The Ryder Candidates

Eugene Joseph Ryder (1875-1946)

We have learned a little bit about Rollie Joseph Ryder's mother, Bertha Daugherty, but what about his father, Eugene Joseph Ryder? He lived as much a nomadic life with a slew of spouses as that of his first wife.

Eugene Joseph Ryder was born 24 March 1875, in Indiana. Sources are unclear where in the state he was born, although one reference indicates Nashville, Brown County, which would be significantly south of where his parents had been living previously. He was the second son of Gideon Ryder and his wife, Isabel Sammons. The father, Gideon, was Canadian-born of New York parents, and his Ryder/Rider lineage stretched back to seventeenth-century Massachusetts. He grew up in a typical eighteenth-century farm family in Keeler, Van Buren County, Michigan, but like his descendants who came after, developed a strong penchant for wanderlust. Gideon may have left Keeler, Michigan, as a young man and spent time in the area of Dowagiac, Cass County, Michigan, as some of his cousins were already here in the 1870s. He likely met and married Isabella Sammons in the early 1870s in Dowagiac, as her family had settled there years before, and it is where she grew to womanhood. But they did not stay there long. Gideon and Isabella's first two children, including Eugene, were born in Indiana in 1873 and 1875, but they had returned to Michigan by the birth of their third in 1877. From there, the family removed to Marshall County, Kansas, where for a time Gideon was a laborer in the town of Beattie. After leaving Kansas, and a brief stay in Nebraska, the family returned to Isabella's home of rural Dowagiac, Cass County, Michigan, where they spent the remainder of their lives.

Son Eugene Joseph Ryder grew up a part of this transient lifestyle, and it was one he embraced and continued until his death. Much like the Daughertys he bounced between many towns and cities in southwestern Michigan working as a moulder. As discussed in a previous blog entry, he first married in 1898 in his home town of Dowagiac, Michigan, to Bertha Daugherty, by whom he had his first son, Rollie, the year after. They separated when Rollie was just an infant, and their divorce was finalized in November 1901. Bertha remarried two days after her divorce was official, and apparently Eugene too had already taken up cohabitation with the woman who would be his second wife. She was his first cousin, Gertrude Belle Carothers. Although Belle gave birth to Gene's second son and only other child, Lyle Joseph Ryder, in 1903, they were not officially married until 9 September 1911, in St. Joseph, Berrien County, Michigan. They moved to rural Battle Creek, Calhoun County, Michigan, near his brother, Leslie Ryder, whose children had fond childhood memories of Uncle Gene and Aunt Belle and cousin Lyle.

But much like his first wife, Bertha Daugherty, Gene never found long-term marital bliss. He and Belle divorced in Battle Creek in 1915, after which Belle remarried and took her son Lyle Joseph Ryder to Rock Island, Illinois. Gene Ryder remarried Viola Stoner in 1915 in Kalamazoo, and divorced her by 1917 when he married Mary Hammer. They divorced in 1922, and he married Mabel Van Tassel in 1930, whom he divorced in 1932. At Gene's death in Kalamazoo in 1946, he was survived by his last wife, Nellie. With or without a wife, Eugene Joseph Ryder, lived wherever he could find work as a moulder. Most of the time he worked in the vicinity of Kalamazoo, Dowagiac, and Battle Creek, Michigan; but he occasionally spent time in the northern part of the state in Traverse City and Cadillac, Michigan.

But since I now had enough preliminary evidence that my mother shared DNA in common with Eugene Joseph Ryder or his first wife, Bertha Daugherty, I had to take a closer look at both their extended families. For my mother to be Kenneth Ryder's second cousin as described previously, one of Eugene's or Bertha's siblings had to be one of my mother's paternal grandparents.

But also recall that mathematically, my mother and Ken Ryder could also be a half-first cousins, once removed, so we have to look closely at Ken Ryder's half-uncle, Lyle Joseph Ryder.

Children and Grandchildren of Gideon and Isabel (Sammons) Ryder
Viable candidates for my mother's father are outlined in blue, click on
the image to enlarge.

Thankfully, although Gideon Ryder and Isabel Sammons were the parents of six children, they were not blessed with a slew of grandchildren for me to assess. And of course, only their grandsons were candidates for my mother's father. Of Gideon and Isabel's children, one son never married. Another son died young. And yet another son fathered only two girls. The only two grandsons who could be my mother's father were Clarence L. Ryder, son of Leslie and Jessie (Moslander) Ryder; or Richard Eugene Buck, son of Robert William and Katherine Emily (Ryder) Buck.

To be Ken Ryder's half-first cousin, once removed, my mother's unknown father would have to be a son of Lyle Joseph Ryder. But Lyle had only two girls who died shortly after birth. So we could eliminate that possibility.

If my mother's DNA was "Ryder DNA" and not "Daugherty DNA" I had only two men who could have been her father. Of these two, Richard Eugene Buck, grew up in and around Kalamazoo, Michigan, and married there in 1930 to Florence Helen Austin. And surprisingly for this family, he remained married to her until her death in 1982. Richard died in 1989. They had no children, and their entire married lives were spent in the Kalamazoo area. It takes about an hour to drive to Kalamazoo, Michigan, so it is reasonably close, but not terribly so. Would a married man in Kalamazoo be in the Elkhart, Indiana, area to meet my grandmother in 1946? 

It was possible. 

Richard Buck's parents were divorced when he was only an infant, and his father, Robert William Buck, spent many years in the state of Wyoming. But he had moved back to the area by 1930, and he settled in Mishawaka, Indiana, where he lived until his death in 1960. Could Richard Eugene Buck have had a secret tryst with my grandmother upon a visit to his father in 1946? 

It was possible. 

And at this stage of the game, I was quite aware that ANYTHING was possible.

But Clarence L. Ryder was a much, much, much better candidate.

And The Nominees Are...

