Excitement is in the Air!!

We are awaiting Y-DNA results to help identify our place in the Boyd clan!  For a long time, I've searched for a male Boyd from our branch of the clan who would be willing to spit into the tube and help us make the connections that we've been unable to make through many hours and years of paper research. 

We are incredibly grateful to the Boyd cousin who was willing to help with this obsessed genealogist's quest!  I've searched for more than 25 years and cousins Connie and Annea spent many more years looking for the paper trail that might lead us to John Boyd's roots.

Now we wait.  The sample has been collected and sent to the lab for review. . . once we receive the results, the real fun begins!

It's not so easy as looking at a website and saying here is where we fit.  With the DNA results will come many hours of sifting through paper records and trying to make connections with those matches closest to our Boyd cousin.

Best case scenario, we'll have lots of "close" matches to work with.  Worst case, we will have to wait for the right testers to join the Boyd Y-DNA project.  My brother tested 5+ years ago and he still has exactly 1 match with the name Willems, not Schlichting.  And he is a distant match.  So distant, it may not even be possible with traditional research to identify our most recent common ancestor.  That person may have existed long before names were used.

Fingers crossed, we will have a good outcome and will be able to finally determine where our Boyd clan comes from.  My great grandma always claimed we were English.  Others in the clan proclaimed Scottish, Irish or Scots-Irish.  The furthest back reference to these roots came on Horatio's pension papers at the turn of the 20th century when he left the KS National Guard.  He wrote that he was of Scots-Irish descent.  Hopefully, soon we will know more about our Boyd clan and where they fit on the "tree of mankind"!

 

Remembering Our Boyd Ancestors

 We visited several cemeteries this past weekend to remember and honor our Boyd ancestors.  We took time to share stories and memories of those we knew personally and shared historic information about those older ancestors.

                Visiting great great grandparents' Tom and Cora Boyd's graves.

 

 

 

 When reviewing the photos after our visit, I see that these fireman's stars are personalized.  Will take a closer shot of the rest of these next year.  Our family members were a big part of the downtown Columbus, NE fire station.

 

 

A picnic was held in Pawnee Park in Columbus following the cemetery visit.  Cousin Jane Dodds in New Zealand had sent some old Columbus newspapers to share with the gathering, along with some old family recipes that she'd come across.  I'll share some of those recipes in another post.  

   Good food, good fellowship!  We were a small, but mighty group this year. 

The newspaper article that stood out to me was the one focusing on all of the community work done by the Columbus Fire Department.  Among their projects were a number of improvements in Pawnee Park.  No wonder the Boyd clan gathered in the park annually!

Following the picnic, we made our way up to Norfolk to remember more Boyd family and my grandparents / great grandparents.

        Harold Boyd's first wife.  Buried in the plot with her sister-in-law and family.

  No relation.  But a rather colorful Norfolk resident who rests nearby my grandparents. 

                   Following are Ralph Waldo Emerson Boyd's family members.

On the way to Nebraska, I also stopped in Belleville, KS to remember Horatio Boyd, Mary, his wife and son's graves.