52 Ancestors Week 49: Oops

+17 votes
803 views

Time for the next 52 Ancestors challenge...

52 Photos and 52 Ancestors sharing bacgesPlease share with us a profile of an ancestor or relative who matches this week's theme:

Oops

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in The Tree House by Eowyn Walker G2G Astronaut (2.4m points)
Where would we be without Alexander Fleming's "oops" which gave us penicillin?

24 Answers

+10 votes
 
Best answer
I have a wonderful Oops! It is too recent and still living to name names; however, it is relevant to this week's theme and heartwarming as we approach the holidays.

DNA was mentioned and with the advent of DNA in genealogy it brings blessings and Oopses. I administrate my, my brother's, slster's and mother's DNA on FTDNA, Ancestry, 23andme and My Heritage. About 5 years ago, I got a message on my Ancestry account asking if I knew of any Baldwins in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. First, know that I got written permission from my three family members to apprise them of any 'surprises' and respond to surprises (genealogical ethics). So...I responded with a listing of names of my dad, aunts, uncles, etc.

Long story short...it's a boy! It turns out that one of my paternal relatives fathered a son following WWII and this new cousin found out that his father was not his biological dad after his mum died leaving him a letter (with sources).

Within 6 months of meeting by email we met in person along with several family members and my mum. She is the only remaining member of that generation and an aunt through marriage. It was so touching to see mum reminisce about our new cousin's biological family and he was so sweet and warm with her...discovering another family and piece of the family heritage puzzle.

And we still keep in touch! Some Oops are the best Oops and real gifts!
by Carol Baldwin G2G Astronaut (1.1m points)
selected by Patricia Kent
Thank you so much, Patricia! This makes the Oops an even better Oops! Much appreciated.
+15 votes

An OOPS Proposal

Through DNA testing and analysis in recent years I have helped to identify NPE (Not Parent Expected, or Non-Paternal Events) for quite a few members of my extended family, the closest being a first cousin. Some were adopted and others were simply raised by fathers who turned out to be unrelated to them. Every one of these people have been extremely grateful to me for helping to connect them with their biological families. I would love to share some of them with you, but I will not out of respect for their privacy. I know that's anticlimactic; sorry about that.

The concept of the NPE got me thinking sometime back that this term is not really very easy to remember and not recognized by many. In that vein, I would like to propose that we use a different term.

I propose that the world of genealogy switch to the acronym OOPS, for "Out Of Paternity Scenario." OOPS is much more apropos than NPE, easier to remember, and already in our vocabulary. When someone finds an unexpected father, that is definitely an OOPS moment.

I hope my apropos OOPS Proposal does not offend anyone, but if it does, I can only say, "Oops!"

by Bill Vincent G2G6 Pilot (172k points)
edited by Bill Vincent
+18 votes

When I asked my grandmother about her family, she said

"My father was John Richard Smith. My mother was Anna Houghtaling. My sister was Elsie Davis."

"Wait a minute, Grandma. Why was her name Davis when yours was Smith?"

"My mother had an accident before she was married."

Elsie was a happy accident. She was raised by Anna's mother, Ellen. She and my grandmother always had a lot of fun together. My mother loved to go visit Aunt Elsie and Uncle George Hunt on their farm.

by Joyce Vander Bogart G2G6 Pilot (198k points)
edited by Joyce Vander Bogart
Thank you, Joyce, for this lovely story.
+16 votes

This is the Marriage certificate of the paternal grandparents of my wife from 1935 in Sülfeld, Segeberg, Schleswig-Holstein, Germany.

