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Who is the middle child? It is our brother, Jason. He’s been involved in the production of the podcast in a variety of ways behind the scenes. But, today, we thought we would have him join the conversation.

What has it been like to watch our family story unfold from his perspective?

What surprised him the most about what we’ve learned so far?

What would he most like to learn now?

We’ll discuss all of these questions and give a few quick research updates. Listen now!

-Angie & Cyndi

🧵Buried Threads: Rewound.

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We can’t believe how far we’ve come with our family story in just one year! We’re looking back at one of our earliest episodes on Manuel & Rosa, and how their lives together began.

🎙️Listen to this remix of Season 1 Episode 3: Manuel & Rosa.

We’ve included never-before-released recordings of Nina (Pacita), Manuel & Rosa’s daughter, talking about her parents.

Enjoy this look back with us!

-Angie & Cyndi

🎙️Still pulling threads.

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This episode we take a look back to where we were about one year ago today. Listen to one of our earliest episodes to hear what we knew then and what we hoped to know. Can you pick out some of things we were just wrong about? It makes us realize how much we’ve learned about our family story in just one year! And we aren’t done yet…

Some people have asked, “Why Season 3?” and we’ll tell you. Season 1 of our podcast contains episodes produced from over two decades of research into our family history. Once we made a DNA connection, truths about our great-grandmother, grandmother, and our extended family, started becoming obvious and we thought it was a great story to share.

By the time we were ready to publish our very first podcast episodes, another major DNA connection was made and even more crazy truths were discovered. We continued researching and began working on Season 2 while publishing Season 1 episodes. Almost as quickly as we were discovering new information and even trying to relearn things we thought we already knew, we were creating episodes to share with all of you.

Now, the onslaught of new information has slowed down - though we continue to research hanging threads: What happened to Christopher? What do Marie Christine’s adoption files contain and are we ever going to find them? What more is there to know about Walter Scott? Season 3 will be posting in real-time, what we know and we’re looking for. It means we may not have a new episode every week. But when we know something, you’ll know something!

Thanks for continuing this journey with us!

🧵Keep pulling those threads.

-Angie & Cyndi

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This week’s episode is a two-parter, and it might be our most “we can’t believe this is our life” update yet.

First, the hanging thread: Marie Christine’s adoption file. We’ve known for a while that her guardianship was terminated in Sangamon County in 1932, but that she wasn’t actually adopted until 1934 in McDonough County, under Judge T.H. Miller, with attorney Eugene J. Hampton handling the case. What we didn’t know was where she was in between, or whether she had any contact with her mother or sister Florence before landing with Noah and Nellie Hickman. So we went after the records.

That search has now, somehow, become a lawsuit against a county clerk. We didn’t set out to sue anyone, we just kept following the legally correct path a judge herself told us to take. Last week we had our second hearing. The state’s attorney showed up (representing the clerk against us, technically), was a little dismissive, and suggested we’d gone about this “the wrong way” — even though the judge had personally approved our approach at the first hearing. When she asked him how he’d have preferred we do it, his answer was: get a judge’s order. So the judge gave us one, on the spot.

Two days later, we got a letter: the clerk couldn’t locate the files. Old records, maybe never indexed. Convenient, since the state’s attorney had also called this kind of search “laborious,” yet somehow they searched it in under 48 hours.

We’re not done. Monday we’re filing again. This time with actual proof (the newspaper clipping naming the judge and attorney) that these records exist and were created in that courthouse. We’ve got a list of other places to search: guardianship files, juvenile court dockets, even the personal records of the long-deceased judge and attorney, which someone, somewhere, still holds. And we’re asking the court for permission to go dig ourselves. Cyndi has already volunteered for attic duty.

And then, a recap: what a year this has been

We recorded Season 1 back in July 2025, right after meeting Paul in person for the first time. But everything since January of this year has moved so fast it’s genuinely hard to summarize. In just the first seven months of 2026, we’ve:

• Identified Estrella’s final identity as Wilma Nelson, found her husband William, her children Frances and Edward, her grandchild Teri, and her great-grandchild Ryan — and met Teri in person, standing at Estrella’s actual grave.

• Documented Christopher’s court marshal and prison sentence at Fort Leavenworth after receiving his VA file.

