William was adopted by John Russell and there was no further information about him and as far as I know the family had no contact.
Last year I had my DNA tested at Ancestry and received my results at the end of February while attending Rootstech in Salt Lake City. I took some time to go over my matches. I had many on my mother's side and not quite so many on my dad's side. I narrowed the results by doing a shared match with a cousin on my grandfather Daniels side. This way I would only get the Daniels matches separating them from the Bush matches. There were very limited results and only a few with online trees. There were names on the list I was not familiar with, so I opened each one that had a tree, to look at them. Eileen Salamone had a tree with 304 people and in that tree was one name that stood out to me, Wm Russell. Could this be William Daniels?
Eventually I got into more trees and found his name to be William Daniels Russell. This was getting exciting!. There was a story of how he had been adopted from an orphanage in Canada another exciting bit of information! One problem was his birth year, they had him being born in 1855, but that was his adoption year so that put a damper on things. In talking with my brother Wayne I learned that it was a common practice to put the adoption year as the birth year for adopted children. I e-mailed some of the people on the list and eventually got a reply. Lisbeth Anderson-Thayer "Betsy" was very interested in the story and we have been corresponding ever since. We have shared pictures and information. There was still doubt in my mind though, but why would I match with this line of people? Betsy did not have her DNA done so I could not do a cross match with her. She had a family picture, but no names with it and she had a list of names for a picture, but no picture. I am still hoping she finds the corresponding list of names and picture.
 |
| The Spalding Family Reunion. The picture with no names. The gentleman 3rd from the left in the first row looks similar to Frederic Daniels. No confirmation yet though, still hoping. |
The day back from our trip to Europe I have a message waiting, it is from Betsy:
"The Daniels stuff is true!
I did the ancestry dna test and we came out matches
Betsy in St Louis"
I was able to do a shared match with Betsy and found a heather57anne with a large tree, so I viewed Heather's tree and found the Wootton connection which adds to the confirmation of William Daniels Russell being the brother to my great grandfather Frederic Daniels.
When I started my DNA testing I had the thought in the back of my mind, maybe there would be a chance to connect with a descendant of William's. Every piece of information helped. Knowing who had adopted him from the Hamilton records gave me the knowledge to look for the William Russell name, and having my DNA in the system gave me the opportunity to find him in a family of unfamiliar names.
Thank you for joining my search!
Dennis
