I continue to work on the Ancestry Jerry Ban(n)ister Family Tree, placing over 15,300 names on its sprawling branches over the past few years. The work started after I began to piece together adoption paperwork as well as DNA matches on both Ancestry and 23andMe. I was curious about these “blood” relatives and interested in how they connected with each other. Other hobby genealogists (if I can even call myself one?) were impressed with my dedication and enthusiasm. I also began to compile this written diary blog, outlying each step of my discovery journey, including the many mistakes and assumptions that I made. I searched obituaries, Facebook, Linked In, public records, and even made a few face-to-face visits in the process. The result is a database of first, middle, and last names that form a complicated puzzle of my life. There are only a hand full of people that I actually know on the tree, mostly the adopted relatives that I grew up around. 

My life-long identity as a Johnston is a last name that only appears 45 times, with only about a dozen familiar faces in this close family mix. My birth name of Ban(n)ister accounts for only about 5% of the total, that’s taking into account both the “n” and “double n” spellings. The Legg family also accounts for 5% of my tree, with the Hall and Greathouse names comprising another 5%. The next 5% includes Burton, Anderson, Foist, Taylor, Sweany, Miller and Branham, in order of appearance. However, these prominent names carved into the roots amount to only 25% of the overall total. The remaining 75% are names that appear less than 100 times, most fewer than 25. It just proves that everyone around us is probably related in some way. The world is just one big family!

I spent most of yesterday and today on the Burton branches of my tree, trying to find a connection with my #1 DNA connection on 23andMe, Joyce Gourley. Like me she was also adopted, and we’re supposedly scientifically related as first cousins. Her birth mother was a Burton, complicated by the fact that her biological grandmother was also adopted.  I was Jerry at birth, while she was Nancy. Now, I’m Mike and she is Joyce. Just as the Johnston family made me their own, she became a Thompson, then married a Gourley. These twists in the trunk make it difficult to find where our separate life paths crossed. With 512 Burton names on my tree, I’ve yet to find a connection with her after months of on-and-off research. Joyce and I had initially started an on-line conversation through 23andMe, but she must have lost interest. I find that most people run hot and cold when it comes to their personal lives. I did not hear back from her regarding my speculations on her roots. At least, she didn’t answer my last few questions. I worry that perhaps I made some wrong assumptions when I found her name on Facebook. I could have even found the wrong person. 

I’m not really trying to establish a relationship. I’m just naturally curious – obviously more than even my own birth mother. I still get crickets in trying to communicate with her family. It’s scary when a stranger claims to be related, and I’m certainly sensitive to this concern. It’s not like I’m Sneaky Pete, trying to steal the family fortune. I’m not even looking for an invitation to Christmas dinner. It’s easy to sit here and add names to my family tree, some of them are even probably wrong. I often view it as a game, but in reality each name is an actual person that has lived most of their lives without me in it. Admittedly, I’m a late-comer to the Ban(n)ister Party, but would like to learn more about the family that with a twist of fate could have been a bigger part of my life.