Hoosier Daddy? ... Revisited

"Mother's Baby, Father's Maybe."

This is the unfortunate mantra that disturbingly lingers in the backs of the minds of every good genealogist. In the past, we had only the paper trail and the integrity and morality of our hopefully monogamous and faithful ancestors to ensure our genealogies were correct. Now in the 21st century, we have DNA analysis to force post-mortem confessions, but not necessarily answers, from our long-dead forebears.

As I have stated before... life is messy. And our ancestors, so staid and proper and stone-faced in those old family photographs crammed between the yellowing pages of old photo albums stored in the deep recesses of neglected closets, hot attics, and damp basements, were just as human as their descendants today.

One only has to turn on the television and scan the tabloid shows reveling in the scandalous stories of illegitimacy and poking fun at the game of "guess the father's identity." Just this week it was revealed that the remains of Richard III discovered in 2012 bear a different Y-DNA signature than the male descendants of that line living today. And since Y-DNA is passed relatively unchanged from father to son, it means that somewhere in the royal line before or after Richard III, the king's consort had visitors to her bedchambers that His Majesty would have vehemently objected to.

The existence of this blog is predicated on a random, and likely brief, dalliance that resulted in the life of my mother; and therefore in my own existence. Although her story has definitely had its own unique twists and turns, in a larger sense it is a story as old as the human race.

And such is the story of the niece of Russell Tom Hath that I met on the afternoon of 3 September 2014.

We agreed to meet at a small diner-style restaurant located within the Farmer's Market in South Bend, Indiana. I came prepared with a rolled-up scroll detailing the Daugherty family tree showing where this woman fit into the branches and where my mother might likely fit. I also had my computer ready, as well as the photo of my grandmother from 1946 that helped put a human face to my dilemma. And of course, I had a 23andMe autosomal DNA test kit wedged into my computer bag as well.

The woman I met was a slight woman just two years younger than my mother. Her movements were rapid and animated, and I wasn't entirely sure if she was agitated or excited about this odd meeting. She was dressed professionally and neatly, and her blond hair was very precisely and neatly coiffed. This was a bothersome detail amongst the remaining genetic candidates for my grandfather that gave me significant pause. Both the living Hath relatives and the Schrader relatives (at least those I could stalk on Facebook) were decidedly blond. My mother was as bald as a cue ball until well into her toddlerhood, and when her hair did finally come in, it certainly was most decidedly of a golden - almost platinum - hue. But it darkened rapidly with age, and the mother I remembered growing up had long, thick hair of dark brown. Were this lifelong blondes really her relations?

Russell Hath's niece reviewed my material and listened to me ramble with less enthusiasm than I had hoped, seeming alternately bored, confused, or bothered. She listened to me spout the terminology of the cousinhoods, and of half-cousinhoods, and of generations removed, and of Daugherty relatives long-since dead with what I perceived was a bit of mistrust. She finally confided in me that even after agreeing to meet, she wasn't entirely sure that this wasn't just a big scam. After all, I presented myself as a professional genealogist asking for DNA. She was expecting a sales pitch. I had never stopped to think that my painstakingly crafted Begging-For-DNA letter could be viewed as an advertisement. My reasoning for explaining my role as a genealogist and directing people to my website gave me transparency and credibility. I made a mental note to hone my previously perceived well-honed letter.

Sales pitch or not, Daughertys and Rieders and Haths be damned, she had one burning question that brought her to agree to a DNA test and to our meeting on that late-summer afternoon.

She wanted to know who her father was.

I knew my mother's identity crisis wasn't unique, but I was shocked at how many people I found along this journey asking the very same question. I had contacted a young man in his 20s from the 23andMe database who had a tiny match with my mother's presumed paternal DNA early in my search, only for him to reply he could not help me, as he took the test to find his parents. He was adopted as an infant. I couldn't help myself but to follow up with an email asking him what he did know. Surprisingly, his birth and adoption were local, and a relative in his adoptive family worked at the hospital in which he was born, and gave him the names of his biological parents years earlier. He told me that unfortunately nobody had ever been able to find them with this information.

How could I turn THAT challenge down?

After asking him for the names, and locating a legal surname change for his father, and a simple misspelling that had persistently thrown him off track on his mother's surname, I presented him with the names, addresses, and identities of his parents and two full siblings he never knew existed. He was dumfounded, shocked, and ecstatic.

Why couldn't it be that easy for me?

Or maybe it could be more like the story of the man who approached me with DNA questions who heard about my chosen profession at a social gathering. When his dear sweet frail grandmother was on her death bed, she gathered her three daughters together to tell them she had no idea who their fathers were. Perhaps it was the only husband and father they had ever known, but it was likely not. She calmly regaled her shocked daughters with stories of the Depression and the need to take in boarders to make ends meet. And when there is no extra money for frivolity and entertainment, and nobody is working, what else was there to do to pass the time?

You had sex. Lots of sex. With the boarders. With your spouse. Everybody consented. Nobody cared. And over the course of time, three girls were born. And with this jaw-dropping revelation, grandma promptly died.

"Mother's Baby, Father's Maybe."

But every story is unique and nuanced. And the story of Russell Hath's niece was no exception.

Mildred Hath was born in 1928 in Kalamazoo, Michigan, the daughter of Frank Hath and Catherine Rieder, whom I discussed previously. Mildred was just a small child when her parents separated and her mother left Kalamazoo for South Bend, Indiana, in the company of Jack Dorn. Her teenage years and her entry into womanhood occurred after the family moved to Niles, Michigan, and on to Pine Street surrounded by her extended Daugherty relations. And it was in Niles, Michigan, that she met John Charles Reum, he having recently returned to his home town after spending over six years with the United States Navy.

Mildred Hath, twenty years old and three months pregnant, married John Charles Reum in Newport, Kentucky, on 12 February 1949. Why they traveled to the Kentucky town just across the Ohio River facing Cincinnati is unknown. Six months later, the woman presently seated before me in a bustling mid-afternoon farmer's market was born to John Charles and Mildred (Hath) Reum. But was she really his daughter?

Did I mention life is messy?

John Charles Reum (1917-1951)

John Charles Reum was born in Niles, Michigan, on 28 November 1917, and had enlisted into the United States Navy long before the United States had entered World War II. His military career began with his enlistment in Detroit on 21 June 1939 for a four-year stint in the armed forces. After briefly stationed on the U.S.S. Pyro (AE-1), he was formerly transferred to the U.S.S. Bernadou (DD-153) from the Philadelphia Receiving Station on 16 November 1939. Prior to this country's entry into the war, the Bernadou mostly escorted convoys working in Neutrality Patrols. 

A little known fact regarding the second World War was that the British invaded and occupied Iceland in 1940. Although a neutral country with no defense force, the Kingdom of Iceland was still strongly tied to its mother country, Denmark, from whom it had gained independence in 1918. When Germany invaded Norway and Denmark in 1940, it was necessary for England to maintain control over Iceland and its strategic positioning in the defense of the British Isles. In July 1941, as more British forces were needed on the European continent, Great Britain passed responsibility of Iceland to the United States. John C. Reum was aboard the Bernadou as it made several trips back and forth from Newfoundland bringing Marines to the island country through the fall of 1942.

But this was wartime, and John Reum and the Bernadou were destined for more than just convoy duty. After leaving Norfolk, Virginia, on 25 October 1942, the ship participated in the invasion of North Africa the following month, which garnered the ship and crew a Presidential Unit Citation for landing assault troops inside the harbor of Safi, French Morocco. The Bernadou thereafter continued her convoy duties between the United States and Africa through 1942, and then later to ports in the Mediterranean in 1943, participating in the occupation of Sicily in July, and the landings in Salerno in September. While at sea in June 1943, John Charles Reum agreed to extend his enlistment by another two years, having achieved the rank of Chief Machinist's Mate.

Returning to the United States in December 1943, the Bernadou remained stationed on the east coast for the winter months. It was while in port in Portland, Maine, that John met twenty-one-year-old June Haley. The youngest of thirteen children from Rangley, Maine, June had moved to Portland to join two older sisters after her graduation from high school. The dashing young sailor and the enrapt girl in port had their whirlwind romance, and John Reum was back on the Bernadou and out to sea. Realizing she was pregnant, June and John married in a brief ceremony while he was in port in Boston, Massachusetts, on 12 April 1944. John resumed his duty on the Bernadou, and June returned to Portland, Maine. Their daughter, Judith Ann, was born in Portland seven months later.

John Charles Reum was transferred to the U.S.S. San Marcos (LSD-25) upon its commission in April 1945 and participated in the delivery of cargo boats in the Panama Canal, Pearl Harbor, Guam, and Okinawa. John was honorably discharged on 6 October 1945.

