Assembling Shards of Identity

Imagine, for a moment, participating in an archaeological dig and finding a sliver of pottery. Though its broken edges are rough, one side seems smooth, and even bears the faint outline of a design. Could this be part of something bigger? Sifting through the surrounding rubble, you try to find a similar piece. 

Eventually, several such pieces get revealed through the silt of ages. It's time to gently brush them off and examine them closer. Could they fit together?

That, sometimes, is how I feel about the process of viewing the minuscule segments of matching genetic material, brought to light only when two people--unknowingly, distant relatives--coincidentally purchase a test at the same DNA company. Somehow, unseen hands know how to brush off the extraneous genetic layers added through generations, to focus on the details revealing our specific familial connection.

Equally invisible processes sift through countless family trees to spot a run of two or three names here, a connection to the next generation there, to piece together a pedigree chart connecting distant cousins. Get one step of the pathway wrong and the sign leading the way now leads astray. Run into a forest of family trees which unanimously stop at that same brick wall ancestor, and the way pointers no longer speak to us.

That's how I've been feeling, lately, about pursuing Nicholas Snider's roots. Yes, he showed up in Pennsylvania from—supposedly—Germany, but it's almost as if he had landed in Adams County by being dropped there by space aliens. As I sift through tokens of his identity, I feel as if I've been grasping for shards from an archaeological dig, unsure whether I'd find anything—and even if I did find something, unsure of what, exactly, it means. No search tool like Ancestry's ThruLines or MyHeritage's Theory of Family Relativity is pointing the way, because no way has yet been proposed, much less proven.

This is when we move into an experimental role. Granted, I'll still be examining all those DNA matches—eighteen more to go on Peter Snider's forty descendants who match my husband, then twenty two matches for Nicholas Snider's youngest son Conrad—but taking my cue from archaeologists sifting through the layers of time, I've got to broaden my search parameters. And welcome even the slightest shard I find. After all, it might turn out to be just the clue I've needed.