Cool family discovery

Ever since I can remember, my mother told me that my maternal great-grandmother...mum's mum's mum, was a foundling, and we didn't know anything at all about her background. I always thought this was a rather romantic idea, but was also always vaguely disappointed because it meant we couldn't dig back any further into our heritage than my great-grandmother.

But recently we learned a new, and very fascinating detail.

My folks have a friend in town whose hobby is genealogy, and he's been digging into my mother's ancestry for a while now. He has discovered my great-grandmother's mother's name! Elizabeth Gorman, born in Merrickville, Ont., we're guessing sometime in the late 1860s. My great-great grandmother has a name! She gave birth to my great-grandmother in 1883, and her name was Julia - which is where my own mother gets her first name.

The reason my great-grandmother, Julia, was described by our family lore as a "foundling" was probably because there was no father's name on Julia's birth certificate. Our friend the genealogist mentioned he couldn't tell if it just was never there, or had been erased at some point. He's still digging to see if he can turn up a name for the missing "sperm donor." We are speculating about why the father's name is absent. Possibly he ran off on Elizabeth before Julia was born (though I suspect they'd still have put his name on the birth certificate), or possibly Elizabeth was raped...or some other possibility which I won't even mention.

So, just to fill in the blanks, my grandmother's name is Christine and my mum is Julia (called Julie), so that makes me...

Patti, daughter of Julie, daughter of Christine, daughter of Julia, daughter of ELIZABETH!

This is so cool.