Thursday, February 19, 2015

Genealogy Story - Finding cousin Jane

When I was initially building my family tree, tracing all the descendants of my great-great-grandfather, Walter J Russell, there, one major piece of the “puzzle” concerned the descendants of my grandfather's brother, William Russell.  William had one son, also William, but both Williams and their wives had passed away two decades ago.  Our only contact with them was a memory that I had as a young boy visiting the Russell farm, along with my father, in New Milford over 50 years ago.  I recollected only that they had a daughter about my age.  But any records in ancestry.com for living individuals are blocked from viewing by other than the tree owner, and there are few other databases on living individuals available.  However, a multi-day hunt was successful – and here’s how it went.

·         I had noticed a family tree in ancestry.com that included William Russell and had placeholders for his children, grandchildren, etc.  Since all those individuals were living, the only information available to me was the structure of this tree and the gender of the individuals (shown by male/female outlines).  However, the tree was called the “Young Family Tree” and one of the Russell females had apparently married a male with the last name Young, as evidenced by the ancestors of this person having that name.  Further, the tree owner had an ID of mjyoung110 and was identified as the son of that Young/Russell marriage.  I sent a message to the tree owner, but did not receive any response.

·         I made a presumption that the Russell female in question would have been the one about my age since there were only two children of William who were female and the one who had married a Young had the deepest family tree, i.e. she had grandchildren.  Further, I presumed that she might likely have been married in New Milford since most marriages take place in the church/community of the bride.

·         I then searched through the Connecticut Marriages index in ancestry.com looking for a male Young marrying a female Russell in New Milford.  There were two such marriages recorded, and one of them took place in 1972 between an Alan R Young and a Jane M Russell, both of whom were of an age that placed their birth in 1947/1948.  I made the next presumption that this was the one that was the daughter of William.

·         I used the search capabilities of whitepages.com to look for an Alan R Young in the US whitepages who had an “associated person”, i.e. someone with the same phone number, of Jane M [Russell] Young.  Further, since the search page often has links to a [paid] website that shows the age of the person, I was able to narrow the results to such a person in Minnesota who was age 60-65.

·         I then placed a “cold call” to that phone number, and when I heard a female voice, I first asked if I was speaking to Jane and when she responded positively, I identified myself and asked if she was the Jane whose father was William Russell of New Milford.  To my wonder, she said “yes”!

While at times I wondered both if my long-ago memory was correct and if my presumptions were correct, the fact that my first phone call turned out to be to the right person, showed that this was a proper method of investigation to use.  Ahh, the wonder of technology!

I was then able to get email contact with my [second] cousin Jane and with her help fill in that part of our joint family tree.


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