I’m going to tell a story, in real-time. You know the kind where it’s long and meandering, filled with insight and intrigue. Maybe someone learns something about themselves along the way. I’m not sure what I learned about myself but damn if it wasn’t one hell of a ride. You’ll stumble with me into dead-end searches. You’ll feel your heart quicken as a new record is found. And you’ll reject things that come to be true later on in the story.

So come with me; I have someone I want you to meet.

You see, my paternal Grandfather was a known fibber and all around prankster. His daughters claimed he never told anything of worth beyond jokes. His sons remembered bits and pieces but nothing substantial. Afterall he’d been being gone nearly 45 years by the time I asked any questions. My time on this Earth equated the sum total of ten months when he passed and for them he was gone in their early adulthood. So little time to store useful information; kids store selfish memories because they don’t realize how precious a boring memory can be when all you have left are boring memories.

Everything Grandad ever said about his life prior to North Carolina amounted to no more than a handful of names and events. He never spoke of his childhood. He never recounted his life on whatever street or the people who attended his church. He might recount some tale about life as an adult in New York when he wanted to impress you. Or he might mentioned he spent time on the seas in the merchant marines. Everything’s gospel until proven otherwise.

The problem only got worse with the invention of the Internet. Businesses sprung up offering vast troves of genealogical data. Now you can fill in the missing pieces of your family story, even the parts that wishe to remain hidden.

My Grandfather gave a handful of details about his life which included a few names and places. The only real data were his 1936 Social Security card application, his 1942 draft registration, his census data from the 1940s, a string of phone book entries, and a death certificate. Nothing before those dates. And for names we had his mother and father’s names and the city where he was born. Everything else is what he told us.

The problem is nothing he told us appears in the public record.

When researching a family on a service like Ancestry you notice patterns. Some families are diligent in properly registering the births and deaths of their family. Others not so much. Worse, some families add to the story making it nearly impossible to tease out the facts. Our effort became mired in 60 year old memories, compounded by love and diluted by time.

Public census records make it possible to watch a family take their meandering journey through life, leaving breadcrumbs for their descendants to follow. I can read the death report on an uncle, see the coroner’s notes, and determine next of kin. I can see the handwriting on the draft card of my great-uncle. With enough names from a family tree you can get a sense of how big a family is and where they lived in their life. It’s humbling to see the whole thing spread out, spanning over a hundred years before I was born. I find myself thinking about the job a great Aunt performed during the War when I realize suddenly that person has been dead for over 80 years.

You get a sense of time doing the research.

Following is the story of our journey from ignorance to understanding. It’s the search for identity as much as it’s a search for the truth. My grandfather left clues without a key. But thanks to a DNA test given as a Christmas gift we were forced to reopen the case. The details we uncovered make for great television, but the finer details required good old fashioned footwork. And when this is all done we’ve got to go to New Orleans and see the gravestones, hopefully meeting some people who could be long lost relatives.

The final act could take years to write, but I’m an optimist. I actually believe this story will finish its tale before I’m gone. I sure hope so. It’s ok if we turn out to be wrong. If we’re wrong it means nothing he told us can be proven. But if you make one small tweak to something he told us, you see a whole deck of facts that compare favorably with what he told us all. Even though we feel strongly in our data we think it’s important to document the process as it happens.

So welcome to the story.

NOTE: If you want to read the story in a coherent narrative, read Part 8 which tells it the way it probably happened.