Tuesday, December 24, 2024

Upcoming Events

Sherlock's Genealogical Adventures

Follow Sherlock on his adventures into genealogical mysteries.

4 minutes reading time (702 words)

I Found My Biological Grandfather - The Smoking Gun

Brick Walls

Tim Firkowski

Monday, 24 March 2014

4139 Hits

0 Comments

Photo of William D. Bond from his Naval Personnel RecordsI have long sought to locate my biological grandfather. My search is finally over. After finally finding clues to who he might be, I acquired the Naval Personnel Records of the person I believed to be my biological grandfather and now I have the smoking gun.

The Navy file for William D. Bond contained 86 pages of documents, and as it is to be expected they were mostly related to his exploits while in the Navy for 3 years. I say mostly because there were some that relatd to the paternity of my mother.

Here is what I found relating to my mother and grandmother. There was a letter dated 8 May 1944 from the Commanding officer of the USS Raton. It stated that William had been notified of the allegations of paternity & William admitted intimacy with my grandmother, it goes on to state an amount that would be paid to my grandmother for child support. William did not want to admit to being the father but still agreed to pay $22.50 per month.

I did not find the originating documentation informing William that he had a child, but I suppose that some documents may have just gotten misplaced in the shuffle over time.

The file also included a letter written by my grandmother on 21 Feb 1945. She had not been in contact with William and feared that something had happened to him. She wanted to get the address of his parents so she could contact them and let them know they had a granddaughter. She also requested more child support as what she was getting paid was not enough. A letter from the personnel office is included stating the request for increase in child support and also names my mother as the child. It is interesting to note that finding this personal letter from my grandmother really brought it home that I had finally found what I had been looking for all these years.

Paperwork relating to the proper dispursement of payments of child support are also included. Apparently after he left the service the end of 1945, the child support payments stopped. My grandmother apparently was unaware he had completed his tour of duty, and had used the American Red Cross to help in locating an address for William D. Bond. So there is paperwork from the American Red Cross and a response by the Navy included in the file. Some negatives from his file were also photocopied and although it is not the best copy, I have tried to clean up the image and am now able to see a photo of my grandfather as you see in this post.

I can now safely say that without a doubt that I have found my biological grandfather. But just to have insurance for the years to come, my mother has agreed to take a DNA test so that a match will may be found to reach the same conclusion.

According to what limited information my mother was able to extract from my grandmother those many years ago, no more contact ever occured. From the Naval records I found that in William married a woman named Mary Louise from Georgia on 22 December 1944. From the previous information I have presented in my search, he was married to a woman named Norma J. The reason for this discrepency is known from other research I have done, but is not included here because it does not pertain to establishing the identity of my biological grandfather. I does apear that after he married Mary Louise, there was a "falling out" and he remarried Norma J.

If you have read all of my posts documenting the search for my grandfather, you may think my search did not take long. Even though my Blog posts were over a short period of time, in actuallity it took many hours of work to locate him. I would easily estimate that at a minimum over 200 hours of accumulated time was needed to solve this mystery. If you have your own Brick Wall, I want to let you know that with persistence you will find what you are looking for. Do not give up.

Tags:

WWII USS Raton NARA Julitta Poisson Georgia DNA Navy William D. Bond Brick Wall

About the author

Tim Firkowski

I have been doing genealogy research since 2002 & have worked full time as a Professional Genealogist since 2008. I specialize in Polish and American-Canadian Genealogy. As a member of APG, I was the 2010/2011 President of the New England Chapter of the Association of Professional Genealogists (NEAPG). I have Certificates of Completion for studies in "Foundations of Forensic Genealogy" and "Advanced Forensic Genealogy Techniques". I have been a volunteer librarian at the local Family History Center, and a genealogy research consultant at “Ask the Expert” Ancestry Road Shows. I have traveled to Poland numerous times & researched in churches and archives. At conferences and special events, you may find me dressed up in my Sherlock Holmes outfit, or my Kujawy (the folk costume from the region in Poland where my ancestors came from).