A Happy Holiday Story

+8 votes
70 views
Hi, all you WikiTreers out there!  I have a great story that I'd like to share with you during this most joyous time of year.  While chatting with a third cousin of mine a few weeks ago about our shared ancestors, I got the notion to start digging in to the family of my great grand uncle, Andrew Yasaitis, who, along with my great grandfather, Joseph Sites, and several of his other siblings, emigrated to the U.S. in the late 1800s. Of the eight siblings who made the journey, Andrew was the only one who retained some semblance of the original family name (Jasaitis).
 
The first of his children that I started looking closely at was one of his daughters, Frances, in part because all that I had on her was a birth date.  After 1930, we'd lost track of her, meaning that she had probably either died at a young age or gotten married. One of my usual routines when I run into a roadblock like that is to Google the heck out of the person, and that's what I did with Frances. Sure enough, she popped up fairly quickly, but in an unusual location, a press photo for sale on eBay. The 1937 photo was a picture of Frances and her husband of four years, a young fellow named Bill DeLancey.
 
As it turns out, Bill was a major league baseball player, and not only that, he was one of the stars of the St' Louis Cardinal's "Gas House Gang", the team that beat the Detroit Tiger to win the World Series during Bill's rookie season in 1934. Like I said, pretty cool, but it get even better. Unfortunately, the reason for the press photo with Frances was that Bill contracted tuberculosis during the 1936 season and was forced to retire from baseball. The picture was of Bill and Frances after returning home from the hospital for recuperation.
 
Bill's doctors advised them to move to Arizona for the warm, dry climate, so they were off to Phoenix soon afterwards. He spent the remainder of his relatively short life coaching and managing minor league teams associated with the Cardinals. Being a baseball player, and a popular one at that, it was fairly easy to find information about him. They had a daughter in 1934, during his rookie season, but the illness kept them from having more children until they managed to have a second daughter, born in 1945. Sadly, over the years, Bill's tuberculosis had developed into pleurisy, and he passed away the following year on his 34th birthday.
 
Well, to make a long story short, I soon found the older daughter, now 80 years old, on Facebook of all places! As you may or may not know, you can send a message to anyone on FB, whether you're friends with them or not. Now, if you aren't friends, the message goes straight to their dreaded "Other" inbox, which most people either never look at or aren't even aware of. Fortunately, you are able to get a message placed squarely in any users's "regular" inbox, where they might actually see it, if you're willing to pony up one thin dollar for the privilege. So, one thin dollar later, my message is winging it's way to Frances and Bill's older daughter, asking if she is indeed my second cousin, once removed.
 
While waiting (not very patiently) for her response, I then turned my sights on her younger sister, who seemed to have vanished. Another possible early death or, more likely, a marriage, so back to Google I went, and what do you know? Up she pops in another even more unlikely place...a 2010 post on an Phoenix adoption registry webpage. Now, this was starting to get really interesting!
 
It seems that the younger sister was listed as the birth mother for a female baby who was born in 1970 and adopted out to a couple when she was only three days old. Somehow, the adopted girl had obtained the name of her birth mother, but since the post was over four years old, I didn't know if either of them were still alive, if she had found her mother, or might have deactivated her email address. Regardless, I decided to take shot. Holding my breath, I sent her a rather tentative email just to let her know that if she hadn't found her mother yet, I might have some information that would be helpful to her. A few hours later, I received a shocked reply, and we were off to the races!
 
Amazingly, over the next few days, scurrying back and forth online between "the girl" (now 44 years old and living in Los Angeles), her new aunt and her new first cousin (all of whom still live in the Phoenix area), we've managed to put the whole bunch of them back together, including the birth mother and a heretofore unknown second daughter, the adopted girl's new sister, and everyone is ecstatic about the news!
 
I can't begin to tell you how crazy exciting this has all been! Not only was I able to play a small part in reuniting a mother and her daughter, and right before Christmas no less, but just like that, I now have about a dozen new living relatives to get to know! This is far and away the coolest thing that's ever happened to me in regards to genealogy, and I'd say this might be one of the nicest Christmas presents I've ever given myself. I hope that you all have enjoyed hearing about it.
 
To all my friends and relatives in the WikiTree family (meaning everybody!), my best wishes for a happy holiday season full of fun, friends and family. Ho, Ho , Ho, now it's back to the records!
 
​P.S. - My new third cousin bought the photo of her grandparents off eBay and just sent me a copy...figured you might like to see...there's nothing quite like getting a family photo as a Christmas present, eh?  :)​  Bill and Frances (Yasaitis) DeLancey - 1937
in The Tree House by Tom Shaw G2G6 Mach 1 (17.4k points)

1 Answer

+1 vote
Way cool!  Congratulations.
by Foster Ockerman G2G6 Mach 3 (36.3k points)

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