The wedding was to take place on 26 Jan 1935 in Sülfeld, as it was originally registered here.
But then - Oops - their first son, Heinz Friedrich Petersen, was born on 26 Jan 1935.
Therefore the date was crossed out and the new marriage date, 2 Feb 1935, was written over it.

by Dieter Lewerenz G2G Astronaut (3.1m points)
+13 votes
Was able to find an oops on my wilson line through her first marriage. It was by her son of that marriage.
by Jennifer Robins G2G6 Pilot (248k points)
What?
+15 votes

Great Aunt Lillian (McIntosh) Russell was married  29 January, 1919 in Quincy, MA.  Her eldest son, George, was born on 22 February, 1919.  I wonder if it was a shotgun wedding?

by Dorothy O'Hare G2G6 Mach 8 (87.7k points)
My maternal grandfather's uppity sisters always looked down on the sister-in-law who was pregnant when she got married. In my father's more pragmatic family, the classier sort of women got married when they were pregnant.
+17 votes

I had a massive oops moment trying to sort out the marriages of my third great grandfather, James S Collins. He married twice, to two different women who both happened to go by the nickname Fannie... It was a headache to untangle the mismerges that had been made by people who were likely just trying to help but who had unintentionally made the problem worse. Trying to figure out who was the mother of the many many children he had with both of these women... EEK!! I had to rely on the death date of his first wife to figure out whose children were whose, and even then I'm sure I must have missed something... 

by Raven Martin G2G6 Mach 1 (10.3k points)
+16 votes

My first cousin three times removed Seymore Long married Maryann Forepaugh, the niece of Adam Forepaugh, who owned the Forepaugh Circus. Seymore and Maryann and their family were part of the circus. Their oldest son Harry worked with the elephants. Harry was also called "Half-A-Foot Harry" due to the partial loss of one of his feet after having been stepped on by an elephant; that portion stepped on was removed.

by Alexis Nelson G2G6 Pilot (843k points)
Getting stepped on by an elephant is a more unusual "oops." Also an "ouch."
Thank you Joyce for your comment; one time my foot was run over by a car, and it actually did not hurt it. It mainly upset the people that saw it happen.
+16 votes
MY 3x great grandfather, John Burrow - married his wife Amy in Somerset in 1817. She was already 4 months pregnant because the baby was born 5 months after the wedding.

https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Burrow-404

We have no way to know if William was Johns biological son or someone elses son!!  OOPS!!
by Robynne Lozier G2G Astronaut (1.2m points)
+14 votes
For her entire life my mother, Ruth Rammel-Sims (1918-2006), used the middle name of "Etta".  It is a family name.  Her grandmother, Etta May Omelia-Allison (1872-1944), and there were a few other ancestors who had the name.

The "Oops" part of the story happen much later in life.  When Mom reached 65 she was preparing to apply for Social Security.  She couldn't find her Birth Certificate.  So, she had to order a copy from Long Prairie, MN.

When she got the certificate she found that her real middle name was shown as "Ann', and not "Etta"!  She called her mother, Oma M Allsion-Rammel (1895-1995), who first told her the birth certificate must be wrong.

However, Oma did recall that there was a discussion around the time of her birth and both names were mentioned.  She wanted Etta and her husband, Harold "Hal" Knott Rammel (1892-1930), wanted Ann.

Since Hal was deceased, he couldn't be consulted.  So they concluded that after the birth he was the one who completed the paper work for the birth certificate.  He was the one wanting to use Ann.  So he must have done so without telling his wife, who assumed he had used Etta.

For his entire life, my dad, John William Sims (1919-1983) even referred to Mom as "Ettie" ... meaning it to be an affectionate form of Etta.

This big "Oops" caused a lot of hassle for my mother.  All of her personal, work, insurance, drivers license and legal documents had the wrong name.  It took her a lot of time and a lot of letter writing to get all of this corrected.

I told her it might have been easier to go to court and legally change the Ann to Etta.
by Bill Sims G2G6 Pilot (126k points)
+12 votes
Week 49 - Oops. Well.... today I'll highlight a tree I created, thinking that they were my family, until I accidently proved that they weren't, and had to separate them off. Mavis Eveline Keane-1008, who I created a quick new profile for, after discovering, her parents were the wrong family. This Mavis was born in South Australia, whereas my Mavis Evelyn Keane-668 was born in South Melbourne, but I had struggled to find her birth because of a mispelt name. I have found many ancestors who moved from one state to another, so that wasn't an indication of any problems. After going back and finding something that triggered me to find the mistake, I actually found cousins, which was great. But a little while afterward, I had someone email me, to tell me that I had the wrong parents for my Mavis. They made the same mistake, oops. Had to explain why it was wrong.
by Ben Molesworth G2G6 Pilot (161k points)
+8 votes
No, I didn't mark myself as dead......again.

