New revelations about Tim’s first family were popping up regularly until all of a sudden toward the end of November 2018 our progress stalled. What we knew for sure was that Tim’s paternal great-grandparents, Hazlett Hastings and Rebecca McCausland, had seven children; the age difference between the oldest (born in 1891) and youngest (born in 1909) was nearly a generation. Tim had documented cousin matches with offspring of three of the younger siblings and a fourth sister never had children. Logic would say that we could eliminate those four, so Tim’s grandmother or grandfather was likely one of the three older Hastings/ McCausland siblings – Mary Jane, Robert or William. Unfortunately, these three branches of the family tree were not as well known to the cousins Tim was working with.
Luckily, about that same time we became aware of further DNA testing that offered promise. I’ll spare you the genetics lesson, but unlike autosomal DNA which had gotten us this far, Y-DNA testing could actually identify Tim’s paternal surname. To us novices, it sounded too good to be true. But other than a couple of hundred bucks, we had nothing to lose and everything to gain so we went for it. The downside was more waiting since test results probably wouldn’t arrive until the new year.
We kept ourselves busy through the 2018 holidays getting to know the new cousins and working the various leads we had, filling in holes on our family tree with each precious nugget we discovered. By this point our kitchen had become a war room, complete with white boards charting our progress and tracking leads. Everyone had their assignments and it wasn’t uncommon to find us all sitting around the kitchen table googling well into the night.
Going into the new year we had a pretty good handle on Tim’s maternal side. Now that we had the spelling right, his grandparents’ grave marker and census data provided a lot of information for our family tree. But it was social media that was the gold mine from the standpoint of acquainting ourselves with Tim’s Australian family. All you really need is to find one person in the family with lax privacy settings and you’re in. We found pictures of his mother at her most recent birthday party, a video tribute to her husband after his passing that included a lifetime of family photos, lots of pictures of Tim’s half-siblings and their kids. We even found the home his mother was selling since she had recently moved in with one of her daughters. We had all of this information before Tim’s Nashville cousin even agreed to reach out on his behalf.
I mentioned in a previous post that Tim’s mother ultimately declined communication with him, and he promised to make no further attempt to contact her. And of course, he’ll honor that. But that didn’t mean we stopped searching for information about her and the rest of the Rodgers clan. They’re part of his story. He has simply hit pause on developing relationships with his Australian family, but he still hopes that someday he will have the opportunity to make contact with his siblings. They have a large family and sooner or later someone may take a DNA test. We’ve put Tim in all the top databases in Australia so he will show up when that day comes. And of course, once she passes we’ll have more options. Until then we’ll just keep up through social media and wait.
In mid-January we had our biggest break yet! The Y-DNA results were in and we learned that Tim’s paternal surname was McConnell. This discovery was monumental; beyond our imagination only a few months before. Of course, you’d think knowing the surname would give us a speed pass to Tim’s immediate family, but it’s never quite that simple. One of the quirky little things about the Hastings/McCausland family is that both their oldest daughter, Mary Jane, and their youngest daughter, Sarah, married a McConnell…an Andrew McConnell at that. Same name, two completely different families.
We worked through it and between Tim’s DNA matches within Sarah’s family, and the birth dates of possible father candidates we confidently declared Mary Jane Hastings and Andrew McConnell to have been Tim’s grandparents. Each step was leading us closer and energized us more; by mid-January we couldn’t put it down – it had become 24/7 for Tim and me.
Mary Jane and Andrew McConnell were marred in 1916 and owned a farm in Carrickadawson, just outside Raphoe in Co. Donegal. They had three sons; all close in age, all deceased and thankfully, none of them married around the time of Tim’s birth. In fact, two of the three never married and only the middle son, Roy, was known to have children – he had two daughters and a son. Many hours of discussion and countless email exchanges had everyone leaning toward Roy being Tim’s father. We asked for his real name as I couldn’t locate any documents using Roy McConnell, but everyone seemed certain that was his given name. Our whole effort had been fact based and now when it mattered most, I wasn’t ready to just rush to judgement. I wanted something more to connect them.
That night my brain was on overload revisiting all the facts that had gotten us to this point. We were so close. When we started this, Tim’s father could have been any man in the world, and now we were down to just three. While I was thinking, I started idly searching family trees within the ancestry.com database, not even sure what I was looking for. I was searching on McConnell, then Andrew McConnell, then Mary Jane McConnell… just searching and scrolling through the trees for hours. I was half asleep when I found myself staring at a sparse little tree that slowly took my breath away.
We later learned that the tree’s author was Tim’s niece and she had started the tree in 2011 just after her grandfather had died. What had caught my attention was that she didn’t use the name Roy on the tree…she used Robert McConnell. And oddly enough she had a second little tree out there, exactly the same as the first with one exception, on the second tree she used John McConnell. I sat there in the wee hours of the morning staring at those two long-ago abandoned trees not believing what I was seeing; Roy was Robert John McConnell. Tim had been born Robert John Rogers. Their name was the connection I needed. I was now on board with what his cousins had suspected…Roy McConnell was most likely Tim’s biological father.
The family tree that had once seemed impossible to even start was now our treasured masterpiece! It had been a labor of love and a journey of healing. And now there was one final step – it was time for Tim to reach out to the McConnells. We knew all too well that there was no guarantee what their response would be. But toughened up a bit from rejection on the Rodgers side, we pushed forward. Everyone was in agreement that a letter was the best way to approach them. So, with equal parts excitement and apprehension, Tim and I went to work on the most important letter we’ve ever written.
