Finding Family in Colorado (or I How I Met My Mother’s Brother)

If you read my last blog post “Cologne and Finding My Roots“, you know I am into Ancestry. What follows is the story of how we discovered who my mother’s biological father was, and the aftermath of that (don’t worry, it’s good 😊).

The Beginning

I want to start off this story by saying my mom was the lucky one – she was adopted by a very loving family and had the best life! My grandmother was a very hard worker and would do anything for anybody. She definitely loved my mother, and at her funeral one of her friends said that the day she adopted my mother was the best day of her life.

My mom had known for many years who her biological mother was – her name was Edith Ham. The biological father was a mystery.

Back in the day, people really knew how to keep secrets. My mother had been given the names of three men who could possibly be her father (we will refer to them as The Original Three). Kind of like Mama Mia! 😂

Fast forward several years – technology has made it pretty easy to create a family tree. I am the keeper of the old family photos, and I joined Ancestry to help me organize these pictures and understand how I was related to everybody.

Ancestry DNA

My mom and I both took the Ancestry DNA tests several years ago, when they were fairly new. My thought process – we knew Edith Ham was my mother’s biological mother, and Edith’s mother was a Dewitt, so those names will most certainly be showing up as DNA matches. And did they! What I was looking for was somebody not related to the Ham’s or Dewitt’s that would be a close familial match.

No surnames matching The Original Three were showing up. All we were getting were Ham’s and Dewitt’s.

One day I received a notice of a close familial match of a man named Russell Thornberry. There’s a new name! I contacted him through Ancestry, and his daughter Michelle responded to me. I asked if they were related to the Ham’s and Dewitt’s – and she replied back that they were. I was so deflated! He was showing up as a close familial match through DNA, but on the regular family tree it looked like Russell would have been a 5th cousin or so. I even contacted Ancestry, and their response was yeah, this could happen. Not very helpful!

Two years go by – I am newly retired and we are in the midst of the Covid pandemic. One night I am watching the Henry Gates show “Finding Your Roots“, and there is a DNA Detective named CeCe Moore on the show. She inspired me to take another look at Russell Thornberry.

How the data in Ancestry DNA is displayed changes as the technology gets better – a win for us. I was able to click on Russell Thornberry and now Ancestry DNA was predicting that he was my – wait for it – half-uncle. And he was coming up as my mother’s half-brother. What?!?!

I went into Ancestry.com to try to find out what I could about Russell Thornberry’s dad – Russell “Jack” Thornberry (I will refer to him as Jack). I found through a census record and Jack’s military draft card that he was living in Chambersburg, Illinois, in the early 1940s. Edith also lived in Chambersburg. Jack was Edith’s third cousin, so they would have known some of the same people. And Chambersburg is a very small village.

I couldn’t believe it!!

I called my mom and told her that I thought I had identified her father, and found her half-brother. I think she was in disbelief at first since it was none of The Original Three. But when I laid out the evidence, based on science and fact, it was very hard to dispute.

Next, I contacted Russell Thornberry through Ancestry again. I did not have a response for a week, so I contacted his daughter Michelle, who had responded for her father previously. I must have sounded like a mad woman. “Yes, hi, your father is my mother’s brother …”!! 😂 “And I’m your cousin!”

We made arrangements to talk that night on the phone, and talked for over an hour. We just really clicked! I explained what I had found, and texted her a photo of my mother when she was a little girl, in high school, and a recent picture. Oh, snap! Michelle sent me a picture of her grandfather, Russell’s father Jack, and there was no doubt in either of our minds that Jack was my mother’s father.

Jack Thornberry was born in Colorado, enlisted in the Navy and was stationed in Texas, where he married and started a family. He passed away in 1985.

Jack’s son Russell grew up in Texas, became a singer/songwriter and moved to Canada where he met his lovely wife Sharleen. He was a member of the New Christy Minstrels, and also had a #1 single called Miss January as a solo artist. During our recent visit, he told me he also hosted a variety show in Canada styled after the variety shows in the 1970’s (like the Mac Davis Show). I’m looking for it! After having a successful singing career, he became the Editor in Chief of Buckmasters White Tail Magazine, and is an extremely successful hunter and guide. He is also a fantastic storyteller and has written several books. And, he is an expert flint knapper and an ordained minister. He is literally the most interesting man in any room he is in!

His children Michelle and Darren are also extremely talented – which actually had me questioning whether we really were related!? They are both singer/songwriters with their own bands, and they are FANTASTIC! Check them out!

The next logical thing was to get Mom and Russell together. The Thornberry’s live in Colorado, so we decided we had to take a trip to meet the Wild Thornberry’s!

Our Trip to Colorado

Mr. T and I decided to drive, and my sister Dee and her husband Kent flew along with Mom and Dad.

Mr. T and I took two days to drive out – I was bringing photo albums, history books, etc. Once we were in Colorado, we took US Route 24 through Colorado Springs to Woodland Park. US Route 24 ?!?! This route also runs through Mt. Sterling, where my family is from. So, if you take U.S. Route 24 straight west from Mt. Sterling, Illinois, you will end up in Woodland Park, Colorado 😊. Is this a coincidence – I think not!

We got to Woodland Park about the same time as the rest of the family, and our rental house was not ready for us yet. So, we found a brewery to camp out while we waited. I contacted Michelle to let her know we were in town, and we just happened to be right around the corner from her house! It was so exciting to finally meet the Thornberry’s!!

Michelle had snuck into our rental earlier that day and stocked the fridge, brought us some beautiful flowers, and scattered old photos throughout so we could familiarize ourselves with our new found relatives.

Every morning we woke up to a beautiful view of Pike’s Peak. In the book “History of Brown County, Illinois 1880 – 1970”, it states our second great-granduncle Gilbert Thornberry helped build the first railroad up Pike’s Peak. It was so cool to think we were exploring the same areas that the Thornberry’s had many moons ago.

And “the neighborhood” was very friendly!

We were there for five nights, and spent every evening with the Thornberry’s. It was so much fun getting to know them, even though I felt like I had known them for my entire life.

We visited the Garden of the Gods and recreated a photo that was taken in the late 1800s of Lizzie and Frank Thornberry (my second great-grandparents) in front of Balanced Rock. In the 1890s, Balanced Rock was privately owned, and the family who owned the land would take photos of tourists, sometimes with a burro, in front of the rock. Eventually the family sold the land to Colorado Springs, and Balanced Rock became part of the Garden of the Gods.

Like I said in the beginning, this story has a very happy ending – and it’s not really an ending at all. My mom started off as an only child, and now she has discovered eight half-siblings. She was very close to Ed Davis, the first sibling who actually found her, and continues a great relationship with her brother Larry Long. And now that we have found Russell and the Thornberry’s, we couldn’t be happier!