On rare occasion I will come across a name where I want to determine just how it came about. I was about to throw in the towel for the evening when I came across the surname, “Loveall”. It happened to be in line with an adoptee that I wanted to take back a generation or so to see if any other genetically related cousins could populate substantiating the position I had chosen for the birth mother.
Well it all started with a young lady named Elizabeth Loveall in 1788. It continued on for three more generations, back to an individual named Henry Loveall born in 1699. Apparently he changed his name from Henry Baker to Henry Loveall. Still looking for more information on the back story, but it created a large family taking on a life of its own clustered around those three generations; what landed in Baltimore, Maryland grew so far that I just had to stop.
So far I have no more cousins genetically showing up, but it may take a few hours for Ancestry to compare this tree to other public trees and genetic relatives. Although I am satisfied with the close relatives for this adoptee, I am a bit flustered with the mother’s identity. She and her siblings are mentioned in one public tree.
Public trees are as good as tissue paper until you can blanket them with documentation to substantiate them. I spent the better part of four hours covering all the siblings, but this one birth mother. All the siblings have proof, but she just seems like a ghost and her name is just too common to narrow it down with searches.
So it looks like we will need to reach out to the individual to ask where they got the name from and why it appears on their tree. Yet, after I created a child under this potential candidate and moved the DNA results to that child I began to get immediate matches to the tree and to genetically related cousins. And they were not far out; which always gives me a warm feeling.
Still without more proof the only potential thing that can be done is to flesh out this tree within the immediate family surrounding this potential birth mother than get the adoptee involved in reaching out to living relatives. If a warm body steps forward and it willing to take a DNA test, we could prove this individual more. Yet it sure would be nice to know more about the actual individual before spending money or creating a drama. The birth year of the mother seems far too old to still be alive, so I am not sure who would be disturbed with the insinuation.
There really is no way to reach out to living relatives and not take the risk of causing some to consider hiding the truth or fleeing from any questions. At least there does not seem to be enough genealogy related to this individual to cause someone in the genealogical community from getting upset with a non-paternal event; an adoption.