https://allroadhaverhill.blogspot.com/2020/12/52-ancestors-week-49-oops.html

Instead, I talk about a mistake on the world tree that was eventually cleaned up.
by Chris Ferraiolo G2G6 Pilot (756k points)
+11 votes

Second great grandparents Patrick Brodigan and Mary Lee have a big OOPS in common. They are both amazingly inconsistent when it comes to their birthdates. Patrick's birthday may have been in 1835 as it says on his death certificate, but then again why not go for 1843? When in doubt, check out the 1900 census, it's 1838!

Mary's story is likewise befuddling. 1844 is a good bet, but why not try 1851 for a lark? 

by C Ryder G2G6 Mach 8 (87.9k points)
I had a relative like that. I thought of him as "the guy who didn't know how old he was." He turned out to be two different people.
Joyce, It did cross my mind there might be two different people, but the evidence says no. Maybe Patrick and Mary didn't keep track of their age, or they mistrusted the census takers, or made a habit of fibbing about their birthdates. Mystery.
+11 votes

 Before there was DNA testing, there were plenty of oopses, and careful work with genealogical resources can sometimes prove them. This oops goes back to the 1870s.   My grandfather's aunt was a maiden school teacher, living in Peru VT.  She had a son out of wedlock, who for the first few years was raised as an Adams, as can be found in the 1880 census.  At that time, three generations were living in the family homestead, my great great grandmother, my GGF and GGM with their two children, and Aunt Carrie and little Lester.

Above is a picture of the three boys when they were in their late teens or early 20s.  I think it was taken about 1895-1898.  The one on the left is Lester, with his cousins Elmer, and Kirt, who is my grandfather.  They are on the farm in Peru before it burned about 1900.  By this time, Aunt Carrie had married and Lester took his stepfather's last name. 

  He went on to lead a good life, as a husband and father, a merchant, and a town manager.  I have a letter that my grandfather wrote to my dad during WW2, telling dad that cousin Lester had died.  My grandfather said he had lived a Christian life, which I take to mean that he was a wonderful person, kind and honest, and someone my grandfather was proud to have in the family.

I knew Lester's daughter in her later years, and because my family enjoyed working on genealogy, my aunt told me never to talk about genealogy around her.  There was this distant oops that mustn't be spoken of.  

Lester has grandchildren and great grandchildren, and maybe they know this, and maybe they don't.  No one in my generation on my side of the family knows who Lester's father was.  We have a story, that may be fantasy, about a minister.  Aunt Carrie was very bright, and he would have been her intellectual equal.  We know Aunt Carrie made a train trip to see her sister in Iowa, and when she came back, she was pregnant.  The baby was named Dudley Lester Adams.  Aunt Carrie would have known who Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester was in history.  There is a clue to his paternity there, but I can't unravel it.  Maybe DNA will someday.  

  

by Carolyn Adams G2G6 Mach 9 (90.7k points)
edited by Carolyn Adams
I loved hearing about Cousin Lester, who like my mom's Aunt Elsie, was an "oops," who turned out to be a happy accident. (not like an elephant stepping on your foot). . .
+8 votes

Fear of making a mistake is a big DE-motivator to me when doing genealogy. I have to overcome my anxiety, especially if I want to edit a profile started by someone else. What if I make a big "OOPS"? Or what if the profile manager doesn't agree with a correction I make? The permanent and public nature of WikiTree is a little frightening, as is the potential for conflict. 

To compensate for my fears of making a mistake, I try really hard to research things thoroughly and document everything. I'm sure I make a lot of mistakes in formatting. I haven't got the hang of embedding citations when one source goes to multiple facts. I get extremely anxious before doing a necessary merge... what if I accidentally delete something crucial? And even though I've taken the self-certification for pre-1700 profiles, I can count on the fingers of one hand the number of those profiles I've edited. What if I make a mistake and someone on the internet gets angry with me?

