Latest / Stories That Live In Us / Virginia: One DNA Match and a Woman Who Didn’t Want to Be Found (with Nicole Palsa) | Episode 109

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Virginia: One DNA Match and a Woman Who Didn’t Want to Be Found (with Nicole Palsa) | Episode 109 · Stories That Live In Us

0:00
Nicole Palsa: And we get to my great-great-grandmother Dessie Dulaney.
0:03
Nicole Palsa: And we didn't have a death date for her.
0:06
Nicole Palsa: And I thought, well, that's unusual because her daughter, Rushie, my great-grandmother, was still alive.
0:12
Nicole Palsa: And I thought, well, if Granny's still alive, she doesn't know when her mother died.
0:18
Nicole Palsa: Like that seems a little odd.
0:19
Nicole Palsa: So I start asking questions.
0:21
Nicole Palsa: The initial reaction was, we don't talk about things.
0:25
Nicole Palsa: And I thought, well, let's talk about it.
0:30
Crista Cowan: Stories That Live In Us is a podcast that inspires you to form deep connections with your family, past, present, and future.
0:37
Crista Cowan: I'm Crista Cowan, known online as The Barefoot Genealogist.
0:41
Crista Cowan: Counting down to the upcoming celebration of America's 250th birthday, you'll meet families from each state whose stories are woven into the very fabric of America.
0:52
Crista Cowan: Tales of immigration, migration, courage, and community that remind us that when we tell our stories, we strengthen the bonds that connect us.
1:01
Crista Cowan: So join me for season two as we discover from Sea to Shining Sea the stories that live in us.
1:07
Crista Cowan: I don't know if you've taken an Ancestry DNA test or not, but I did back in 2012 when Ancestry first started selling those kits, and I've tested everybody in my family.
1:19
Crista Cowan: Now you might wonder why somebody who knows so much about their family history would take a DNA test, but it's because there are always mysteries to solve.
1:30
Crista Cowan: And that mystery involved a great-grandmother who was born and raised in the state of Virginia.
1:44
Crista Cowan: Virginia is fascinating to me because if you have deep American roots, you know that you've got family who at one point lived in or passed through the state of Virginia.
1:57
Crista Cowan: It was one of the earliest British settlements.
2:00
Crista Cowan: It is the 10th state in the Union.
2:03
Crista Cowan: And there are people who are still in Virginia who have lived there generations since the 1600s.
2:13
Crista Cowan: And then there are some people who leave.
2:16
Crista Cowan: Well, my guest today is Nicole Palsa.
2:20
Crista Cowan: And in her DNA, she made a discovery about an ancestor who left.
2:27
Crista Cowan: And what she discovered is a really interesting story.
2:31
Crista Cowan: Enjoy my conversation with Nicole Palsa.
2:34
Crista Cowan: Well, Nicole, thank you so much for joining me.
2:37
Crista Cowan: I'm so excited to meet you and to learn a little bit more about your story.
2:41
Crista Cowan: Um, I'd love to have you just tell us a little bit about what it was like uh growing up and where you grew up and what your family was like.
2:49
Nicole Palsa: Sure.
2:50
Nicole Palsa: Yeah, I grew up in Richmond, Virginia, and most of my immediate family was all really close to each other, uh, physically and otherwise.
2:57
Nicole Palsa: So always saw my family members.
3:00
Nicole Palsa: Um, and my mom's side of the family always had a lot of family history stories that were passed down, and my grandfather and my uncle were always really into it.
3:09
Nicole Palsa: Um, and then I graduated college and moved out to Nashville, Tennessee.
3:13
Nicole Palsa: There and here ever since.
3:15
Nicole Palsa: Yeah.
3:16
Crista Cowan: And did anybody in your family follow you or you just have to go see?
3:19
Nicole Palsa: No, just me.
3:20
Nicole Palsa: Just me.
3:21
Nicole Palsa: Yeah.
3:21
Nicole Palsa: So if I want to see anybody, I have to go back to Virginia.
3:23
Nicole Palsa: Yeah.
3:24
Crista Cowan: Um, so how did your parents meet?
3:27
Crista Cowan: And what is that story?
3:29
Nicole Palsa: Um, they worked at a video store together.
3:31
Crista Cowan: Like a blockbuster?
3:33
Nicole Palsa: Yes.
3:34
Nicole Palsa: Yes, yes.
3:34
Nicole Palsa: I think it was like a local version, but yeah, they they worked at a video store together and I think maybe a pharmacy at one point.
3:41
Nicole Palsa: Um details are a little rusty, but they were they were uh fresh out of high school.
3:45
Crista Cowan: Okay, and so their families then were both local.
3:49
Crista Cowan: How far away from you did each set of grandparents live as you were growing up?
3:53
Nicole Palsa: Oh gosh, 10, 15 minutes.
3:55
Nicole Palsa: Very, very close.
3:56
Nicole Palsa: And did you have all four grandparents living while you grew up?
3:59
Nicole Palsa: I did.
3:59
Nicole Palsa: So not only did I have all four grandparents, I had two great-grandparents and even a great-great-grandparent.
4:06
Crista Cowan: What growing up amazing?
4:08
Nicole Palsa: So one of my first pictures ever, um, I was an infant and it made in the local newspaper is a five-generation photo of all the women um on my mom's side.
4:17
Nicole Palsa: So me, my mom, my grandmother, my great-grandmother, and my great-great-grandmother all together about a month after I was born.
4:23
Crista Cowan: That's incredible.
4:24
Crista Cowan: And how long did your great-great-grandmother live after that?