• Heard Nina’s own recorded voice describing the day Estrella disappeared and learned we’d had the location wrong all along.

• Uncovered two devastating early childhood traumas that reshaped how we understand Estrella’s choices.

• Found yet another identity and a marriage to a real Walter Scott, in Cook County, in 1934. (Angie owes that one an apology.)

• Discovered where Marie Christine’s adoption took place and that the records are now impounded.

• Discovered Florence was married twice, not once.

• Found another close, mysterious DNA match to our mom that we still can’t place.

It’s been a waterfall. And now, for the first time in a while, it’s slowing down. This is why we’re capping Season 2 with this episode. We’re not stopping the research, and we’re not stopping the podcast. We’ll be back with new episodes as soon as we have real updates to share, including from a couple of family gatherings we have coming up.

-Angie & Cyndi

🧵We’d never give up looking for records after only two days, or two decades.

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Some threads get pulled all the way through. Others just…dangle. This week’s episode is one of our “hanging threads” installments, and it’s all about the man we’ve called a wanderer since Season One: our great-grandfather, Christopher Columbus DeBoard.

If you’ve followed the podcast, you know Christopher’s story about as well as we do. Orphaned young in the Ozarks, bounced between farms as a hired hand, a stint in the Army that included a court-martial, hard labor at Fort Leavenworth, and a dishonorable discharge before he ever met our great-grandmother, Estrella/Stella. He married Stella in Springfield in 1925, they had two daughters (Florence and Marie Christine, our grandmother), and by the early 1930s he had drifted away from all of it. He showed up here and there at VA hospitals, using different names and ID numbers to try to claw back benefits he’d already lost.

This episode, we go back through everything we’ve gathered on Christopher and lay it out plainly: what we know, what we only suspect, and what we may never find.

At the end of the day, our goal with Christopher is the same as it was with Stella: we want to know where he’s buried. We’d like to visit. We’d like to stand there.

Christopher was a hard man to pin down in life. He’s proving just as hard to pin down after death. But he’s our great-grandfather, and his story is part of ours, even the parts we haven’t found yet.

-Angie & Cyndi

🧵The thread is still loose. Help us pull it.

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Florence DeBoard was born in 1926 to Estrella and Christopher, the older of their two daughters. This week we’re pulling apart what we actually know about Florence’s life from what we’ve just been assuming for years.

What we know for sure: Florence shows up on the 1930 census living with Christopher, but not with Estrella, and not with her little sister Marie Christine. The home belonged to Della Redburn and her husband, and Florence would go on to call Della her foster mother for the rest of her life.

What we’ve been assuming: That this was a formal foster placement through the state or the Children’s Home and Aid Society. There’s none of the documentation we’d expect if this had gone through the same official channels as Marie Christine’s case.

Christopher drifts in and out of the picture the whole time. He’s listed as a boarder in that same 1930 census. He names Florence as his next of kin when he enlists. When Florence eventually marries, she names Christopher as her father even though she never names her mother.

One especially strange clue: when Estrella’s youngest daughter (a child from her fourth family, decades later) died young, her obituary listed a surviving sister named “Florence Noll.” Florence’s married name. The family who wrote that obituary had no idea who Florence was when we found them. Which raises an uncomfortable, fascinating question: did Estrella keep tabs on the daughter she left behind, quietly, for years, without ever coming back?

We also chased down another marriage. We knew Florence was briefly engaged to a soldier as a teenager, a wartime romance that fell apart, likely because no one could legally consent to the marriage while her parents’ custody status was still unsettled.

Then, in 1946, we found a marriage to a Marine named Ernest Wahlsmith, one we’d never seen before. It didn’t last. By 1948, both Florence and Ernest had remarried within the same month, to other people. Florence’s second marriage, to Theodore Noll, is the one that stuck. They eventually settled in Arizona, where Florence died in her fifties. As far as we can tell, she had no children.

That last point matters more than it might seem. A newly discovered, very close DNA match — one that can only belong to a child of both Christopher and Estrella — has us wondering if there was another child we don’t know about. If we can prove Florence never had kids, that rules out one explanation and pushes us to look even harder for a third DeBoard child history forgot.

So many threads, so few certain answers. But that’s the work: sorting fact from assumption, one document at a time.

If you have any ideas about where to look next, we want to hear from you.