This fear of making mistakes says more about me than about the genealogy hobby or WikiTree, I know. I've been able to overcome those fears in my personal life and work in the academic world, but it's never easy. I keep working because the quest for knowledge and the improving of information is more important than my personal fears. And the WikiTree format does make it possible to fix mistakes pretty easily. So maybe I'll conquer my fear of making a mistake if I try to improve the profile of my 4th g-grandather, William Maffett. His LNAB is misspelled (a common oops with that name) and there's a lot of confusing GEDCOM stuff in there.

by Katherine Chapman G2G6 Mach 6 (69.5k points)
Thank you for your thoughtful answer. It will help if you think of an "oops" as an embarrassing or inconvenient mistake, not a terrible error.  Genealogists make "oops"; you can read some of them in this week's answers. Mistakes made by surgeons, airplane pilots, or structural engineers are not "oops."
+9 votes
I have a major oops story for you:

Earlier this year I found some more or less distant relatives (we are related through my great-great-grandfather) and called a cousin on the phone. I asked him about what happened to his grandfather Adolf, who was my (half) great-great-uncle.

The reason I was interested in him is because Adolf's older brother Heinrich moved to the United States in 1911 and died in Denver in 1981. I am in contact with Heinrich's grandson, but somehow no one knew where Adolf was. This was particularly confusing because Heinrich and Adolf were full brothers, all other siblings of them were their half-siblings. So if anyone had to know where Adolf was, it would have been Heinrich's family, right? Very curious.
During that phone call, my cousin told me that Adolf and Heinrich actually wanted to emigrate together in 1911. They went all the way from the Ukraine to Bremen, Germany to board the ship together. And that is when Adolf noticed he made a big oopsie: He forgot his papers at home in the Ukraine and could not leave with his brother. So he went back.

He died some time before 1935 and his children had to be raised by his younger half-siblings. Heinrich received a photo of his open casket (which was custom back then) and he was so upset about how things went, that he threw it away. He never really talked much about his family after this.
by Evelina Staub G2G6 Mach 1 (17.8k points)
edited by Evelina Staub
+9 votes

For the longest time my Grandma and her family had down in family history notes that my 3rd Great Grandmother's maiden name was "Godin". I had such a headache trying to find the family. Finally, I found out that the name was actually "Jadin". My family had gotten the name "Godin" from a misspelled census.

Marie Gauthier (nee Jadin)

by Chandra Garrow G2G6 Mach 7 (70.1k points)
+9 votes
When I first started I made the mistake of adding a mass of people in my tree based on others' work. Turns out that someone oopsied and I copied the oopsie into my tree as well. I didn't catch it until I had to connect another person to my tree that married into the family. Oooops lesson learned restarted the tree to double-check all of my work.
by Christine Preston G2G6 Mach 6 (64.9k points)
+9 votes
Here's a family oops for you. 30 years ago my great Uncle Milton Taylor told a story about having another sister. When he was about 10 ysars old, he remembered hearing a family argument with is mother, grandmother,  and other adults. They were telling his sister (he thought she was a sistsr) that she was the daughter of his mother and not her grandparents that raised her. All he knew was her name was Addie and she ran off with a "Brown." I searched for years trying to find her. Then about 8 years ago, I found her in the newspapers.  Once I had her name, I was contacted by J. McDonald asking questions on her. I told him the story and to my luck, her son, Jim Brown was still alive anc 90 some years old.  I called him and he said it made sence because his mother never talked about her family.  He was convienced by his family to do a DNA test. Once that was done, it proved Milton was right. We were anld to find out the father to my great grandmothers daughter in Kansas. Things started falling in place. My dad wasn't surprised,  because of his grandmother's comments on her father in law being married 5 times. Nellie Hodge Taylor had a daughter out of wedlock, and it was a secret for a good 80 years. Now we are back on track.
by Lynn Taylor G2G1 (1.5k points)
+9 votes
I don't dwell on my mistakes, but I did come up with enough for a short post. https://rhymeschemesanddaydreams.wordpress.com/2020/12/06/52ancestors-in-52-weeks-oops/
by Auriette Lindsey G2G6 Mach 3 (31.3k points)
The picture of you and your large oops is hilarious!
Thanks for visiting my blog, Joyce!
You traced your ancestors back to 65 million years ago?

Way to go!!

Love the Pic!! LOL

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