4:27
Nicole Palsa: Um, probably another 10 years.
4:29
Nicole Palsa: I mean, I was I think I was in middle school when she passed.
4:31
Nicole Palsa: Yeah.
4:31
Nicole Palsa: Oh, you have memories of her.
4:33
Nicole Palsa: Oh, absolutely.
4:34
Nicole Palsa: Absolutely.
4:35
Nicole Palsa: We didn't live close.
4:36
Nicole Palsa: That part of the family lived a couple of hours away.
4:38
Nicole Palsa: Um, and so we would go visit her um sometimes in the nursing home.
4:42
Nicole Palsa: Um, but I I definitely do have vivid memories of her.
4:44
Nicole Palsa: Sure.
4:45
Crista Cowan: That's so cool.
4:46
Crista Cowan: And did you have a big family, a small family?
4:49
Nicole Palsa: Um, so I'm an only child.
4:50
Nicole Palsa: Um, so immediate small family, but um my dad has four sisters, so that part of the family is big, and my mom has uh two brothers.
4:58
Nicole Palsa: So um, yeah, so lots of cousins, especially on my dad's side of the family.
5:02
Nicole Palsa: And they all stayed local as well.
5:04
Nicole Palsa: Um, a couple of them have moved, so there's a handful of us who have spread out across the country, but growing up we were all physically really close.
5:11
Nicole Palsa: Yeah.
5:11
Crista Cowan: Oh, I love that.
5:12
Crista Cowan: And and Richmond, like, tell me about growing up in Richmond.
5:16
Crista Cowan: Like it's such an area that's so like deep in history and you're kind of entrenched in it.
5:21
Nicole Palsa: Yes, every field trip was somewhere historic.
5:23
Nicole Palsa: So, and not only that, my grandparents would take me on field trips, quote unquote.
5:28
Nicole Palsa: So we would go to Mount Vernon or we would go to Yorktown or you know, the National Zoo, or you know, we were always taking trips together.
5:36
Nicole Palsa: And so my childhood was just immersed in history.
5:39
Nicole Palsa: So it's not really surprising that I I love it so much.
5:42
Crista Cowan: Oh, I think that's amazing.
5:44
Crista Cowan: Yeah, I actually, if you go back in my family tree far enough, um, I I don't remember exactly which episode of the podcast it was, but I told a story about my ancestor Margaret Lawrence, who was on a convict ship from England, sent to the Americas and ended up in Richmond, Virginia.
6:01
Crista Cowan: Her bomb was bought by a plantation owner there.
6:05
Crista Cowan: So she was uh essentially like um in servitude, right next to his enslaved people.
6:13
Crista Cowan: And he ended up fathering some children with her.
6:16
Crista Cowan: And so my connection to Richmond, like I've I love the stories about her and the story of survival, and there's just so much about it that's so interesting to me.
6:25
Crista Cowan: But then after her sons grew up, um, one of them stayed there in the Richmond area for another couple of generations.
6:33
Crista Cowan: So yeah, so it's always been kind of this interesting connection for me because I've been so enamored with her.
6:39
Crista Cowan: Yeah.
6:40
Crista Cowan: That's great.
6:41
Crista Cowan: Well, in in all families, stories get passed down for generations, and sometimes they're a little bit of a mystery.
6:49
Crista Cowan: And I understand you have a little bit of a mystery in your family tree.
6:53
Nicole Palsa: Yes.
6:53
Nicole Palsa: So it started with a middle school family tree project.
6:57
Nicole Palsa: So it was one of those, you know, go back four generations, fill in names, birth dates, death dates, etc.
7:01
Nicole Palsa: And I knew that my uncle and my grandfather had already done, you know, all this work on my mom's side of the family.
7:06
Nicole Palsa: So I was like, oh, this will be easy.
7:08
Nicole Palsa: I'll just take it to them and have, you know, work with them to fill it in, then go to my grandparents on my dad's side and you know, knock it out.
7:13
Nicole Palsa: And so we're working on it, and we get to my great-great-grandmother, Dessie Dulaney, and we didn't have a death date for her.
7:22
Nicole Palsa: And I thought, well, that's unusual because her daughter, Rushie, my great-grandmother, was still alive.
7:28
Nicole Palsa: And I thought, well, if Granny's still alive, she doesn't know when her mother died.
7:34
Nicole Palsa: Like that seems a little odd.
7:35
Nicole Palsa: So I started asking questions.
7:37
Nicole Palsa: The initial reaction was, we don't talk about that.
7:41
Nicole Palsa: And I thought, hmm, well, let's talk about it.
7:45
Nicole Palsa: So after some uh nudging and some prodding, I finally got the story out.
7:50
Nicole Palsa: Leslie had left um Virginia around 1914 and it was supposed to come back to Virginia at some point, and nobody ever approached her again.
8:00
Nicole Palsa: And how old was your great-grandmother at the time that her mom raised?
8:03
Nicole Palsa: It was three years old.
8:05
Nicole Palsa: Yeah.
8:06
Nicole Palsa: You remember the day her mom went.
8:08
Nicole Palsa: She remembered the tote her mom was wearing the day she left.
8:10
Crista Cowan: And how many children were in that family?
8:14
Nicole Palsa: Um, so it was just her.
8:15
Nicole Palsa: Okay.
8:16
Nicole Palsa: So yeah, so Rushie was the only child.
8:19
Crista Cowan: And then did she ask questions like what, like, and then how did her dad move on?
8:24
Crista Cowan: Like, what did that look like?
8:25
Nicole Palsa: So Dessie was single.
8:26
Nicole Palsa: She was not married.
