Katie - 
My children were very young (3 1/2 and 6 mos.) when their father, the love of my life and a 1st Lt. in the Army (Airborne Ranger) was killed, and about 18 mos. later I remarried... when I called the V.A. to ask if I would lose my late husband's check for the children if my husband, a young Army captain (Yes, I agree I had to be out of my mind), adopted them, I was told, 'M'am', you can change their name, but you can't change their blood.'! ... and so it goes...
Yes, they have wonderful memories of grandparents whose blood they do not carry... and rare few of their neglectful paternal grandfather... but that's another story... they will remember the times spent with my husband's parents, who also 'adopted them in their hearts', and so will their own children. However, it does not change who they are... their genetic make-up... or lessen their father's role in their conception.
Yes, I believe in DNA, although two branches of my family have thrown me for a loop - including my surname... and I want to know who I am, where my ancestors came from, in blood, and in love... and I believe that both men, one b. 1724 and the other abt. 1755, were young when their widowed mothers married into the family whose name they carried into life... and gave their own children. However, I still want to know who conceived them! What is that story? For, surely, like that of my own children, it cannot be any less important than that of the men whose names were 'adopted'.
I even wrote a book so that my children would know about their father, and his role in their lives... even if it was just riding home from the hospital with their tiny fingers wrapped around their father's big finger - or eyes filled with love watching as I nursed 'his' babies... or the thrill of having his own 'little family'.
Yes, the stories are wonderful - but there are other stories too, that you will never know.
Diane Stark McConnell Sanfilippo
http://www.more-than-life-itself.com
  Subject: Re: [VA-ROOTS] [POCAHONTAS] my alleged Pocahontas ancestry


  To my fellow genealogy email Listers: personally I think DNA in regards to genealogy is irrelevant. I know this might create a storm; but while your blue eyes may be in the genes, your history isn't. It is in the people who cared for you and who relayed stories of your "ancestors", blood or culture.

  It might help with these 2 Pocahontas lines of "mine" in that it will show Asian genes and a more narrowed focus to my research, or not, and it would save a little time; but it doesn't really show the family lines or who the people are, just that someone back there might be ... whatever.

  I started doing my family history when I was about 4 and asked my father's uncle about his mother for whom I was named. I've continued, I listen to stories, I write things down; I have fine memories of the microfische readers at the old Virginia State library in Richmond. But if tomorrow a letter appeared in my mother's estate that said she had found me on the doorstep, I would still have memories of her as my mother and I'd still be named for my paternal great-grandmother. I do not come from a culture that has an intense religious connection to the actual ancestry of individuals, I was tickled when I learned of this possible Matta-Po-Ni connection, I love to hear my daughter sing the Disney music with personal pride when we drive over the Chickahominy River outside Richmond - but none of this distracts me from still wanting to dig up and read the documents that actually name people in my line, who played a part in bringing together this
   wonderful country in which I am so fortunate to be nor does it make me want to discover what I consider very vague defining lines of my gene pool. I am not criticising those of you driven to have the info. But to me, it is not as important as reading the old documents and looking at the old photographs that document my trail.

  Katie Holland
  born in Portsmouth, VA to Norfolk parents
  raised in Va Beach and educated in Richmond
  but married to a Marylander and happy to be alive.



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