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 new 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.

Sandy Schill

Having been born and raised in Newtown, Sandy Schill never guessed that her family played a part in founding multiple towns in Connecticut, including Waterbury, Middlebury, Farmington, Milford, and Norwalk.

When she began her genealogy journey in December 2017, it was purely to have an activity that could take her mind off her younger sister’s untimely passing two months prior.

“My aunt, who’s my mom’s [identical] twin sister, received a DNA-test kit for Christmas from her boyfriend. She was visiting up from Florida when she got the kit, and we then dragged out my great-grandfather’s family Bible that my grandmother had,” Ms Schill said.

When they opened the Bible, they found dozens of handwritten names scrawled across pages marked “Family Records.” The writings dated back to the early-1800s and included her ancestors’ birth, marriage, and death dates.

“We took it out and started looking at who’s in here, who are they, and how do they relate to us,” Ms Schill said.

Since her 75-year-old aunt, Carolee Kingsbury, had done the DNA testing through the genealogy site MyHeritage, Ms Schill decided to sign up for an account on the website to begin seeing what she could find.

Before too long, her family tree began expanding at a booming rate.

Mother’s Maternal Side

“I started noticing that we had a certain branch of the family that went back to the 1600s here in Connecticut,” Ms Schill said of her initial findings on MyHeritage.

“When I was a kid, my grandmother — my mom’s mother — would talk about the Daughters of the American Revolution and that she thought that we had family who fought in the Revolutionary War, but she was never able to make those connections,” she said.

Upon Googling the names of the people from her family tree that were alive during that time period, she discovered her family had not one, but nearly half a dozen ancestors who fought in the Revolutionary War.

With that finding, Ms Schill contacted the Daughters of the American Revolution, a nonprofit women’s service organization dedicated to promoting patriotism and preserving American history.

“We chose the [chapter] in Watertown, because several of our ancestors are buried in the Watertown Old Burial Ground, and the Daughters of the American Revolution oversees that cemetery,” she explained.

After filling out the membership application in June 2018, Ms Schill received approval into the Daughters of the American Revolution in November 2018 — along with her aunt, sister, and daughter.

“There is a lot of work that goes into it,” she stressed. “I have pages and pages of charts.”

The first ancestor they submitted for approval to join was Ms Schill’s great-great-great-grandfather, Samuel Woodruff. When he was verified, Ms Schill received an official blue ribbon that has a musket pin with his named engraved on it.

Through her research, she found that Mr Woodruff was born April 10, 1759, in Milford and died March 21, 1847, in Watertown. He was buried in the Watertown Old Burial Ground, where his father, wife, and several other family members are also buried.

“His father [John] was also a patriot, so we are going to be filing an additional application for his father and other people,” Ms Schill added.

Throughout her genealogy search, she even discovered there are historical books that chronicle the lives of her local relatives.

In The History of Waterbury, Connecticut by Henry Bronson, there are numerous pages where her relatives are discussed as founders of towns in the area. Ancestors mentioned include John and Isaac Bronson, Joseph Gaylord, Samuel Hickox, Lieutenant Thomas Judd, Robert Porter, and Thomas Upson.

“There’s also a book called Breakneck: [The Early Settlement of Middlebury, Connecticut: From 1657 to Its Incorporation as A Town by Raymond E. Sullivan] that’s about Josiah Bronson, who was another Revolutionary War patriot,” Ms Schill said. “The book is written about him, his brother, and his family and how they helped form the town of Middlebury — his house is still standing in Middlebury.”

Connecting With Relatives

It turns out Ms Schill’s family on her mother’s maternal side had deep roots in Middlebury, which was confirmed further when she met with Middlebury Historian Bob Rafford to show him an old photo album she received from her aunt.

“We never knew who the people were in this old book,” she said. “It’s very delicate and is starting to come apart.”

The album, with its pages of antique photos stuck to worn black paper, showcases many buildings in Middlebury and Lake Quassapaug that Ms Schill recognized.

“He was able to help me identify the people in the album, and it turns out the people in the album were not my direct [ancestors], but cousins,” she explained.

Mr Rafford also mentioned that he had been speaking with a woman named Alison Heyniger, who is a descendant of the Abbotts. He determined that Ms Schill and Ms Heyniger are second cousins once removed and put them in contact with one another.

