I spent a lot of time this weekend in “Banister World,” adding some more clues to the family tree. When you’re doing genealogy work on Ancestry.com, each leaf that pops up on the site indicates that information is available that might help connect family members. My Jerry Banister Tree has now grown to over 9,000 members, so it’s nearly impossible to keep up with all the leaf clues. It’s like a bad fall day in the Midwest and all you have is a rusty, old rake. All that raking just might give you a blister. (See Post #818). In my case, it’s simply a case of “Banister Butt” and a sore back from sitting at the computer too long.

One of the branches of the Banister family is the Foist family. It’s important to me because my suspected birth father married a Foist, and it’s my way of being useful to my new DNA relatives with my retirement time. It’s actually much like playing a game, trying to fit the pieces of a genetic puzzle together. My current quest is to find a place on the tree for each of my DNA matches on Ancestry and 23andMe. I mark them each with a green “DNA Match” icon on my sprawling Jerry Banister Family Tree. This is not always easy since in many cases they are distant “relatives” – third or fourth cousins. I’m guessing that I now have found 30 or more such connections. I added two more today, but still struggling to find father and son Grimshaw. They were my very first contact as distant cousins, but we’ve not been able to connect the dots on precisely how we are genetically related.

One of the many challenges of establishing lineage is that Foists can be Fist(e)s or Foysts, and the last name McLoughlin can be spelled entirely too many different ways. The surname Emly can be listed with two e’s, and even Banister can have one “n” or two. There are also too many Charlie Foists and Mike McLoughlans or is it Mclaughlins? I can certainly relate to this because my adopted name is Johnston and everyone wants to leave out the “t” or add an “e” on the end. Back in the days when census taking was a cumbersome door-to-door process, names were mispronounced, accents got in the way, and results were written illegibly. By the time they were eventually typed into the system and years later computerized, the correct spelling of people’s names were even more misconstrued. To make matters worse, thousands of amateurs are adding these already inaccurate names and dates into the Ancestry database with their own clumsy fingers.

Unfortunately, I have to rely on this information. Most all of the people on my tree are dead strangers. Unlike the network of adopted Johnston family members that I grew up with, the Banisters are a new connection. I have personally met less than 10 of them in the past year, and 5 were on one visit down to Scipio, Indiana, a small town I’d never even passed through before. I met one in Chicago, two in Indianapolis, and had a phone conversation with one more. I hope to add to that total, but I understand the reluctance of acceptance. After all, I surprised them all 67 years after my birth.

“Banister world” is a strange new planet and I’m an alien who just landed. I’m fortunate to have gained some acceptance into an exclusive family club thanks to a hand-full of open-minded people. Even my Banister birth mother has denied any possible connection, and her close family members remain unreceptive to my messages. In the meantime, I’ve built probably the largest connective network of Banister/Bannister/ Foist/McLaughlin/Emry/Legg/Robinson/VanMeter/????Sampson/etc. relatives in the world. I even found a very “large” Butt family in the mix. giving even more meaning to Banister Butt! At this point, I might even be one of the leading experts on “Banister” lineage, especially since I come from both sides. It’s all in an effort to gain acceptance, even if I am just a beloved Banister bastard, grateful to have been given a meaningful life thanks to a forgivable “mistake” between two teenagers and the adoption option.