That is the question that I am currently asking myself, have I in fact discovered the mother and sibling of Christina Chamberlain right there in a Census document that I have looked at several times before?
The document in question is the 1870 Danish West Indies Census, here you can see Christina with Ancilla living next to her “father” Ludwick Chamberlain, and in the house above is Catherine “Caty” Simmons. I’ve seen the name Simmons before, in the trees of people who seem to have the same relatives as I do but they haven’t tested or maybe they have and we don’t match? Whatever it is I never ran across them in my brother’s DNA relatives and I have not seen them in mine.
U.S. Virgin Islands Census, 1835-1911 (Danish Period)
This record alone isn’t enough to say Hey! That’s her Mama, it was the other records that I found that made this even more compelling, here is Caty and Christina in the 1860 Danish West Indies Census, it lists Christina as her daughter.
Danish West Indies, Denmark, Census, 1835-1911
And here in the 1857 Census is Caty with Judy Powlis also known as Judith her other daughter and Judy’s son Carl.
Danish West Indies Census, 1841-1901
In the 1850 Census, I found Catherine, Judith, and Christina in the same place. I have not identified the other people yet, possible relatives? Maybe.
My Great Grandmother on my father’s maternal side was Valderia Eugenie Petersen, she was the daughter of Maud Hines and George Petersen.
I know a lot about Val’s mother and her mother’s maternal family but her father was a mystery because all I had was his name.
The only reason I even knew his name was because of the index for Valderia’s Social Security Application.
It has taken me 16 years to finally find his family, with the help of DNA relatives on Ancestry and knowing more about genealogy now than I did when I was 19, I was able to build a family tree of only men with the name George Petersen born between 1870 and 1905. I choose those dates because I knew Valderia was born in 1920 and her father could have been anywhere between the ages of 50 and 15. I have seen very young parents in my searches so 15 is not common but not unheard of.
I’m getting a little ahead of myself so let me backtrack a bit, before I even began my George Petersen tree I identified DNA relatives from my father’s maternal side of the family and those who were not related to Val’s mother’s side I separated and focused on building branches for them in my own tree with the hopes that I would find the connection but the higher I got on their trees the more I didn’t recognize the names. It was also more difficult because some of them didn’t have any shared connections! They were puzzles that intrigued me. I could see that they were related to each other somehow but my brother just didn’t have the same shared DNA with each of them.
This is when I got the idea to look for all the George Petersens, and there were so many of them that I just started labeling them I, II, all the way up to XIII. George Petersen XIII (13) was the one!
His full name was George Henry Petersen born on June 26, 1879, to George Henry Petersen and Lydia Gasper. Gasper also spelled as Jasper and Yasper is a name I’ve seen in my DNA relatives’ trees and I got that lightbulb feeling that this had to be him, he never showed up in any of their trees but his grandmother on his mother’s side was the half-sibling of my brother’s DNA relatives’ 3rd Great grandfather, 4th Great grandfather, and through another side, his mother was the sister of these relatives Great grandmother.
St. Croix, Danish West Indies, Denmark, Records of Enslaved and Free People, 1779-1921 for George Henry Petersen
When I entered his information into my tree and attached him as Valderia’s father, I had to wait the next day to check the Thrulines to see if it would show me anything interesting and it did.
I found 3 other DNA relatives, one of them was only 7cM which I didn’t really pay any attention to because of how small it was and they literally shared no common matches so I had no idea they belonged on my grandmother’s side but it makes me feel good because this meant that I had found the right person.
Days like these show me why I love Genealogy and pairing DNA testing with it. Conventional Geneaology can only get you so far it’s the DNA that will help you break those decade-long brick walls.
My focus now will be to find the father of my 2nd great-grandmother, Maude Hines. I know that he has to be a Hynes from St. Croix because I have DNA relatives with the Hynes last name and they share common relatives from my grandmother’s family but they do not match with my grandmother’s father or her most of her maternal side. There’s some overlap which isn’t surprising with the size of the Island but the connection is there and it’s waiting for me, I just have to find it.
This is a question I’ve seen asked by people new to Genealogy all the time, if you are one of these people I’m going to give you the answer to this question you’ve been searching for.
Yes, there are free Genealogy websites!
The biggest free Genealogy website is FamilySearch, the site is available in 30 languages, and is completely free. All you have to do is sign up for a free account and you will be on your way.
I’ve written about using FamilySearch before in my Finding my Roots In The Caribbean and Who are you? Joseph Boldt posts and this site is really essential, not only can you find records that are also available on Ancestry but you can find records that are not on Ancestry. When I’m working on a tree for someone I will usually go to Familysearch and look for the free records before I move over to Ancestry to find the paid sources. If you haven’t created an account on Familysearch I highly suggest you do so today.
Because I mainly focus on genealogy for two specific Islands I’ll share with you the sites I use the most. For Saint-Barthélemy and pretty much all the Islands in the French Antilles I suggest using the Archives nationales d’outre-mer or Anom for short. If you are looking for someone born between 1724 and 1905 chances are very good that you find them on here. I will not lie to you but the earlier records are very difficult to read so I’d suggest you be more advanced in genealogy before attempting to look at those records. I do have to mention that for Gustavia the records only go up to 1904, for Lorient it goes to 1905. I keep hoping that they will add more records; the 1910s for instance but one can only hope.
For the Danish West Indies, I use Virgin Islands History, there are so many records here that it should be one of your first stops when looking for family members from the Danish West Indies, most of it is not indexed but some are, so all you have to do is type in your surname and see what shows up.
If you are looking for more recent family then visit FamilySearch or Ancestry sometimes you will have to use both as FamilySearch has Church and Census records that Ancestry just doesn’t seem to have.
I hope this was helpful, and if you have any questions please feel free to leave a comment or visit my Instagram page and send a message there. You can find me on Instagram here :
Crucianize 