When the COVID pandemic started, a lot of people found themselves having more free
time than they knew what to do with. To fill their time, some of them took up new hobbies:
baking, dancing, painting nails, whatever their hearts desired.
The hobby that I took up was genealogy research. My family tree is large and
complicated, and I ask questions whenever something comes to mind. For example, I found out
that my Great-Great-Grandfather came to America from Italy with his mother and many siblings.
My mom also told me how my Great-Great-Grandfather and her would eat banana splits
together. And, after making an Ancestry account, I found my late Great Uncle’s and my Great
Grandmother’s obituaries.
While my mother’s side of the tree is easier to track, my dad’s side has a lot of entangled
vines. When I asked my dad about his side of the family, he could only tell me that his biological
father and mother split when he was very young. His step-father adopted him and my uncle.
When I asked if he knew anything else about his family, he said that my uncle had a binder full
of our family’s history, passed down from my grandmother. My uncle gave me this binder, and it
was a THICK binder. This binder goes all the way back to about the mid-1700s, where my
six-time Great-Grandfather, Lee Wagner, came off the boat from Germany with his wife, Laura
Ramsey.
And, within this binder, was my biological Grandfather’s (my dad’s dad, Grandpa Stump)
obituary. And in his obituary was a long list of 9 kids that he had with his “now” wife (after my
Grandmother). The only thing was, some of these kids weren’t his biologically, and my dad
wanted to know, of these 9 kids, who he was related to. And so the search began.
In this batch of 9 kids, there were 6 girls and 3 boys. We quickly ruled out the boys, as
none of them had the last name ‘Stump’. That left us with the girls, one of which we quickly
ruled out because she had a different last name from the other kids (she wasn’t married, so this
name was her maiden name). My dad and I began looking up the other girls’ names. We were
striking out at first; we couldn’t find any information about any of them. But we did strike gold
with one girl; Lori. Her phone number was on an address website.
My dad hemmed and hawed for a week before he called the number. The phone number
turned out to be her son’s phone number, and from talking with him, my dad figured out that they
(him and Lori) were, in fact, half siblings! My dad got Lori’s home phone number from her son,
and called her. They chatted for an hour before they decided that they wanted to meet
face-to-face. Finally, on May 30, 2021, my dad and uncle met Lori. Lori brought pictures and
stories of Grandpa Stump, and revealed that there was another half-sister, Susan (one of the girls
on Grandpa Stump’s obituary)! Before we left the meeting, my dad, uncle, and Lori all got a
picture together, and you can see the resemblance! They all have the same nose, and dad and
Lori have very similar smiles. They also share the best light hearted sense of humor
I’m happy my hobby was able to answer some questions for me, as well as my dad and
my uncle. I feel happy that, in a way, I helped them find their sister, who is happy that we found
her as well. My hobby connected families.
Feature image credited to Joanna Kosinska via Unsplash.