The Expanding Ryder Family Tree and 23andMe
Matches to my mother, Carol Sue Crumet

When Kenneth Eugene Ryder's DNA results became available to me on 28 April 2014, that same surge of excitement and dread overcame me. Of course, knowing that the Robinson match was a big ZERO the month before, I had anticipated at least SOMETHING in my favor on the Ryder test. But remember, the DNA segments that my mother matched with Brian Ryder and Briana Rieman were all different. There was a possibility that I was dealing with multiple common ancestors, and Ken Ryder's results might just yield another small match that held little real identifying assistance. Additionally, even though Briana Rieman was one generation further away from a presumed common ancestor, she carried more DNA in common with my mother than Brian Ryder. I had no idea what I was going to find when I clicked on his results.

The bottom line: Mother Nature is not predictable. Autosomal DNA matching is a numbers game, but it's also a bit of a crap shoot. I knew theoretically Ken Ryder's numbers should be higher than Brian's and Briana's. I just needed it to be high enough to be significant.

And it was.

It was with a sense of dizzying euphoria that I read the results. Ken Ryder and my mother, Carol Crumet, shared twelve identical segments of DNA on ten different chromosomes, for a total of 4.26% similarity between them. So if you thought an anonymous match at 2.10% made me ecstatic (see Hoosier Daddy?: Dabbling in DNA), these results had me walking on clouds and doing happy dances and fist pumps and every clichéd body movement associated with success. And since an unbearable part of the whole DNA process is waiting, I had spent a great deal of time piecing together the extended family in anticipation of these results.

And for those unfamiliar with autosomal DNA testing, the reason I call it a numbers game is that the larger the amount of shared DNA between two people, the more definitive the relationship between them. Of course, this is a simplistic approach, as there are many variables that can affect the numbers, but it generally holds true. If you share 50% of your DNA in kind with another person, that person can only be your parent, your child, or your full sibling. The theoretic amount of DNA you should share with known relatives is indicated in the chart below, which has been referenced elsewhere in this blog.

Cousin Tree (With Genetic Kinship)
(fro, Wikimedia Commons, Author:Dimario, 2010)

But keep in mind that the above listed percentages are theoretical. These numbers exist if every one of us got exactly half the genetic material of all the ancestors that came before us. And that's just not how it happens. As chromosomes tear apart and recombine, so does all the genetic material passed down through generations. And over time, we may not carry ANY genetic material from a possible ancestor six or eight generations before us because of the randomness in which pieces of DNA are inherited. But although the numbers are theoretical, they have a tremendous predictive value. As more and more people have their DNA tested, and statistics are calculated on known matches, it can be seen that close relatives do not differ terribly far from those theoretical value.

For example, figures generated from 23andMe's Relative Finder show that although first cousins should theoretically share 12.5% of their DNA in common, real-life findings show figures between 7.31% and 13.8%. Similarly, second cousins should be 3.125% similar, but values range from 2.85% and 5.04%. But the beauty of even the real-life values is that they are still distinctly separate from each other, and therefore, predictable.

Again, life is messy. Values can be altered by cousins who connect at different hereditary levels. A first cousin, once removed, should share 6.25% of their DNA, with a calculated range of 3.3% to 8.51%, and these numbers start overlapping values associated with other relationships, so one has to be wary in a situation like mine when you are comparing a known person to an unknown person. Also, family lines with cousin marriages concentrate DNA within lineages, and connections via half-siblings dilute findings by 50%. Nothing is simple.

And because I was now using Brian, Briana, and Ken, as markers to guide me to my grandfather, I first had to determine if those three knowns matched each other the way they were supposed to. Brian Ryder is Ken Ryder's great-nephew and theoretically he should match Ken at a level of 12.5%. He did so at 15.3%. Briana Rieman is Ken Ryder's great-great-niece, and she should match him at half that value, or 6.25%. She matched him at 9.45%. These real-life values, although higher than average, were comfortably within an expected range of shared relationship. So as long as every known person tested matched each other appropriately via genetics and via the genealogical paper trail, I could take a closer look at Ken Ryder's relationship with my mother.

Since Ken Ryder and my mother, Carol Crumet, were of the same generational age, the immediate conclusion would be that they were second cousins. With a theoretical genetic kinship of 3.125%, my mother's match with Ken at 4.26% would make this a comfortable estimate with no real overlap into other relationship categories.

We have already talked about Ken Ryder's grandmother, Bertha (Daugherty) Ryder Rieder Prestidge Merrifield. Having given birth to three children by three different men, we have some "halves" to contend with as well. And we haven't even begun to discuss Ken's grandfather Eugene Joseph Ryder's six wives, and the one other son born to him by his second. From the kinship table, we know that first cousins, once removed, carry 6.25% of their DNA in common. Half-first cousins, once removed, therefore share 3.125% in common, and these too have to be considered when coming up with candidates for my mother's father.

And although this sounds like an enormous breakthrough, remember that second cousins share the same great-grandparents. That still makes for a lot of second cousins. On my father's side alone, I have more than thirty second cousins (without knowing my maternal grandfather, I certainly can't count them on my mother's side!). In many situations, this would still be a daunting task to pick one man out of a list of dozens, but finally - finally - I had luck on my side.

In the previous post, I had mentioned that since we jumped back a generation from the "Ryder vs. Robinson" dilemma, we were now faced with a "Ryder vs. Scharich" question. And if my mother was a second cousin of Ken Ryder's, it meant I had to assess the descendants of his FOUR sets of great-grandparents ... because one of those sets of great-grandparents was also my mother's.

Kenneth Eugene Ryder's Family Tree

But as you can see from the chart above, I didn't know all eight of Ken Ryder's great-grandparents, since four of them were Germans who lived and died in Russia. But this unknown actually did me a huge favor, and cut my work in half. The bulk of Emily (Scharich) Ryder's extended family were ethnic Germans living in Russia. Although it was possible for unknown Scharich or Rappuhn relatives to have come to the United States and to have been my mother's paternal ancestors, it was unlikely. Northern Indiana was not a target place of immigration for Volga Germans, although there were settlements in relatively nearby Kalamazoo and Berrien Springs, Michigan. Also, although I put very little weight behind the "ethnic distributions" reported by the various DNA companies, my mother's "French/German" heritage as reported by 23andMe was only 19.1%. On the surface this made immediate paternal descent from ethnic Germans less likely.

