All My Ancestors

For over 50 years, my Osborne family has been looking for information about Christopher Osborne (c 1732-1789). I have copies of my great Aunt Fannie’s correspondence with her “Cousin Fred” from the 1950s. I’ve been searching almost 20 years myself.

We have a copy of Christopher’s will and we know he died in Mecklenburg County, North Carolina, but where did he come from? There are lots of Osborne families, of various spellings, in western North Carolina at the same time as Christopher and his son Jonathan. When DNA tests became available, I thought this would help provide the link that we’d been struggling with for so long. There were other Osborne families in the area who had similar naming patterns–Jonathan had 10 sons and there were several families with the same names–Enoch, Ephraim, John–even a Sherwood or two–who were well documented. Surely we could link up with one of those Osborne family’s who knew the path of their immigrant ancestor.

I persuaded my brother to submit a cheek scraping–he was a little paranoid since his fingerprints are on file from doing a grad school internship at a state prison–but I assured him it would be safe.

Relatively soon, I got a notification of a match with a man with a different surname. We match on 36 out of 37 markers. The literature says there’s probably no close relationship with a person who doesn’t share a surname or a similar name, but this man’s relative was in the same area of Wake County, North Carolina, at the same time as mine, so I think there’s probably a relationship. He says they know his ancestor had 3 children out of wedlock (as they say) so I think there’s a strong possibility that we’re related–that sort of puts a new spin on surnames not matching for this case, I think. My results were posted at the Ausburn/Osborne DNA website for almost a year and a half before I got another hit. About 6 weeks ago, I got a perfect match with someone on 12 markers–her family name was Ausburn. When we corresponded, I encouraged her to upgrade her test to 37, hoping against hope that we’d have a match on those markers. Sure enough, all 37 markers match–we’re among the closest matches in the family project. That means, I think, that we have about a 97% chance of sharing a common ancestor within 8 generations. I’m the 7th generation from Christopher.

The bad news, so to speak, is that Rhonda can only track her line back to 1875. Her great-grandfather appears in south Georgia from North Carolina about this time, marries in Decatur County, has a son, leaves to build some railroad depots, and doesn’t return. That’s the family story.

She and I have consulted on how to verify these stories and to try to track her great-grandfather. I’m lamenting that I’ll have to learn to research another state. (Not seriously lamenting, you understand, but I’ve not known I had family in Georgia until now. AND, not only Georgia, but right down on the Georgia-Florida line, so you know what that means!)

Part of me is thrilled to have found a match–it’s a whole new day. Great Aunt Fannie and/or Cousin Fred had a story devised about how the Osborne name came to be spelled with an “e” on the end. Something about Aunt Hattie adding it when she came back from boarding school. What would they say if they knew the DNA shows a perfect match between an Osborne and an Ausburn? Those of us who do genealogical research know that how a name is spelled is not all that important, but Fannie and Fred lived in a different day and I doubt they had an understanding that fixed spellings of surnames is really a fairly recent phenomenon.

Rhonda and I have lots of research to do. I’ve posted much of what we know at my All My Ancestors site. Rhonda had always heard her great-grandfather’s name as James F. Ausburn, but when she got her grandfather’s death certificate (James Alexander Ausburn, the son of her great-grandfather), the name for his father was given as John A. We all know the problems that can arise from the information on a death certificate, but this “new” twist on the given name has to be considered. It was provided in 1937 by James Alexender’s wife–the daughter-in-law of the man who appears in south Georgia about 1875. We should be able to find him living in a household in 1870 or 1860 or maybe even 1850, right? Evidently, that’s too easy. We have some possibilities, but with such common names, we need more evidence to be able to narrow down the field.

So, despite the great hope for the problem-solving potential of the DNA test, we have instead lots more questions. It’s the nature of information, though, isn’t it? Answer one question and at least two more emerge. Tell people what they want to know, and they’ll want to know more. We know we have a match, we know we have a common ancestor, but the question remains, who is that ancestor? And where does Christopher fit?