Waiting for John in Maine was a wife he hardly knew and a daughter soon to turn one year old. Perhaps he reconsidered his role as a husband and a father within a family in which he knew so little, or perhaps June was opposed to moving to Niles, Michigan, away from her large family in New England. After his discharge, John Reum did not reunite with his young family. He went home to Michigan, and his wife and daughter moved to June's childhood home of Rangley, Maine, to live with her sister Stella, where she took work as a bank teller. John Reum immediately filed for divorce in Niles, Michigan, in November 1945. Perhaps there was discussion of reconciliation, as the divorce proceeding were stalled, but they resumed shortly thereafter, with John and June formally divorcing in Cass County, Michigan, Circuit Court on 3 April 1946.

Less than three years later he was married to a pregnant Mildred Hath. Mildred gave birth to her daughter, the woman now willing to offer me her DNA to help solve my mother's mystery, in August 1949.

This newborn girl, in the eyes of the law, was the legal heir of John Charles Reum. But her mother, Mildred, had another story.

Apparently John Reum maintained contact with his first wife and daughter in Maine, and he visited them on the east coast and discussed a reconciliation. Perhaps it was this event that spurred Mildred to file for divorce from him just a year after they were married. Or perhaps, as Mildred told her daughter later, John Reum only married her because he felt sorry for her being young, single, and pregnant. After all, he had previous experience in bringing about this condition in young, single women, and perhaps his marriage to Mildred was borne out of guilt. But as told later by Mildred, the child's real father was interested in marrying her and raising their child together. And John Reum's guilt had forced him to reevaluate the fate of his first wife and daughter.

John Charles Reum and Mildred Hath Reum were formally divorced on 9 October 1950. At the same time, John's first wife June and daughter Judith arrived by train in Niles, Michigan, and moved in with John's family. John and June remarried on 19 May 1951 in Grand Haven, Michigan. Mildred Hath Reum took her baby girl and married the presumed father, Elvin C. "Al" Gropp, on 14 April 1951, in Walkerton, Indiana, with whom she would have two more children. The daughter born to Mildred during her marriage to John Reum in 1949 would never carry his surname.

Mildred (Hath) Reum Gropp would live to the age of seventy-nine, dying in 2008 surrounded by her three children, nine grandchildren, and four great-grandchildren. John Charles Reum was not so lucky. He died of a heart attack at the age of thirty-three years, just eight days after his remarriage to his first wife June. She raised their daughter alone in Holland, Michigan, never remarrying.

So while awaiting lunch, as this smartly dressed woman excused herself to go to the bathroom and spit into a plastic DNA test kit specimen tube, I was one tiny step closer to obtaining some Daugherty DNA to finally identify my mother's father, and she was one giant step closer to determining if she was a Reum or a Gropp.

And this time it was not lost on either party to heed a valuable lesson I had learned late in the game. When you're considering Strukel or Miller, or Reum or Gropp, always remember there is a third option.

None of the above.

The Rieders and the Haths

Catherine Rieder (1903-1968) and Frank Hath (1895-1971)
Photo likely taken shortly after their marriage in Kalamazoo, Michigan

In the past, I had to assess the general value of those whose autosomal DNA I chose to test while searching for my mother's missing father. While it would have been more time-saving to skip about with a basket full of DNA tests tossing them to all persons who might yield information, the unfortunate reality is that my budget did not warrant such behavior. But at this juncture, I knew by crunching the numbers associated with genetic mathematics that my mother, Carol Sue (Miler) (DePrato) Lacopo Crumet, was a descendant of John Henry Daugherty and his wife, Emma Augusta Jonas. And I knew from the numbers that she was either the daughter of one of three Schrader brothers, or she was the daughter of Russell Tom Hath (see family tree at Hoosier Daddy?: The Daugherty Candidates).

So now was the time to start contacting multiple people for testing rather than one at a time. I was down to the wire, and I was willing to test any and all persons who stepped forward first. And although the finely-tuned email begging for DNA went out to a handful of living relatives during the third and fourth weeks of August, 2104, the one who most readily replied was the one relative of Russell Tom Hath.

As discussed previously, everything calculated and predicted thus far hinged on the DNA results of Kenneth Eugene Ryder. My mother was most likely his second cousin, or his half-first cousin, once removed. If Russell Tom Hath was my mother's father, it would fulfill the criteria for the latter relationship. This would make my mother the great-granddaughter of Bertha (Daugherty) Ryder Rieder Prestige Merrifield, whom we have already discussed (see Hoosier Daddy?: The Ryders, the Scharichs, and the Daughertys).

Bertha's first-born son, Rollie, was born in 1899, from her first short marriage to Eugene Joseph Ryder that ended in divorce in 1901. Rollie's youngest son, Ken Ryder, was the man who thus far matched my mother the closest.

On 13 November 1901, just days after her divorce was final, Bertha (Daugherty) Ryder married Charles Thomas Rieder. Bertha had just turned 20 years old, and was thus beginning her second marriage. Her husband, Charles, was twenty-five years old, previously unmarried, and the son of Swiss immigrants, Daniel and Catharine (Dietsche) Rieder. Although born in Angola, Indiana; Charles Rieder had grown up in Kalamazoo, Michigan.

Daniel Rieder (1877-1928) and Charles Rieder (1876-1944)
Kalamazoo, Michigan

Neither party brought with them the knowledge or experience of a happy home life, and both were ill-equipped at making a marriage work. Bertha, divorced and with a toddler, was born of a family marred by abject poverty and alcoholism. Charles, one of two sons who survived amongst the six children born to his parents, was raised surrounded by mental disease. The sanity of Charles's only surviving brother, Daniel Rieder Jr., was in question even as a teenager, when a public insanity hearing was held in Kalamazoo in 1897. Although found sane by this hearing, the following year he was taken to the Michigan Asylum for the Insane when he declared "that all the Swiss should be killed and he proposed starting in on his parents." (Kalamazoo Gazette, Saturday, 12 February 1898, page 1.) Although well enough to be living unhospitalized in the home of his parents at 418 East Frank Street in Kalamazoo in 1900, he was soon a full-time resident of the asylum, where he died in 1928.

The erratic behavior was not confined to Charles Rieder's brother either. Even his father who managed to work as a laborer and support his wife and two sons was prone to odd outbreaks. While Christmas shopping with his wife in 1898, the fifty-four year old man suddenly screamed, "They're after me!" and ran off. After his failure to return home immediately, the police became involved, and Daniel Rieder Sr. resurfaced late that night wet up to his knees. He explained that his feet were hot, and he stood in a creek for seven hours to cool them off.

So it is no wonder that the marriage of Bertha (Daugherty) Ryder and Charles Thomas Rieder was not a successful one. A daughter, Catherine, was born to them on 19 November 1903, but the couple separated shortly thereafter. In February 1905, Charles published notice that he would not be responsible for any debts incurred by his wife. After filing for divorce, yet reconciling shortly thereafter, in April of that same year Charles Rieder went to the John Daugherty residence on Ransom Street in Kalamazoo to fetch his wife who had failed yet again to come home. The ensuing loud and violent calamity resulted in the arrest of four men and two women of the extended Daugherty family for disorderly conduct.

Charles Rieder and his wife Bertha stayed married long enough to move together to the northern part of the state when Charles took work as a moulder in an iron foundry in Charlevoix County a few years later. By 1910, Charles and Bertha were living in East Jordan with children Rollie Ryder and Catherine Rieder, and Bertha's sister LaVina Daugherty. But the marriage was doomed, and Bertha returned to Kalamazoo leaving her husband in Charlevoix County. They were divorced by August 1914, when they both remarried.

Catherine Rieder was still a little girl when she left the home of her father and returned to Kalamazoo with her mother, but she grew up quickly, as members of the extended Daugherty clan learned to be self-sufficient early on. Her mother remarried twice more, when Catherine was ten and thirteen years old. But at the age of fourteen Catherine herself became a bride, marrying Frank Hath on 14 April 1918 in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Six months later, pregnant with her first child, her mother Bertha died, leaving her with the care of her three-year old half sister, Mary Prestige. Catherine was beset with the responsibilities of an adult long before her childhood was over.

Her husband, Frank Hath was twenty-three years old when he married teenager Catherine Rieder, who claimed to be eighteen on her marriage application. Like everyone else in the extended Daugherty family and those who married into it, he was a moulder, and he had come to Kalamazoo following work. Unlike the Daughertys, he was an immigrant. Frank Hath was born in 1895 in the vicinity of Gecse, Hungary, and had come this country in 1903 with his mother, Rozalia, and his siblings to join his father Dénes Hat, who had made them a home in New Brunswick, New Jersey, the year before. Although obviously of foreign birth, Frank circumvented the hassles associated with it and his father's lack of naturalization by claiming birth in New Brunswick, New Jersey. In an era of significantly less red tape than we are accustomed to presently, he easily got away with it.