-Angie & Cyndi

🧵We found the name. Now we’re chasing the story!

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We continue to research our great-grandmother, finding family across generations. And, once again, we have a close DNA match we are trying to connect with. This one is a very close match, closer than Paul, Ryan, or Teri.

We’ve reached out, but haven’t heard back from them yet. Listen to the whole episode to hear what we’re looking for, where we’re looking, and how our listeners might be able to help join the search!

-Angie & Cyndi

🧵The search is live. So are we.

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Buried Threads is a podcast about family secrets, silence, reinvention, and what happens when lost stories begin to resurface. If you’re new here, we recommend starting with Season 1. This post follows Episode 11 of Season 2.

We were excited to receive more interesting information from a family member. A letter to Nina. Not just any Nina. Our Nina. The daughter of Manuel and Rosa Suarez, the little girl who grew up in the same house as Estrella, who knew her before she was Stella Smith or Wilma Nelson or any of the other names she would carry through her life.

Nina’s friends wrote her after visiting Spain, and what she found there, or rather, what she didn’t find tells its own kind of story.

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What the Letter Says

The writer had just returned from a trip to Spain. She went looking for Nina’s cousins (Estrella’s people) in the town where the family had lived.

Here’s what she found:

No one knew where the family lived. It seemed as though they had all moved away.

She did learn that Oscar and Teresa had died. And there was a mention, almost in passing, of Oscar having a daughter who was born with something wrong with her arm or hands.

She spoke with a woman named Maria Lola Fernandez, who couldn’t tell her anything further. But she included her address at the bottom of the letter, just in case Nina wanted to write:

Maria Lola Fernandez
Santiago del Monte
La Campa
Asturias, Aviles, España

Why This Letter Matters

This letter is a window into a search that was already happening long before we ever started ours.

Someone, presumably connected to Nina, actually traveled to Asturias, Spain, the very region we now know is Estrella’s homeland, and tried to find the family. They came back with fragments: names, a death, a child born with a disability, and one contact willing to be reached.

And then… silence. We don’t know if Nina ever wrote to Maria. We don’t know what she might have known.

What we do know is that the Suarez family roots run deep in Asturias, a region in northern Spain known for its mining communities and, in the early 1900s, for sending workers across the Atlantic. Manuel came from there. Rosa came from there. And Estrella came from there as a child, crossing an ocean to a new country and a family she may or may not have known well.

We’ve confirmed through DNA that Manuel was Estrella’s uncle, not her father. That means her parents either stayed behind, or at least aren’t the people who raised her in Illinois. We believe her mother was named Consuelo, and that much of her nuclear family came to the United States in May of 1913, landing in St. Louis, just blocks from where Rosa and little Louisa were already living. But Estrella and her father have no arrival record we’ve found yet. How did she get here? Who brought her? Why does the paper trail go quiet?

The answers, if they exist anywhere, are probably in Asturias.

What We’re Looking For

We are actively searching for any records, family connections, or leads connected to the Suarez family in Asturias, Spain; specifically in the areas around Aviles and Santiago del Monte. We’re looking for:

• Any record of Estrella Suarez or her parents before 1913

• Anyone familiar with the Fernandez family in the La Campa area of Aviles

• Church records, civil registries, or family histories from this region

If you have Spanish genealogy experience, connections to Asturias, or the ability to help us search records in Spain we would love to hear from you!

-Angie & Cyndi

🧵This thread runs all the way across an ocean. We’re not done pulling it.

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Funny story…we accidentally sued the McDonough Illinois County Clerk today.

We have been looking for information on our Great Grandmother, Stella Smith, for over 25 years. Our grandmother had quietly been looking for at least five decades before that. We found several names, marriages, children, grandchildren, even her grave. But we’ve found very little documented information about her. The pursuit of her, has raised many questions about her history, our grandmother’s history, and our family’s history. We believe our grandmother’s, Marie Christine’s, adoption records may hold answers to some of those questions.

When we finally realized where the adoption took place, we reached out to the McDonough County Clerk’s office. They responded that the records were impounded and they could tell us nothing else about them. They couldn’t even confirm that they had the records. We thought the process that followed was simply to get a judge’s order to hand over the records. Instead, we found out we were suing the County Clerk.