But the biggest and most reliable reason for me to be able to eliminate Ken Ryder's Volga German great-grandparents from my equation is that he had many DNA matches in the 23andMe database with people sharing ancestors with classic Volga German surnames. None of Ken's German matches were matches with my mother.

So through some educated analysis and deduction, the question was no longer "Ryder vs. Scharich." It was "Ryder vs. Daugherty."

For Ken Ryder and my mother, Carol Crumet, to be second cousins they had to share ancestry with either Gideon Ryder and his wife, Isabel Sammons; or with John Henry Daugherty and his wife, Emma Augusta Jonas. In theory, I had already started my new family tree. I just needed to pick a couple and start filling in the generations in between!

And once I did the genetic mathematics and the preliminary research, there were only six men who could be my mother's father: two on the Ryder side, and four on the Daugherty side.

My search had been narrowed down to six men with the results of one test.

Six.

And one of the six was a perfect candidate.

The Ryders, the Scharichs, and the Daughertys

Bertha (Daugherty) Ryder Rieder Prestidge Merrifield
1881-1918

With Paul Robinson's DNA test showing absolutely no similarity to my mother's DNA, the presumed shared segments of genetic material that my mother held in common with Brian Ryder and Briana Rieman must have come from the ancestors of Rollie Joseph Ryder, Jr. (1924-2006), and not his wife Nora Lee Robinson Ryder (1926-2011).

So now that I knew my DNA trail led upward through the family tree of Rollie Ryder Jr., it meant I could jump back one generation from him. If my hypothesis was correct, then the DNA that Brian and Briana shared with my mother came from one of Rollie Jr.'s parents, Rollie Joseph Ryder Sr., or his wife, Emilie "Emily" Scharich. So now the question was no longer "Robinson or Ryder?," it was "Scharich or Ryder?" But just exactly how much "Ryder/Scharich DNA" my mother carried in common with Rollie Jr.'s brother, Kenneth Eugene Ryder, was yet to be seen. I waited impatiently after 23andMe informed me on 8 April 2014 that his sample had reached the lab. 

That gave me some time to hop back a generation and do a little research on Rollie and Emily and the families they came from. 

Rollie Joseph Ryder was born 2 April 1899 in Dowagiac, Cass County, Michigan, the only child of Eugene Joseph Ryder and Bertha Daugherty. His parents had married in Dowagiac the year before; Gene was twenty-two years old, Bertha was sixteen. The marriage dissolved quickly, and Gene and Bertha separated before Rollie was even five months old. His mother, Bertha (Daugherty) Ryder, quickly remarried on 13 November 1901 in Benton Harbor, Berrien County, Michigan, to Charles Thomas Rieder - just two days after her divorce was finalized from her first husband in neighboring Cass County, Michigan.

Rollie was raised by his mother, and he likely had minimal contact with his estranged father, Gene Ryder, as neither of his parents could settle in one place with one spouse for any length of time. His mother Bertha (Daugherty) Ryder Rieder remained married to her second husband for over a decade, spending most of Rollie's youth in a number of rented homes in Kalamazoo, Michigan, where her husband Charles Rieder worked as a moulder for a number of local factories. Sometimes finding good work took them further afield, as Rollie spent a short time in Charlevoix County in northern Michigan, moving there by 1910 when his stepfather took a job in an iron foundry in the village of East Jordan.

Perhaps Bertha despaired of being distantly separated from her extended Daugherty family residing in southwest Michigan, or her maybe her marriage to Charles Rieder had soured for other reasons, but by 1914 she left her husband and returned to rural Cass County, Michigan, in company with her fifteen-year-old son Rollie Ryder, and her ten-year-old daughter, Catherine Rieder. At the age of thirty-two, she found herself pregnant again, and married the father, Francis Joseph Prestidge, a small land-owner who lived in rural Glenwood, Cass County, Michigan. By the time her daughter Mary Prestidge was born on 4 April 1915, in Grand Rapids, Michigan, she had been separated from her husband for nearly six month, having lived in marital bliss for a grand total of fifty-eight days.

Bertha's parents, John Henry Daugherty and Emma Augusta (Jonas) Daugherty, and her Daugherty siblings, were as nomadic as she was, always following work opportunities leading them all over southwestern Michigan and northern Indiana. They rarely stayed in one place for too long. But as the Great War raged overseas, and Bertha found herself alone again after three failed marriages and three children, she found support in her extended family who had all settled for a time in her old stomping grounds of Kalamazoo, Michigan.

Bertha tried her hand at marriage one last time. On 7 May 1917, in Kalamazoo, Michigan, just three weeks after her son Rollie had married, thirty-five-year-old Bertha (Daugherty) Ryder Rieder Prestidge became the wife of Oscar S. Merrifield, a small neighborhood shopkeeper, and a man twenty-one years her senior. Together they moved to 314 East Patterson Street in Kalamazoo to run a boarding house.

She filed for divorce six months later. She officially secured her fourth divorce on 2 March 1918.

There would be no further chances to find a lasting, loving, successful marriage for Bertha. Still a resident of the Patterson Street address, she fell ill toward the end of September 1918. Although likely aware of the second wave of influenza that had just begun to show itself in the United States again that fall, she may have felt a false sense of security in the fact that no cases had been reported in Michigan during the month of September, 1918. But just two weeks into the month of October, Michigan state officials had reported over 11,000 cases of influenza, a figure that was likely under-reported. Bertha died in her home of lobar pneumonia secondary to influenza on 9 October 1918 at the age of thirty-six years.