The two have since become so acquainted that they have met on a few occasions and Ms Schill even sponsored Ms Heyniger when she applied for the Daughters of the American Revolution.

Come to find out, Ms Heyniger has the sequential family album after the one Ms Schill has that was given to her from her aunt. Their albums both are the same style of book, use the same paper, and have identical handwriting. They believe the albums are from Ms Schill’s aunt Bertha Holmes Abbott, who is Ms Heyniger’s great-grandmother.

“During this time, we also got a message from a woman on the MyHeritage site because through my aunt’s DNA test, it gives you people you might be related to,” Ms Schill said.

The person reaching out was Fran Into from Florida, a cousin of Ms Heyniger whom she had never met. The three women, along with Ms Schill’s aunt, were able to connect in person at a local Panera Bread on October 26, 2018.

Mother’s Paternal Side

Having such success exploring her mother’s maternal side, Ms Schill began putting together her own scrapbook, with the help of another aunt, to archive her mother’s paternal lineage.

“We started looking into the Hultman side of the family,” she said.

In large blue album, she has begun assembling a variety of black and white photos with labels detailing who is photographed and where the picture was taken.

There are images of her grandfather with his siblings and parents, Johan Alfrid Hultman and Elin Augustus (who changed their names to John Alfred and Ellen when they immigrated from Sweden to America).

While researching the Hultman’s, though, the family came across some information that did not seem to add up.

“The mystery was that John and Ellen went to upstate New York, to the Buffalo area, when they came to the United States, and lived there, but they were married in North Carolina,” she said. “We couldn’t figure out why.”

It was not until Ms Schill recently found a first cousin of her mom’s who was able to help solve the confusion.

“The cousin told us that John, who was a cabinet maker, worked on the Biltmore Estate [in North Carolina] for a time. While there, he became very ill,” she explained. “Apparently, Ellen went down there to nurse him back to health, and they got married while she was there.”

In search of more living relatives and information on her Swedish ancestors, Ms Schill has expanded her quest by using ancestry.com.

“I found that ancestry.com has more source documents than MyHeritage,” she said. “It’s a little more expensive, but to go to all the town clerks’ offices to get all the documents, you have to pay $20, where if I pay $100 for Ancestry, I can just download them.”

In doing so, she found her great-grandfather’s birth record from Sweden and discovered the town he — and several generations of her family — was from.

As a result, she said, “In May, my mom, my aunt, my sister, and I are going to Sweden for nine days… to Tofteryd to visit where our family came from.”

The village is so small that they have only been able to find the local church online, because it has a Facebook page.

“Around the church, if you look at the Google Map, is a cemetery, so we are hoping to go and find headstones,” she said. “With there being several generations [there], you never know — we may bump into a cousin.”

Father’s Family

After doing such lengthy research on her mother’s side of the family, Ms Schill began compiling information about her ancestors from her father’s side of the family.

“In doing so, I found the engagement announcement for my great-grandparents — my maternal great-grandparents, so my grandmother’s parents,” she explained. “It says in the announcement how they met, which we never knew.”

It turns out that Ms Schill’s great-grandmother, Mildred Beck, was working at a corset factory in Bridgeport when the workers went on strike. While outside the factory with the group of fellow workers, some men started to harass her.

“My great-grandfather [John Weltner] happened to be walking by and came to her rescue,” Ms Schill said. “That’s what it said in the newspaper article. A relationship budded from that, and they ended up getting married.”

“All Connected”

Ms Schill’s genealogy search has been an “interesting process,” she admits. It has brought her together with relatives she never knew existed, answered family mysteries, and set in motion a multi-generational family adventure to Sweden.

“It’s amazing to me how when you look at the family tree and it’s all these branches, you think, ‘Gosh, all of this had to come together just right for me to be here,’” she said.

On top of all her findings, Ms Schill also discovered her ancestors include Samuel Andrews, one of the founders of Yale; Robert Treat, one of the first governors of Connecticut; and Nathaniel Foote, whose Foote Family Association has determined that he and his wife, Elizabeth, have over a million descendants.

“It’s amazing how we really are all connected,” Ms Schill said. “It’s just amazing.”

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.