Genealogy Story – A Cousin-Web

One of the types of genealogy research that I enjoy is the challenge of discovering new cousins. While doing this research for ancestors is challenging enough, doing it for individuals who are still living is even more so, because things like census records since 1940 have not yet been published.

I spent a fair amount of time a few years ago building out the Russell family descendant tree and finding all the descendants first from my great-great-grandfather, Walter J Russell (and thus my 3^rd cousins), then going back one more generations to my great*3 grandfather Silas Russell (and thus my 4^th cousins). In the process I was able to make connections to many of these individuals and make them part of my friend list in Facebook. 

One such individual is my 3^rd cousin, whom I’ll just call here R for anonymity. While the connection for me from Walter J Russell and his wife Lois [Cook] is down the male line (Walter -> Louis -> Erskine -> Vernon -> me), R’s is down a totally female line. Since following female lines is more difficult to the ever-changing last names, this was a fun connection to make.

Recently R posted an old picture of her grandmother and all her siblings. Since these seven individuals are all first cousins to my grandfather, I enjoyed seeing the picture and I commented on it. But the next person to make a comment was another of R’s Facebook friends who had the last name Pierpont (I’ll call them P (again for anonymity)). Seeing the Pierpont last name was a trigger to me, since that is my mother’s maiden name, and a quick check showed that this individual lived in the same part of CT where my mother’s family came from originally. I wondered if P was related to me, and I thought, “How interesting, that one of the friends of my cousin (on my father’s side) might be a cousin on my mother’s side.” Since there were no last name changes to deal with, I did some quick research to see if I could document this P’s Pierpont ancestors.

As I began encountering the typical problems in doing research on living individuals, I made a note of what I was doing. But I soon got a response from R asking why I was doing this research about her cousin. “Your cousin!” I exclaimed, then R told me that P was her first cousin, and she told me about how they were connected. Wow, I thought, we might have a cousin “chain” with each of the three of us being a cousin to the other.

As is not unusual in doing this type of research, I was not able to fully make the connection using available resources. However, I came to the conclusion that P was almost certain a cousin, with the degree of “cousin-ness” being somewhere between 7^th and 5^th cousin. But as I looked at all the names I realized that there were other connections I needed to include as well.

First, I had previously written about how my parents were distant cousins of each other with Walter J Russell’s wife, Lois Cook’s grandmother being Almira Beecher, and my mother’s great-great-grandmother being Sally Beecher and these two ladies sharing a common ancestry. This made my parent’s 9^th cousins of each other (see http://ramblinrussells.blogspot.com/2017/02/marrying-cousin-part-3.html). But since R is also descended from Walter and Lois, this also meant that R and I are 10^th cousins as well as 3^rd cousins.

Secondly, I had also recently documented a few other incidents where the Pierpont and Russell lines were connected (see http://ramblinrussells.blogspot.com/2017/03/genealogy-story-pierpont-russell.html). One of these is that in the chain leading up from the likely common Pierpont connection between P and myself were Joseph Pierpont (1704) and his wife Hannah Russell. One the Russell side, Hannah is my 8^th cousin, 10 times removed. But this has huge implications in the current situation since that distant Russell ancestor is thus a common ancestor of all the recent Pierpont and Russell families. One leg of this long connection is entirely through the Russell last name, the other leg is through Russells down to Hannah Russell, then through Pierponts.

So, to recap:

R and I are:

·         3^rd cousins through our common great-great-grandparents, Walter and Lois Russell

·         10^th cousins through our shared Beecher ancestors

·         17^th cousins through our shared Pierpont-Russell ancestors – she up the Russell side, I up the Pierpont-Russell side

R and P are:

·         1^st cousins

·         17^th cousins as above – R up the Russell side, P up the Pierpont-Russell side

P and I are:

·         Somewhere between 5^th and 7^th cousins through our common Pierpont ancestors

·         17^th cousins as above – P up the Pierpont-Russell side, I up the Russell side

While it’s true that if you go back far enough most of us may be related in some way, being able to document this web of connections is not typical. Can you tell I’m excited?