The "Other" Thompson Family

I need to come clean about my Descendant list.

I may have mentioned this earlier, but it bears repeating. The family tree I've picked to be "my" family tree is really just one possible tree among many. The problem stems from my great, great grandfather Albert. He was born in 1878, married Ida Williamson and died somewhere between 1909 and 1920. In the 1910 census he is listed with the children and Ida and it says his mother is from Indiana and his father is from X.

In 1920 he is also listed without Ida, but with her birthday and it says that both his parents are from Indiana. It also lists him as widowed. I believe it's a jumbled record really meant to portray his wife...maybe as Mrs. Albert Thompson.

It's really sort of a dead end. So I began looking for Albert Thompsons who were born in or around the right town and at the right time and came up with several possible alberts to follow. The three most likely were two Alberts with both parents from Indiana and one Albert whose parents were from Denmark.

Since the two records I have list father from X or Indiana and both list mother from Indiana I disregarded the Denmark Albert and went with the other 2.

I have not done any good legwork on this. It will take years to contact county officials and put pieces together from obituary records that might exist. All my leads come from Ancestry.com which is a dubious resource most of the time.

Never the less, I followed both Alberts, one led to Thomas Thompson from Ireland circa 1785 and the other led to Archibald Thompson form Ireland circa 1751. Both familys began life in the U.S. in the Carolinas. Thomas moved to Ohio and the Archibald Thompsons wound through Kentucky before both ended up in Indiana with dueling Alberts.

Neither of these outcomes totally fits with our family story of being British...but both kind of do in that they were both probably Ulster Scots or Northern Irish who transplanted to the U.S. during separate droughts and famines. Both fall within the range of two Scotch Irish migrations.

I realize that these are just two possible outcomes in a universe of Albert Thompsons and I'll never know for sure until I actually start working with state and county records offices in Indiana. All of that will cost me money and take time.

So I turned to DNA to try to verify some of this information. As you can see in my Ambiguous results post I didn't get the "direct" answer I was looking for. In fact I just got more mystery.

The one thing I did get from the DNA testing that is sort of immeasurable is contact with some very helpful people who are giving me clues and tools to help me find the real Albert and his real parents. Now that is exciting.