We had one short hearing where the judge cleared up some missed steps we needed to follow. Then, Angie did everything by the book, and not long after, got a letter saying the Illinois State Attorney’s office would be representing the County Clerk. So today was our virtual court date to actually address the lawsuit.

Angie, Cyndi, our mom - Chris, and our brother - Jason, all joined virtually. The State’s Attorney was in person.

The judge asked the State’s Attorney for his response to our petition for the records. He argued that suing wasn’t really the right path here. The judge didn’t seem convinced. She asked him, “What is the right way, then?” And the attorney said a judge could simply order the county clerk to go look for the records. Which, is actually what we want.

The State’s Attorney also made it clear that they don’t even know if they have the records. They’re very old and requests like this are rare. It seems, rare enough that nobody’s quite sure how to handle them. He also referenced the Illinois law about adoptions before 1946, stating this only applies to birth certificates. However, there is another allowance for very specific non-identifying information which can be released to adoptees (or their adult children or adult grandchildren).

We didn’t get a chance to make this point, because the judge made her decision. She issued an order for the County Clerk to pull the records. She’ll review them in camera (meaning privately, not in open court) and then decide what we’re actually allowed to have.

We don’t know yet what’s in those records, or how much we’ll get to see. But after wrong counties, impounded files, “no information” and becoming accidental plaintiffs in a lawsuit against a County Clerk…we’re calling this a win.

We’re one step closer to Marie Christine’s story. And maybe more of Estrella’s as well. We’ll keep you posted.

-Angie & Cyndi

🧵Some questions don’t wait for the next episode.

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The first season of Buried Threads was all about sharing our story: about our grandmother, picking up her search for her mother, and what we learned over 25 years of research. We loved sharing that part of our story.

And then, before we could even post the first episode, more connections were made, more information was uncovered, and we had more story to share. We continued to discover and continued to share as we’ve made those discovers, in real-time.

This episode is the first of a new episode format we’re calling “Hanging Threads.” In our Hanging Threads episodes, we’ll share about one thing we are researching. We’ll share the general information we have, what we would like to know, where we’re looking and how listeners can help.

We believe there is more about Estrella/Stella/Estella/Wilma Suarez/Valdez/Smith/DeBoard/Scott/Nelson for us to know. And we also believe there is more to know about Christopher DeBoard, Walter Scott, Florence DeBoard/Noll, and more.

We’re here for the rest of this wild ride, and we’re glad you are, too.

🎙️Buried Threads Season 2 Episode 11: Hanging Threads - Spain, is live now!

-Angie & Cyndi

🧵Real-time searching. Real-time asking.

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Our grandmother hid documents in a safety deposit box. After her death, our mom went to the bank with her dad to open the box. It’s contents were a complete mystery to them both.

How she got some of those records in the first place, was a mystery to us. Marie Christine was adopted in 1934. Her records were sealed, and as we now know, impounded. That is a step beyond the normal “sealing” of adoption records. The Illinois Children’s Home and Aid Society told later inquirers their records had been destroyed in a fire. The county where she was born had no record of her adoption. The paper trail, by every reasonable measure, was gone.

And yet, in that safety deposit box our grandfather almost threw away, was a handwritten copy of Marie Christine’s birth record, dated as issued in 1983. Her parents’ names are on it: Stella Smith and Christopher DeBoard. It was obtained nearly fifty years after her adoption.

We don’t know how she did it. We know she hired a private investigator at some point, who was able to find the estate where Estrella last worked and not much else. We know she had the name of the agency that facilitated her adoption.

But a birth record with her original name on it - her parents’ names on it, in 1983, when those files were sealed?

She kept it quiet. She didn’t share all her secrets with her husband. She didn’t tell her children. She put it all in a box - the ICHAS letters, the adoption newspaper clipping, the caseworker’s narrative - and she locked it away.

Our mom told us our grandpa wasn’t really able to support her mom, emotionally. He would find ways to shut down conversation when it got uncomfortable for him. Think about what it meant for her to hold that information alone. To know her original name, her mother’s name, her father’s name, and her birthplace. To have all of that and still not have enough to really know where she came from.

Let’s not forget, Marie Christine spent decades wondering about a woman who may have passed her on the street or served her at the counter of the local drugstore. But, of course, she never knew.

