DNA Surprises, or how we found out we sit on a throne of lies.

In June of 2009, my oldest brother took a Y-DNA test from Family Tree DNA. After years of battling some pretty hefty genealogical brick walls, we figured it couldn't hurt to get the paternal test done to see if it could shed any light on our family's history.

We just couldn't seem to connect the dots on my father's father's side. We knew that my Great Great Grandfather, Henry Gleason Ward, was the son of one William C. Ward and Mary Wallace Ward. We had no marriage record for the parents, but we had a record for William C. Ward, a non-resident sailor, from the Savannah Poor House and Hospital stating he was buried on September 3, 1841, that he was born in Massachusetts 36 years prior, and had died of fever.

 We had some scattered records for Mary Wallace Ward in Savannah, but not much. We knew Mary Wallace had been born in Charleston, South Carolina in 1816 and that she had died in Savannah in 1859.

Photo: Courtesy of the late, great Jane Beacham. Thanks for everything, Jane.

We knew she was a nurse, and died of Intermittent Fever after a six day illness.

Other than these few things, we really didn't know much about Mary Wallace and William Ward. We didn't even know for certain where William was buried. We did know that sometime after Henry Gleason Ward was born in Charleston on 30 October 1836, the family had moved to Savannah, where his only sibling Julia Ward was born on 4 June 1841. Just three months later, William Ward would die in the Poor House/Sailors' Hospital. Mary would live 18 more years, long enough to marry Nicholas Handle in 1849. In the 1850 Census, Nicholas, Mary, Henry and Julia Ward are living in Savannah. So far we are unable to find a divorce record for Mary and Nicholas, but three months before Mary died in 1859, Nicholas married a Lucy Bennett.

What happened to Mary Wallace's Charleston family is unknown. The true birthplace of William C Ward is unknown. Julia's 1923 death certificate records her father's birthplace as England. The 1910 Census records it as Connecticut. The marriage record of Mary and William cannot be found.

This leads us to August of 2009. My brother's Y-DNA test results had come back, and just like we'd hoped, the brick walls started to fall. Just not in the way we could have ever imagined.