Remember the story my mother told about my father flying with the Eagle Squadrons and being state side for a bond drive? The initial results from my DNA test were not promising, all the 4th cousins and closer were on my maternal side. So I threw myself into researching the Eagle Squadrons, to find much of what my mother told me was factually correct. My father could have joined the RCAF in Canada and gone to England to fly with the RAF, he could be on a bond drive because the only year the Eagles did bond drives was 1943. There was an Army Air Corp radio training school in my home town and that base was the technical home of one of the Eagle Squadrons. May be it was true after all.
I researched every single Eagle Squadron member who was alive in 1943 and could by any stretch of the imagination be my father. I came up with nothing, not even one I could place near my home town in 1943 no matter their name or home town. It was a great lie because it was based on factual information, just not information about my father. What was true is he did attended the USAAF Radio Technical School in my home town the second half of 1943, that was an important undeniable fact. How much of the rest of anything she told me was true like being artistic, or being from Chicago, I had no idea. Back to the DNA.
Based on the ethnic break down of my DNA results it looked like my biological father was Norwegian, so was my maternal grandfather. I wasn’t thrilled with the prospect of searching Norwegian surnames and their crazy naming conventions. It just gives me a headache thinking about it, LOL. My kids kept encouraging me to look for my father and really got into the hunt. It was frustrating because the “Viking” matches were all on my maternal side. But I did have some distant matches that didn’t seem to fit in on my maternal side, they had trees but they were German. I started building on the Fuhrman and Gallmeyer lines to see where it took me. Ancestry said we were related but in a cryptic 5th cousin of 4th great uncle of the second wife’s grandparent 10 times removed kind of way. Normally this would tell you there is no genetic relationship, but the DNA said there was and DNA doesn’t lie. I built the two lines out to the extent I could hoping they would converge. I wondered even tho they weren’t Vikings if they were indeed my father’s people. If they were I would eventually get to the two people who were my father’s parents.
Then December 2, 2017 I got a match, a strong third, weak second cousin looking for her father. That match was Heather. I contacted her and said I was looking for my father too and thought her father might be one of my relatives. We have a bigamist why not a missing father? She gave me the information she had his name was Tim, he was born in Ft Wayne Indiana about 1950 and her grandmother’s name was Charlotte. I found two possibles the right age, one living and one deceased, but neither had a mother named Charlotte. As we pondered which one was the right one Tim’s DNA popped up and he had a tree. His grandmother was Charlotte and Tim’s tree connected the Fuhrman and Gallmeyer branches to them along with another cousin Jason who turned up a few days later.
The mind boggling revelation for me was In between Fuhrman/Gallmeyer and Tim/Heather/Jason was the family of Hoffman. That is right Hoffman was the common link between all four of us. DNA halves with each generation more or less, so there is a range for cousins and how far back they are. It appeared our common ancestor was back between two and three generations. Because I am older, a generation closer to be safe I went back four for them, three for me and started building down to present day. This was very time consuming to build out the whole family and took me several months of steady work. But it was also exhilarating because I knew my father was in there hiding, waiting for me to discover him and that drove me to finish as quickly as possible. I built out about 1000 people by the time I got to my father who was, as it turned out the very last person it could possibly have been. I had seen his enlistment information while looking for another Arthur Hoffman in an earlier generation and it said he was an artist, I thought at the time how cool would that be if he turns out to be my father. Once completed what a story that tree told.
My 2x great-grandfather Peter Hofmann was born December 28, 1817 in Homberg Germany, he married Anna Marie Barbara Fuhrman b1822, also an immigrant from Germany on December 17, 1841 in Adams County Indiana. They had seven children before he died in 1856, the oldest Daniel Peter Hoffmann born in 1842 was my great grandfather. In looking back over the Fuhrman and Hoffman families things looked as one would expect, the usually large number of children almost all surviving into adulthood. Checking death certificates there seem to be a mild propensity for chronic nephritis/Bright’s Disease and the usual heart failure and strokes expected in people well into their 80s . That would change dramatically.
My great-grandfather met and married a beautiful first generation German American girl, her name was Lizette Gallmeyer. Lizette had 22 siblings from her father’s four marriages. Of those 22 children, five died infancy or as toddlers, another five died very young, of the others many died of pneumonia with hereditary ataxia as a secondary cause. All through the family, time and time again the death certificates listed hereditary ataxia. Lizette herself died of hereditary ataxia, although it was thought by most to be multiple sclerosis. For years people had no idea what was happening even in Lizette’s own family and many people lived out their lives in mental institutions because the family often thought they were dangerous their behavior was so bizarre. Reading the commitment papers was heartbreaking. None of them were intellectually diminished they knew what was happening but had no way to convey it to their loved ones or the court.
