We don’t know what we don’t know?

As a family historian and genealogist, I marvel as I learn about the lives of our ancestors. Where did they live, how’d they get there, who were the immigrants, in what country were they born? The mysteries uncovered, layer by layer, page by page, with each document a new discovery. Every family has stories, grains of truth within, and passed down from one generation to another. . . Often I hear “we don’t know anything, our parents and grandparents never discussed the past.” So this is where I come in with the research, no preconceived notions about them and their lives. I use the research to flesh them out and find those nuggets of truth from the stories their descendents might’ve been told. . . I do this research for my own family as well as my husband’s family and others who’ve hired me to assist in their research. Now you’ve the idea, and I’ll tell you another story, it’s a doozie, stay with me here…

By now you’ve no doubt seen the commercials on TV about DNA testing. Ancestry.com, 23andMe, to name a few. We decided to have our DNA tested, in 2012, to add this information to our own family trees. We then expanded the DNA testing, adding my mother, and mother-in-law.  Realizing neither my father nor father-in-law were alive, I decided to ask my Dad’s sister, and my husband’s paternal Aunt to each do the DNA. I’d purchased the kits and mailed them. You get the idea; I’ve also sent kits off to other older cousins to work on verifying the family research. Now for the rest of the story…

During the summer of 2013, during a visit with Scott’s Uncle Jim in Minnesota, Jim told him “the story.”

Jim pulled out a high school year book and began to share … turns out Scott’s father Jack had a high school sweetheart, during his junior and senior year. We knew Jack went away to St. Cloud to college, after graduating from Forest Lake High school in 1954. We also know Scott’s father and mother met in 1956 and married in 1957. What we didn’t know was the “rest of the story,” as Paul Harvey used to say…

Jim went on to share; Jack and his girlfriend had a child, possibly born in 1954 or 1955. Jim shared the photographs and some notes from the yearbook, and background on them during high school. Scott shared the story with me, and then with his brothers. This meant they might have a brother or sister they never knew, but knowing adoptions during this time were often closed, we had no way to get information. Uncle Jim passed away a few months after sharing the story, November 2013.

Scott and I did some research on the sweetheart of Jack’s, from the yearbook and my genealogy skills this part was pretty easy.  We’d discussed this knowledge we had and decided we’d leave it all alone as we didn’t know anything else and didn’t want to disturb her at this time.

January 2017 Scott and I were discussing the story once again, and he asked, “If the baby did a DNA test, would we know and be able to verify the relationship?” I said “yes, the baby would have to do the DNA test we’d be notified of the “relationship,” and could initiate contact if desired…”

April 2017 we were planning an annual road trip, this year back once again to Minnesota to visit the cousins. We’d talked some more about the baby and the birth mother, and decided, let’s write the birth mother and see if we can share a visit, and see if she’ll share the story we already knew, or if she’d simply share more about Scott’s father during their high school years. I typed up a letter, planning to print and mail it the first week of May before we left on our trip.

Then on April 27^th we welcomed our 6^th grandchild in to the family, and were riding high on the emotion, little Miss Cassidy was born just 7 weeks after our 5^th grandchild, Grayson. 2 babies in 7 weeks, what a whirlwind ride!

Just 2 days later we received the news we’d known might come our way one day, the baby found us, no not our new grandbabies, “the BABY” … Here is what was in my email Saturday morning April 29^th, 2017, at 6am, while making my coffee and getting things together for a large breakfast, my girlfriends were sleeping, here for a weekend visit.

I read the email message, recognized it immediately from the messaging service at Ancestry. As I read the message, the feeling overwhelmed me, I started to shake and cry as the adrenaline rush hit me, oh my, oh my, oh my, as I read, “I was adopted, born 1954 in Minneapolis, and Ancestry DNA says we’re a close match!” The baby found us, the baby isn’t a baby, it’s a girl, she’s Bonnie, Bonnie found us, she matches the DNA of Scott, of his paternal aunt, Kathy and a 2^nd cousin, Michelle. WOW, I was floored, it worked, and she found us!

One by one my girlfriends came up for air and coffee in the early hours, I was still shaking and crying, and each one said “what, what? did someone die?” “No she was born, she was born to us today, Scott and his brothers have a sister!!!!” I was then able to pull myself together about an hour later and tell them all the “story.”  What a joy, and what a fabulous group of women to share it with, they grew up with me, and they went to high school with Scott and me, they know both of us. They were all over this; we decided I had to wait for Scott to wake before I floored him with the email from his new sister!

The email had been sent the night before about midnight, and I’d read it at about 6am. Wow a sister, Scott has a sister. I was able to finish my coffee, and verify a few things on the Ancestry website showing the brand new match for Scott & the others matching Bonnie.

