulting children.

Unfortunately since I know absolutely nothing of Emil's parentage and ancestry, is it possible for me to ever actually be able to officially confirm or debunk the idea that he might somehow be related to Johanna Rein and her family? According to my mom, when her parents were alive they would sometimes joke that they might be cousins....

On top of that, the vast majority of my mom's known ancestral roots come from Korsnäs, Finland.

As I mentioned in a previous post, on my paternal grandma's side I come from one particular set of Vaughns in New York.

My third great grandfather, George Edwin Vaughn 1849-1914, is certainly the son of Thomas Vaughn 1823-1875 (possibly Robert Thomas or Thomas Robert as he is named Robert in at least one census and names back in the 1800s were often not as consistent as they are today) and his probable first wife Catherine (an attempt at extracting the text on her children's marriage records suggests that her maiden name was McSorly or McSorley, which just feels really Irish or Scottish to me). After Catherine passed away, he married Cecilia Joseph in 1866 and had at least one daughter with her, then his daughter with Catherine married a brother of Cecelia's as well. Mr. Vaughn was certainly.... interesting.... more on that in a minute!

I currently do not have any information pertaining to Catherine's parentage, if she has any siblings or anything of that nature. With Catherine's suspected maiden name, I ended up finding out that in NYC there is a certain McSorley’s Old Ale House pub that literally served President Abraham Lincoln when he was alive and was founded by an Irish immigrant who would probably be proud to know that it's still standing. It certainly is an interesting story for sure, but I have no way of knowing if the John McSorley who founded it could possibly be related to my ancestor Catherine in any way. This one could very well be a complete nothingburger for my genealogical research however fascinating the history behind it might be.

According to FamilySearch, the parents of my fourth great grandfather are themselves named Thomas Vaughn and Cornelia Darby. Unfortunately that's it, no other information pertaining to this couple appears to exist on there and I struggle to find anything out about them. I know both of them have parents but I'm unsure who the parents of either of them could be. No birth years (if I had to guess I'd reckon anywhere from maybe 1750-1805ish?) let alone birthdays are known, no death dates or years, no idea about much of anything pertaining to them.

If you missed my previous post about my Vaughn side, George's father was.... I can't word it better than interesting? He was noted to be a very talented banjo player and singer. IIRC he was in his mid-teens when his career took off and he ultimately became one of the original members of E. P. Christy's Minstrels. With Edwin Christy and his stepson George (who also used Christy as his stage surname.... yes the fact that his son is named George Edwin is DEFINITELY not lost on me y'all, to say nothing of the other fact that there is a photo online of George Edwin Vaughn playing the banjo which is definitely something that he picked up from his dad). Minseltry involved a bunch of white actors painting their faces black so as to mock black people with "humorous" skits about why black people shouldn't be considered equal to white people, that was definitely wrong and I won't sit here making any excuses for it since it contributed to segregation policies and Jim Crow. However, my ancestor also volunteered to fight for the Union in the Civil War (and evidently his health suffered so greatly for it that he ended up passing away shortly before he would have turned fifty-two after being basically helpless following the end of the war). So I am also morbidly curious about how he would have reconciled his role in the minseltry with his role in the Civil War. I even read on Wikipedia that the original Edwin that Thomas would have worked in the minstrels with ultimately committed suicide following the war, presumably for financial reasons? This story got wilder the more time I spent researching it. I'm also someone who has been involved with music, even performing with musical instruments starting in grade school (though I ultimately quit doing that altogether during my senior year of high school for completely unrelated reasons as this discovery was relatively recent) and ever since all of this dawned on me I have been feeling horrible over this. It seems to me like I might have inherited a couple traits from him which has me worrying over whether I had inadvertently and unwittingly perpetrated the kinds of things he did with his talents by using mine at all.

Has anyone ever been able to trace New York families like these people?

Editing this to include the link to my previous post. I was also typing at 1:30 AM so will be editing for clarity as well.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Genealogy/comments/1rpvezb/i_was_mistaken_about_a_genealogical_line_any_help/

I have so far never managed to find the parents of my fifth great grandmother Nancy Jane (Ogden) Lashley 1795-1870. However, some recent researching on the Ogdens could potentially have just changed everything.

When looking for people who could potentially be Nancy's parents I learned of this gentleman named Amos Ogden 1791-1867. Amos is certainly too young to be Nancy's dad but my first thought was to ponder whether he might be her brother (or possibly a cousin or something). Interestingly enough, Amos has a daughter he named Nancy Jane so if it was after her he and (probably) his wife Elizabeth must have gotten along very well with her, been super close to her and regarded her highly (unfortunately my ancestor never had any sons of her own so I can't say whether she would have returned the favor if she were ever given that opportunity). Nobody on Elizabeth's side seems to have been named Nancy Jane (and one of their sons was named after her dad) which lends even more credence to the idea that Amos is somehow somewhat closely related to her and felt sufficiently fond of her to name one of his daughters after her. Amos's parents are Joseph Ogden who fought in the American Revolution (IF he is my direct ancestor, he wouldn't be the first one I have discovered who had done that) and Susannah. However, Joseph and Susannah are said to have nine kids not including a Nancy Jane....

Could Amos be related to my Nancy Jane or should I just go back to square one? 🤔

My third great grandfather Joshua Thomas Kelley 1844-1918 is the son of a couple named Benjamin Franklin Kelley and Maria Elizabeth Hall (in some records she's just named as Elizabeth). Joshua also fought for the Union in the Civil War and following that war he was elected as a Republican treasurer of Blackford County, Indiana in the mid-1880s. Interestingly enough, his first wife (my third great grandmother Anna Eliza Gettys) has a younger brother who also took a prominent position in the Blackford County as justice of the peace. It appears that Samuel might have gotten to his positions through nepotism (being appointed deputy sheriff by his uncle in the 1870s) but he has also been described as a total gentleman with a very happy personality and being able to befriend basically anyone as well as being a very hard worker. I would reckon those two probably did at least have some kind of professional relationship due to this as well as being in-laws. Anna passed away early and the widowed Joshua subsequently married Martha Pearson, having several more children with her in the 1880s.

According to Joshua's biography from his time in office, his parents were described as being members of "old Virginia families" though they inexplicably moved around a lot during his first few years of life, bouncing around from Virginia to Tennessee to Ohio before settling into Indiana. Some sources listed Benjamin Kelley's parents as a couple of Irish immigrants named James Kelley born in 1780 and Elizabeth Stone born 1782, and I reckon that this could be technically possible however I have no idea if someone could be described as a member of an "old Virginia family" while also literally being born to a couple of migrants. Simply googling it had some interesting results with Google AI (telling me that Benjamin's parents were William Kelley and Mary Smith, which are the parents of a very different Benjamin Franklin Kelley and also telling me that Elizabeth's parents are Isaac Hall and Mary Newbold, but I'm not sure how he came to THAT conclusion) so that's the answer AI provided for whatever that might be worth. Benjamin's second wife Amanda Baker has a verified parentage, so I'm mystified as to why Benjamin and Elizabeth apparently don't. Elizabeth has a death certificate but every single time I googled it with the "extract text from image" command it just tells me that everything on it is illegible.

It isn't lost on me that Kelley and Hall are relatively common surnames, which unfortunately means that just browsing for families surnamed Kelley and Hall in that area in the late 1700s and early 1800s is no simple task. If any of y'all could please help me out with this baffling brick wall, it would (as always) be greatly appreciated!