I know that over the years many people here and elsewhere have tried to find Eveline Schulman . Lots of information was amassed about her later life, but the mystery of her birth has always remained. Dorothy was advised to try DNA and she has recently tested with Ancestry. She was good enough to let me assist her in understanding her results.
I am delighted to say that as a result of her recent DNA test we have now identified Eveline’s mother and found Eveline’s birth certificate. We were extremely fortunate that Dorothy’s maternal half aunt ( her mother’s half sister) had also tested so it was very easy to isolate the relevant matches. There were two high matches, both for women living in Scotland who were also DNA related to each other. One had a small public tree on Ancestry while the other had provided enough personal information to allow a tree to be drawn up. From this we identified that they had a common great grandmother. Her name was Jane/Jeannie Grant Clark. She never married but had at least four illegitimate daughters in Aberdeen in the early 1900’s. At least one other of these daughters was given away to another couple. Armed with the Clark surname it was possible to identify a likely birth in 1905. Eveline was born Isabella Park Clark on the 26th February 1905 in Aberdeen.It was always likely that the birth was on 26th February as that information remained constant throughout her life, but the year has always been in question.Dorothy initially believed she was born in 1911, but she was age 5 in the 1911 census and age 16 years 4 months in 1921 so 1905/6 was always more likely. Eveline/Isabella’s mother Jane ( Jeannie) Grant Clark was born in Cruden in 1882 to William Clark and Elizabeth Davidson and there are also lower level DNA links to many of their descendants. We are now trying to see if we can find a possible birth father.