Although this marriage too would end, like so many other marriages in the extended family, the Haths managed to create a more stable, solid environment for their growing family during their married years. Unlike the city hopping from one rental home to another of previous generations, Frank and Catherine owned their homes at 1136 North Clark Street, and then at 1206 Gull Street in Kalamazoo. They would welcome four children during their twelve year marriage: Daniel Kenneth Hath in 1919, Russell Tom Hath in 1924, Dorothy Marjory Hath in 1927, and Mildred Hath in 1928. The Haths maintained very close ties with their Daugherty relatives in Kalamazoo, as Catherine and her half-brother Rollie Ryder were barely a decade younger than their Daugherty aunts and uncles. Although both were newly married when their mother died in 1918, they were very much an extension of their Grandfather and Grandmother Daugherty's family.

Frank and Catherine never legally divorced, and they were still living together in Kalamazoo at the Gull Street address in April 1930. But they would forever separate shortly thereafter, and Catherine (Rieder) Hath would immediately "remarry" John Howard "Jack" Dorn in May 1930 and have two more sons: Jack in 1931, and Richard in 1936. The Dorns moved to South Bend, Indiana, by 1935, where they lived in a string of rental properties while Jack worked as a foundry worker. By 1940, the Dorns moved to Niles, Michigan, and eventually move to 936 Pine Street in Niles, which for all intents and purposes, was a street populated only by Daughertys and their descendants. In 1958, they moved to Cassopolis, Michigan, where Catherine died in 1968. John Henry "Jack" Dorn died two years later in a car accident outside Dowagiac, Michigan.

The sons of Catherine (Rieder) Hath Dorn were of the proper relationship level to be my mother's father. If so, it would make my mother a half-first cousin, once removed, of Kenneth Ryder and thus be mathematically compatible with the 4.26% DNA they shared in common. Luckily, only one of Catherine's children could be this man. Her two youngest sons would have been only fourteen and eight years old when my mother was conceived. Her eldest son, Daniel Kenneth Hath, had died in 1941 at the age of twenty-two years, unmarried, in Niles, Michigan, of meningitis.

The only person it could be was Russell Tom Hath, just twenty-one year old in the spring of 1946 when my mother was conceived.

Russell Tom Hath (1924-1965)

Unfortunately, Russell did not live long enough for a lengthy biography. The man my mother thought was her father for so many years, Frank Strukel, died of a heart attack at the age of forty-six. Clarence Ryder, whom I was previously certain was the man I was seeking, died of a heart attack at the age of forty-three. Russell Hath died of a heart attack at the age of forty-one.

I was bound and determined to give my mother hereditary heart disease.

Born in Kalamazoo, Michigan, on 2 July 1924, Russell Hath grew up in this city surrounded by his maternal relatives, his Hungarian paternal family all being in New Jersey. Not even six years old when his parents divorced, his later childhood and teenage years were spent in and around the Niles, Michigan, area with his mother, Catherine, and stepfather, Jack Dorn. And much like Frank Strukel and Clarence Ryder and every other young man of his generation, he enlisted in the armed services after the outbreak of World War II.

Russell Hath enlisted in the United State Marine Corps on 17 March 1943 at the age of eighteen. He was sent to the Recruit Depot in San Diego, California, and then spent the summer of 1943 at the Naval Air Technical Training Center in Norman, Oklahoma. Russell spent the bulk of his military career on a variety of bases in southern California, rising to the rank of Staff Sergeant by the beginning of 1946. After the end of World War II, Russell became a member of VMF(N)-541, or the Marine Night Fighter Squadron 541, stationed in Hopeh Province in China as a part of Operation Beleaguer. In addition to assisting in the repatriation of hundreds of thousands of Japanese and Koreans left on China's mainland after World War II, Operation Beleaguer also attempted unsuccessfully to mediate a peace between Nationalist and Communist China. Russell returned to San Diego, California, from China aboard the U.S.S. General George M. Randall on 27 April 1946. He was discharged shortly thereafter.

Upon returning to Niles, Michigan, Russell married Lee (Firnstahl) Wilson, a divorced woman five years his senior, on 30 May 1947. They divorced in 1950 with Russell charging her with cruelty. The following year he married Mary Ann (Stoddard) Avery, a divorced woman with an infant child whom he raised and who took his last name. Russell and Mary Ann thereafter became the parents of two children of their own: David in 1957, and Jeannine Marie in 1964. The couple had moved to South Bend, Indiana, shortly after their marriage, and Russell found work at the South Bend Lathe Company. Around midnight on 4 September 1965, Russell had a heart attack. He was dead before he reached Memorial Hospital in South Bend, barely a half-mile from his house. His little girl had just celebrated her first birthday six days previously. He was buried in Silverbrook Cemetery in Niles, Michigan, with the whole extended Daugherty clan.

As I looked into Russell Hath's past, I considered him lowest on the list of candidates for my missing grandfather. Only twenty-one when my mother was conceived, he was the youngest of those under consideration, when my grandmother would have been twenty-nine. Would a married woman approaching thirty be wooed by a man that young? Perhaps a dashing man in uniform, yes. Then again, Frank Strukel was only twenty-three when she met him during this same time period, and he became her second husband the following year.

More importantly, the Marine Corps muster rolls for Russell Hath made it seem unlikely that he was even in the area at the time my mother was conceived. If my mother was a routine pregnancy, as her birth certificate indicated, she would have been conceived in late March or early April, 1946. Although I had no concrete date for Russell's deployment to China, he was boarding a train at Nan Yuan Airfield in Peiping, China, on 10 April 1946, for his return trip to San Diego. It is doubtful that he was in the Elkhart, Indiana, area just weeks before to meet my grandmother and give life to my mother.

Although my mother's "Ancestry Composition" from 23andMe did not seem to fit a father who was half-Hungarian, it was tempting to think that her surprising 0.6% Asian & Native American component arose from the Asian history shared by the Magyars who were the original tribes that settled Hungary.

As stated at the beginning of this blog, I had put out my carefully worded email to several relatives of the Schraders AND the Haths, since I was down to the last of my mother's paternal candidates. Tragically, both of Russell Hath's children had died in 1981. His son, David, died of a heart attack at the age of twenty-three. His daughter, Jeannine, died of a congenital heart disease at the age of sixteen. So there were no potential half-siblings to test. But just like Clarence Ryder, Russell Hath left two sisters, who although both had also since passed away, they had left behind a total of eight nieces and nephews for Russell Hath that would be close relatives to test.

Since my suspicions for Russell Hath as my grandfather were slim, I only initially contacted one niece. But she responded to my Facebook message within four hours of its delivery on 31 August 2014. She was incredibly eager to help. Unlike the crazy waiting games with people in the past, this time I was the one to slow things down. After all, it was $100 per test, and I wanted to hear from the Schraders first, as they seemed a more likely group to be assessing and testing. But Russell's niece was adamant. She was ready to spit, and she repeatedly offered times and locations to meet. Even though my experiences with asking strangers to donate DNA had been generally good, I was taken aback by the earnestness of her appeals.

With no immediate meaningful response from the Schraders, I figured "What the hell?" I had already spent enough money and time tracking this man. What was another hundred bucks? Even if Russell Hath was not the man I was looking for, I would have one more sample of Daugherty DNA with which to compare my mother. If Russell Hath was the man I was looking for, his niece would be my mother's first cousin, and therefore they would share 12.5% of their DNA in common. But if my mother's father was one of the last remaining candidates - the Schrader brothers - this woman would be a second cousin, once removed, and therefore only match her genetic material on an average of 1.563%. At the very least, it would lend confirmation to my hypothesis that I was looking at a Schrader as the culprit.

A lunch date and time for DNA donation was set for 3 September 2014.

Little did I know that this woman's eagerness to test was not out of helpful exuberance for me and my plight. This distant cousin had an agenda all her own.

The Daugherty Candidates

Children and Grandchildren of John Henry and Emma Augusta (Jonas) Daugherty
Viable candidates for my mother's father are outlined in blue, click on
the image to enlarge.

ZERO.

Zero percent matching DNA.

Those were the results of Rick Denney's DNA profile as compared to my mother, Carol (DePrato) Crumet, received on 20 August 2014.

