More than 20 years have passed since I first met my friend, Anne. I was a student at UMKC’s Conservatory of Music and she was my voice teacher. We hit it off instantly. She’s intelligent, witty and sings like a goddess. Truthfully, she helped me find my voice and gave me a solid singing technique. After I graduated, our student-teacher relationship evolved into a close and enduring friendship. So it should come as no surprise that we consider each other “family”.

Oh, DNA results. How I love thee!

Anne, who is also into genealogy, is a descendant of George Keeling and Ursula Fleming. And so are 25 of my DNA matches on Ancestry.com. That’s right. 25 of my distant cousins are also Anne’s distant cousins. Although Anne and I do not share enough DNA (if any) for it to register on Ancestry.com, we are quite possibly related.

If there is a “Holy Grail” in my genealogical research, this is it. Frankly, we may never solve this. For whatever reason, marriage records of the earliest Trenthams/Tranthams of the Carolinas are missing. That said, we could just as easily be related through another branch. Ursula Fleming’s mother was Judith Tarleton. One of my Boren distant cousins from South Carolina was named “Tarleton Boren”. Coincidence? A family name passed down? Quite possibly.

The quest for my Anne-cestors is now underway. Ironically, it was a conversation with Anne back in December of 2014 that prompted me to take my first DNA test and start this adventure.

Kenfolk: It’s a mystery
Relation: Not sure
Common ancestors: It’s looking that way