Week 2’s Prompt is “Favorite Picture”

Who was George Roy Hutson?

Have you ever had a brick wall that you just can’t get past?  Well I did.  I wanted to know who my paternal grandfather was.

My dad, Robert Edward Shumaker was born on February 6, 1931 in Los Angeles, California to an unwed mother.  His birth certificate has the father’s name blacked out.  On my dad’s social security application it lists his fathers name the same as his own.  There was no Robert Shumaker who married my grandmother, Margaret Ann Schumacher.  So who was my grandfather?

It all comes down to taking an Ancestry DNA test.  Me, my brother and our Mom took the test to figure it out.  I would have tested my Dad, but he died in 1985.

When my parents were getting married, my dad’s uncle, Oscar Franklin filled out the marriage certificate listing my dad’s father’s name as Paul Simpson.

When the results came back,  I spent countless hours separating the DNA matches that were not in common with our mom.   We had a few 2nd and 3rd cousin DNA matches.  I was excited to figure out our connection.  Much to my dismay, they were all on my paternal grandmother’s side of the family.  The only other option I had was to search the last name “Simpson” in an attempt to find others with that last name in their tree.  I found a 4th cousin match and reached out to her.  The two of us racked our brains trying to figure out how the “Simpson’s” in her tree, that lived in Missouri, could be related to me and my brother, who’s grandmother never went to Missouri.  The mystery continued for months.  We about gave up.

One day my brother and I had a new DNA match.  She is a 2nd/3rd cousin match who didn’t match our mom.  She didn’t match our paternal grandmother’s family either.  It had to mean she was related to our unknown grandfather.  Her name is Kathy.

The excitement wore off rather quickly when I noticed she didn’t have a tree.  I clicked on her name to find the exact amount of shared DNA and low and behold, she did have a tree.  She just hadn’t attached her DNA to it.  Her tree had seven people in it.  I got busy building a tree to find our mystery grandfather.  She didn’t have any “Simpson’s” in her lineage.  Did I waste months looking for that name?  The answer turned out to be YES.

After I had a tree going back to 3rd great grandparents on both sides of our newly found cousin, I started searching the family names.   Several other 2nd/3rd cousin matches showed up during this time and that 4th cousin I had worked with previously had some of those names in her tree as well.  So I truly was not looking for a Simpson but someone most likely with the last name Hudson or Hutson in Perry County, Missouri.

Kathy is a descendant of James Bennett Hutson and Frances Ann Hudson.  They were her 2nd great grandparents.  James and Frances had eight children.  Six daughters and two sons.  Since I was looking for my grandfather, I concentrated on their two sons.  I was forced to rule out one of the two right away.  One of their sons, Walter Perry Hutson died on November 14, 1922.  That left their other son, George Roy Hutson.

My dad’s uncle, Oscar Franklin worked for a grocery store here in Los Angeles.  George Roy Hutson was a traveling salesman in the tea and coffee industry.  Walter’s children had moved to Los Angeles after he died in 1922.  There was more than one reason why George would come to Los Angeles.  His job and checking on his brother’s children.

How my grandmother met George Roy Hutson is a new mystery.  One that went to their graves.  It was something that was never talked about.

George Roy Hutson died in 1948 of the same thing my father did,  it’s in the genes.

What we have found out though, my brother and I now have about 30 DNA cousin matches to James Bennett Hutson and Frances Ann Hudson as 2nd cousin 1X removed to 4 of their 8 children and Kathy is one of them.

Me, my brother and dad c. 1961