It all started somewhat innocently. Around the end of
February I had written a blog about my great*7 grandfather, James Pierpont, and
had posted a link to it in the Pierpont Family Association Facebook page. Two
weeks later a person who I did not know, named Gaye, left a comment on the blog
which said, “…this is a great and interesting article for me. I am trying to
put together some genealogy or at least ‘connections’ for my friend here in
Tennessee, son of Russell James Pierpont. Could you please email me?”
As is often the case when I get such rather scanty
information like this, I like to do some quick checking to see who it is that
is being asked about. Within a short amount of time that evening I had
determined who she was talking about (by checking her out, finding her Facebook
account, and locating a Pierpont in her list of Facebook friends). I then made
a quick check of the Pierpont Family tree (which I have saved in my favorites),
and located her “friend” as well as where he fit into the tree. My response to
her was,
“I also sent you a message via
facebook. I’m presuming that your friend is Ron James Pierpont. I’m good at doing
research! He is my 4th cousin. His family tree is Ron James P_
(1952) <- Russell James P_ (1929) <- Russell Raymond P_ (1905) <-
William Seabury P_ (1833-1883) <- Austin P_ (1791). Austin is also my
great*3 grandfather.”
“It also appears that Ron’s brother
Keith as well as his sister-in-law and niece attended the Pierpont Family
Association meeting in 1998 (they are also on his friend list in Facebook). How
am I doing?
As our conversation continued, I learned that Ron had
virtually no knowledge of his ancestry on the Pierpont side. His parents had
divorced when he was just a toddler, and his mother cut all ties to his father
(including calling Ron by the last name of her new husband). So Ron grew up
knowing nothing about his father or any of his Pierpont relatives. He was soon
going to be turning 65 and Gaye, a friend from his church, wanted to be able to
present him with some information about this side of his family. She had
stumbled onto the Pierpont Family Association Facebook page, noticed my blog,
and wondered if I would be able to help her.
Thus began a rather exciting (for both of us) couple of
weeks of my putting together a comprehensive genealogy report for Ron – all without
him knowing anything about it.
Because of the excellent records in the Pierpont Family tree
(maintained with care by my cousin Bob Kraft), and because Ron and I were 4th
cousins (relatively close as things go), I had a lot of basic material already,
including the complete family line from the origin of the family name to Ron in
the 31st generation. I also had written a number of blogs about our
common Pierpont ancestors. But I had to fill in the blanks for the more recent
years, including (I was hopeful) seeing if I could find any pertinent pictures
of his family.
Doing research on more recent events is a bit more
challenging than looking through historical records such as census records,
etc. But I have done a bit of that too and was up to the challenge. Through things
like online obituary archives, Connecticut marriage records, Facebook friend
lists and other sources, I was able to piece together a lot of what I needed.
Through the above sources, I was able to identify contact information for Ron’s
older brother who lived in Long Island, and Ron’s step-sister (who had been
adopted by his father when his father remarried right after divorcing Ron’s
birth mother). While I could put together a pretty complete family tree for
Ron, including all of his father’s descendants from both marriages, I decided
to contact Ron’s brother and step-sister to see if they could help me in my
search for pictures, as well as to help verify the other information that I had
found.
While some people are very upset to receive unsolicited
questions about events that may have been painful, that turned out to be the
right move in this case. I was able to get a couple of good pictures, including
a 4-generation picture of Ron’s brother, his father, his grandfather, and
great-grandfather (the whole Pierpont line). I was also able to get a picture
of Ron’s father’s grave back in Connecticut.
I put all of this together over about a 2-week period into a
42-page report that included genealogy trees, obituaries for his relatives who
had passed away, several pictures, and copies of all the genealogy stories
about our common ancestors that I had blogged about over the past few years. I
sent copies to Ron’s brother and sister-in-law (as a thank you for their help),
as well as to Gaye. She printed it and put it into a nice presentation folder
for giving to Ron on his 65th birthday.
Her email to me the following day said,
“Hey! It was pretty emotional. I was going to take a picture
but it became really personal real quick so I just couldn't take a picture. He
stared and turned pages and made remarks 'I did not know that,' 'I have never
seen them.' 'There's my grandfather!' He really got emotional and thanked me
but I told him you had all the work ready for him. I just found you! He was
silent and engrossed in the pages. I believe his whole view of his life has
changed. He has that sense of security of his past that most of us have and he
just hasn't. Your contact info is there for him. I believe he will want
to call you when he is ready. It is still all sinking in. Thank you so
much for just being there prepared for this time for Ron. My short part of this
was a special journey of its own.”
I recently had
a chance to talk to my new cousin on the phone. He is excited not only for
himself, having now been able to fill in this major hole in his background, but
for the opportunity to pass this information on to his two daughters.
As I have said
a number of times, I get excited about the research that I do and the
connections between genealogy, geography, and history. And having the
opportunity to help change someone’s life through this research is a real
blessing to me as well.
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