Scott was up about an hour later, and came out the room where we were all sitting, and said good morning to all the ladies, then looked at our faces and said “what, what?” I started to cry again, once more he said “what?” I was saying the baby, the baby, he said “Cassidy” no, the baby, “he said Grayson?” I then said, “the baby found us, the baby, you have a sister, she did the DNA, and she found us?” To say he was stunned was an understatement, completely, utterly floored, he kept saying, “really, are you sure???  More coffee, and we read the email again and again, and showed him the DNA match. Time to reply to Bonnie’s message.

The messages are sent via Ancestry’s messaging system, and the match shows only initials, Bonnie later said she’d no idea who she was messaging nor the relationship.

Sharing here the initial messages:

Close family match      

Just got my DNA results and there is a high probability that we are close relatives. I am adopted so it's exciting to learn this. I was born on Dec. 24, 1954 in Minneapolis. I would appreciate any information you could give me. Thank you so much.

Apr 29, 2017

Dear Bonnie, we learned of the possibility of your existence only 3 years ago. We've been hoping and waiting for this message. Welcome, I’m Linda, you are matching my husband. I believe you're his sister.

Apr 04/29/17 1:31 PM

Dear Linda,

You can't imagine how surprised I was to get your message. When I sent in my DNA sample I was just doing it to know more about where I was from. In fact I didn't really know that I might be given matches. So this is all really crazy. Being adopted I've never been very interested in genealogy and ancestry because I always felt that I'd never really know. And honestly my adoptive parents were wonderful and always very open about everything. I never had a lot of curiosity about the situation. That being said I'm thrilled at the prospect of finding out about my birth family.

Where do you live? I live in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. I'd love to find out more about your husband. So I'm assuming that he is my birth mothers son... is that correct? Please fill me in as much as possible. And feel free to ask me anything you're wondering about.

Apr 29, 2017, at 4:15 PM

Dear Bonnie, sister-in-law, WELCOME. Surprised as much as you, yes we are...

Relation is your birth father, unfortunately he died in 1979. You've a large extended family, including 5 brothers, 4 living. They will be thrilled to hear they've a sister. Scott is my husband, as he says now, “no longer the oldest.”

Your birth father, John Francis Trudeau 1936-1979, everyone called him Jack.

We'll get to the rest soon enough. They were raised in MN, before moving to CA in the, 70s where we live now… It's a lot to take in for all of us, and as I said we only learned the story 3 years ago.

Small bite size pieces, tag you're it!  Linda

Our emails were back and forth for a day…Sunday the 30^th; we all decided it was time for a phone call.  Scott decided he’d make the call, he must’ve held that phone for 15 minutes before he dialed. “Hi Bonnie, this is your brother Scott, long time no talk,” and the ice was broken. They spoke for over an hour, then it was my turn… here we were, all floored, flabbergasted, oh my gosh, oh my gosh, oh my gosh, he’s talking to “the Baby.”

Scott filled her in on the family, her birth father, her brothers, their families. She did the same, her family, and grandchildren. One of the pictures she sent, looked like Lake Tahoe, she confirmed it was indeed, she and her husband have visited there every year for the last decade. She and her family live in Cedar Rapids, IA. Scott told Bonnie he’d camped just a few miles from her home 2 years before in 2015. The strangeness was wearing off, and amazement setting in… Bonnie said later, as soon as she heard Scott's voice she felt she knew it and it was somehow familiar to her...

...within hours of the phone conversation the pictures started flying back and forth between California and Iowa. We shared family pictures, childhood pictures, our children and grandchildren. One of the first pictures I'd sent to Bonnie was of Scott & our daughter Kendall, from Kendall's wedding a few years before. . . . Bonnie shared it with her daughter Brooke who said "well he looks like you but she really looks like you" ... all of a sudden our 2nd daughter went from looking like me to being a dark haired version of her new Auntie... DNA shows up in amazing ways...At the same time the first picture Bonnie sent our way I immediately recognized how much she looked like her grandmother Kay Trudeau, Scott could see it too, no doubt in that DNA.

We’d had our summer tour planned, but we’d not yet named it, now we did, “re-calculating.” Our timing changed due to various factors, we found we weren’t going to be able to meet up on the first leg of our trip heading east to Indiana, as she was going to be in Minnesota. We were going to be in Iowa just east of her home, told her we’d meet up with her husband Steve and share a meal, he could scout us out, and apparently he told her the same thing, Bonnie gave us all a resounding, “No” … we have to wait … We waved as we passed the Cedar Rapids water tower.

