Family is family, no matter how distant

I had lunch with two of my maternal grandmother's first cousin Myrtle's great granddaughters and one of her great great granddaughters. It's the first time we met. And I owe it all to my grandmother. How I wish she had been there so I could have seen her expression when she first saw them. I knew they were related to us in a heartbeat!

It always amazes me how cousins, third and fourth cousins, can look so much alike or have similar mannerisms. I felt right at home with Pat, Tina and Emily. It was almost as if I'd known them all of my life.

As we visited and shared stories, I couldn't help but notice Pat pursing her lips, just like my grandmother, her daughters, her great niece Barb and yes, even I do.

I got so tickled at Emily when she rolled her eyes at her Mom (Tina), and then quickly looked down in total innocence. I've seen my Mom and Aunt Ethel do that to my grandmother. I know I did it to my Mom and so did Cindy. I see others roll their eyes, but they don't usually drop their eyes to the floor right afterwards.

And when we were leaving, Pat went over to talk to one of her friends. She had her back to us, and if I hadn't known that my Mom wasn't there, I would have sworn she was. Pat's stance and the way she moved her head and hands when she talked to her friends was 100% Mom.

I've made progress on the promise I made to my grandmother oh so many years ago to reconnect with her father's family. I know they lost touch when he moved away and that she wished she had known her first cousins.

She set me out on this quest, and I thank her for that. I wish she were here so I could thank her in person. I know in my heart that she is following my journey from the other side. I'm not sure why she asked me, out of all of her grandchildren to do this. Maybe she asked the others, and they either don't remember or aren't that interested. Who knows? Well, grandmother knows. I know that a couple of my cousins are interested and do research once in a while. Now if they would only share their information instead of telling me "Oh, I already knew that." when I send them updates on my research! Grr!

Maybe she knew that out of all of her grandchildren, I would be the one who needed to connect with family, even distant cousins. Maybe she knew that I would take her request seriously and keep chipping away at the brick walls until I could find a loose brick that would lead to a long hidden document or photograph that gave me another clue in my quest to reconnect with my great grandfather's family.

Speaking of which, it's time for me to close. I'd love to hear your stories of reconnecting with long lost relatives.

And now, I'm off to continue uprooting the family tree!

Oops! This Willard is a girl!

So, I'm going down the line of my great grandmother's eldest brother, trying to locate some living descendants to contact to share family history information, and I find a family tree that shows that great great uncle John has a great grandson named Willard. Woohoo! Celebrate, add another twig to the family tree by copying the other person's info for Willard and start searching for more information on Willard, right?

Next, I find a marriage license for Willard. And Willard is marrying another guy in the late 1930's. No way! That just didn't happen back then. I go back and double check the names. Willard and Gordon got married. For real. No kidding. There it is in black and white, or rather in pixels in shades of grey.

Now I have to go and figure this one out. Folks in the 1930's weren't very accepting of two males marrying. So, the index I found has misinformation, or either Willard or Gordon is a female, or something else is going on. I have to keep an open mind, not jump to conclusions and stick to facts, verifiable facts.

I do some more digging around on the internet and stumble upon an image of the actual marriage license. Aha! Willard is the bride! So, I go back to modify Willard's record on the family tree to show Willard is a female. I check the actual census images, which I did not do the first time around, and find that on each one, Willard is plainly marked as female. This is my fault, as I didn't verify what the other researcher had for Willard. I just accepted it and moved on. My mistake! And I know better.

Now I have a ton of work to do to go back and verify the details for family members with unusual names, just in case. And while I don't think there's a boy named Sue in my tree, there is a very beautiful girl named Willard. I'm so happy she's there, that I discovered my mistake and I corrected it. Cousin Willard is on the other side now, probably shaking her head at my mistake, ensuing quandary and the head slap I gave myself when I figured it out. I do hope she's happy that I found her and her family. 

From now on, I have to remember: when you add a new person or line from another's family tree, you need to verify the information. I was so excited that I didn't stop and start verifying Willard's information starting with the census and birth records. Had I double checked, I would have found out that Willard is a female, and I wouldn't have wasted valuable research time on my little adventure. 

So, I'll take a good hard look at what the other tree or source has for the person or line I'm researching. Does the information make sense? Is the person's birthdate in keeping with the parents' birthdates and death dates, if I have those? I've seen people in family trees with birthdates before their parents' birthdates, i.e. John is born in 1780 but his father isn't born until 1810? What about the marriage date, if there is one? Did John get married in 1781, a year after he was born? Unless John's royalty, which won't happen in my family, something is just right with those dates. I'll check it out.

What about the birth and death dates of any children? Do they pass the smell check? Was John born when his mother was 5 years old? I could find out that John's mother died and the person shown is the stepmother who raised him, or the birthdate for his mother could be wrong. I've had both things happen in my quest to uproot my family tree.

On several trees that other researchers have for my mother's family, they have my grandfather as his brother's father and my great grandmother married to my grandfather, even though the dates don't make sense. They have the correct dates. The relationships are way off! Someone messed up on the relationships. Others just copied without verifying. The error spreads. I've tried to contact the tree owners, but they either aren't interested, thought my e-mail was spam or aren't checking that e-mail account.

I'm off to do some verifying of information on my family tree and adding source information for any documentation I find. And then, it's more uprooting the family tree. Have a great weekend. May you make a wonderful discovery on your family tree!

Susan

The Cousin Connection - Finding New Cousins

I love finding new cousins! My poor husband says that by now, I must be related to most of the residents of the United States. While that is a huge exaggeration, I do know many more of my cousins, closely related and distant, than he knows of his closely related cousins. And I keep in touch with many of my cousins, between e-mails, phone calls and Ancestry updates.

Chanda is my most recently found cousin. I haven't calculated exactly our kinship degree (first, second, removed), but we are at least third cousins. My great great grandfather is our common relative.

We connected while I was researching an old newspaper article on my great grandfather's family. I was trying to verify or disprove some if the information by searching for other documentation on Google. And Chanda's tree popped up. I contacted her via Ancestry. While she wasn't able to verify the information I sought, we were able to confirm that we are related. She descends from my great great grandfather's sister. Her grandfather lost touch with his family, so she doesn't really know too much about our family history. And I don't really know too much about her line, so we're both going to do some research on her line and see what we uproot.

I'm looking forward to getting to know Chanda and working with her on our shared family history.

Here's to uprooting the family tree!

Susan