She saved what she found, so she must have had hope that someone would keep looking someday. And we’re still looking. We’re going to court to ask a judge to release the records that someone decided over ninety years ago should not be easy to find. We think our grandma would have appreciated the fight.

We’re doing it for her.

-Angie & Cyndi

🧵She deserves answers. We’re still getting them.

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Episode 10 of Buried Threads is live, and it is another wild ride.

We’ve been chasing Marie Christine’s adoption records for years. Our grandmother chased them before us. She collected every document she could find letters from the Illinois Children’s Home and Aid Society, a birth record she somehow obtained in 1983 when those files were supposed to be sealed, newspaper clippings, handwritten notes, and hid them all in a safety deposit box her husband didn’t know existed.

She never obtained her adoption record itself.

We thought we were close. We had the presiding judge’s name from a 1934 newspaper announcement. A listener identified the county. We called the clerk’s office. The clerk called us back and said the records had been impounded.

Here’s what that means, and why it matters: in Illinois, adoption records from before 1946 are supposed to be accessible without a court order. Marie Christine was adopted in 1934. Somewhere along the way, a judge placed an additional restriction on her file, above and beyond the standard seal. We don’t know why. We don’t know what’s in there. But we know it was deliberate.

So we filed a request. Paid the fee. And on May 26th, we had a Zoom hearing with a judge. The judge informed us that we hadn’t properly served the county clerk’s office with a summons and that without it, she couldn’t hear the case.

That’s when we realized we are, essentially, suing the county clerk of McDonough County. And guess which office processes summons in McDonough County?

The county clerk’s office.

We are not making this up.

In this episode, we walk through the full journey: the documents our grandmother secretly collected, our three attempts to access the records across three different counties, what “impounded” actually means, and what we think might be in those files, including the reference to a probation officer that has haunted this search from the beginning.

We also share our theories. Was Marie Christine removed rather than surrendered? Was there legal trouble on Estrella’s part? Something else entirely?

We don’t have the answers yet. But we’ve filed a summons, contacted a sheriff to serve the summons, and we’re patiently (maybe no so much) waiting for our new hearing in July.

Listen for the whole story!

-Angie & Cyndi

🧵The file has been waiting since 1934. We filed the summons. See you in court.

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We’ve wanted Marie Christine’s adoption records for a long time. Our grandmother knew, at least from her teen years, that she was adopted. She collected documents in secret and hid them away safely. She never found what she was really looking for.

Our mom asked Angie to help in the search. Now, we have more tools. We have DNA. We have listeners who search and find information that changes everything. One listener saw the name of the judge who presided over the adoption on a newspaper clipping we shared from 1934, and was able to determine the county where the adoption took place. And it was the key to the door we’ve been looking for.

What we weren’t prepared for was the word the county clerk used when they called us back: Impounded.

Not sealed. Not restricted. Impounded.

In Illinois, some information about adoptions which took place before 1946 don’t require a judge’s order to be released. Information like: birth parents’ medical, education, family, mental health and relational history; other siblings of adoptee; birth place and date of adoptee; and reasons for child being put up for adoption, who chose adoptive parents, etc. If the adoptee is deceased, this information can be obtained by adult children or adult grandchildren of adoptee. By the letter of the law, this information should have been accessible to us.

However, someone, at some point, decided it shouldn’t be. We don’t know what’s in those files. We don’t know why they were impounded. We have theories and we’ll share them. We’ll also share the story of our search for these adoption records- and have we got stories!

Everything about our search for Estrella, especially in the last couple of years, has been a wild ride - obtaining Marie Christine’s adoption records is no different. Whatever it takes, we’re here for it.

🎙️Episode 10 of Season 2 of Buried Threads drops this week. And for the first time in this search, we’re not just pulling threads. We’re going to court.

-Angie & Cyndi

🧵We went looking for an adoption record. We ended up in court.

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Recently, we shared a fresh discovery - another name, another marriage, another life of Estrella Suarez (aka: Estrella Valdez, Stella Smith, Stella DeBoard, and Wilma Estella Nelson). Teri told us her grandmother talked about a man named Walter and we almost convinced ourselves it was a story she made up.

A listener found a newspaper clipping and then we received this license.