Our date was set for the meet-up, Monday June 12^th, 2017, in Forest Lake. We were there with the cousins for a golf tournament, and Bonnie’s children live an hour away. The wait and anticipation was nearly unbearable, but we managed. The conversations every day during our weeks of waiting, what if, how about this, we wondered this or that … another phone call here or there, lots and lots of text messaging and Facebook messaging. Scott & Bonnie were on the same page with all of the questions. With the daily messaging, the same ideas were popping up between all of us …

The day arrived, we were nearly undone from the anticipation, the nervousness, what if … and Bonnie said she was feeling the same way. Scott & his brother Jack went to get “pink” balloons, and came back with one that said, “It’s a girl,” Scott’s Aunt, Carol, got a cake; we had the kitchen full of food. We knew the cousins were going to be coming in at different times during the day, so she wouldn’t be overwhelmed and we’d have a quieter start.

It was time; we saw them all drive up, we went out to meet Bonnie, Steve, daughter Brooke, daughter-in-law Noelle, and the grandchildren, Winston, Hazel, and Ruby & Baker. Introductions and hugs, all around a few quick photographs and we were off and running. Speed dating in person, the conversations flowed, the little ones played… all chatting about how it felt for each involved, what did they think, who did they tell… can you believe this?

Our afternoon gathering, the meal, the stories, getting to know each other. Photo-slideshow, sharing some history along the way, seeing the family resemblances in several generations was crazy fun. Time to finish for the night, exhaustion all around. We’d already planned a 2^nd day, touring Forest Lake, paying our respects at the cemetery, and sharing another meal in Stillwater, MN. During the touring we had 2 vehicles; with the cell phone open lines listening to Scott narrate in the first car as we extras listened in the 2^nd car, what fun! Finished with lunch and a stop for Nelson’s ice cream.

To say we were wiped out emotionally & physically by the 2^nd afternoon, was an understatement. We just had to call it, we all did and set a tentative time for the next meet up, in Iowa. The messages have been flying all over again, “can you even believe this,” “this is so easy,” “you all seem to fit together,” ….

UPDATE It’s now 2021, four fast years, the sharing of our lives. Definitely time to share this update etc., how we’ve managed; our lives are forever changed in the most marvelous way. As I worked to gather the images for this blog update, I realized just how fun this is, I now have to check the dates on the pictures files, “was this that year, or this year or what year?”

I’ll go back to 2017 we had our “initial meet up in June where Bonnie met two of her 4 brothers and lots of cousins. Scott & I finished the Minnesota leg of our summer trip and then headed south to Cedar Rapids, Iowa. We enjoyed a few quiet days together, we toured their town, we went to the theater, and we toured Dubuque, where Bonnie lived during her childhood.

August 2017, we crashed Bonnie & Steve’s annual vacation in Lake Tahoe, CA. Kevin’s family from Arizona, Mike’s family from Livermore, our own 3 kids and 6 grandchildren. We rented a big house a few miles from Bonnie’s rental and waited for them to arrive at our place. We were barbequing dinner and we needed a few things from the grocery store. Kevin volunteered to go while we waited for Bonnie & Steve. So, imagine this … Kevin standing in the aisle with the Ziploc bags where he ran smack dab into his new sister Bonnie! She was there getting a few things too; they knew each other from Facebook and pix back and forth and here they were … how many of you can say the first time you met your sister was in the Ziploc aisle? We’ve laughed at that for four years. Scott & I brought his Dad's yearbooks to this visit, the grandsons were looking through them and found a picture we'd overlooked, Jack & his girlfriend together...this was pretty cool to see.... 

May 2018 I was able to fly to Minnesota to meet Bonnie’s newest granddaughter, Annika, we visited with Brooke and her family, as well as Aunt Carol Trudeau…then Bonnie & I headed to Cedar Rapids for a few days of touring, shopping, coffee, pedicures, and time…. While driving from Burnsville, MN to Cedar Rapids I had to introduce Bonnie to some more relatives...off to the side of highway 35 near Northfield, MN the small Church of the Annunciation which sits atop a hill in Webster, MN. I introduced her to her 3x great-grandfather John Tosney. Then over to the Northfield cemetery to meet Patrick Heffernan and his family, Patrick is her 2x great-grandfather.  Bonnie says she's driven this route her entire lifetime of going back and forth to MN from IA, she's always noticed the little church up on the hill fronting the highway, now I've given her a new reason to look and wave as she drives by... She knows me now I'll always find a way to hit up a cemetery wherever we are ....

August 2018 after Bonnie's vacation in Lake Tahoe, once again she and Steve came to stay at our home in Arnold. One of our days together we drove down to Livermore, 2 hours west of us, for lunch with the family. Our kids, grandkids, Scott's mother Mary Lou came too, we had a great time. Then off to tour Livermore, show her where her brothers had grown up, the homes, our high school and the to our favorite ice cream spot, Loards. Our last stop was out the cemetery to visit their father Jack and brother Ted's grave. This was also the first time some of the grandchildren had been here.... Now Bonnie was well versed in our hometown of Livermore. 