I don't have to describe the rush of adrenalin I get when I find out that new DNA sample results are available. I have already done so. But as I got closer and closer to identifying my missing grandfather the trembling hands, the immediate facial flush, and the engorgement of the singular vein that runs down the middle of my forehead, became more and more intense. And because Clarence Ryder was such a perfect match, I was just certain that I'd see my biggest number match to date. As Clarence Ryder's nephew, and potentially my mother's first cousin, I was hoping for an approximate 12.5% match between my mother and Rick Denney. Even a 10% or higher. If I received a number down to eight percent or so, there could be some generational questioning, and testing another Denney sibling might be necessary, but I was just hoping to see double digits. I felt like I was in Vegas betting my savings on a number.... "Come on double digits! Given 'em to daddy! I'll take a pair of snake eyes! One and one is an eleven... I'll take it!"

But zero?

Ugh.

Having discovered only after collecting Rick Denney's DNA sample that Clarence Ryder had left Indiana for Michigan in 1944 or 1945 - before my mother's conception - I had known that this was possible. Was I shocked? Maybe not as much so as disappointed. It felt like I was starting over. But I had to tell myself it was not the case at all. Just like the earlier test of Paul Robinson that came out a zero match, I had to tell myself that this was the sign at the fork in the road again. When the road split to Ryder or Daugherty, Rick's test told me that the yellow brick road to the Emerald City was now "Daugherty Boulevard."

And I now had to adjust my terminology. From the very beginning of this genetic saga with the initial half-percent match with Brian Ryder, I had been calling my mother's paternal genetic material "Ryder DNA." It was now "Daugherty DNA."

And since my mother carried no Ryder DNA, not only could I eliminate Clarence L. Ryder as a candidate for my mother's father, but I could also eliminate Richard Eugene Buck, whose mother was a Ryder.

And so then there were four.

Or really two. At least two family groups. Going back to my discussion regarding the results of Kenneth Eugene Ryder, recall that his 4.26% match to my mother made it likely they were second cousins. Second cousins share the same set of great-grandparents, and we had now effectively eliminated three out of Kenneth's four sets of great-grandparents. I had removed the two sets on his maternal side because they were Germans in Russia with few descendants here in this country, and the German matches that Ken had in the 23andMe database were not shared with my mother. That left his Ryder great-grandparents, and his Daugherty great-grandparents, and with the Ryders out of the running by this latest test, it meant that my mother was definitely a descendant of John Henry Daugherty, and his wife Emma Augusta Jonas.

But also recall that in addition to a second cousin, my mother and Ken Ryder could also be half-first cousins, once removed. Both degrees of relationship would results in an approximate 3.25% genetic match. And although there were no male candidates for this degree of relationship to hold true on the Ryder side, there were suspects on the Daugherty side.

Also mentioned previously, I was damn lucky that neither the Ryders nor the Daughertys in this generation were very prolific procreators. Finally, I had a reason to rejoice for making my task easier! If Ken Ryder was my mother's second cousin on the Daugherty side, it meant that one of my mother's grandparents was a sibling to Ken Ryder's grandmother, Bertha (Daugherty) Ryder Rieder Prestidge Merrifield (1881-1918), whom we have discussed earlier.

Bertha was the second child of John Henry Daugherty and Emma Augusta Jonas. She had three brothers and one sister, and a nomadic lifestyle she had inherited from her father.

John Henry Daugherty was born 18 July 1852 in the area of New Boston, Mercer County, Illinois. Or in the area of Muscatine, Muscatine County, Iowa. It really depended on when he was asked what answer was given, and it is likely that even he wasn't even sure of the exact location. His father, Daniel Daugherty, was just as much a rolling stone as his son and granddaughter proved to be, and he had business dealings in Rock Island and Mercer Counties in Illinois, and in Muscatine County, Iowa, throughout the 1850s. Surprisingly, he can be found in records of all counties within days of each other, indicating the man wasn't setting down strong roots in any three of the locales. Where his wife, Elizabeth (LeQuat) Holston Daugherty, stopped to give birth to their first son together was likely wherever Daniel had dragged her on that mid-summer day in 1852.

John Henry Daugherty's early life was that of a wanderer. While his father wheeled and dealed in Iowa and Illinois shortly after his birth, John was still a toddler when Daniel Daugherty moved the family to the brand new town of Homer, Minnesota, on the banks of the Mississippi River in 1855. By the time Daniel Daugherty arrived with his family, Albert Bunnell, the first permanent white settler of the county, had been living there for six years. Bunnell had begun building his new dream town on the river named Homer for his hometown in New York, and had even erected a hotel there in 1853. But what Bunnell had forgotten to do was to file a claim for the virgin ground with the United States government. Daniel Daugherty did, and he did so on the land that contained the hotel and other town buildings. In the government's eyes, the land belonged to Daugherty, and Bunnell had to leave. Needless to say, Albert Bunnell was none too pleased with these arrangements and engaged Daniel Daugherty in a fight. During the argument, Daniel "seized Bunnell's thumb in a vise-like grip and held on until Bunnell surrendered. Bunnell lost not only the fight (and his land) but also his thumb, which was so mutilated it had to be amputated." (Source: Laying the Foundation).

John Henry Daugherty's childhood was spent in Homer, Minnesota, and although just a nine-year-old at the outbreak of the Civil War, his half-brother Silas V. Holston (aka Holstein) enlisted from Homer. But before the war was over, he had moved with his father back again through several counties in Iowa before settling in Jefferson Township in Poweshiek County, Iowa, by 1870. An older teen by this time, and already accustomed to being an adventurer and a wanderer, John Henry Daugherty's whereabouts in the 1870s are still clouded in mystery. Although possessed of a number of half-siblings by both his mother and father, his only full sibling was a younger brother, Ira, born during their stay in Minnesota. Ira died shortly after the family's arrival in Poweshiek County, as did his mother in 1873. Several years later, John Henry Daugherty's obituary stated he had spent three years in college in Illinois, while one family story said he was a teacher at a school, chased away with threats of death for having an affair with another professor's wife, but somehow by 1875 he had found his way to Michigan.

How John Henry Daugherty ended up in Michigan is currently unknown. Somehow his path crossed with that of Emma Augusta Jonas, a teenager born during the first year of the Civil War in St. Clair County, Michigan, bordering Ontario, Canada. Born of a German immigrant father, Friedrich Wilhelm Jonas, who married a New York girl shortly after his arrival to America in 1851, Emma spent her early childhood over the international border in Ontario before her family moved to Calhoun County, Michigan, when she was nine years old. She grew to womanhood in the city of Marshall.

No marriage record has been located for John Henry Daugherty and Emma Augusta Jonas. Later census records - when they can be found - indicate they married sometime between 1875 and 1877. Perhaps they never formally married at all. And there is no explanation for how fifteen-year-old Emma gave birth to her first child, Albert Emery Daugherty, in far-away Clay County, Missouri, in 1877. John Henry Daugherty would have been twenty-five years old. They cannot be located in the 1880 census to even begin to make sense of how their stories can be neatly summarized over a geographical span of Iowa, Illinois, Missouri, and Michigan, in a few short years.

Nor can the family be followed easily thereafter. John Henry Daugherty and Emma Augusta Jonas would have five children in vastly different localities - and one of these children was certainly my mother's grandparent. As stated, the eldest child, Albert Emery Daugherty, was born in Clay County, Missouri, in 1877. The next born was Bertha Daugherty whom we have discussed, born in 1881 in her mother's childhood home of Marshall, Calhoun County, Michigan. In 1884, John Henry Daugherty Jr. was born in Walkerton, St. Joseph County, Indiana. In 1886, their third son Ira Daugherty was born in Madison Township, Williams County, Ohio. Their last child, LaVina Veatrice Daugherty, was born in 1890 in Isabella County, Michigan.

In a span of just over twelve years, five children were born in four states. The family cannot be found in either the censuses of 1880, nor 1900. And it is only beginning in 1902 that the family can be pinpointed in a specific locality on any regular basis. And even that changed frequently. While family lore indicates that John Henry Daugherty had some college education, he found jobs only as a common laborer, and worked mainly in factories or doing odd jobs. For almost three decades, the family can be found in directories of Benton Harbor, Grand Rapids, Kalamazoo, and Niles, Michigan; and in South Bend, Indiana; with no two entries ever having a matching address.

John Henry Daugherty and his wife,
Emma Augusta (Jonas) Daugherty,
951 Pine Street, Niles, Michigan,
Summer 1937

It is only in the 1930s that John Henry Daugherty and his wife quit moving all over southwestern Michigan and northern Indiana. They spent the remainder of their lives at 951 Pine Street in Niles, Michigan, living with their son, Albert Daugherty and his wife. Next door to them was their daughter, LaVina (Daugherty) Schrader and her children. And next door on the other side was their grandson, Rollie Ryder, whose mother, Bertha (Daugherty) Ryder had died in 1918. Surprisingly nomadic until their old age, they did so usually with their grown children in tow, and they died surrounded by family. Emma died on Halloween 1937, not long after the above picture was taken. John Daugherty followed just two weeks shy of two years later. They were both buried in Silverbook Cemetery in Niles, Michigan.