A few things worth pointing out if you’re reading for the first time:

• The name. She’s listed as Estelle H. DeBoard. It is a variation on Stella DeBoard, the name she had from her marriage to Christopher Columbus DeBoard in 1925. By 1934, she and Christopher had been separated for around six years. They wouldn’t officially divorce until 1944. So, legally, she was still Stella DeBoard. And, we believe, whoever filed for this marriage license knew that.

• The address. 809 South Walnut Street, Springfield, Illinois. That is the address of Etta Montgomery’s estate, where Estrella had lived and worked as a live-in maid since at least 1930. This notice places her there in the fall of 1934, which lines up with everything else we know about her time at Etta’s.

• Chicago. The license was issued in Chicago (Cook County) which is where Angie found the official record. They went to the city for it. That’s an intriguing detail. A small one, maybe, but it tells us that Walter likely had ties to Chicago, that this was his world.

• “No details of the wedding plans could be obtained.” We love this line because it is just so Estrella. She spent her life making sure no details could be obtained.

  ---

A listener found this notice, not by searching for Walter’s name or Estrella’s name, but by searching the address. She went looking and she found what we had missed.

This is what we love about sharing this story publicly. We are not professional genealogists or researchers. We’re two sisters pulling threads on a family mystery that’s over a hundred years old. And sometimes the people listening see things we don’t.

If you have ever found something in our story that gave you a lead (a name, a date, a connection), please reach out. You’ve already helped us once.

Where We Are Now

We’ve confirmed the address. We’ve confirmed the marriage. We’re still looking for:

Walter and Estrella’s life together between 1934 and 1937. Where did they live? Did they have children? The seventh child listed on Edward’s birth certificate is a loose thread.

We’ve reached out to a known grandson of Walter Scott (not a DNA match) and we hope to connect with him soon.

We continue to research what Estrella’s life at Etta’s estate looked like during those years: before Walter, during, and after. There may be more there than what we’ve found so far.

We’ll keep pulling those threads.

-Angie & Cyndi

🧵More threads. Less sleep. Worth it.

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The idea for this episode started with a theory and ended with us being wrong. When Teri first mentioned Walter Scott, described as love of her grandmother’s life, we were skeptical. Not dismissive, we know better than that by now, but skeptical. Wilma/Estrella had spent decades building stories. She told her family she was born in Oklahoma. She said her people came from Italy. She had more names than some people have decades. The story of a rich, devoted husband who swept off her feet and then conveniently died before anyone could verify him, seemed like it could be one more layer of reinvention.

Listen to our theory about Walter and how it changed with the help of listeners who searched a way we didn’t even think of, and found what we missed. Now we have more of the picture of Estrella’s life between 1928 and 1937, when she married William Nelson, and became Mrs. Wilma Estelle Nelson.

As always, we gained answers to some of our questions, and we have many new questions about a marriage, children, and even her location for a time.

And we reached out to a new contact who might be able to give us even more information.

Listen and let us know if you have more search ideas for us!

-Angie & Cyndi

🧵He was the love of her life. She almost took him to her grave. Almost.

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Buried Threads is a podcast about family secrets, silence, reinvention, and what happens when lost stories begin to resurface. If you’re new here, we recommend starting with Season 1. This post Previews Episode 9 of Season 2.

We have a rule on this podcast: we don’t get surprised anymore.

We found out our great-grandmother had multiple identities, multiple families. We discovered she was a Spanish immigrant who came to America as a child and spent decades reinventing herself across central Illinois. We stood at her grave that bore a name we never knew. After all this, we told ourselves: nothing can shock us now.

We were wrong.

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When Teri, the granddaughter of Estrella (Wilma Nelson), sat down with us and described her grandmother, she mentioned something almost in passing. Something about a man her grandma talked about. A man named Walter.

Wilma had talked about him and said he was the love of her life. She said he had money. She claimed he showered her with gifts. She said Walter died in 1937, just a few months before she married William Nelson, the man Teri and her father, Edward, knew as “Papo.”

We listened. We filed it away. And honestly? We thought Walter might be a fantasy.

Here’s why: Estrella (Wilma) had a documented history of constructing stories. Stories that aren’t true, but have threads of truth running through them. Wilma told her family she was born in Oklahoma. She said her family came from Italy. She gave herself new names, new birthplaces, new histories. She was a woman who walked away from two families, changed her name at least four times, and left very little paper trail for decades. If anyone could invent a romantic backstory, it was her.