She was buried two days later in Riverside Cemetery in Kalamazoo, and although she was outlived by four ex-husbands and three children all bearing different surnames, she was simply buried as "Bertha Daugherty."

Emilie "Emily" Scharich and Rollie Joseph Ryder,
on their wedding day, 17 April 1917,
Kalamazoo, Michigan.

Shortly before his mother's fourth marriage and right after his eighteenth birthday, Bertha's eldest son, Rollie Ryder married in Kalamazoo, Michigan. His bride was sixteen-year-old Emily Scharich.

Emily was an immigrant, the proper German spelling of her name being Emilie. She was born 23 November 1900 in Reinwald, Russia, the daughter of Jacob Scharich and Katharina Rappuhn. Both her her parents' surnames can be found in the early history of the Volga Germans. This area along the Volga River in Russia had been settled by ethnic Germans at the invitation of Catherine the Great in 1762, and they had been given special rights to farm Russian lands while maintaining their language and culture and religious traditions. Hundreds of thousands of autonomous Germans lived in this area, and Reinwald alone boasted a population of 5,000 people when Emilie was a child.

Saginaw, Michigan, originally a lumber town, had grown to a thriving industrial city at the beginning of the twentieth century. The Volga Germans began immigrating to Saginaw in 1902, not because of the booming urban environment, but primarily because of the growing sugar beet industry in the Saginaw Valley. But when eight-year-old Emilie Scharich and her eleven-year-old brother Jacob Scharich, arrived at the port of Philadelphia on 28 April 1909 and stepped off the S.S. Merion destined for Saginaw, it was not in the company of parents looking to pursue the American dream. They were orphans.

Emily's father, Jacob, had died when she was a toddler, and her mother had cared for the family in Reinwald until she too died in the fall of 1908. Jacob and Emilie accompanied the Peter and Ekaterina Simon family from Krasnojar on their trip to America. The Simons were joining their eldest son, Peter, who had gone to Saginaw, Michigan, the year before. Who cared for the children after their arrival is unclear. Although the Peter Simons family is enumerated in the 1910 census settled in Saginaw, the Scharich children are not in their household. Nonetheless, Jacob grew up and remained in Saginaw his entire life, and the siblings were joined by a married brother Gottfried Scharich a few years after their arrival.

Main Volga German Colonies in Russia
Reinwald and Krasnojar are circled
(from Wikimedia Commons via user:Chippy)

It is not known what brought young Emily Scharich to Kalamazoo, Michigan, to meet and marry Rollie Ryder, in 1917. Rollie Ryder, having grown up with a number of stepfathers, suffered an identity crisis of sorts as a young married man. He married under the surname of "Ritter," a commonly encountered misspelling of his first stepfather's last name "Rieder." One of the witnesses to his marriage was his mother, "Bertha Ritter," the name she often reverted to between marriages.

Rollie Joseph Ryder, Sr.

After Rollie married, and his mother had passed away, he and his young wife resided with his aunt and uncle, Edward Emil and Lavina Veatrice (Daugherty) Schrader. Lavina was Bertha's youngest sibling and only sister, and although eight years Bertha's junior, she was only nine years older than her nephew. In 1918, Rollie registered for the draft under the name "Robert Joseph Schrader" as a resident of Kalamazoo with his wife Emily living at 812 North Pitcher Street, although he was not living with her. He was away from home working as a janitor for the Michigan Reformatory in Ionia, Michigan. Although this looks innocently like Robert/Rollie had found work away from home, in reality he was imprisoned at the reformatory in Ionia for car theft, the result of a joy ride in a vehicle he took without permission in 1918. This was not just an innocent prank gone badly. Robert/Rollie had already had numerous run-ins with the law, mostly regarding theft of scrap metal from his various places of employment that he then tried selling to other businesses.

In 1919, "Emily Schrader" is living at the same Kalamazoo address as Edward E. and Lavina Schrader, with no Robert/Rollie. He was likely still in prison, as his sentence delivered on 20 August 1918 in Kalamazoo was for imprisonment for a period of six months to five years. But by 1920, both couples had moved to 3 Matthews Court in Grand Rapids, Kent County, Michigan, where Rollie is again identified as "Robert Schrader." The families were both enlarging. Rollie and Emily had two children under the age of two, Helen and Robert; while Edward and Lavina (Daugherty) Schrader had three children of their own. Edward was a core maker at an iron foundry, while Rollie was a delivery man.

Emily (Scharich) Ryder with daughter, Helen

By 1921, both the Schrader and the Ryder families had again moved together, this time to Dowagiac, Cass County, Michigan, Rollie's place of birth. And although Rollie's father and paternal relatives were never completely out of his life, perhaps coming back to his roots allowed him to embrace his Ryder surname. The Ryders and Schraders would forever be deeply intertwined, as they again both moved to Niles, Michigan, around 1926. By the early 1930s, the Edward Schrader family lived at 943 Pine Street in Niles, while the Rollie Ryder family lived at 957 Pine Street in Niles. Separating them was just one house: 951 Pine Street. This house was inhabited by Rollie's uncle, Albert Daugherty, and his grandparents, John Henry and Emma Augusta (Jonas) Daugherty.

The family of Rollie Joseph and Emily (Scharich) Ryder would continue to grow while they remained at this Pine Street address. Eight children were born to them between 1918 and 1942. This was the place Rollie called home when he died on 25 September 1957. His widow, Emily, outlived him by many years, dying in Niles on 30 May 1991.

Of their eight children, only the youngest survives today. Kenneth Eugene Ryder was the man who held the key to my grandfather's identity. And it was his DNA that would bring me closer to that name. It was his test results I waited impatiently for to determine where I fit into this convoluted network of Ryders and Scharichs and Daughertys.