8:28
Nicole Palsa: So she was an unwed mother.
8:29
Nicole Palsa: And so it was very taboo, and it just wasn't talked about.
8:33
Nicole Palsa: Um, Rushie did know who her biological father was.
8:37
Nicole Palsa: Um, I'm not sure how that information was, you know, passed on to her, but she did know who her biological father was.
8:43
Nicole Palsa: Um, and but she did not, he was not part of her life at all.
8:47
Nicole Palsa: So Rushie was raised by Dessie's mother, Margaret.
8:50
Crista Cowan: And was she also single by that time?
8:53
Nicole Palsa: So Margaret um was a widow.
8:56
Nicole Palsa: So Dessie's father had passed away when Dessie was about eight years old.
8:59
Nicole Palsa: And so the household, when when Rushie was born, the household was Margaret.
9:04
Nicole Palsa: Dessie was the oldest child still at home, and then there was a younger brother, Albert, and then Ollie and May were the youngest two um children still left at home.
9:14
Nicole Palsa: So when Dessie left, it was Albert, uh, May, Ollie, and Rushie that were at home with uh with Margaret.
9:22
Crista Cowan: And so because Rushie was old enough to remember her mom leaving, she wasn't raised thinking this was her mother and these were her siblings.
9:30
Crista Cowan: She knew it was a big no she knew it was her grandmother.
9:32
Nicole Palsa: Absolutely.
9:32
Nicole Palsa: Yeah.
9:33
Crista Cowan: Okay.
9:33
Crista Cowan: But like, how does that affect like that has that has to affect somebody and their like view on the world when their mother abandoned you like that?
9:40
Nicole Palsa: She she felt abandoned.
9:41
Nicole Palsa: She felt abandoned, and it was really hard.
9:43
Nicole Palsa: Um, and later in when I was in high school, I actually sat down to do do an interview with Rushie and to talk about it.
9:51
Nicole Palsa: And it took a lot of convincing of my grandfather because he was like, it's just too painful for her.
9:55
Nicole Palsa: And I said, you know, I'll be really delicate about it.
9:57
Nicole Palsa: I just want to kind of get the facts down.
9:59
Nicole Palsa: And uh, and she was very emotional over it.
10:01
Nicole Palsa: And she had a couple of items that had been passed down to her that belonged to her mom that she showed me.
10:07
Nicole Palsa: Um, but it it was just so painful for her.
10:09
Nicole Palsa: Um, not only with her mother abandoning her, but the stigma of being an illegitimate child at that time.
10:15
Nicole Palsa: Um, she was not treated well by some of her family members because of that.
10:20
Nicole Palsa: So um really tough on her growing up for sure.
10:23
Crista Cowan: What kind of a woman was she?
10:25
Crista Cowan: Like, what was your interaction with her as she was an older woman?
10:29
Nicole Palsa: Yeah.
10:29
Nicole Palsa: So um, I called her Granny Hilton because there were so many grannies around, you had to distinguish between them.
10:35
Nicole Palsa: Um, so she was my granny Hilton and she was so kind and loving.
10:40
Nicole Palsa: And you know, by the time that I knew her, she was a widow.
10:43
Nicole Palsa: Um, that she lived on her own up until about close to she was 90 years old, I think, um, before he moved into kind of a community um situation.
10:52
Nicole Palsa: And um, you know, she mowed her own grass and you know, did everything around the house.
10:56
Nicole Palsa: And um, my fondest memories with her were sitting in her living room and pulling out old photo albums.
11:02
Nicole Palsa: And she would tell me who who the people were in the pictures and the stories behind them.
11:07
Nicole Palsa: And um, I I just loved her so much.
11:09
Nicole Palsa: She was such a great writer.
11:12
Crista Cowan: Was there ever a picture of her mother anywhere?
11:15
Nicole Palsa: Yes.
11:15
Nicole Palsa: So there was one photograph um that that we had in the family.
11:20
Nicole Palsa: It was of Dessie and Rushie, and Rushie was an infant, so maybe just a couple of months old.
11:24
Nicole Palsa: And that picture was framed in my grandparents' house.
11:27
Nicole Palsa: And so every time I went to go visit my grandparents, I would see that picture and just be reminded of that story and be like, what happened to this lady?
11:35
Crista Cowan: So, what was it about this story that like kept you intrigued?
11:41
Crista Cowan: Was it the mystery of it all?
11:43
Nicole Palsa: It was the mystery and the fact that Rushie was still around, my granny was still around.
11:47
Nicole Palsa: And, you know, I just made it my mission to try to find out what happened to her mom.
11:51
Nicole Palsa: Um, because you know, she was in her 90s, and I was like, there's gotta be a way for me to figure this out and help bring some closure to her.
11:59
Crista Cowan: So what is so what did that search look like for you?
12:02
Crista Cowan: How old were you when you kind of got serious about it?
12:05
Nicole Palsa: And yeah, so it was probably when I was in high school.
12:09
Nicole Palsa: Um, we actually had a genealogy elective class when I was in high school, and that gave me I it was the best thing ever.
12:16
Nicole Palsa: It it really is what started the bug for sure.
12:18
Nicole Palsa: Every high school should have that.
12:21
Nicole Palsa: Absolutely.
12:22
Nicole Palsa: It was amazing.
12:23
Nicole Palsa: And so I learned a lot of the research skills that set me up for success.
12:27
Nicole Palsa: And so I was going to the library of Virginia and I was looking at microfilms and all of this.
12:32
Nicole Palsa: And the biggest thing for me was okay, she disappeared around 1914.
