I came across a newspaper clipping from a Trapp family reunion held in 1990 in Paris, TX. My mother and her sister and brother are mentioned as participants. This is potentially a useful goldmine of names to explore, should I ever have time to do it.
It's possible that I was there, though I would have been 6 yrs old at the time.
This is a clipping of "The Paris News" edition from Aug. 26, 1990.
In June 2017 I made contact with a woman named Maggie Craw through Ancestry.com because we shared some DNA with each other. She had an even stronger DNA connection with my mother's brother Jim Trapp. Long story short, we eventually concluded that Maggie is the biological daughter of my grandfather James Trapp, which was the result of a relationship he had as a young bachelor in Air Force training, possibly in Louisiana. Maggie was born in El Paso, TX on July 23rd, 1947. That makes her older than all of my mother's siblings:
I will have to write a more complete report of these events later.
I tell this summary of Maggie Craw's connection to the family in order to set the stage for another DNA discovery: Emilie Allsup.
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In April 2021 I reached out to a woman named Laura Salter on Ancestry.com because she shared DNA with myself and with my uncle Jim Trapp, just like Maggie did. She replied that her mother, Emilie, never knew who her biological father was. That lifelong mystery has been a source of emotional pain for her. Emilie's mother's name was Irene Wright, and she gave birth to Emilie on July 14, 1950. Because of our conversations Emilie went ahead and ordered a DNA test kit for herself, and the results very strongly point to a similar situation as with Maggie. Emilie is almost certainly my half-aunt. Her four daughters (including Laura Salter) are my half-cousins.
DNA relationships are defined by the number of "centimorgans" you share, otherwise called "cM". Higher cM between two individuals means they are more closely related, and certain ranges of cM can tell you what kind of relationship they have. These are the cM numbers between these three individuals:
Then add in my own cM connection with Maggie (904cM) and Emilie (890 cM).
The chart below shows possible relationships based on cM numbers. I've put red or blue circles around the possible relationships of the red/blue cM counts above. The arrows point to what I believe to be the most likely solution:
Based on the relative ages of the individuals, as well as the details of their personal stories, the evidence overwhelmingly points to Emilie Allsup being another biological daughter of my grandfather (James Trapp), and half-sister to my mother and her siblings.
So, here is a simplified family tree with the cM values shown between the half-siblings:
So to summarize, this would be the resulting timeline:
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Here is much more complex web of cM relationships which brings a mountain of supporting evidence for my conclusions:
Bila Tserkva or Moschna (?). Where was Stefan Ramik, my great-grandfather, born? Where did he live the first ~17 years of his life before immigrating to the USA? Both of those places are mentioned in different documents that ask for his birthplace.
Order of statements:
For example, these earlier records list a location that begins with an "M". They are very hard to read and may not even be the same word, but they definitely are not "Bila Tserkva":
Hamburg Passenger List (1904 at age 17). This is listed under a column titled "Bisheriger Wohnort", which translates from German to "Previous Residence". So it may not be where he was born but if not it's certainly not Bila Tserkva.
WW1 Draft Registration Card (~1917 at age 29):
On the other hand, his Petition for Naturalization (1925 at ~age 37) states that he was born in Bela Cerkow, Russia:
And his WW2 Registration Draft Card (1942 at ~ age 54) lists his place of birth as "Bela Cerkow", a version of the Polish word for Bila Tserkva:
