Finding Living Relatives

I began my serious genealogy work after my mother passed away in 2012 and I [wrongly] thought that I was then the oldest “Russell” in my family. However, this was based on rather incomplete knowledge. I only knew my relatives from my grandparents on down. Since then I have tried to trace down the lines from not only my grandparents’ siblings to find 2^nd cousins, but also from back a few generations more to find my 3^rd and 4^th cousins. In the process, not only have I become acquainted with other “Russell” relatives, but those with other last names. In a few cases, I’ve managed not only to begin a dialog with them, but have been able to meet them face-to-face as well.

Doing research into living relatives is in some ways even harder than going back up the family tree to find ancestors. With ancestor research, you can look at things like census records, death certificates, and family trees that have been built by others. But these tools are not available when looking for living relatives. Census records in the US are not publically available until 72 years after the census, so they aren’t much use. And family trees generally block out any names of living individuals for privacy reasons.

Instead, one must use tools like Google to look for things like obituaries (which often list the survivors), and other even more complicated searches. Nonetheless, I have been fairly successful at finding my relatives. Here are some of the ones I’ve located (all on my father’s side of my family tree). Most of them I’ve connected with through social media and a few via telephone. All face-to-face connections are noted.

Reconnection with relatives I knew growing up

Shirley [Macnaught] Meo – my father’s cousin through my grandfather’s sister Loretta [Russell] Macnaught

Dennis Scott – 2^nd cousin through my grandfather’s sister [Martha] Pauline [Russell] Scott

Steven Rezendes – 2^nd cousin through my grandmother’s sister Irene [Levy] Hartwell

Other 2^nd Cousins

Jane [Russell] Young – my 2^nd cousin through my grandfather’s brother William [I had only met her once when I was about 10 years old]

Lauren [Withycombe] Munger – 2^nd cousin through my grandfather’s step-sister Eva [Pulver] Peet [I had the privilege of visiting with Lauren and her family outside of Boston last month]

3^rd Cousins – descendants of my great-grandfather Louis Russell’s siblings

Donald Moore and Pamela [Moore] Otomo – descendants of Martha Jane [Russell] Bradley

Sande [Hosford] Vanhook – descendant of Charlotte [Russell] Hoyt

George Russell (and several of his relatives) – descendant of George Hall Russell [I had the privilege of meeting George and Sallie when they were in this area a few years ago, his older brother Andy just passed away last year]

Robert Russell, Kim [Russell] Thompson, Patricia [Russell] Luopa, Donna [Russell] Todd, and a number of others – descendants of James Walter Russell [In December 2015 I had the privilege of visiting Robert, Kim, their families and their father Robert Earl Russell (my grandfather’s first cousin!) before he passed away in early 2016.]

4^th Cousins – Other Descendants from Silas Russell

Kim [Weed] Iezzi – descendant from Eliza [Russell] Hallock

Judy Viertel Weir, Ellen [Evans] Dunn (and others) – descendants from Rebecca [Russell] Simmons

Raymond Abruzzi – descendant from Theodore Russell

Others (non-Russell Ancestors and very distant relations)

David & Janice Benedict – 3^rd cousins through my great-grandmother Carolyn [Northrop] Levy’s younger brother Cyrus

Nancy [Lombardi] Russell and Cheryl [Russell] Soucy – my father’s 8^th cousin and my 9^th cousin – from the same town in Connecticut where I grew up, my father always joked that they were “kissing cousins”, but it’s turned out that the connection was actually real