These were definitely my great-great-grandparents. The question then was which one of their children was my great-grandparent?

The Daugherty boys made my research easier by not reproducing. When son Ira Daugherty died in a car accident outside of Niles, Michigan, in 1943, his obituary named only his stepchildren by the wife he had married five years earlier. Son John Henry "Jack" Daugherty Jr. married twice, and died childless in Dowagiac, Michigan, in 1953. Son Albert Daugherty, although married twice, never had children and always lived with his parents, and upon his death in 1960 his surviving heirs were his nieces and nephews by his sister, Lavina.

So if Kenneth Eugene Ryder and my mother, Carol Sue Crumet, were second cousins on the Daugherty side, which seemed to be the only conclusion one could come to with the DNA results to date, that would make LaVina (Daughery) Schrader's sons the only men of that generation to be my mother's father. And of the five boys LaVina gave birth to, three were living in 1946 when my mother was conceived: Theodore Schrader, born in 1912; Edward Schrader, born in 1915; and Joseph Russell Schrader, born in 1920.

But as mentioned earlier, we had to factor in the half-first cousins, once removed, so that meant Bertha Daugherty could still be my great-grandmother, as she had three children by three husbands. Since her youngest daughter, Mary Prestidge (aka Prestige), died at the age of sixteen, I had only the sons of Catharine (Rieder) Hath Dorn to consider. Catherine had four sons: two by Frank Hath, and two by Jack Dorn. The eldest Hath son had died in 1941, and the two Dorn sons were too young to be my mother's father. The only one who could be considered as my grandfather was her second son, Russell Tom Hath, born in 1924.

So my mother was a Schrader or a Hath. It was just that simple. The DNA had taken me this far, and there was no way else for the numbers to mathematically fit anyone else. The numbers of candidates were dwindling, and an answer would soon be forthcoming.

If it were only that simple.

Is DNA On The Menu?

A standard Cracker Barrel interior decorated with discarded ancestors.
Will I find mine there?

The ninety-minute drive to Battle Creek, Michigan, on 2 August 2014, was hardly a chore after waiting impatiently for ninety-five days for this meeting to even become a reality. I just needed to walk away with a sample of DNA that would confirm or refute the possibility of Clarence L. Ryder being my mother's missing father. As I stopped at a gas station for morning coffee in Union, Michigan, I posted to my Facebook time line: "Getting a coffee refill on the way to meet a stranger for a hopeful DNA donation to solve a difficult genealogical problem."

I snickered a little to myself. Those who had been reading my blog still had not even been informed that my mother was missing a father, let alone that I was hot on his trail with DNA. It was like sneaking in a little "spoiler alert," and I was the only one in on the private joke.

But it was a difficult genealogical problem. And it was a hopeful mission. There was no guarantee that I would be getting what I was heading to Battle Creek for, even though I had a 23andMe autosomal DNA kit at my side. I was also armed with charts, graphs, photographs of my grandmother in 1946, and my laptop. Beyond being "willing to meet with me" as stated over three months previously, there was nothing further clarified about this meeting other than the time and the location. Other than that piece of information, I had further asked for photos of Clarence, and Rick Denney replied he would ask his sister for some.

I arrived at the appointed Cracker Barrel restaurant thirty minutes early. Anyone who knows me knows that I am not a morning person, and those who watch my Facebook account for postings of new blog entries knows they go up usually between 3 a.m. and 5 a.m. in the morning: my normal bedtime. So although being ready and on the road at 8 a.m. seems like no small feat for most people, it was so for me. But I was not going to be regarded as a slacker and keep anyone waiting. It was a warm, clear, brilliantly sunny day, and I took a seat on a bench in front of the restaurant with my clumsy black overly-stuffed computer bag.

I refrained from sitting in one of the ubiquitous Cracker Barrel rockers in front of the building. I tend to release voluminous amounts of nervous energy whilst seated. Whether it be twitching my foot or bouncing my leg, I generally drive those around me batty with my herky-jerky rhythmic movements. I love rocking chairs, but I figured if I wanted to maximize my charm to gain a DNA sample, being the imbecile rocking at a frantic pace in front of the restaurant when I met potential cousins and genetic donors was not in my best interest.

Thirty minutes of waiting was profoundly worse than the ninety-five days that preceded it. What if Rick declines to take a test? Do I beg? Should I have brought my mother so she could pull the "I just want to know who my father is before I die" schtick to generate guilt-driven positive action? If he is unsure, do I leave him with a test kit, knowing I may just be throwing $100 into the trash if he chooses not to use it? And why are we meeting at a restaurant anyway? The test kit clearly states, "Do not eat, drink, smoke, chew gum, brush your teeth, or use mouthwash for at least 30 minutes prior to providing your sample." Will I need to start a stopwatch immediately after the waitress takes our plates away?

It then suddenly occurred to me that I had seen one singular picture of Rick Denney. Would I even recognize the person I should be looking for? I figured he had also seen pictures of me via Facebook, and I was likely the only person waiting outside a Cracker Barrel restaurant with a computer bag, so I was probably not a difficult target to spot.

Ten o'clock came and went, and I had to refrain from texting frantically at 10:01 a.m. confirming that the meeting was still taking place. But what I did spot as I was eagerly scanning the parking lot was an older woman approaching me carrying a small, flat bag; the kind you would get at a Hallmark store after purchasing a birthday card. Also a perfect size for carrying photos! She asked me if I was the person interested in Clarence Ryder, and I knew immediately this was Rick's sister, Mary, the fourth-born Denney child and fourteen years his senior. Whereas Rick was born long after his uncle Clarence Ryder had died, Mary was ten years old when she lost her uncle.

Mary (Denney) Erskine was an incredible joy to talk to, and all my fretting about being turned away empty-handed washed away from every core of my being. Admittedly, the selfish part of me was ecstatic to have another Denny sibling at breakfast, because if Rick had misgivings about spitting in a plastic tube, I could just turn my pouty lip and puppy dog eyes to Mary and ask her to do it. Things were definitely looking up!

Rick arrived shortly thereafter with his wife, and I immediately knew that the three months of waiting, as well as the short terse responses, had nothing to do with the man as a person. His law enforcement background certainly made him wary, but frankly I'd expect anyone to be a bit disarmed by a request for DNA. But as the four of us chatted outside the restaurant, I knew immediately these were people I'd be very happy to call my cousins.

Once inside the restaurant, it occurred to me how appropriate the setting was for this meeting. On the walls were large exquisitely framed nineteenth-century charcoal portraits of properly dressed men and severe looking women; nameless ancestors discarded and purchased by an antiques dealer in Tennessee to grace the walls of Cracker Barrel restaurants all over the country. Down from those walls peered men and women with no names looking at a man who was searching for the same.

I unrolled my long, unwieldy relationship chart to explain to the table how my mother was intertwined with the Ryders and the Daughertys, and explained the mathematics of the DNA connections. I still shook with the nervous adrenalin rush I was experiencing, even though things were going exceedingly well. I shared photos of my grandmother, while Mary shared photos of the Ryders and Moslanders. Several times the waitress was sent away because we had not gotten to reviewing the menu for food options, but once breakfast was served we all lapsed into familiar chatter as if we were all cousins acquainted from birth.

In addition to amazing photographs (many of which you have already seen on this site in my discussion of Clarence Ryder and his parents), Rick and Mary brought first hand biographical accounts of the lives of their grandmother, Jessie (Moslander) Ryder, and of their mother, Isabell (Ryder) Denney, written by the both of them during their lifetimes. I was shocked at Mary's recollection of Clarence Ryder's death. Although only ten years old at the time, her account mirrored exactly the newspaper recollections of the event in 1951. Family photographs and memorabilia? First-person biographical narratives? Accurate oral family lore? Good God, I certainly hoped this was my family!

After a couple hours of jabbering, we all left the restaurant. Rick Denney asked for the 23andMe DNA kit, stepped aside, and filled it with saliva swimming with precious cheek cells holding the answers I had been so desperately seeking. In addition to his DNA, he also paid for my breakfast. Yes, yes, I really did want these people to be my cousins!

I returned home and quickly shot off an email to Rick thanking him for all he had done for me that morning. His response this time was prompt:

"We enjoyed meeting you also, Mike, and it would be nice if Uncle Clarence was your grandfather. If nothing else, you have new friends in Battle Creek."