A Fork In The Road

Kenneth Eugene Ryder, c1959
Niles, Michigan

On 27 March 2014, I received my DNA results for Paul Aaron Robinson, of Smiths Grove, Kentucky. And just like every time before, and every time to come, as I hit "Return" to see the statistical comparison of DNA from the immediate target person to my mother, my heart races, my cheeks flush, and I can feel the metallic taste of adrenalin surging through my entire being. I desperately want to see the results, and yet I also feel like squinting my eyes, because like a gruesome slasher film, I don't want to see it either. And every time I feel somewhat like I want to vomit.

Paul Aaron Robinson and my mother Carol Sue Crumet shared absolutely no DNA in common with each other. Zero. None. Zilch.

Although disappointed, I wasn't entirely surprised. The Ryder side of the family had been local to the vicinity my mother was born since the turn of the century. The Robinsons were recent southern transplants. But since my mother had several genetic matches with people whose ancestry reached back to Texas, Alabama, Tennessee, Georgia, and the Carolinas, I had to consider a southern connection like the Robinson family. Up until this time, I had no identifiable ancestors in the deep south. And since it was a 50:50 Ryder:Robinson toss up, the first taker got the DNA test. The fork in the road had been encountered, and the road sign now said RYDER.

Presuming my initial hypothesis was sound, Nora Lee (Robinson) Ryder was not the vessel from which Brian Ryder and Briana Rieman got their DNA in kind with my mother. It likely came from her husband, Rollie Joseph Ryder, Jr. And as mentioned before, I had already reached out to Rollie's brother Kenneth Eugene Ryder with no response.

I had not actively chased Ken Ryder, nor had I even sent a second email. Once Paul Robinson agreed to be tested, I figured I would just sit and wait. Hey, I am not a full-time veterinarian anymore. I chase dead people for a living now. This means that gleefully handing out autosomal DNA tests at $100 apiece willy-nilly to all who may hold the answers to my plight is no longer within my budget. I have established in previous posts that I am not a patient person. But unfortunately I have to waylay expediency and immediacy for cost effectiveness.

But it was now apparent that I needed the saliva of Kenneth Eugene Ryder immediately, and I wasted no time in obtaining it.

I had no idea what to expect from Kenny. Although he was Brian Ryder's great-uncle, he was roughly the same age as Brian's father. Brian had indicated that he had never known Kenny, and that his father had not spoken to him in quite some time. Briana Rieman indicated that from her family's discussion, she thought Ken Ryder was in jail.

It was a logical assumption.

Kenneth Eugene Ryder was born in Niles, Michigan, in 1942, the youngest child of Rollie Joseph Ryder, Sr., and his wife, Emily (Scharich) Ryder. His mother was forty-two years old at his birth, and his eldest sister was just a few weeks shy of her twenty-fifth birthday with children of her own. Kenny grew up on Pine Street in Niles, Michigan, surrounded by relatives, having more in common with his same-age nieces and nephews than with his much older siblings.

Kenny's father, Rollie Ryder Sr., died when Kenny was fourteen years old. And perhaps the lack of a father, and a tired widowed mother who had raised eight children, contributed to Kenny's propensity for trouble. Or maybe he was just a teenager that loved the rush of danger. But the photograph above of teenage Kenny Ryder shows a young man quite confident and sure of himself. His first brush with the law came at the age of seventeen, when he unlawfully drove away in an automobile that was not his. While waiting for sentencing, he was arrested again with two other teenagers for entering a vacant house and vandalizing it. In return, Kenny got two-years' probation and a slew of fines.

Although a lot of things can be attributed to the stupidity of youth, Kenny Ryder needed to grow up, because shortly after his eighteenth birthday, he got married and started a family.

But marriage and children didn't have a calming or settling effect on Kenny. A six-month jail sentence for unlawfully using an auto in 1964, was followed rapidly by a four-to-ten-years sentence in 1965 for burglarizing a gun shop in Niles with a buddy. He was divorced in 1967, and out of jail by 1969 when he was arrested again with two escaped convicts from Florida. A handful of other brushes with the law continued to be part of Ken Ryder's life through the 1970s.

Ken Ryder, 2011

This was the man whose DNA held the answers I was looking for. This was the man I needed to bend to the desperate pleas of a stranger.

It was apparent by now that Ken Ryder had a Facebook account, but he seldom used it. The message I sent to him on February 24 had gone unread. As mentioned previously, I personally find the written word far more powerful than the spoken word. This may not be true for everyone, but when writing, I can clarify complex issues, summarize information, and make requests clearly. When speaking, my brain works faster than my mouth. What usually spews forth is a lot of nonsense.

But three days after my negative results from Paul Robinson, I picked up the phone and called Ken Ryder seeking his DNA. I was buoyed by the ease and enthusiasm in which Paul Robinson and his son had responded, hoping even an ex-convict could be softened by my search for a missing father and grandfather. But what if his rough youthful exploits and legal wranglings of years past had produced a man in his seventies bitter with the world around him? There was only one way to find out. I dialed.

Ken answered the phone immediately, and I explained the situation as best as I could, briefly and succinctly. I presumed that a cold call from a person seeking your DNA could quickly be met with a dial tone, so I laid out all the facts as quickly as possible.

The man that responded to my breathless, garbled, angst-filled babbling was one of the most pleasant men I have had a phone conversation with in quite some time. And remember, as a veterinarian I spent a lot of time on a telephone responding to a whole variety of dilemmas and questions. Despite the hours logged on the device, I still always feel awkward on a telephone. I can lecture to hundreds, but I lose my words on a phone. Perhaps I rely too much on visual cues to gauge the response to my delivery, and more importantly to my requests. Was he lost and confused on the DNA issue? Did he fully comprehend what I wanted from him? A furrowed brow can tell a lot. A telephone silence is harder to interpret.

But Ken Ryder made it easy, and he agreed immediately to my request. And on the following day, 31 March 2014, I hopped in my car for the one-hour drive to Benton Harbor, Michigan, to retrieve some of Ken Ryder's saliva.

