This One is for You

Dearest Cousin Henrik,

Reflecting on the past, especially on the impact family members have had in my life, has been most of my Vocal "creator-ship." It's my wheelhouse...especially if you add a bit of genealogy and ancestry into that mix. But this is a story of all of that, along with a heaping dose of serendipity to give it a taste of magic. I can't take credit for any of this recipe, but my Swedish cousin, Henrik certainly can!!

After my mother transitioned to Heaven, my sister gave me the gift of a DNA kit for Christmas. For those that have also done theirs, I am sure you would agree that it can be a gift that keeps on giving, meaning it gives you historical knowledge, new relationships, insights into our past that will answer some of the whys of today, and also strength and hope as we learn who we truly are based on the trails our ancestors left for us.

My siblings and I had goals we hoped that DNA would meet. Both of our grandfathers had been sources of mystery, family secrets, and confusion for us. We needed answers.

On our mother's side, we found out that our grandfather had indeed changed his name and left a wife and children behind in another state, only to start a new family. There still remains a question of why.

We will probably never have all the answers, but much of the confusion has been cleared up. At least some of the "names" we had overheard as "hushed children" from adult conversations, we now know weren't from our imaginations.

But as an added bonus, using an ancestry site, along with the genealogical platform, and Facebook, we have "met" and established solid relationships with some of those people/family in the other state.

Henrik comes into our story from our father's side. But we wouldn't know that at first. First, there was, "Look...we have a whole lot of Scandinavian DNA!" "Where did that come from???"

By that time, we had given up trying to find background information into our paternal grandfather's family history. We thought we would go to our graves not knowing. It seemed like the proverbial "cold case." And we certainly, weren't genealogists. All we knew is that we had hit the wall. There was no "Spooner" history to be found and all the lore of family stories were just that. There were absolutely no facts to support the lore.

By some fluke, I decided to upload my raw DNA to another platform to "see what happened." And I think I uploaded my brother's too. (I didn't have access to my sister's.) But my sister, brother, and I had all uploaded to yet another site, too, making a total of three sites at that time.

And that is when Cousin Henrik magically popped into our lives back in 2021. Here are excerpts from that first correspondence:

"I’m a genealogist interested in genetics and genetic relationships. It so happens that you match with my mother,#########, on #####. It’s not a major match, but it is of great interest to me as that particular chromosome segment is also shared with three other genealogically related people... and they all descend from an ancestor couple born in the 17th century in Sweden, Tobias Leffler (1669-1749) and Birgitta (or Brita) Schybler (1689-1771). The Leffler family is rather well-researched and it’s origin as far as we can tell is in the city of Breslau (=Wrocław in today’s Poland).

I obviously haven’t been able to connect you to that line, because you only display a few generations in your family tree on ######. Yet I’m sort of struck by what could be coincidence but what could also be a logical name adaptation some time in the past. “Spooner” is namely the idiomatic English correspondence to the original meaning of the German name Leffler/Löffler/Loeffler (all of those German names go back on the same root and are most likely related to “spoon”).

I guess you understand that I’d be very interested in connecting with you, and perhaps this will also help you in finding out more about your own roots."

Are you kidding me? How often does a genealogist just pop into your life like that??? OF COURSE WE ARE INTERESTED!!!

So, the next step was that my brother sent a specific male DNA sample for analysis to further specify our connection. And it served to hone in to a specific bloodline of "Lefflers." But we still were grasping at straws to match the DNA to our American history. And we couldn't pinpoint "Who's Your Daddy" to a great-grandfather. There were many Leffler brothers and birthdates/immigration/death dates had to make logical assumptions, too.

And we didn't even have hopes of finding the great-grandmother married to our Swedish great-grandfather Leffler. We didn't have a clue as to what her maiden name might be...just that she was also Scandinavian.

As time passed, Henrik would work his magic once more, though! He had found something that brought clarity. He noticed that along with the Swedish blood, there was a high degree of Danish, as well! So he began researching Lefflers in that light. Sure enough, there was one that had married a Dane and immigrated to America...to Minnesota to be precise.

At this time, I built a family tree on an ancestry site using their names, adding children from one generation to the next. My brother bought a DNA kit from that site (#4 site,) and we got the results which verified Henrik's hypothesis by matches to this Leffler family.

So why the name change? Well, we will probably never truly know all the intrigue behind that, but it involved a marriage to another woman and her child of whom was left behind as my grandfather made a new life and family in another state, too.

Thank you, Cousin Henrik from Sweden, linguistic professor and genealogist extraordinaire!!! You have given us "roots"...lovely Scandinavian ones!! Forever grateful to you...the Spooners (Lefflers)