But as I settled in to review my findings, I was troubled by two things. Firstly, although possibly a superficial worry, I saw no family resemblance whatsoever with Clarence Ryder to my mother. I had always seen the strong resemblance that my mother shared with her mother, Helen (Timmons) Miller Strukel, so I was not expecting a lot in that department. But I saw nothing. Absolutely nothing.

Secondly, as I read the narratives written by Clarence's mother and sister, I was worried about something far more troubling than the lack of a subjective resemblance. I had known that Clarence Ryder had returned from the war in 1944, upon which he immediately divorced his second wife Thelma, in Plymouth, Indiana. I knew also that he had remarried in Battle Creek, Michigan, in May 1947, where he remained until his death in 1951. To have been my mother's father and to fit my hypothesis, he would have had to have remained in Plymouth or the surrounding area when my mother was conceived in the early Spring of 1946.

The life story penned by Isabell (Ryder) Denney made it obvious that the Denneys had left Plymouth, Indiana, for Battle Creek, Michigan, in 1943, and their parents, Leslie and Jessie (Moslander) Ryder had followed shortly thereafter. Sister Mamie was also already residing there. If Clarence Ryder left the Army and divorced his wife in 1944, what would have enticed him to stay in Plymouth, Indiana, until 1946 if his entire family had already moved northward?

And it was only after this wonderfully productive visit with the Denney siblings that I found a copy of the 1945 Battle Creek city directory indicating Leslie, Jessie, and Clarence Ryder all resided at 416 North Wood Street. 1945. He was in Battle Creek by 1945.

I was crushed.

But my mother still had DNA in common with both an Ilgenfritz and a Moslander, both ancestors of Jessie; and her diverse genetic heritage more closely fit this Ryder-Moslander ancestry. And really, none of the other genetic candidates fit all that well in many other areas. Perhaps Clarence Ryder maintained some of his Indiana contacts, or worked in Plymouth or Elkhart before settling down with his third wife in 1947 in Battle Creek. Perhaps he lived somewhat nomadically between Indiana and Michigan from 1944 to 1947, although he maintained a Battle Creek address with his recently relocated parents. The whole family had maintained enough ties to Plymouth to be forever interred there.

But there were now serious doubts.

And all I could do was wait.

Progress Stalled (...or Begging For DNA)

Mamie Bell (Ryder) Langs Gibson (1912-2006) and her sister,
Isabell Helen (Ryder) Denney (1915-1997),
Battle Creek, Michigan, 1993

Clarence L. Ryder had to be the man I was looking for. Circumstantial evidence certainly made it seem so, and frankly the brief biographies I had put together of the other five candidates just did not fit what I knew genetically or historically. Three of the other five were already married, two may have still been in the service at my mother's conception, four were children or grandchildren of immigrants whereas my mother's genetic background seemed more diverse to account for such heritage. None of them could be placed in a reasonable geographical place or time to intersect with my grandmother's world. The others all failed on one or more levels.

But Clarence Ryder was long gone from this world, having died exactly sixty-three years to the day before I found out via DNA testing that my mother's father was not the man everyone thought him to be. His secrets - and his DNA - had been buried deep underground for many, many decades. And the only possible half-sibling my mother could have had by Clarence, Ralph Duane Ryder had died seventy-six years previously at the tender age of seven years. It was time to look further afield.

Whereas Clarence Ryder's life had been cut short by heart disease, his two younger sisters, Mamie and Isabell, lived long, productive, happy lives surrounded by the love of their large, close-knit families. Families who were very much alive and harboring DNA that I could use to prove my case.

As discussed previously in this blog, I call autosomal DNA testing and its subsequent matching "a numbers game." And it is very much so when you are seeking the identity of an unknown man. The larger the amount of shared DNA, the more predictable the relationship, and the more conclusive the evidence when identifying an unknown person. If Clarence Ryder lived, his tested DNA would match my mother by 50%. If Ralph Duane Ryder had lived, he would have shared approximately 25% of his DNA in kind with my mother, just like her half-siblings Ted and Dianne did who shared the same mother with Carol. Had Mamie or Isabell lived to donate their DNA to my research, they too would have shared 25% of their DNA with my mother, as aunts and uncles do. These are all large, predictable, and conclusive numbers that would have confirmed Clarence Ryder as my mother's father.

But the rule of the game now was to find the closest living relative through Clarence that was still very much alive, and those would be my mother's presumed first cousins. Although the DNA numbers have now dropped to 12.5% similarity, they are still very, very large numbers that would conclusively identify Clarence Ryder as the man I was seeking.

And there were plenty of first cousins to choose from.

Mamie Bell Ryder had married at the age of sixteen to Albert William Langs, a man not even four months her senior. They met and courted briefly in Battle Creek, Michigan, and he followed her to Plymouth, Indiana, and married her in 1929. Her first child, a baby boy, died shortly after his birth. But she was blessed with two more children, Norma in 1933, and Bill in 1936. Divorced from their father when the children were young, Mamie remarried Lyle Gibson in 1945 who proved to be a loving provider to his stepchildren. Lyle died in 1989, but Mamie outlived him by many years, dying shortly after her ninety-fourth birthday.

Isabell Helen Ryder met Lloyd Denney when she was sixteen and working with her parents at the lunch counter in Sidney, Indiana, and they started dating in November 1931. One month shy of her eighteenth birthday, they married on 16 September 1933. Isabell later wrote a narrative of her life, and she cherished her role as a wife and a mother, having eight children, five boys and three girls, between 1934 and 1955. Although all eight children grew up to have large loving families of their own, two of them had passed away before I came into the picture looking (begging) for someone to spit.

The Denney Children in 2007
Rick, Dave, Karen, Junior, Mary, Jack, and Steve

Armed with the names of eight individuals who could potentially help me resolve the dilemma of my missing grandfather's identity, I went to my familiar place in the hunt for the living: Facebook.

Although I found a few of the clan on the social networking site, I reached out to only one: Rick Denney, the youngest of Isabel's children. I can't tell you why I chose him particularly. Maybe because he looked so friendly and handsome, smiling in a picture surrounded by his equally attractive, happily grinning family. Maybe because I thought it might be easier to explain the science of DNA to a retired law enforcement official in his fifties than to a Michigan housewife in her eighties. Regardless of the reasons, on 29 April 2014, Rick got the now finely crafted "May I please have your DNA?" letter that had been honed over the last couple months of use. This is who I am... these are my credentials... my mother is missing a father... this is her story... this is who I have tested so far... this is how DNA testing works... this is why I think it is Clarence Ryder... this is why I need you... please, please, please can you spit in a tube for me? It was all pretty standard fare by now.

I waited nineteen agonizing days for a response.

For those who have read the entire blog up to the present, you know what I am going to say next.

I hate waiting.

But there has to be a time where one exercises patience. I wasn't exactly asking to borrow a cup of sugar or a couple eggs, so to go willy-nilly throwing out DNA requests to all the Denneys or Langs I could find would seem to be a bit over-the-top. Even if only one of them went all paranoid and crazy thinking I was gathering his DNA for nefarious purposes, he could end all chances of a successful connection between possible cousins. I had to give my first request a chance to sink in, to be digested. And that meant I had to be patient and persistent, but not pestering. I am not good at that either. But I waited.

I hate waiting.

On 18 May 2014, I finally got my response:

"I talked with a couple of my older siblings, and we would be willing to meet with you. And we do have a photo of our uncle Clarence. And your information seems to be accurate."

That's it.

Okay, so it wasn't exactly a lengthy response to my very detailed previous email. And it wasn't exactly welcoming me with open arms and enthusiastically offering me assistance in my mother's plight to find her father. And there wasn't exactly a promise to spit into a tube... just a willingness to meet. At least he used appropriate sentence structure and excellent spelling skills. It could have been worse.

But it really could have been a whole lot better.

I responded with metered enthusiasm the following day. I gushed with thanks for responding to my odd request. I offered to drive to the Battle Creek, Michigan, area at anytime he chose me to do so. I offered the enticement that as a professional researcher I would actively pursue the Ryder genealogy and share all my findings with him if Clarence turned out to be my grandfather. But I also jokingly nudged that results may take two months to acquire, so the sooner we do this, the better.

That was met with a month-long silence.

On 19 June 2014, I sent a follow up email detailing how terribly busy I had been in the last month with researching and lecturing, and that I was finally home and eager to meet. 

See what I did there? I deflected the blame for the month of silence onto myself. I'm brilliant.