12:36
Nicole Palsa: The next logical record would be the 1920 census.
12:40
Nicole Palsa: And so I I did every search I could imagine in the 1920 census using her birth date, her first name, Virginia, Illinois, based on what I knew.
12:50
Nicole Palsa: Nothing, nothing ever came up.
12:52
Nicole Palsa: And I tried every variation and it was just a dead end.
12:56
Nicole Palsa: And so um, I was like, well, did she die during the influenza you know epidemic or you know, some tragic accident?
13:03
Nicole Palsa: Um, couldn't find death records anywhere.
13:06
Nicole Palsa: It just nothing for years.
13:08
Nicole Palsa: And so it took until 2018 before I had a breakthrough.
13:12
Crista Cowan: And so how long was that like from the first time you've been?
13:16
Nicole Palsa: So that was about 20 years.
13:19
Crista Cowan: Okay.
13:19
Crista Cowan: And did and is this something that like you constantly thought about, or is it something that you kind of dipped in and out of?
13:26
Nicole Palsa: I I definitely dipped in and out of it.
13:28
Nicole Palsa: So I also had um a distant relative who was kind of involved in the search too, that he was helping out.
13:33
Nicole Palsa: So he was um Dessie's brother's son-in-law.
13:40
Crista Cowan: Wow.
13:41
Nicole Palsa: Okay.
13:41
Nicole Palsa: So he married into the family.
13:43
Nicole Palsa: Um, but he had heard the story, you know, as soon as he became part of the family, and he was really into family history research as well.
13:51
Nicole Palsa: And so it intrigued him.
13:52
Nicole Palsa: And he had started researching it, you know, well before I was even born and kept coming up short and you know, couldn't ever find anything.
14:00
Nicole Palsa: Um, and his father-in-law was, you know, one of the last people to actually see Dessie.
14:04
Nicole Palsa: So um that was a little discouraging that he had been searching for decades and hadn't found anything.
14:10
Nicole Palsa: Um, but the fact that he was searching too is like, you know, we would compare notes every once in a while and be like, okay, well, I tried this.
14:16
Nicole Palsa: Did you try that?
14:17
Nicole Palsa: And um, yeah, so that that's kind of what kept me motivated, was knowing that I wasn't doing it alone, but I would kind of, you know, dip in and out of her.
14:25
Crista Cowan: And and when did when did your great-grandmother pass?
14:29
Crista Cowan: Like in the middle of all of this, I suspect.
14:32
Nicole Palsa: 2006.
14:33
Nicole Palsa: Okay.
14:34
Nicole Palsa: She was 95.
14:35
Nicole Palsa: Yeah, she lived a really long life.
14:39
Nicole Palsa: We thought for sure she was gonna make it to 100.
14:41
Nicole Palsa: And um, and yeah, it's it just didn't work out.
14:44
Nicole Palsa: But yeah, she lived a really long, beautiful life for sure.
14:47
Crista Cowan: Oh, I love that.
14:48
Crista Cowan: So, what was the thing that was finally the breakthrough for you?
14:52
Nicole Palsa: Yes.
14:52
Nicole Palsa: So um, my family all did ancestry DNA tests, including my grandfather.
14:57
Nicole Palsa: And um, he did his in 2017 and he was like, I'll spit in the two, but he's like, I just don't want to deal with computer stuff.
15:04
Nicole Palsa: Um, he said, you know, so I'll give you the permissions and all that kind of stuff.
15:07
Nicole Palsa: I said, Okay, great.
15:08
Nicole Palsa: So May of 2018, it was the Friday before Mother's Day weekend.
15:13
Nicole Palsa: I got an email that he had a new first cousin DNA match.
15:17
Nicole Palsa: And I looked and I said, I don't know who this person is.
15:20
Nicole Palsa: I was like, that's encouraging.
15:23
Nicole Palsa: And so I clicked on this match, and the person had started building out a family tree.
15:27
Nicole Palsa: And the only thing I saw that I needed to see was that the man's grandmother's name was Dessie.
15:32
Nicole Palsa: And I just started bawling.
15:35
Nicole Palsa: And but I also did my due diligence and I said, Okay, this looks really promising, but I need to find a paper trail to confirm this.
15:43
Nicole Palsa: And so started looking at the information that he had put on his tree to try to find those records, like that elusive 1920 census.
15:52
Nicole Palsa: And I found finally found it.
15:54
Nicole Palsa: And the reason I hadn't been able to find her was because the transcription of the census had her name as Jesse.
16:00
Nicole Palsa: So the way I ended up finding it was Dessie had another daughter who was named Wilma.
16:10
Nicole Palsa: And Wilma showed up in the census, and that's how I ended up finding Dessie.
16:14
Nicole Palsa: And how did you find out about Wilma?
16:16
Nicole Palsa: Was that because DNA?
16:18
Nicole Palsa: Um see so the tree that the DNA match had built, Wilma was on that tree.
16:23
Crista Cowan: Okay.
16:23
Crista Cowan: And so yeah, and so the match, can we use the match's first name?
16:26
Crista Cowan: Are you okay with that?
16:27
Crista Cowan: Yes.
16:27
Crista Cowan: Okay.
16:28
Crista Cowan: Yep, his name is Garth.
16:29
Crista Cowan: Okay, so the match, this this new first cousin match Garth.
16:32
Crista Cowan: Wilma is his mother.
16:34
Crista Cowan: Uh yes.
16:35
Crista Cowan: And then Jesse was his grandmother.
16:37
Crista Cowan: So what year were what year was Wilma born?
16:41
Nicole Palsa: Wilma was born in April of 1915.