The man that greeted me was not a hardened criminal, but a warm, open man who laughed easily and welcomed me to his modest home. A kitten was climbing around in the garage knocking things off shelves which only made Ken laugh. We chatted about the Ryders and about his grandmother's siblings, the Daughertys, who all lived on Pine Street in Niles, Michigan, where he grew up. He reminisced about relatives long gone, and I filled him in on details he may have forgotten. Believe me, I had already committed many, many hours to Ryder genealogical research before this visit. We moved from chatting in the driveway to inside into the kitchen. As Ken reached for his cup of coffee, it was my cue to interject, "No drinking! You have to spit first!"

My Ryder DNA was secured.

Ken and I chatted for a short time longer. None of it was forced or uncomfortable or rushed. He wished me well in my search, and asked me to keep him updated regarding my findings. And although I had no idea how he would fall into my family tree, I really thought I'd enjoy Ken Ryder as a cousin, even if it were distantly.

Black sheep can still be warm and woolly and fuzzy.

And as so many future posts will end..... I then impatiently waited for results.

Soliciting DNA From Strangers

By the second quarter of 2014 there were an estimated 152 million daily active users from the United States and Canada on Facebook. This figure is rapidly approaching the half-way mark of the combined total population of both countries. For such obvious reasons, Facebook can be a genealogist's best friend. As mentioned in previous blogs, for a country so morbidly afraid of identity theft, we are conversely in the forefront of Internet exhibitionism. Our lives to the most intimate daily detail are presented for the world to see on a variety of social media outlets, and the electronic paper trail we leave behind us is profound. And, believe me, this is not a bad thing. I am a firm believer in living a transparent life, and I scoff at those who choose to hide behind the fear of malevolent people presumably peering over their shoulder. And for the desperate genealogist looking to "borrow" a tiny bit of someone's DNA, Facebook is the first place I am going to look.

Although 81-year-old men are not the largest demographic for Facebook, it did not take long to locate one of Paul Aaron Robinson's children online. Paul and Carol (Fedor) Robinson had raised a family of three boys and two girls in Niles, Michigan, but the adult children had scattered to all regions of the country by 2014. Paul Robinson himself had finally bid goodbye to the familiar surroundings of Niles, Michigan, in 2010 and had joined his son Robert "Bobby" Robinson in Smiths Grove, Kentucky.

71-year-old Kenneth Eugene Ryder was easier to track down. Living in Benton Harbor, Michigan, he had his own Facebook profile, although it appeared to be seldom utilized.

One of these two men presumably carried a significant amount of DNA in common with my mother, and by assessing their connection to Brian Ryder and Briana Rieman, I was now on a path of "targeted testing." But how does one ask a stranger for DNA?

Whereas I generally think a phone call is a more personal form of contact compared to the formal and emotionally distant email, it seemed more than likely that I would come across as a lunatic if I called someone out of the blue asking for their DNA. And even if I could get them to listen long enough to hear my reasoning, could I actually get them to understand enough of the science behind DNA to make my request seem valid? I have already indicated that many people who had already tested themselves through a number of DNA companies had very little concept of the interpretation of their results. So if neither of these men had never even heard of autosomal DNA testing, I needed to be able to reasonably explain it to them so that they understood the thinking behind my request.

And the only way that seemed plausible to do so was by email. At least with such a format it would allow both Ken and Bobby the ability to read my message, re-read it, digest it, research it, understand it, and formulate a response. But no matter how you try to slice it and dice it, explaining why they are the person you need DNA from, why you need it from them particularly, what it will tell you, and how the science of DNA analysis can tell you that information is no small feat.

So on 24 February 2014, I sent two emails via Facebook (which kindly asks you for a dollar per message to send to someone you are not currently friends with). One email went to Bobby Robinson, son of Paul Robinson, asking for his father's help in locating my missing grandfather. The other email went to Ken Ryder directly.

"This is going to sound like an awfully odd email, but please bear with me. I am going to ask you a favor, but you need to understand where I am coming from, who I am, and why this is important to me. So it gets a little technical..."

From there the email continued for another nine paragraphs explaining my hunt for my missing maternal grandfather, the science of autosomal DNA testing and how you inherit it from your ancestors, the "numbers game" and the percentages that indicate your relationships via your results, the previous test results obtained from Brian Ryder and Briana Rieman and how their relationship to them makes them candidates to test, and then the begging part.

"I need you/your father to spit in a tube. That simple. I am therefore asking you to be a helpful part of a family detective story. By all means, if this is a bit overwhelming or you have questions, I am free to discuss this by any format in which you are comfortable. This would mean the world to me, and definitely to my mother."

This was followed by every conceivable way to find me, learn about me, contact me, or otherwise quiz me about who the hell I was and why I was begging for personal genetic information.

It took exactly forty-seven minutes for Bobby Robinson to reply.

"Hi Michael, give me a few days or so to present this to my parents here. I will show dad the info on my laptop as soon as I get time to do so, but I WILL present it to him ASAP!"

Twenty-four hours later:

"Dad says he has no problem with your request, just let us know how to proceed."

Frankly, I was unprepared and shockingly excited for such an immediate response. I didn't even have a spare 23andMe test kit to send that quickly (a detail that is no longer a problem, as there is ALWAYS a spare lurking on my desk at all times now). On 6 March 2014, an autosomal DNA test was sent to Paul Robinson in Smiths Grove, Kentucky.

Ken Ryder never responded to my email.

And then all I could do was wait. Again.

Brian, Briana, the Ryders, and the Robinsons

Briana Rieman, 2014
Great-granddaughter of Rollie J. and Nora L.
(Robinson) Ryder
(photo courtesy of Briana Rieman)

Briana Rieman responded on 28 February 2014, about two weeks after my initial email. Although she had little to add to her family history, she confirmed that she and Brian Ryder were cousins. It was at a family gathering that both had discussed doing a DNA test to take a peek into their shared ancestry. Knowing only that she had a strong German background, and a supposed touch of Native American blood reported further back in time by her grandmother, Briana purchased a 23andMe test kit for both her boyfriend and herself.