I also gave him some tidbits of interest into his Ryder-Moslander genealogy hoping to entice him into learning more about his lineage. Of course, I only tossed out a few really interesting, yet vague, nuggets of information so that he might be eager to question me for more. Again, sheer brilliance.

And one more nugget I had for him that also made it all that more important for me. I had found yet another match in the DNA database to my mother. A match who descended from Abraham Moslander (born c1735), who also happened to be an ancestor of Jessie (Moslander) Ryder. The argument for Clarence Ryder being my grandfather was almost a done deal. But I needed Rick's DNA to prove it.

Upon review, I ended this email with entirely too many exclamation points:

"It's just so very important for both me and my mother at this time. So I am eager to meet with you, and I do sincerely hope that you or your siblings are willing to take the DNA test for me. Just let me know when I can head up your way! I am eager to solve this mystery, and I am eager to see what Clarence looked like! Thanks again for your consideration. I look forward to hearing from you!"

Two days later:

"I am just returning from a vacation to Florida. I will get with my family and try to set up a date."

The man was certainly not big on lengthy responses.

I responded the following day with more exclamations.

"Sounds great! I am looking forward to it!

Two weeks of nothingness followed. Two weeks of waiting. Two weeks of wondering if I should start trying to contact other Denneys or Langs. But he had already stated he had talked to other family members. Would this look like I was "going over his head" if I were to contact his siblings? Was he stalling because he was suspicious of my motives? Or perhaps it just didn't hold as much urgency to him as it did to me. Two weeks of deciding how to proceed, and I get:

"Hi Mike, I was wondering if you could tell me your grandmother's first name."

Jesus H. Christ On A Popsicle Stick... what the hell did THAT have to do with anything?!?!? Was he looking for love letters written by my grandmother to the man who impregnated her sixty-seven years ago? Was he hoping a name might ring a bell of truth before agreeing to donate his saliva to my research, when I already outlined to him that whatever relationship my grandmother had with Clarence may have been no more than a single night?

But of course, my immediate response was dripping with sincere apologies for being so irresponsible as to leave out such important details as my grandmother's name when asking for such a large favor from him. I directed him to my blog address so that he could read about my grandmother and her life, and the sequence of events that led me to his email Inbox. When that failed to incite a response, nine days later I laid out the whole story for him anyway via email so as to not bother him with the task of reading my blog. I then outlined the research path that led me to Clarence Ryder, and I even included graphs and family trees to illustrate it all.

Nothing.

Three months had passed since my initial email, and I was no closer to proving Clarence Ryder was or was not my mother's father. I took a chance. Figuring that the Denney siblings were all kept in the loop by youngest brother Rick, I did not want to upset any chances that still remained for testing Rick by contacting another Denney. So I sent an email to Bill Langs on 24 July 2014. Having learned from my mistake with Ken Ryder who had a Facebook account he never used, I also sent a copy of the same email to Bill's daughter, Julie, on the same day. I could tell that Julie was a frequent Facebook poster, and it seemed likely that she would alert her father to something as important as this if he did not check his account regularly. Both read the emails. Neither responded. Having thrown patience out the window long before, I sent follow-up messages quickly: one to Bill on 28 July 2014, and another to Julie on 31 July 2014. Both were read immediately by both individuals. Again, neither responded.

On 1 August 2014, having exhausted all means of patience, pleasantry and persistence, and after nearly a month of no response from Rick, and entering into our fourth month of very intermittent correspondence, I did what any good, self-respecting, upstanding genetic genealogist dripping with integrity would do.

I lied.

"Rick. I will be in the Kalamazoo-Battle Creek area this weekend. Do you have time to meet?"

Although, yes, I do know people in Kalamazoo, and, yes, I could very well have gone to visit them on that weekend had I called and asked them, the reality was, no, I really had no plans that weekend. Frankly it was time to push the envelope. The challenge had been made. I am going to be there. Yes or no. You will meet with me or you will not. There's only one of two ways for this to go now. I took a deep breath. Held it. And  I hit "Reply."

Less than seven hours later:

"How about tomorrow at 10:00 a.m. at the Cracker Barrel on Beckley Road just off I-94 at the Capital Avenue exit in Battle Creek?"

Score.

Clarence Ryder

Richard Buck and Clarence Ryder, c1910
The only two Ryder men who could be my
missing grandfather.

 

My mother was conceived sometime in late March or early April, 1946. At that time, my grandmother, Helen Marie (Timmons) Miller was a mother of three children under the age of eight years, and unhappily married to a philandering husband. Concurrently that spring, she met the man who would show her love and affirm her worth. That man was Frank Louis Strukel. Just days after relinquishing for adoption a daughter she so desperately believed and wanted to be Frank's, born in December 1946, Helen and Frank were married.

This left little to no room for my mother's biological father to have had any significant relationship with Helen. Perhaps it was a one-night stand. Perhaps Eldon was off on one of his extra-marital flings, and the kids were staying with their grandparents, and Helen met a handsome stranger who helped her forget about a life in which she felt trapped. Perhaps it was a man she saw more than once, but immediately paled in significance when Frank Strukel entered her life.

But what it meant to me was that it was unlikely I would find this man in any sort of paper trail or closely interwoven into Helen's life. He likely did not live next door or down the street from the Millers. He likely did not work in the same vicinity. He was probably a random encounter and a brief fling, so finding a meaningful, solid connection to Helen would be difficult, if not outright impossible. And although DNA analysis had led me to a list of men of whom one was likely to be my maternal grandfather, none of them lived that close to my grandmother in 1946. Although all were within a twenty to sixty mile radius of Elkhart, Indiana, none of them were lurking around the corner.

But this hunt for my grandfather had taken on the dimensions of a crime drama. Who had the motive? Who had the means? Who had the opportunity? I had narrowed my search to six possible men, but I still had to put them into Helen's world. I had to figure out whose life would have intersected with hers in the most believable way, and who had the freedom and opportunity to make that meeting happen.

Clarence Ryder seemed to meet those criteria.

We have already discussed Gideon Ryder's often-married son, Eugene Joseph Ryder, as he was the progenitor of the Ryder descendants whose DNA had taken me this far in my journey. But Eugene's brother, Leslie Ryder, eleven years his junior, couldn't have been more different than his brother.

Leslie Ryder (1886-1960) and his wife,
Jessie Moslander Ryder (1889-1978)

Born in Beattie, Marshall County, Kansas, Leslie Ryder was still young when his parents returned to rural Dowagiac, Cass County, Michigan. He did not have a childhood marred by constant wandering as did his elder brother Eugene, but instead had the mundane and stable existence of a farming and working family in southwestern Michigan. Like most boys of his time, he obtained an eight-grade education, and like his brother began working as a moulder in the many iron foundries and factories in the area.

Leslie's wife-to-be, Jessie Mamie Moslander, had a far rougher time growing up. Her parents, Joab Moslander and Savilla Helen Guntle, had married in Elkhart County, Indiana, in 1881, but the marriage was a rocky one. In 1888, while living just northwest of Plymouth, Marshall County, Indiana, Joab had attempted to get his wife declared insane and committed to a hospital. She was not. A year later, and perhaps in an attempt at a fresh start, the Moslanders moved to a home eight miles from Dowagiac in Cass County, Michigan. It was here that Jessie was born in 1889. But in the spring of 1894, her parents separated. Her mother, Savilla, pregnant with her fourth child, stayed in Cass County, Michigan, with her eldest daughter, Emma. Her father took the two middle children, Ida and Jessie, and moved to the farm owned by his parents near Plymouth, Indiana. Thereafter, Ida and Jessie, often found homes with their father during moves to Payne, Ohio; and to Coleman and Gaylord, Michigan; or went back and forth to Plymouth, Indiana, to live with their grandparents. By the time she was fifteen years old and after several homes in three different states, the whole family finally reassembled and settled on a farm outside Plymouth, Indiana.

Once her family was resettled in Indiana, they learned of the whereabouts of her older sister, Emma, long since separated from the family by their parents' divorce. Emma had married Samuel Buck in Dowagiac in 1899, and after Jessie turned sixteen, she moved to Dowagiac to live with her. Only having a sixth-grade education, Jessie had been working out as a domestic since her early teen years, and she continued to do so in Dowagiac. It was here that she met Leslie Ryder in November 1905 after he took her home from church. They were marred in the Methodist Church in Dowagiac on 10 November 1906. Leslie went to work for the Round Oak stove factory to learn his trade as a moulder.

Their first child, a son, was born on 16 July 1907, in Dowagiac, Michigan. They named him Clarence L. Ryder.