16:44
Nicole Palsa: And she left in 1914.
16:47
Nicole Palsa: So the uh what I was able to find out was that the the last actual record of Dessie in Virginia was she came into some money in February of 1914.
16:58
Nicole Palsa: Um, so she got the portion of the land that she had inherited from her father.
17:05
Nicole Palsa: And so she sold that.
17:07
Nicole Palsa: So February, I think it was 27th or 28th.
17:10
Nicole Palsa: Um, she gets like a thousand bucks.
17:12
Nicole Palsa: And my theory is that that's when she goes to go visit her sister out in Illinois because she's got some extra money in her pocket.
17:20
Nicole Palsa: Um, and then things took a turn from there.
17:23
Nicole Palsa: And and tell us about the turn they took.
17:26
Nicole Palsa: Yeah.
17:27
Nicole Palsa: So the the family story was that Dessie had gone to visit her sister Sarah in Kirkwood, Illinois.
17:34
Nicole Palsa: And that she had stayed out there for a little bit, and then apparently she had sent word um that she was coming back home to Virginia, and then nobody had ever heard from her again.
17:42
Nicole Palsa: And um what I had learned in my research is that um she got pregnant by either her brother-in-law, Sarah's husband, or one of his brothers.
17:55
Nicole Palsa: So that's why she never went back to Virginia.
18:01
Crista Cowan: She'd already had one child out of wedlock and had probably suffered for that.
18:05
Crista Cowan: Yeah.
18:06
Crista Cowan: And and is there any indication or do you have any clue if this was a consensual relationship or a non-consensual relationship?
18:14
Nicole Palsa: I don't know enough about you know his character to my guess is not consensual.
18:20
Nicole Palsa: I just I can't imagine that you know, I don't know for sure.
18:25
Crista Cowan: Um but did she keep Wilma?
18:28
Nicole Palsa: Did she raise Wilma?
18:29
Crista Cowan: She did.
18:29
Crista Cowan: So what was different this time?
18:33
Nicole Palsa: Um, I think she didn't have the family pressure.
18:36
Nicole Palsa: So growing up with, you know, she was living with her mom at the time when Rushie was born, and she also had her younger brother, who was the man of the house, and they belonged to the Church of the Brethren.
18:48
Nicole Palsa: And I think living in a really small community where everybody knew each other and the church was the center of everything.
18:55
Nicole Palsa: Um, and she was also related to half the county because of the way just you know where they lived.
19:02
Nicole Palsa: And so I think she was probably ostracized for the community and was not gonna really be able to live a good life there.
19:10
Nicole Palsa: Um, and so when she went out to Kirkwood and she got pregnant, she ended up actually crossing the state line into Iowa.
19:19
Nicole Palsa: And Wilma was born in Burlington, Iowa.
19:22
Nicole Palsa: So I think she just started a clean slate because she also claimed that she was a widow when Wilma was born.
19:29
Nicole Palsa: And that gave her the ability to avoid the stigma that came with being an unwed mother.
19:36
Crista Cowan: Yeah, absolutely.
19:37
Crista Cowan: So did she ever marry and have more children?
19:40
Nicole Palsa: Uh, no more children, but she did marry.
19:42
Nicole Palsa: Um, so she got married in 1917 to a man named Fred Renner, and they lived in Tampa Coe, Illinois.
19:48
Nicole Palsa: And then um in 1922, she married a man um named Giff Mont, and he was her knight in shining armor, and they lived happily ever.
19:56
Nicole Palsa: So he's my favorite one of the whole story.
19:59
Nicole Palsa: He's the one who came and saved the day.
20:01
Nicole Palsa: Yeah.
20:02
Crista Cowan: And how old, how old was Wilma at that time?
20:04
Crista Cowan: Like was Wilma still young or had she already been raised?
20:07
Nicole Palsa: So Wilma.
20:07
Nicole Palsa: So Wilma was two years old when um when Dessie married Fred, and then when Grip came into the would have been in first grade.
20:16
Crista Cowan: Okay.
20:17
Nicole Palsa: So Wilma never knew anything about her biological father.
20:22
Crista Cowan: Oh, okay.
20:23
Crista Cowan: And is that maybe why her son took the DNA test?
20:26
Crista Cowan: Was he looking?
20:27
Nicole Palsa: You know, he's he's never really cared why he took the DNA test, but he did tell me that he suspected there was something suspicious in his grandmother's past because she never talked about it.
20:37
Nicole Palsa: Has has he been forthcoming sharing stories or pictures or um he has not been much, but his brother has and his children have.
20:45
Nicole Palsa: So um I've gotten a lot of great pictures and stories and stuff from the extended family.
20:50
Nicole Palsa: I love that.
20:52
Crista Cowan: So so how long, like, how long from the moment you made that DNA discovery?
20:57
Crista Cowan: And I love that you know, like it was the Friday before mother.
20:59
Crista Cowan: Like, I know you know that you know the exact moment.
21:02
Crista Cowan: Yes.
21:03
Crista Cowan: So how long from the time you made that DNA discovery till you felt like you really had put together the pieces of her life enough that you could tell a story about her?
21:13
Nicole Palsa: Oh gosh.
21:14
Nicole Palsa: Um, I'd say probably two years.
21:17
Nicole Palsa: Um, I I had the basics down within a couple of weeks, but I think it's I ended doing a lot of research trips.
21:24
Nicole Palsa: So I went out to Iowa, I went out to Illinois to gather stories because where she spent the majority of her life in Lemoyle, Illinois, is a very small village, and there were still people there who knew her.
