More than 20 million people throughout the world have begun exploring their genealogy through websites like ancestry.com and 23andme.com.

Whether the person is hoping to gain insight on their family’s past, connect with living relatives, or know their genetic makeup, there is an innate curiosity that has fueled the surge in people participating in DNA-based websites.

Its popularity has even expanded to pet owners seeking knowledge about their dog’s breed and health facts through similar programs.

In this series, The Newtown Bee is inviting residents to share the stories of what they have discovered after participating in these sites and how their findings have affected their lives.

Jane Sharpe

A descendant of kings, queens, and an orphan, Jane Sharpe’s family tree is as diverse at it comes. It even includes an unexpected connection to Sandy Hook.

Ms Sharpe, a 52-year resident of Newtown, has always had an interest in genealogy and began researching her ancestors with her cousin, Donald “Don” Jacobs of Rhode Island, in the 1970s.

“We’ve always gotten a kick out of this,” Ms Sharpe said of their investigating.

The duo have been corresponding with each other, primarily over e-mail, and have enjoyed sharing information with one another when they solve a new piece of their family’s puzzle.

Ms Sharpe stressed that by no means is she an expert and explained, “My cousin has been the dominant researcher, and he’s used ancestry.com.”

Through their research, though, they have uncovered a family line that stretches back centuries, while another path mysteriously stops cold after just a couple generations.

Donald DeBretton Jacobs

Ms Sharpe’s maternal grandfather, Donald DeBretton Jacobs, has a well-documented family history, thanks to the late Kenneth Barta of San Diego, Calif., who meticulously archived as much information as he could throughout his lifetime.

Before Mr Barta’s death, he created a 264-page binder detailing every generation he could find, dating as far back as 1316. The book chronicles the family’s lineage to barons, baronesses, kings, and queens of Sweden and Denmark, including King Christian III and Charlemagne.

Ms Sharpe says Mr Barta was an Episcopal priest who spent his vacations traveling all over the world to find pictures of his ancestors, whether they had been in oil paintings, stained-glass windows, etc.

“He compiled this three-inch thick book on the Jacobs family, and it has since been validated by ancestry.com,” Ms Sharpe said.

The volume was gifted to Ms Sharpe’s mom, Myra Jacobs Sheldon, for her hundredth birthday in 2011 and is titled The Royal Ancestry of Myra Jacobs Sheldon.

Its dedication page reads, “This collection of royal genealogies is dedicated to our great-great-grandmother (Myra’s great-grandmother), Countess Juliette Elisabeth von Rantzow 1801-1870.”

Countess Juliette Elisabeth von Rantzow was married to Dr William Stephen Jacobs — Ms Sharpe’s maternal great-great-grandfather — who came to the United States and graduated from the University of Pennsylvania Medical School. Displeased with the New England weather, he later moved to St Croix, where he became the island’s first physician.

Ms Sharpe elaborated, saying, “…my grandfather, Donald DeBretton Jacobs; his father, Ferdinand Anton Rantzau Jacobs; and my great-great-grandmother, Philippa DeBretton, were born on the island, which was a Danish territory at that time, until 1916.”

The family’s book of ancestors has since been passed down to Ms Sharpe after her mother’s death in 2013.

Bessie Ellen Smith

“Don and I have both been trying to track our grandmother, Bessie Smith,” Ms Sharpe said.

In the 1970s, the two searched for years through various records, looking for any information they could find on Bessie’s past.

“Our grandmother, Bessie, always told us that she was an orphan, that her mother dropped a gas lantern and died in the resulting fire, and that her father could not keep her on his own,” Ms Sharpe explained.

When Ms Sharpe worked at the Waterbury Republican newspaper, she spent hours reading microfiche, trying to find records of her grandmother’s birth in Waterbury on January 15, 1889, or any evidence about the deadly fire.

She says her family had also been told that Bessie became a ward of the state at age 3 and was sent to a farm on the Madison shoreline to live with the Moody family.

As a teenager, she was taken in by a lawyer and his wife in City Point, New Haven, to be a companion for their daughter, who was the same age as Bessie. The attorney later sent both girls to Stone Secretarial School in New Haven.

Bessie went on to marry Donald DeBretton Jacobs — whose family came from royalty — on January 14, 1909, at Christ Episcopal Church in West Haven.

“His family was horrified that he married an orphan,” Ms Sharpe said.

Later that same year, the couple had their first daughter, Lydell, and went on to have Myra (Ms Sharpe’s mother), Luciel, and Stanley. Sadly, Lydell died of scarlet fever at age 6.

Bessie died in 1972.

Despite having this information, all their searches to find out more on Bessie Smith’s early life and her biological parents came up empty.

“Later, my cousin remembered that Gram Jacobs said her name was Nell when she was little,” Ms Sharpe said.

The revelation led him to investigate Waterbury birth records at the Hartford State Library. He found that four baby girls were recorded as being born between the two-day span of January 14 to 15 in 1889. There were no documents on a Bessie Ellen Smith, but one birth stood out.

In a letter written to Mr Sharpe from her cousin, he wrote, “It listed the child as ‘illegitimate.’ The names of the parents were Nellie Lourland and Nelson Frazier. The child’s named was listed as Nellie Frazier. Miss Lourland was listed as having been born in Newtown, Conn. Nelson was listed as having been born in Massachusetts. Their ages were also reported in the document; age forty for Nellie, fifty for Nelson.”