...now this is the craziest serendipity, coincidence, special meet up ever! Our son-in-law Bobby works for our hometown fire department, Livermore - Pleasanton Fire...his station has a public service call, smoke detector malfunction at a nearby condo, while on the call Bobby was looking at the family pictures on the wall, he points to some and asks the homeowner, "hey who are these two kids?" She replies, "my grandchildren in Minnesota" Bobby then says, "is that Seth and Brooke Nielsen?" she replies, "why yes, it is, are you a Trudeau?" Bobby tells her, "No but I'm married to one" .... turns out the call for service is for Karen Nielsen, she's Steve Nielsen's stepmom, Bonnie's mother-in-law, retired school administrator from Cedar Rapids, now living in Pleasanton CA a few miles down the road from Livermore. Bonnie told us she's been to Pleasanton a few times over the years...crazy down the road from where her "birth" brothers and their families were raised...."serendipity? coincidence? happenstance?" .... 

Spring 2019 Bonnie & I took our girls to Waco it was the first time our girls all met, the cousins were able to get to know each other as we all enjoyed Magnolia!

July 26, 2019, our cousin Taylor was getting married in Minnesota. The California & Arizona cousins were there for the fun! This was Bonnie’s first family wedding. By now the inclusion of Steve & Bonnie felt as normal as everyone else we were with that weekend.  

February of 2020, we took at trip to Florida. Scott & I flew in from CA, Bonnie & Steve from IA, and we met up with Aunt Carol Trudeau who was there wintering with her own brother & sister-in-law. We’d decided to go visit our cousin Jonathon and his family in Ft. Lauderdale. We’d visited with them at the family wedding 6 months before in Minnesota and that’s what started us thinking of our next visit. Jonathon is caring for his mother Kathy who is Scott & Bonnie’s aunt, she’s the sister of their father Jack. Kathy’s had some health issues, so we knew we needed to be there … what a wonderful two days we had …

Kathy was so excited to see Scott, Kathy was only 10 when Scott was born, she’s always called him her “baby” …. Scott was able to take the conversations to his childhood memories and then let Kathy fill in her side of the story. They were both spot on for the family history I’d learned for many years from Uncle Jim. Kathy had a few of her own stories of some of the relatives. While she didn’t know specifically about Bonnie being born, she remembered Jack’s girlfriend and said she’d gone on a few dates with them as the backseat – passenger – little sister, she was only 6 years old. Jonathon’s daughters were there for most of the visit and they got such laughs out of hearing the stories. They also had a trunk full of treasures, this genealogist was in heaven. Photographs, newspaper clippings, Mass cards, and obituaries to add to the family treasure trove. I was able to photograph all of the items they’d offered to share. This visit was another connection to the history Bonnie now shares with her brothers.

We had another visit with Bonnie’s brother Tom & his wife Tow. Tom was 8 when Bonnie was adopted, his parents let him choose her name, “Bonnie Jean” … Bonnie had her two brothers from both sides of her life to share the day…incredibly special.

I was able to arrange a meet up with my dear friend, Emily, she lives in Indianapolis, she was wintering near us, so Bonnie & Emily were able to meet, they'd heard about each other from the start. In fact Aunt Carol & Emily were the first two I told of the message from Bonnie that morning, April 29th 2017. Though they both said I scared them to death with a text that only read, OMG, OMG, OMG ... Oops. . .  we remedied that quickly enough. 

August 2020 we're repeating the summer visits now, after their annual trip to Tahoe once again to Arnold. Now that we've had the previous visits, sharing and touring, now we can just be about "being" together. Our kids and grandkids came up to see Auntie Bonnie & Uncle Steve .... we say this now with such ease...

May 2021 we all gathered in Indianapolis to be with Jack, their brother, he'd had some health issues, so Scott, Kevin, Bonnie, Steve and I were able to be together with Jack and share our support with him. Bonnie said she was so glad she was able to do this and be there with them in that moment of time, she knows she's part of this clan...

...wrapping this UPDATE tying it up with a bow, what can I say? In just 4 short years, the families have all gotten to know each other, visited back and forth, now it's "normal" ...such a strange way to put it, but it's normal, as if she's always been a part of their lives...During a few of our visits, Bonnie and I have gone over that first 24 hour period of messages, feelings and just what we were doing as each message came in to us ... she and her friends were on Facebook checking out the family connections back in IA, at the same time Scott  and my girlfriends were doing just the same from California... Uncle Jim had opened the door for us in 2013, we were able to see the story come full circle just four years later and now we're just so fortunate? (We really are....)