We shared our theory with Teri when we interviewed her. A man who adored Estrella/Wilma and gave her everything she never had, it sounded like it could be wishful thinking.

But then Teri mentioned the ring.

Teri described a ring with four diamonds which belonged to her grandmother. And no version of Estrella’s documented life, young immigrant, the smelter’s wife, the wanderer’s wife, the domestic worker at Etta Montgomery’s estate - none of them accounted for a diamond ring.

We didn’t know what to do with that. Now, things have changed.

In our next episode, we’re going to tell you what we know about Walter L. Scott.

He was real. With the help of a listener who went digging on our behalf, Estrella managed to surprise us yet again. A newspaper notice. A Chicago marriage license. An address we already knew. And a detail so perfectly Estrella, it made us laugh and shake our heads.

It turns out Walter didn’t just give Estrella a ring. He may have given her something else entirely, something she carried with her for the rest of her life, long after he was gone.

Listen in to hear more!

-Angie & Cyndi

🧵We thought Walter was a fantasy. The records say otherwise.

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Buried Threads is a podcast about family secrets, silence, reinvention, and what happens when lost stories begin to resurface. If you’re new here, we recommend starting with Season 1. This post follows Episode 8 of Season 2.

We didn’t expect a cassette tape.

When Susan mentioned that Nina, daughter of Manuel and Rosa Suarez, had once sat down and recorded her memories, we weren’t sure what we’d find. Nina is gone now. Most of the people who knew Estrella firsthand are. But there was her voice, scratchy and warm on an old tape, talking about her parents like they were still just down the road.

We’ve been searching for our great-grandmother, Estrella Suarez, for a long time. What we didn’t expect was that finding her would lead us here, listening to Nina tell us about Manuel, Rosa, their family, and their life together.

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Manuel and Rosa

Manuel Suarez came to America first. He was a smelter, a working man, following the zinc industry from West Virginia to Kansas to Missouri to Illinois. He married a woman named Concepcion, had a daughter named Louisa, and then lost Concepcion to typhoid fever in 1912. He was young, widowed, and alone with a baby.

Rosa found her way to Missouri and agreed to help. She and Manuel eventually married in St. Louis, and together they built a life — first in the city, then in Taylor Springs, Illinois, where Manuel worked the mines and they started a family.

Apparently Rosa “had a lot of gumption,” according to Nina. She describes her mom as strong, resourceful, and surprisingly independent. And, we’re sure she had a good sense of humor.

Nina’s tape tells it better than any document we’ve found.

One night in Taylor Springs, Manuel went out drinking. Rosa, apparently not entirely convinced he was on his best behavior, decided to investigate. She dressed herself up like a man, slipped out into the night, and tracked him down. Manuel saw the stranger approaching — and didn’t recognize his own wife. Then she spoke. We don’t know exactly what she said, but whatever it was, it scared him.

You can’t hear Nina tell this story without laughing right alongside her! Rosa crossed an ocean, built a home from scratch in a foreign country, raised a blended family through grief and hardship; and she was also, clearly, not someone to be trifled with. Manuel had no idea who he was dealing with, until he did.

Paul

Paul is the son of Mary Rose, Estrella’s first daughter, the child Manuel and Rosa raised from the time she was two years old. Paul grew up knowing almost nothing about his grandmother. The family story was simple and painful: she left in the middle of the night, and no one ever heard from her again.

He spent most of his life with that blank space where a grandmother should have been. When we first connected with Paul through a DNA match a few years ago, he responded almost immediately. He said we were blowing his mind. We were blowing ours too.

Since then, we’ve met in person, visited graves together, sat around tables comparing notes and photographs and half-remembered stories. We brought our mom, Estrella’s granddaughter through Marie Christine, the daughter she gave up for adoption. Paul brought other family to the table. People who had never met, who shared DNA they didn’t know about, sat in the same room and called each other cousin.

Hearing Nina’s voice talking about the parents Paul knew as the people who raised his mother, his grandparents, brought us a special joy. Manuel and Rosa weren’t just names on a census. They were real. Warm. The kind of people who took people into their home, and cared for them, who kept Mary Rose when her mother couldn’t, who held a family together through loss after loss. And apparently, the kind of people with a good story or two.