Clarence L. Ryder, 1907
Dowagiac, Michigan

A daughter, Mamie Bell, was born to them in Dowagiac in 1912. In the spring of 1914, the young family moved to Battle Creek, Michigan, and as Jessie wrote later, it was "the first place we ever had of our own, and we thought it was wonderful, for it was the first place we lived that had electric lights, and running water, and furnace, and bathroom, and all the conveniences." They welcomed their third child, Isabell Helen, while living in this home in 1915. After spending just over a year in another bungalow in Battle Creek, Michigan, the family moved to a home in Level Park which was a small community just northwest of Battle Creek. The move occurred in September 1918, and on their first day in their new home, Leslie Ryder, was stricken with the flu. Thousands of Michiganders would die of influenza the following month, and it was feared that Leslie would be one of them, but as Jessie remembered "the Lord spared his life." Their last daughter, Doris Catherine, was born here in 1920.

Clarence L. Ryder, c1912

Clarence Ryder grew up in this God-fearing, loving family, spending his childhood in and around Battle Creek, Michigan. In 1927, shortly after his twentieth birthday, Clarence married Mildred DeMond, eighteen, in Battle Creek, Michigan. Per Clarence's sister, Isabell, "Mildred ... lived up by the fire station on Cliff Street. She was an only girl. She had two brothers, was nice, but spoilt and expected more than my brother could give her." She filed for divorce in January 1930, five months pregnant with their only child. Ralph Duane Ryder was born in Battle Creek on 30 May 1930, and his parents divorce was official on 28 November 1930.

But Clarence Ryder had already left town before his divorce was completed.

It was the Great Depression, and work was scarce. Leslie Ryder was unable to maintain a residence in Level Park while supporting his wife and children on inconsistent work. They rented out their home and the entire family moved to Plymouth, Indiana, in 1930, to live in a home owned by Jessie's father, Joab Moslander. Both Leslie and Clarence were able to find work at the Argos Foundry nearby. The following year, Leslie sold the house in Level Park, Michigan, and put the money into a hotel and lunch room in Sidney, Indiana, forty-five miles southeast of Plymouth, that had been purchased by his father-in-law. The work maintaining the business was hard, and often many weeks passed where no money was made from the enterprise. Twelve-year-old daughter, Doris, developed a sinus infection the following fall that progressed to spinal meningitis. She died 27 October 1932. The grief for Jessie was overwhelming, and she did not have the energy to continue the grueling work at the lunch room. They sold their part of the business and moved to a ten-acre patch of land in Plymouth, Indiana.

By 1940, Leslie and Jessie (Moslander) Ryder had moved into town on Pierce Street. They would live at a number of addresses while in Plymouth, Indiana. Their son, Clarence, remained single after his brief first marriage, lived at home with his parents, working as a grinder operator at the local feed mill.

But shortly after the United States entered World War II, Clarence Ryder did two things: he married his second wife, Thelma; and he decided to do his part for the war effort. On 14 August 1942, at the age of thirty-five, Clarence enlisted into the United States Army. It was not long before he was sent overseas, leaving his new bride behind in Plymouth, Indiana.

PFC Clarence L. Ryder

Clarence was assigned to the 262nd Ordnance Medium Maintenance Company, Ant-Aircraft Artillery, and spent his time overseas in North Africa and Italy. The men of the 262nd were tasked with repairing and maintaining anti-aircraft weaponry, and served with the Seventh Army in Sicily in July and August 1943, and for the Fifth Army thereafter. They usually did their work about twenty miles behind the front lines, and Clarence was involved with the campaigns in Naples-Foggia from September 1943 to January 1944, followed by Rome-Arno from January 1944 to September 1944. He returned home thereafter and was honorably discharged on 22 November 1944.

Sadly, Clarence returned home to Plymouth, Indiana, to find that the new bride he had left behind had taken up with another man in his absence. They immediately divorced.

With the economy improved, Leslie Ryder no longer needed to rely on the financial help of his Moslander in-laws. The entire extended Ryder family moved back to Battle Creek, Michigan, where Clarence Ryder remarried on 31 May 1947 to Grace Elmira (Funk) Curtis, a divorced mother of three pre-teen girls.

Clarence L. Ryder, c1945

Clarence and Grace moved to Level Park, Michigan, and Clarence found work as a custodian at the Wolverine Tower (built as the 18-story Central National Bank in 1931, it is now known as the Battle Creek Tower Building.) Their marriage did not last long.

On the night of 1 February 1951, Clarence and Grace (Funk) Ryder were driving home from his parents' home where they had enjoyed dinner together. Suddenly feeling ill, Clarence stopped the car on South Kendall Street in Battle Creek at the Michigan Central Railroad crossing. Grace motioned frantically toward two soldiers nearby, and Clarence was rushed to Percy Jones Army Hospital. He was dead of a heart attack before they arrived. He was forty-three years old.

My mother was only four. If Clarence Ryder was my mother's unknown father, he died an even younger man than Frank Strukel. We apparently were not going to escape genetic heart disease.

So what made Clarence Ryder a tempting candidate? Beyond mathematically fitting the genetic match calculated with the other Ryders previously tested, Clarence was the only one that lived in Indiana. The remaining candidates lived in the area of Niles and Dowagiac, Michigan. And even though Plymouth, Indiana, was slightly more distant than the Michigan destinations, there was a reason for Helen to have spent time there.

Helen (Timmons) Miller had a favorite aunt that resided in Plymouth. She also had cousins there. Her grandfather had moved there in 1902 (see Hoosier Daddy?: Helen, Part I: Beginnings), and some of the family had maintained residence there. Her father's sister, Kitty Ann Timmons, had married George Gary Brown, in 1894, and he and his wife move to Plymouth to help Helen's grandfather, Enos Moore Timmons, in the feed mill business in Plymouth, Indiana, until his death in 1913. But after that George and Kitty (Timmons) Brown remained in Plymouth, Indiana, where George worked as a farmer, drayman, and then as a truck driver. They raised one son, Paul Robert Brown, my grandmother's first cousin, who was ten years her senior.

But interestingly, both families - the Leslie Ryders and the George Browns - moved about frequently whilst in Plymouth, living in rented homes, but both always in the central southwest part of town. At any given time, the Browns and Ryders lived just a few blocks apart. At one time, they lived merely a dozen houses away from each other. How easy would it be for Helen to take a trip to Plymouth to visit her paternal relatives, leaving her children in the care of her parents, and meet Clarence Ryder?

Additionally, the bulk of the other genetic candidates were married. And although it goes without saying that a concurrent marriage does not inhibit procreation, being single certainly gives the suspect more opportunity than he would have being married. Clarence had divorced in 1944 while in Plymouth, and he did not remarry until 1947 when he returned to Battle Creek. My mother was conceived in the spring of 1946.

Lastly, we go back to genetics. Again, I will mention the "ancestry composition" patterns set forth by 23andMe. And again, I will tell you that you just cannot put a lot of stock into them. I will let my friend Judy Russell explain to you why at "The Legal Genealogist" from this past May at Admixture: not soup yet | The Legal Genealogist. But, although the composition percentages indicated that my mother was almost exclusively of European descent, she had a little bit of every part of Europe peppered into her. She even has a 0.6% sliver of East Asian/Native American ancestry per 23andMe. And if were to give any of this credence, Clarence Ryder would fit the bill to pass on that hodgepodge of genetic ethnicities to my mother. 

Whereas the other Ryder/Daugherty candidates had spouses of either first- or second-generation European backgrounds, Jessie Moslander was definitely an American mutt. She had a mix of predominantly Dutch and German and English ancestry, but it was almost entirely colonial. There was even chatter in online forums that her Moslander great-grandfather married a woman of Native American descent. And to seal the argument, Jessie Moslander's great-great-great-grandfather was Han Georg Ilgenfritz (1718-1810), who was also the ancestor of a person in the 23andMe database with whom my mother shared the tiniest bit of DNA.

This man, Clarence L. Ryder, had to be my mother's father. It all just fit too nicely.

But getting a DNA sample would be difficult. Clarence's only son, Ralph Duane Ryder, born to his first wife after their separation in 1930, had died at the age of seven years in Battle Creek, Michigan.

Clarence Ryder had no more children that I could test as potential half-siblings to my mother. Clarence's two sisters, Mamie Bell (Ryder) Langs Gibson and Isabell Helen (Ryder) Denney, had died in 2006 and 1997, respectively. But Mamie had two surviving children, and Isabell six, living primarily in the Battle Creek, Michigan, area. If Clarence was the man I was looking for, these eight individuals would be my mother's first cousins, and as such would share approximately 12.5% of their DNA in common with my mother. They would be the closest living relatives I could test, but they would still provide conclusive evidence.

I set out to get me some Denney or Langs DNA.

It would not be easy.