Lizette and Daniel had twelve children. Two died in infancy, one, a twin had the disease and committed suicide at 32. He had been committed to a mental hospital 9 months. Of the remaining nine who lived a relatively normal life spans, six died of things attributed to hereditary ataxia including my grandfather. They watched their families decimated and in that generation many made the choice to have no children or just one child. They knew where it came from and had pretty good idea of how it was passed, they chose to try to stop it.
This may seem like an extreme reaction but it was an extreme disease, that wasn’t really documented until the 1990s.
What is Ataxia
The word “ataxia” means “absence or loss of order.”Ataxia does not refer to a specific disease or disorder. Rather, it is a set of symptoms caused by a dysfunction in the cerebellum and the connections that transfer information to and from the cerebellum. People who have ataxia have uncontrolled, uncoordinated movements in the way they walk,move their arms or eyes, or talk. If a person has these symptoms, they are said to have ataxia. Ataxia can have many different underlying causes.
- Some types of ataxia are considered to be “non-genetic.” These types of ataxia can be caused by diseases such as multiple sclerosis, strokes, brain tumors, heat stroke, or infections. Other types of non-genetic ataxia may be caused by exposure to alcohol, drugs, medicines, or other chemicals. Some types of non-genetic ataxias may be due to vitamin deficiencies or problems with the immune system. Doctors will often look for these non-genetic causes first because some types of non-genetic ataxia may be treatable.
- Some ataxias are hereditary. Hereditary means that the ataxia is caused by a change in the genetic instructions that tell our cerebellum how to work. These genetic changes can be passed through families. The different types of hereditary ataxia are discussed in more detail below.
- Some ataxias are considered “sporadic.” Sporadic means that there is no single genetic or environmental cause of the ataxia. Sporadic ataxias may be due to the interaction of many genetic risk factors with many environmental exposures. While we do not understand the causes of sporadic ataxias today, many people are working to understand the genetic risk factors and environmental exposures that can cause sporadic ataxia.
The word ataxia itself does not denote a specific disease or disorder that affects all people in the same way. Ataxia, regardless of cause, affects every person differently. Even for inherited ataxias, the condition may affect various parts of the body in different ways, and may vary in severity. For example, many family members may be afflicted with the same type of inherited ataxia, but they may all have unique symptoms and/or severities.
Hereditary Ataxia
Hereditary ataxias are caused by changes in genes that can be passed through families. Genes are chemical blueprints for our body. Changes in these genetic blueprints can cause ataxia in some families. Ataxias can be inherited in several different patterns:
- Autosomal dominant-Autosomal means that both males and females are affected. Dominant means that each child of an affected individual has a 50% chance of inheriting the genetic change that causes ataxia. The dominant ataxias are labeled as spinocerebellar ataxias (SCA) and they are numbered in order of their discovery (i.e. SCA1 was the first dominant ataxia discovered and SCA32 is the most recent ataxia discovered in 2010).
Because it is caused by a damaged allele with run away replication what you get is determined by how many copies of the allele you have and it varies from person to person within the same family. Simply parts of your brain stem and cerebellum atrophy over time. Altho pneumonia is the most common cause of death it is because the lungs are the last to shut down and the patient suffocates. We believe it is primarily SCA 3 but it can be any of them from 1-32. It mimics a number of other disease which makes it difficult to diagnose, there is no cure and precious few treatments. Here is more information on the disease which is just now beginning to reveal itself.
My Father was an only child and had no other children. There is no reason to believe he was a carrier, I do not have the mutated allele so neither do my children or grandchild. It is sad he never knew this.
My grandfather Arthur Conrad Daniel Hoffman married a young Danish immigrant Thyra Krough April 21, 1914. He was 31, she was 22 and had left most of her family behind in Denmark. Arthur Daniel Hoffman Jr was born January 16, 1915. When I searched I looked for someone born between 1915 and 1921 the year my mother was born. I was pretty sure the 1915 date would be closer because if he did fly with the Eagle Squadrons he would have to be in his mid-twenties or older when they met. I also knew he would be well mannered, “classy” I guess knowing my mother. All my life I have been attracted to tall slender elegant dark haired men with high cheek bones. My idea of dreamy is Gregory Peck. My former husband fit that mold. My youngest son who everyone thinks looks like my ex-husband actually looks more like my father. Just like people thought I looked like my mother when I look like my father’s doppelgänger. Children have to look like someone so you pick who is handy.
I have no pictures yet of my father as an infant or child but my guess is he looked a lot like me at any given age.