Briana Gabrielle Rieman was a twenty-five-year-old southern California native studying biomedical engineering. Although I was correct in assuming her father's Niles, Michigan, roots, Briana had never spent an appreciable time in the Midwest. Her father, Stephen, while in Hong Kong with the Navy, met Briana's mother, Ginger, who was visiting there as a foreign exchange art student. That meeting was followed by letter-writing which was followed by marriage in southern California, where Stephen Rieman was then stationed. Briana is their eldest daughter.

And although Briana was one generation removed from her cousin, Brian Ryder, and probably several generations removed from a common ancestor with my sixty-seven-year-old mother, she shared more DNA with my mother than Brian did. She shared 0.89% of her total DNA with my mother to Brian's 0.52%. But a facet of this number game that fascinated me was that Briana's and Brian's match to me was 0.70% and 0.51% respectively. The point being that from all the jumbling and recombining of DNA that occurred between my parents to produce me, the bulk of my mother's paternal DNA shared with these two people was also given to me almost in full. I had plenty of my missing grandfather's DNA in me and a similarly strong connection to these new far-flung cousins.

Of course, the most profound ramification of the match between Brian Ryder, Briana Rieman, and my mother, was that they most likely all shared the same common ancestor. And the fact that their families hailed from nearby Niles, Michigan, made it all that more exciting. I was picking up more breadcrumbs on that trail to my missing grandfather!

But upon closer inspection, there was a problem. My mother's matching DNA segments with Brian Ryder occurred on Chromosomes 3 and 11. Her matching DNA segments with Briana were on Chromosomes 1, 4, and 17. So although my mother matched the both of them, they did not match each other... at least not at these specific locations.

What is the significance of this? Previously I discussed the need for a triangulation to help me in my search. A triangulation would include three (or more) people who have matching DNA segments at the same location. These three people would therefore presumably have the same common ancestor who gave them all the same chunk of DNA. And although Brian Ryder and Briana Rieman were known first cousins, once removed (and the percentage DNA they shared with each other confirmed such), they did not match my mother at the same locations. This was not a triangulation.

And so what does this mean? It could mean two things: firstly, there was so much DNA upstream from a common ancestor that each measured participant got a little bit of something genetically from that ancestor, but each got something different. Or...

... secondly, that my mother was genetically related to Brian Ryder through a common ancestor, and she was also genetically related to Briana Rieman through a completely different common ancestor. This would make interpreting these results far more difficult, and it would subsequently dilute my excitement for finding these two people.

I had no other choice but to follow the first assumption. It was the only lead I had to go on.

Rollie Joseph Ryder and Nora Lee (Robinson) Ryder, center,
holding their great-granddaughter, Briana Rieman, flanked by their
daughter, Linda, and their grandson, Stephen, and his wife Ginger, 1988.
(photo courtesy of Briana Rieman)

The common ancestors for Brian Ryder and Briana Rieman where Rollie Joseph Ryder and his wife, Nora Lee Robinson. Rollie Ryder, born in 1924 in Dowagiac, Cass County, Michigan, was the fourth child of Rollie Joseph Ryder, Sr., and his wife, Emily Scharich. Dowagiac is a small city incorporated in 1848, which lies about twenty-five miles north of Elkhart and South Bend, Indiana; and about fifteen miles northeast of Niles, Michigan. The Ryder family and a variety of their relatives and in-laws had established themselves in this area by the turn of the century.

Rollie Ryder had moved to Niles, Michigan, and in 1943 at the age of eighteen, he married sixteen-year-old Nora Robinson. They raised two children in Niles: John (Brian Ryder's father) and Linda (Briana Rieman's grandmother). Unlike Rollie's local roots, Nora was a Tennessee transplant, having come to Niles as a ten-year-old. Although many of her southern kin also made the migration north, there were far more relatives who remained in Tennessee and in the southern United States.

If my mother shared DNA with Brian and Briana, she also presumably shared a significant amount of DNA with their common source. And that common source was either Rollie Ryder or Nora Robinson.

But which one was it? The strong local geographic connection made the Ryder DNA seem the better candidate; but the obvious connection to many unknown individuals in the DNA databases with southern ancestry made Robinson DNA a strong consideration as well. And what did it matter anyway? Rollie Joseph Ryder passed away in Niles in 2006 at the age of 81 years just three days short of his sixty-third wedding anniversary. His widow, Nora Lee Robinson Ryder, outlived him by five years, but she too was gone, dying in Niles in 2011. If they shared DNA with my mother, the point was moot. They were not around to be tested.

Was my mother a Ryder or a Robinson?
Brian's and Briana's connection is shown, 
as is the presence of the two men living
who could supply me with answers.

But, as luck would have it, there was a singular Ryder and a singular Robinson who could help me. Although Rollie and Nora were gone, they both had one remaining younger sibling living who held the key to my further search within their cells. There was one Ryder and one Robinson I needed to find, but only one of these men likely shared the much larger quantity of DNA in common with my mother.

The next step was simple. Locate the current whereabouts of 81-year-old Paul Robinson and 71-year-old Ken Ryder, explain to a couple of elderly strangers why you needed their help, ask them to spit into a test kit and freely give you a sample of their DNA, and walk away with a handshake and a smile.

Well, perhaps it was not that simple.

But I was hot on a trail. And these were small details I would not let deter me from my quest.

I had a grandfather to find.

Disappointments and Surprises

I checked my 23andMe email several times daily after contacting that mysterious cousin whose results appeared so tantalizingly close to my mother's on 13 February 2014. And every day I'd get the same message from my mother: "Anything new on my daddy? Anything?"

And Mr. More-Than-Two-Percent failed to respond.