After researching the last name Lourland, they could not find anyone in Connecticut having had that last name. What they did find was a Loveland family listed as being from a small village in Newtown with a daughter, Nancy Ellen Loveland, that would fit their findings.

Ms Sharpe’s cousin was able to confirm the last name must have been Loveland after submitting his DNA through ancestry.com. He began receiving matches on the website from living relatives with the last names Loveland and Frazier.

“I find it remarkable that you live in the same town where the person, I feel certain, that is our great-grandmother, lived, and where descendants of the Lovelands still reside,” Ms Sharpe’s cousin wrote in a note to her.

Having been a longtime resident in town, Ms Sharpe was truly shocked to discover she had ancestors from Newtown.

“It’s fascinating to me,” she said.

Loveland Family

With a lead so close to home, Ms Sharpe began checking local cemeteries for any clues on Nancy Ellen Loveland and her relatives.

“I contacted the curator of the Zoar Cemetery, John Bond, and we found Lovelands, but we didn’t find her,” she said.

Not to be defeated, Ms Sharpe also went to the C.H. Booth Library to research what she could find about the family.

“Nancy Ellen was born October 16, 1851, and was part of a large land-owning farm family [that] settled in Sandy Hook in the 1880s,” she explained.

Nancy Ellen’s father was Giles Loveland (born January 23, 1801; died November 22, 1866) and her mother was Lorinda Hurlburt (born June 26, 1805; died in 1885). The two married in Roxbury on January 22, 1829.

After Giles Loveland’s death, Nancy Ellen’s 18-year-old brother, Henry, became head of household.

“[Henry] married Julia Tuttle five years later in 1871. The census in 1880 shows Nancy Ellen living with Henry and his wife…” Ms Sharpe said. “The following couple years, Henry and his wife, Julia, had two sons.”

In an article from The Newtown Bee, published April 25, 2008, titled “The People And Stories Behind Newtown’s Road Names – Part 3” Ms Sharpe uncovered that Loveland Drive — a road off of Great Quarter Road near the Monroe line — was named after the Loveland family.

“In the latter part of the 19th Century and into the early 1900s, Giles and Grover Loveland operated a sawmill and gristmill on the Half Way River, not far from today’s Loveland Drive,” the article states.

Grover Loveland’s son, Ralph Loveland, confirmed in the article that at one point, the Loveland property consisted of 20 acres on the east side of Route 34 and another 65 acres on the west side of the highway.

When the family sold the farm in the 1980s, the land was divided up.

Bill Busk, a developer and friend of Ralph Loveland’s brother, the late Earle Loveland, asked to name the road after the family, according to Earle’s widow, Lois Loveland, in the article.

Two years ago, Ms Sharpe was able to locate the former Loveland home, which was built in 1726, and communicated with its current owner.

“Mr and Mrs Michael Fekete bought the house from Ralph Loveland — [Earle’s] brother and Grover Loveland’s son — about 30 years ago. The residence is now owned by their daughter, Elin Fekete,” she said.

Nelson G. Frazier

Ms Sharpe has not been able to find any indication that Nancy Ellen Loveland and Nelson G. Frazier were married at the time of Bessie’s birth.

However, she does say that having the father’s name recorded on the document despite being unwed was an unusual case during the time period.

Through researching Nelson G. Frazier (born May 5, 1840, in Massachusetts), she found documents that show him living in a Shaker Village in Enfield, Conn., at age 9.

“There is no indication that his parents were with him, so it’s assumed that he was turned over for their jurisdiction…” she said. “At age 20, members of the Shaker community are given the option to stay with the community or leave. Apparently, Nelson left.”

When Nelson was 32 years old, he married Ellen R. Clark on April 22, 1872, and they lived in Sharon, Conn., for more than a decade before moving to Waterbury.

“They had ten children before her death,” Ms Sharpe said. “Their last child, Clarence, was born and died on March 30, 1887. Ellen [R. Clark] died 16 days later, on April 15, 1887. She was buried in the Waterbury Town Cemetery.”

Two years later, records show an “illegitimate” female baby born to Nelson G. Frazier and Nancy Ellen Loveland.

It appears when Ms Sharpe’s grandmother became a ward of the state, around 3 years old, she went from being called Nellie “Nell” to being renamed Bessie Smith.

“There is no record after the birth of the child of Nancy Ellen or Nelson Frazier — no deaths, no burial sites, no census records,” Ms Sharpe said.

Information on both of them just ends.

Going Forward

A year ago, Ms Sharpe halted all her ancestry searches to focus on her husband, Donald Sharpe, during his declining health. After his death on December 29, 2018, Ms Sharpe resumed her research — this time working on finding out more on her husband’s side of the family.

“I’m a Sharpe by marriage and have two grandsons, Ryan and Jackson Sharpe, who are very interested in what’s happening,” she said.

Ms Sharpe is also rededicated to learning more about Nancy Ellen Loveland and plans to visit a cemetery in Oxford where some of the Loveland family members are buried, in hopes of finding her grave and records.

She also would like to connect with people in town who are experienced with genealogy to learn more about what may have happened to Nancy Ellen Loveland and Nelson G. Frazier.

Ms Sharpe said, “Our family would like to fill out our understanding of the circumstances and what happened to [Bessie Smith’s] parents.”

If you are a Newtown resident that has used a genealogy site to discover your family (or pet’s) ancestry and would like to be featured in this series, contact Alissa Silber at alissa@thebee.com or 203-426-3141.