Friday, May 19, 2017

Genealogy Story – Filling a Hole in Your Life

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.

No comments:

Post a Comment