Since 23andMe utilizes their own proprietary email system integrated within their site, there was no way I could track this man down by an email address. There was no indication as to where he lived. All I knew was that he was male, and to what paternal and maternal haplogroups he belonged. Even for the most skilled genealogist, that just ain't gonna cut it for reasonably identifying information. And because 23andMe only allows you to contact someone who has not responded only once monthly, and then limits that to three total emails, I used up my six opportunities to contact him. I did so three times from my mother's account. And I did so three times from my own account, as I too shared DNA with him. 

Nothing.

So as I struggled to find other ways to identify my missing grandfather, this close match taunted me every time I reviewed the presumed relatives in my mother's DNA matches. That anonymous male cousin silently mocked me, daring me to keep looking while he quietly held valuable knowledge that could have been the beginning of the bread crumb trail I needed to follow directly to my grandfather's identity.

Who spends a hundred dollars on a DNA test and ignores everything about it the day the results arrive? Apparently a lot of people. Response rates for DNA matches are miserable, even when the urgency of the situation is explained. And genealogists will argue that some sites are better than others:

"23andMe caters mostly to those interested in medical issues." 

"FamilyTreeDNA is used by more serious genealogists."  

"AncestryDNA has name recognition and more people testing who have genealogical knowledge."

Sorry folks.... regardless of the platform used for testing or the means of contact, replies were the exception, not the rule. And as mentioned in previous posts, mastering the mathematics and concepts and science of autosomal DNA usage as it relates to genealogy has a steep learning curve. Many people who did respond failed to understand how the connection worked. One woman offered to send me a picture of her ex-husband to see if I saw a family resemblance because my mother shared 0.2% of her DNA with her daughter. Another woman refused to reveal any information about her father because she insisted her autosomal DNA results had absolutely nothing to do with him, and sending me such information would be nonsense.

I just needed a lead. A bite. Something to narrow my field of research. I scoured my mother's list of matches for the one person who shared DNA with her and not with her sister, her brother, and her niece. I needed a person who was most obviously my mother's paternal relative who had useful information to share.

Among the other new matches that appeared with Mr. More-Than-Two-Percent in that list of DNA relatives on 13 February 2014 were two people who appeared initially to fit my much needed criteria. Through a tedious switching back-and-forth between accounts, I could see that these matches were new additions to both mine and my mother's lists of relatives, but they did not appear on any of the accounts of Ted, Dianne, or Michelle. These appeared to be relatives of my mother's missing father, and not of Helen's. And both of them, wonderfully, had not privatized their accounts and had allowed their names to appear with their results.

Briana Rieman shared three matching segments of DNA with my mother and a total of 0.89%. Brian Ryder share two matching segments of DNA with my mother and a total of 0.52%. These aren't exactly results that sent me into a fit of dancing euphoria like I had done previously with Mr. More-Than-Two-Percent, but they are also not numbers to dismiss as insignificant either. I jokingly tell classes that hear my ramblings about DNA that anyone who matches you above one percent should be added to your Christmas Card List. And with 90% of my mother's DNA relatives matching at 0.35% or less, these were people whose results I needed to probe a little more deeply.

Both of them were sent the standardized, "HELP! The identity of my mother's father is unknown!" message on the same day I sent Mr. More-Than-Two-Percent his still unanswered first message.

Brian Ryder, 2014
Grandson of Rollie J. and Nora L. (Robinson) Ryder
(photo courtesy of Brian Ryder)

Brian Ryder was the first to respond, doing so on the same day he got my message.

Brian had gotten tested through 23andMe mostly out of curiosity of his ancestry, and partially for any knowledge of health concerns. Although he knew his great-grandmother was Volga German, there was little concrete knowledge of the remainder of his ancestry. Growing up, he was told that his grandmother was half Native American. He remained skeptical, as Grandma Nora had red hair. His doubts became certainties when his results indicated he was the product of 100% European stock.

Brian Joseph Ryder was a thirty-two-year-old fine arts major, recently married, and living in Chicago. Working in e-commerce, he was seduced by the weather and lifestyle of southern California while visiting his brother-in-law in Los Angeles. Within months, his wife Sarah secured a job transfer to San Diego, and they left the Midwest winters behind them.

But what made Brian Ryder special to me, beyond the tiny amount of DNA he shared with my mother and me, was that Brian grew up in Niles, Michigan.

Niles, Michigan, lies just north of the state line from South Bend, Indiana, and just twenty miles to the northwest of Elkhart, Indiana, where my grandmother Helen (Timmons) Miller lived in 1946 when my mother was conceived. All localities lie within the same metropolitan area. And although the tiny amount of DNA Brian shared with my mother meant he likely shared a distant set of great-great-great-grandparents in common with my mother, the proximity of his family to mine was far too tempting and alluring to easily ignore. It appeared that I had stumbled upon a single breadcrumb upon which to lead me down the trail to my grandfather.

But which of Brian's thirty-two great-great-great-grandparents did he share in common with my mother?

With the information Brian had given me regarding his father and mother, I frantically started sketching out his family tree. In this tree were his grandparents, Rollie Joseph Ryder (1924-2006) and Nora Lee Robinson Ryder (1926-2011) who lived their entire married lives in Niles, Michigan.

As I fleshed out both Brian's maternal and paternal lines, I started seeing what I could find out about my mother's other close match, Briana Rieman. She had yet to respond to my email, but since I knew her name, I could start to Internet-fish for information. Although it may cause some people a bit of dismay, a good researcher can find a significant amount of information about living people online. We live in a world gripped with fear over identity theft, and we shred every document we throw away into a million pieces. But we leave more than just a paper trail. We leave an enormous Internet trail that any good researcher can follow.

And what I found out about Briana Rieman was that she was the daughter of a man named Stephen Rieman. And while I was checking her out and waiting for her reply at the same time I was working on Brian Ryder's family tree, I located the obituary of Brian's grandmother, Nora Lee (Robinson) Ryder.

Among her surviving grandsons were Brian Ryder and Stephen Rieman.

Brian and Briana were first cousins, once removed.