It's not Dorothy, but I'll take it!

A couple of weeks ago when I got back from my camping trip, I had a Facebook friend request from a woman with my last name. I believe I have mentioned before my last name is not very common, so it is always exciting to come across others who share it (and therefore can actually pronounce it correctly). I didn't respond to it right away. I have my account set up so notifications are e-mailed to me and I typically only log on if there is something I feel I need to respond to sooner rather than later. Although lately, I have found myself logging on to FB more and more often, but have still resisted all the games, for which I am very proud of myself. (Can't say the same about the quizzes. I wonder if I should tell my family I am going to die in 2 years and it is going to take 28 years to find my body? And I disagree that if I was a football team, I would be the Seattle Seachickens).

My friend is my inspiration to keep plugging away with my family search so I sent her an e-mail with the subject "A girl can dream, right?" and told her that this women had sent me a friend request and said wouldn't it be great if this woman was a distant cousin with reams and reams of family info to share with me? My friend responded that yes, that would be cool and put in a genealogical dream request of her own.

As I have mentioned before, I have an elusive maternal great-grandmother named Dorothy Wentz. So, in my response back to my friend I said that while I was at it, maybe I should dream that a Wentz descendant will magically appear and tell me that Dorothy was his/her favorite aunt and just so happen to have a copy of her birth certificate in one pocket and a check made out to me from Publisher's Clearinghouse in the other. (If I'm going to dream, I might as well get some money out of it. I want to go parasailing in Hawaii). I know she knows me well enough to have caught that was an extremely sarcastic sentence as she has tried to help me with Dorothy and has come to the same conclusion I have: the woman is a pain in the ass.

I didn't think anything more of it and actually forgot about the friend request that started it all until this past Friday. I have since added her as a friend and made contact with another friend of hers with our same last name who indicated possibly having distant cousins in Nevada, which is where I was born. I don't think my immediate family is who her grandparents were talking about however.

Friday, I was checking my e-mail and received the following message via Ancestry.com:

"Hi - Have discovered a connection through Alexander Emil G. - his older brother Johannes Carl Gottlieb G. was my husbands gtgrandfather. Alexander was one of 11 born to Prussian missionaries who went to India mid 19th c. Have lots of info. and would like to share. Lionel Walter Kirkpatrick G also had a brother named Karl Roger Kirkpatrick G. Look forward to hearing from you."

Oh yes, there was happy dancing. Emil is my paternal second great-grandfather and he did live in India in the 19th century. (Lionel Walter is my great-grandfather; I have him with 2 sisters but had not come across a brother. Kirkpatrick is their mother's maiden name). I have been stuck on Emil's parentage, as has my 4th cousin in England who has done some work on this line even though she is not a direct descendant to this line. Part of the reason is some records show him as Emil Alexander, others as Alexander Emil; the name switching is also the case for the man we have determined may or may not be his father. In all of the personal correspondence I have, it is Emil. This weekend was somewhat busy and I did not get a chance to respond.

Like I said, it's not Dorothy, but I'll take it! I wonder if I would get a lead on Dorothy if I asked nicely for a change?