21:35
Nicole Palsa: Um, so I went out there and did interviews.
21:38
Nicole Palsa: And um, so gathering all of those pieces of information, it took about two years to really get a complete picture of what her life looked like beyond just, you know, when she got married, when she passed away.
21:50
Crista Cowan: Yeah.
21:50
Crista Cowan: And so as you kind of look at this life that she led after she left Virginia, like, were there any other like stories or moments?
21:59
Crista Cowan: Moments in time where she had something significant happen?
22:03
Nicole Palsa: So many things.
22:04
Nicole Palsa: So I think the first one was probably when she moved to Tampico, Illinois.
22:11
Nicole Palsa: So that was the birthplace of President Ronald Reagan.
22:14
Nicole Palsa: And little Ronnie Reagan um was living at a general store that his dad worked at.
22:21
Nicole Palsa: So they they lived above the general store.
22:24
Nicole Palsa: And at the time, Dessie was working for a local dairy farm.
22:27
Nicole Palsa: And so she would drive the milk wagon into town and deliver milk for everybody.
22:32
Nicole Palsa: And so the story goes that um Wilma passed down this story that Wilma would ride in the milk milk wagon and um Ronald Reagan's mom would ask Dessie to make sure he was awake for school.
22:45
Nicole Palsa: And if he was running late, he would Mitch a ride on the wagon and they would take him to school.
22:49
Crista Cowan: That's adorable.
22:50
Crista Cowan: Yeah.
22:51
Crista Cowan: And it's so interesting because you think about like people just go missing from the family trees all the time.
22:58
Crista Cowan: And you never know what happened to them.
23:01
Crista Cowan: And now here you are generations later making these discoveries and discovering that she intersected with historically significant people that you grew up knowing about, right?
23:12
Nicole Palsa: Right, exactly.
23:13
Nicole Palsa: Exactly.
23:13
Nicole Palsa: That that was probably one of the biggest early discoveries was like, wait a minute, what?
23:18
Crista Cowan: Did what?
23:19
Crista Cowan: That's so fun.
23:20
Crista Cowan: Any other stories you've uncovered?
23:22
Nicole Palsa: Yeah, she also uh during World War II, she worked at a um munitions plant.
23:27
Nicole Palsa: Um it was the Green River Ordnance Plant in Amboy, Illinois, and she helped build bazooka rockets for the entire duration of the war.
23:35
Nicole Palsa: So um Roma worked there at the time as well.
23:37
Nicole Palsa: And so Wilma wrote out this amazing detailed account of what their daily life was like working there.
23:44
Nicole Palsa: So she worked in a different part of the factory, um, but she described how Dessie would go in and have to wear a hairnet because the chemicals would discolor her hair and you know, just the whole process.
23:54
Nicole Palsa: And she even drew diagrams of what the munitions looked like, and it was just so fascinating.
24:00
Crista Cowan: Oh my goodness, what a treasure, what a gift.
24:03
Nicole Palsa: Yes, yes, absolutely.
24:04
Nicole Palsa: Will was really good about um on the things that she kept writing descriptions of things.
24:09
Nicole Palsa: So uh very helpful to have those things passed down.
24:13
Crista Cowan: Yeah, wow, that's amazing.
24:14
Crista Cowan: I love that.
24:15
Crista Cowan: Um, so as you think about kind of the specific, you know, place in Virginia that Dessie came from, what where where was that?
24:25
Crista Cowan: Like you came from Richmond, where was she from?
24:27
Nicole Palsa: Yeah, she was from Floyd County, um, which is in the Blue Ridge Mountains in the southwest corner of Virginia.
24:34
Nicole Palsa: Okay.
24:34
Nicole Palsa: So, yeah, and one of the things I love about Floyd is, you know, I mentioned earlier that everybody's related to each other.
24:41
Nicole Palsa: Um, it because the early settlers that came to that region, they stayed there and their descendants stayed there because they loved it so much.
24:48
Nicole Palsa: And so there's just really deep roots.
24:51
Nicole Palsa: Um, my family think back to colonial era there.
24:55
Nicole Palsa: And so it's just um it's such a special place, you know.
24:59
Nicole Palsa: Families really relied on their homesteads to produce, you know, enough food for them.
25:05
Nicole Palsa: Um, there was some um lumber industry there, um, you know, churches were really prominent, uh, but just a beautiful tight-knit community.
25:14
Crista Cowan: Wow, I love that.
25:15
Crista Cowan: And my family comes from the northeast corner of Tennessee, so just below part of Virginia.
25:21
Crista Cowan: Yeah, Hawkins County, Tennessee.
25:24
Crista Cowan: Okay.
25:25
Crista Cowan: And yeah, like we find every time I dive into my DNA matches on that branch of my family tree, there's just more cousins popping up.
25:33
Crista Cowan: Yeah.
25:34
Crista Cowan: And some of them are still there.
25:36
Crista Cowan: And then as I start to put together the family trees, I realize they they don't fork.
25:44
Crista Cowan: Right.
25:45
Crista Cowan: Right.
25:45
Crista Cowan: My mother calls it the family wreath, not her family tree, right?
25:49
Crista Cowan: Because people just keep intermarrying with some of the same families over and over again for generations.
25:54
Crista Cowan: Yeah.
25:54
Crista Cowan: Do you find that in your own family tree?
25:56
Nicole Palsa: Oh, absolutely.
25:57
Nicole Palsa: Absolutely.
25:58
Nicole Palsa: So the um, so Rushie's biological father was an acres.
26:03
Nicole Palsa: That was also Wilma's biological father was also an acres.