What stays with us

There’s a particular kind of sadness in learning about people too late to meet them. Nina is gone. Rosa is gone. Manuel is gone. Estrella herself has been gone since 1981, buried in Colchester, Illinois. Laid to rest just down the road from the daughter she never found her way back to.

But the stories didn’t disappear. Someone pressed record. Someone kept the tape. Someone found it and took notes, and brought those notes to us. And now we have her voice forever.

That’s what this whole search has felt like: a relay race across generations, passing something fragile hand to hand, hoping it makes it to the finish line intact.

We’re still running.

-Angie & Cyndi

🧵Some people find each other. We found whole families.

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Hearing a voice from the past makes real what documents and dates can only suggest. A census or birth record tells you someone existed. A voice tells you who they were.

This week we hear a voice from the past and a voice from the present, Nina and Paul.

Nina’s real name was Pacita. Rosa called her niña, other family called her Nina (Nine-nah), and it stuck so completely that some family members believed it was her given name. Pacita was the daughter of Manuel and Rosa Suarez, born in Taylor Springs, Illinois, into a household that included a girl named Estrella, our great-grandmother.

Susan, a listener and family member, was inspired by the podcast to go dig through old boxes. She found cassette tape recordings of Nina talking about her life, her family, her memories.

Today, Paul, son of Mary Rose (daughter of Estrella), joins us. It was wonderful to hear his voice alongside Nina’s, tracing the lines of this family that Estrella wove together and then walked away from.

Paul grew up knowing Manuel and Rosa as his grandparents. He knew the rhythms of their family, the nicknames, the food, and the stories.

We listened together. We shed a tear together. We laughed together. We hope you enjoy this conversation with Paul as much as we did.

-Angie & Cyndi

🧵We went looking for a ghost and found family.

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We started this search with almost nothing. A name, Stella Smith, and the knowledge that she gave her daughter up for adoption.

But somewhere along the way, Stella (aka: Estrella/Wilma/Estelle) stopped being a mystery and started becoming a person. And in this episode we hear more from someone who actually knew her, Pacita, known as Nina.

In 1996, Nina sat down with her son and talked about her life, her family, her memories. And from her, we learned things we never would have found in any document or database.

• Rosa arrived in America, but not exactly the way the family story goes.

• Manuel didn’t send for Rosa, Rosa went looking for Manuel.

• Rosa was a force to be reckoned with; if she wanted to do something, she was going to do it.

• Their family moved far more than we realized, impacting what we thought was true about Estrella leaving.

Paul, son of Mary Rose, joins us for the conversation this week. He remembers his grandma’s (Rosa’s) cooking and how she tricked him into liking garlic salt. Paul also shares about his own life and his perspective on this journey of discovery we’ve been on together.

Join us as we listen to Nina’s stories together.

-Angie & Cyndi Shiels

🧵We’re just one, big, beautiful family.

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There’s something about hearing the voice of someone who was actually there.

A lot of our information comes from working with documents. A census record tells you ages, occupations, etc. of a household. A city directory tells you where they lived. A death certificate tells you how they died. What none of these documents can tell you is what someone was like. How they moved through a room. What they laughed at. Whether they were the kind of person who remembered everyone’s birthday or the kind who forgot their own.

Nina knew Estrella. We don’t know how close they were, Nina was younger. Estrella left when Nina was still a young child. But she grew up in the same house. She sat at the same table. She knew what Estrella’s presence felt like in a way that no document can capture.

When Susan found a cassette tape of a recording of Nina and played it, she wasn’t just hearing family stories. She was hearing the texture of a life that we’ve only ever been able to see in outline.

The name Nina, by the way, is a story on its own. Her real name was Pacita. But Rosa, Rosie, called “niña”, and it stuck. The family called her Nina for so long that Paul genuinely thought that was her given name until we talked about it.

That’s the kind of thing that only comes from people, not records. Records would tell you her name was Pacita. Only family would tell you everyone called her Nina. Estrella grew up surrounded by people who had whole other names inside their families, peoples whose identities were layered and spoken and understood without needing to be written down. She was one of them.

Maybe that’s part of why she was so practiced at becoming someone new. She’d always known that a name is just what people decide to call you.

🧵We are the ones who kept on looking.

-Angie & Cyndi

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