Monumentally bad timing [View all]

One of my family's long term brick walls is John Tucker. He was born in South Carolina in 1798 - which we know because of his responses to US census questions and an inscription on his tombstone. He appears in Bibb County, Alabama in 1830 when he purchased land there and by 1834 he was in Perry County, Alabama, where he stayed for the rest of his life.

We've never been able to find out exactly where in South Carolina he was from. On various census he listed that his father was born in Maryland and his mother in Virginia - this has not helped locate him at all.

With the advent of DNA and an active project on Tucker Family DNA, I'd been hoping that one of my male Tucker cousins would allow themselves to test for Y-DNA to see if that would provide some clues. Two of my cousins visited my Mom last month and my sister talked the older one into being tested. She was notified last week that the results were in.

Yesterday she gave me access to the account that held the tests and we looked at the results as to where it showed our ancestors to have lived. Then I tried to upload a GED file so that the family tree could be compared along with the DNA to other people on the FamilyTreeDNA.com site. It has failed numerous times.

This morning I called their customer support - no one there. The center is in Houston. I just hope all their people are safe - and that their servers are not also located in Houston.

I guess our brick wall that has been waiting for over two hundred years will have to wait a while longer.