26:07
Nicole Palsa: Oh, wait, yes.
26:09
Nicole Palsa: Because these are different branches of the acres family.
26:13
Crista Cowan: Okay.
26:13
Crista Cowan: Yeah.
26:14
Crista Cowan: Okay.
26:15
Crista Cowan: So let me just make sure I've got the family tree straight.
26:17
Crista Cowan: That's that's a fun revelation.
26:19
Crista Cowan: So when you first went into this, you had no idea who Rushie's father was.
26:23
Crista Cowan: Is that correct?
26:24
Nicole Palsa: No, we knew who Rushie's father was.
26:26
Nicole Palsa: We did not know, yeah, we didn't know who Wilma's father was.
26:29
Crista Cowan: But you but you figured out enough that Wilma's father was uh at least related to Dessie's sister's husband.
26:38
Nicole Palsa: So I we we looked at Wilma's sons who had done the DNA test and looked at their matches and were able to narrow it down.
26:44
Nicole Palsa: Okay.
26:47
Crista Cowan: Okay.
26:47
Crista Cowan: So both of these women are descendants of Akers families, but those two families are not like immediate.
26:53
Nicole Palsa: Correct.
26:54
Nicole Palsa: Correct.
26:54
Nicole Palsa: They're about one generation apart.
26:57
Crista Cowan: Okay.
26:57
Crista Cowan: And so you were able to identify Rushie's father definitively?
27:02
Nicole Palsa: Yes.
27:02
Nicole Palsa: Yep.
27:02
Nicole Palsa: So we had one of um his name was Matt Acres, and um Matt's granddaughter did it the DNA termist, and through her, we were able to confirm that it was him.
27:13
Crista Cowan: And so was there any more of the story that came to light because of that?
27:17
Nicole Palsa: Yeah.
27:17
Nicole Palsa: So um I found out, so Rushie knew the whole time that her dad was Matt Matt Acres.
27:22
Nicole Palsa: And apparently she approached um one of her cousins, I don't know, at the playground or school or something, and said, We have the same grandma.
27:29
Nicole Palsa: Well, the kid was so confused.
27:32
Nicole Palsa: Really, what are you talking about?
27:35
Nicole Palsa: So uh that was a fun story.
27:37
Nicole Palsa: That is a fun story.
27:39
Nicole Palsa: And apparently that grandma uh had like one interaction with Rushie where she gave her some candy or something, I guess because she knew uh that that was her granddaughter.
27:50
Crista Cowan: So it was kind of an open secret in the community.
27:52
Crista Cowan: Yes, absolutely.
27:54
Crista Cowan: It was such a different time, wasn't it?
27:56
Crista Cowan: It was, it was.
27:58
Crista Cowan: And so, and so as you think about it, right?
28:00
Crista Cowan: Like you think about Rushie, and you knew her and loved her and had her with you for a very long time.
28:06
Crista Cowan: And now you've made this discovery, not just of her mother, but she had a sister that she never knew.
28:12
Crista Cowan: But that's that's yeah.
28:14
Nicole Palsa: That's the part that I think has been the most heart-wrenching is that she had family that she didn't know about.
28:21
Nicole Palsa: And um, because I think she felt pretty alone growing up, not having any siblings.
28:26
Nicole Palsa: And um after the her her aunts moved out of the house, it was just her and her grandmother trying to do everything on this homestead together.
28:36
Nicole Palsa: And so I think she did feel, you know, abandoned, alone.
28:39
Nicole Palsa: Um, and she, you know, she married, um, I think she was about 19 when she got married, and you know, things turned around then.
28:45
Nicole Palsa: She had started her own family.
28:46
Nicole Palsa: But I think it would have been really helpful for her to have known that she had a sister out there.
28:52
Crista Cowan: Well, it and that just that she had a sister, like the the fact that those two women were raised in such different circumstances.
28:59
Nicole Palsa: It's so different.
29:00
Nicole Palsa: There's actually a photograph on my wall right now uh of Ruthie when she was about eight years old and she's standing with the family.
29:07
Nicole Palsa: And so she's standing next to her grandmother.
29:10
Nicole Palsa: Uh, and then there's, let's see, an aunt and uncle, and um, they're all standing next to the house.
29:16
Nicole Palsa: And and Rushie's just wearing these rags.
29:19
Nicole Palsa: Like you could just tell the conditions that she grew up in are extremely, extremely poor.
29:24
Nicole Palsa: And then there's pictures of Wilma at the same age, and she's wearing a Sunday school dress and she's got her hair curled.
29:30
Nicole Palsa: And it's just the difference in how they grew up was night and day because Dusty was able to start a new life with Wilma and just have a clean slate, whereas Rushie was still at home with a widowed grandmother and just trying to survive.
29:45
Crista Cowan: Wow.
29:46
Crista Cowan: And it's so interesting how just one person's choices and can can make all the difference in the world.
29:52
Crista Cowan: Absolutely.
29:54
Nicole Palsa: And you know, and I've I've considered this so many times, you know, why did Dusty leave her child behind?
29:59
Nicole Palsa: And I think it really was pressure from the family of, you know, you can't support her, you better leave her here.
30:06
Nicole Palsa: Or, you know, I don't know the full circumstances of it, but um based on what I do know, my guess is that she was pressured into leaving Roshi behind.
30:15
Nicole Palsa: Oh, that's heartbreaking.
30:17
Nicole Palsa: Yeah.
30:17
Crista Cowan: But you found her and you found the story.
30:20
Nicole Palsa: Yes.
30:21
Nicole Palsa: And I found new cousins, which is the best.
