I keep feeling like I am so close to figuring this out, yet so far away. The Amato end of the family continues to be an enigma, but I've had a couple minor breakthroughs. Unfortunately, I fear this creates more questions than answers.
As I've previously noted, the paternal tree seems to have two main groups. One group is the Poths, where I have one line that I've traced out nicely and have the likely branch where I fit, with Mansley as my probable grandfather. This second group I've traced back to Edward Poth as the likely great grandfather.
The other group consists of multiple cousins: Benjamin, a likely first or second cousin; Christine, Rene, and David, likely second or third cousins; and Mia, a likely second or third cousin (but far more distant than the other three). In all the DNA matches I have, I share significantly more DNA with Benjamin than with any other. I had previously contacted Christine, but never heard back from her; the rest of this family seemed to not be very active on the site, so I didn't try to contact them initially. I've tried to ask around to people I know personally, including some Amatos, but just keep hitting one dead end after another.
I tried to start building out this family tree, but there's not an expert over here like Becky to help me out, so it's been much slower. Without this, I can't even begin to try to tie in the Poth tree, assuming they connect. I had found one Benjamin, but he was born in 1910; certainly this couldn't be the Benjamin I share so much DNA with! A little research showed a son, also Benjamin, born in 1932. Again, I can't believe someone 51 years older than me is my closest indirect relative, but here I am at a dead end. His children are still alive, and Ancestry has a pretty strict privacy policy about living people, so all public trees have these blocked out. The way to get around this is to have the tree creator grant you permission to view the entirety of the tree, which is unlikely considering none of these guys are responding. Apparently this is a pretty long lived family, so I guess this is a good thing.
I ultimately messaged Mia and I got a response fairly quickly. Mia is a minor, and her mother manages the account. Her mother said that Mia's father is David, and that she thinks David was an only child. This isn't particularly helpful, but it's something.
David and Benjamin have not logged into the site for over a year, and neither has built out a tree. I can't imagine I'm going to get any help from them. I'm waiting on a response from Mia's mom. In the meantime, I decided to take another look at Rene, and see if I can build her family tree into what I've got.
Rene's maiden name is different from the others, and her family tree that she's built contains 6 new surnames I've never seen, and zero that I have. One grandparent is a Russian immigrant, and three great grandparents are immigrants (two Canadian and one Irish). This is vastly different from the rest of this group of people in this branch, who seem to have been in this area, even this county, for generations as far as I can see. I now have a headache, but see that Rene has logged in recently, and I decided to message her to see if she had any clue how she tied into this family, because I sure as shit can't figure it out.
As I've previously noted, the paternal tree seems to have two main groups. One group is the Poths, where I have one line that I've traced out nicely and have the likely branch where I fit, with Mansley as my probable grandfather. This second group I've traced back to Edward Poth as the likely great grandfather.
The other group consists of multiple cousins: Benjamin, a likely first or second cousin; Christine, Rene, and David, likely second or third cousins; and Mia, a likely second or third cousin (but far more distant than the other three). In all the DNA matches I have, I share significantly more DNA with Benjamin than with any other. I had previously contacted Christine, but never heard back from her; the rest of this family seemed to not be very active on the site, so I didn't try to contact them initially. I've tried to ask around to people I know personally, including some Amatos, but just keep hitting one dead end after another.
I tried to start building out this family tree, but there's not an expert over here like Becky to help me out, so it's been much slower. Without this, I can't even begin to try to tie in the Poth tree, assuming they connect. I had found one Benjamin, but he was born in 1910; certainly this couldn't be the Benjamin I share so much DNA with! A little research showed a son, also Benjamin, born in 1932. Again, I can't believe someone 51 years older than me is my closest indirect relative, but here I am at a dead end. His children are still alive, and Ancestry has a pretty strict privacy policy about living people, so all public trees have these blocked out. The way to get around this is to have the tree creator grant you permission to view the entirety of the tree, which is unlikely considering none of these guys are responding. Apparently this is a pretty long lived family, so I guess this is a good thing.
I ultimately messaged Mia and I got a response fairly quickly. Mia is a minor, and her mother manages the account. Her mother said that Mia's father is David, and that she thinks David was an only child. This isn't particularly helpful, but it's something.
David and Benjamin have not logged into the site for over a year, and neither has built out a tree. I can't imagine I'm going to get any help from them. I'm waiting on a response from Mia's mom. In the meantime, I decided to take another look at Rene, and see if I can build her family tree into what I've got.
Rene's maiden name is different from the others, and her family tree that she's built contains 6 new surnames I've never seen, and zero that I have. One grandparent is a Russian immigrant, and three great grandparents are immigrants (two Canadian and one Irish). This is vastly different from the rest of this group of people in this branch, who seem to have been in this area, even this county, for generations as far as I can see. I now have a headache, but see that Rene has logged in recently, and I decided to message her to see if she had any clue how she tied into this family, because I sure as shit can't figure it out.
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