30:24
Nicole Palsa: Yeah.
30:25
Crista Cowan: That is the best.
30:26
Crista Cowan: And clearly they've been generous enough to share information with you, which is also really lucky because not everybody has that either.
30:34
Nicole Palsa: Absolutely.
30:34
Nicole Palsa: You know, and it took some time.
30:36
Nicole Palsa: Um, I think there was a little bit of trust that I had to build with them.
30:40
Nicole Palsa: Um, but once we did, you know, floodgates were wide open.
30:43
Nicole Palsa: We've been, you know, sharing back and forth, and I've had a chance to meet them in person.
30:47
Nicole Palsa: And I even took them to Virginia to show them around where Dusty grew up.
30:51
Nicole Palsa: So that was really special.
30:52
Crista Cowan: So after Rushie got married, you said it in 19, did she stay in that same little Blue Ridge Mountain town or did she go somewhere else in Virginia?
31:00
Nicole Palsa: So she stayed close by.
31:01
Nicole Palsa: So she ended up in Blacksburg with her husband.
31:03
Nicole Palsa: That's where my grandfather was born.
31:05
Nicole Palsa: So Blacksburg is just a spit froze away from from Floyd.
31:09
Nicole Palsa: So um Blacksburg, Christiansburg area, she stayed there virtually her entire life until she moved to Richmond when she was in her 90s.
31:16
Nicole Palsa: Is that Spotsylvania County?
31:18
Nicole Palsa: Uh no, that's Montgomery County.
31:20
Nicole Palsa: Montgomery County.
31:21
Crista Cowan: Okay.
31:22
Crista Cowan: Sometimes I think I know where counties are and sometimes I get a little confused.
31:27
Nicole Palsa: It's all good.
31:27
Nicole Palsa: It's all good.
31:28
Crista Cowan: Yeah, Floyd and Montgomery are right next to each other.
31:30
Crista Cowan: Okay.
31:31
Crista Cowan: Well, is there any part of this story that I didn't ask you about that you want to talk about?
31:37
Nicole Palsa: I think for me, what I've learned about Dusty, because I think I went into it originally with a lot of judgment and how could she leave her daughter and learning more about what she went through, um, her first husband ended up being alcoholic and abusive.
31:52
Nicole Palsa: And she was able to get a divorce from him and survive that um and get remarried to a really good man.
31:58
Nicole Palsa: And so I think seeing everything that she went through um changed my perspective on the decisions that she had to make and why she did them.
32:07
Nicole Palsa: Um, one of the things that was really challenging in finding the paper trail for her was me was trying to cover her tracks.
32:14
Nicole Palsa: So she made up where she was born, what year she was born.
32:18
Nicole Palsa: She was trying really hard to make sure she wasn't found, um, which, you know, obviously made it difficult for somebody to try to find her for the right reasons, but she was doing it to make sure she was protecting her daughter.
32:30
Nicole Palsa: Um, and so it just gave me a new perspective on everything and what she did to do that.
32:35
Crista Cowan: Yeah.
32:35
Crista Cowan: Wow.
32:36
Crista Cowan: She sounds like an amazing woman.
32:38
Crista Cowan: Yeah.
32:39
Crista Cowan: And it sounds like Rushie had a good life in spite of beginnings.
32:44
Nicole Palsa: She did.
32:44
Nicole Palsa: Yeah.
32:45
Nicole Palsa: I think she carried a lot of that with her in later years.
32:48
Nicole Palsa: Um, but she had a great husband, great kids, grandkids.
32:52
Nicole Palsa: Um, yeah, she she lived a good life for sure.
32:54
Nicole Palsa: Well, that's beautiful.
32:56
Crista Cowan: Well, yeah, Virginia is not just where you're from, it's part of like your family story for generations as we celebrate the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence and think about Virginia as such a crucial part, particularly of that period of time in history.
33:16
Crista Cowan: Like, what does it mean to you to be from Virginia?
33:19
Nicole Palsa: It means everything.
33:20
Nicole Palsa: Um, so researching Dessie's story led me further back in that line.
33:25
Nicole Palsa: And so I've gone back to the 1770s with that part of the family.
33:30
Nicole Palsa: And so just seeing what their role was during that time in history, um, because I think a lot of people are like, oh, Revolutionary War soldier, but there were so many other roles that people played in it.
33:42
Nicole Palsa: Whereas, you know, in my family, that line of the family, because they were Church of the Brethren, which is um practicing peace and nonviolence, nobody in that line of the family ever served in the military, ever.
33:54
Nicole Palsa: So there's no military records of anybody in that line of the family.
33:57
Nicole Palsa: And so research is a little hard during that time period when you don't have anybody in the military.
34:02
Nicole Palsa: Um, but it's it gives me such an appreciation for the fact that my family was part of the founding of this country, you know, kind of out in the frontier of Virginia at that time and surviving really difficult circumstances.
34:17
Nicole Palsa: Um, and yeah, they came over from Ireland and uh you know started a new life.
34:22
Nicole Palsa: And you know, Virginia has such a and rich history that I'm really proud to be from there.
34:29
Crista Cowan: I love that.
34:29
Crista Cowan: Thank you so much.
34:30
Crista Cowan: Thank you for sharing your love for Virginia.
34:33
Crista Cowan: Thank you for sharing your stories of these amazing women in your family tree.
34:37
Crista Cowan: Thank you for sharing them with us.
34:39
Nicole Palsa: Thank you for having me.
34:41
Nicole Palsa: I appreciate it.
34:42
Nicole Palsa: Studio sponsored by Ancestry.