Most effort expended by users of ancestry.com or other such tools is
discovering “ancestors”, i.e. going back in history to see “where you come from”,
“what famous people you are descended from”, etc. And certainly, this is useful
– I’ve done a lot of that myself and it’s both interesting and fun. But our
degree of connectedness to others should not be just looking back, but also
looking sideways. Having others who are connected to you then becomes a shared experience
and a richer one.
In this entry, I’m not going to go into a lot of detail but will try to
organize all the things that I’ve already written on the subject.
Tools for research
Many of the tools that are used in ancestor research are the same ones
that we can use for this “sideways” research, but there are some differences.
For one, in the US, census results are not made public until 72 years have
elapsed (*1). This means that most living individuals will not be found in
these very valuable records. We must find other things to supplement this
limitation (see *2 and *3 for some of these). But this is not to say that
census records are useless as sometimes we need to go “up” our ancestry tree
and then back “down” again to find our connection to these relatives (see *4
for an example).
*1 - http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2012/04/09/the-72-year-rule-governs-release-of-census-records/
Finding people you already
know of
Sometimes you already know who you are connected to, perhaps you met
them at a family gathering several decades ago, but you haven’t been in touch
since them. Here’s one example (*5) from my own experience where I was able to
reconnect to a 2nd cousin whom I had only met once – over 50 years
ago.
Using family trees
One has to be somewhat cautious in relying on family trees built by
others. I’ve seen countless examples of trees with children who were born
before their parents were living, etc. People are not very consistent in
checking on the “facts” that they rely on, being so focused on building a “deep”
tree and going back as far as possible. However, in the lower, more recent,
levels of a tree, things tend to be pretty accurate as this part of a tree is
generally built using personal knowledge of the person’s parents, grandparents,
cousins, etc. Thus, they can be a very valuable resource. I’ve already noted in
(*5) above how I used a tree to locate my “lost” second cousin. Here are a few
other examples of the results that I’ve gotten that relied on a combination of
recent census results and family trees built by some of my newly found cousins.
More complicated connections
One of the more complicated pieces of sideways research involved what
was seemed a simple question, “what happened to Juanita?” (see *4 and *8).
The answer lay in some further research I began doing into the children
of my great-grandfather’s, Louis Russell’s, second wife, Helen (*9). She had
several daughters from her two prior marriages who would have been Louis’s
step-children. While not technical blood relatives, these ladies would have been
my father’s aunts when he was growing up, and my research showed that there
were close connections to them, including their attendance at my mother’s
bridal shower in 1946 (*10). Through this research, I identified an individual,
Lauren, who was living outside of Boston and who was a 2nd cousin
(but by marriage, not by blood). I visited Lauren, and she loaned me the
journals of her grandmother who was one of these step-aunts of my father (*11).
In these journals I found an entry that gave the new address of Juanita in New
Jersey and this led me to where Juanita had gone, who she eventually married,
and where she lived out the rest of her life (*12). It took many steps, but at
last I had the answer.
DNA research
Another useful tool is looking at your DNA and finding others who share
some of that DNA. When I got my results (*13), I found a surprise connection
that led to me having to correct a “fact” in my family tree that everyone else
had gotten wrong too. And I was thus also able to make a connection to a previously
unknown distant cousin.
Helping others
One of the greatest joys that I’ve gotten from all this work is in
helping others. As I stated at the beginning of this article, “Having others
who are connected to you then becomes a shared experience and a richer one.” I
was contacted by someone who wanted to give her friend some “roots” that he had
not had while growing up (*14). Since he shared a last name with my mother, she
wondered if I would be able to help. I was able to determine that he was my 4th
cousin (relatively close as things go), and then to put together his family
tree as well as bunch of genealogy stories for him. It was my pleasure to do
so!
Long Lost Family
I’d like to close this entry with some “sideways” research I did to
help someone else. There is a TV show called “Long Lost Family” where they try
to help those who have lost their family connections, through adoption/divorce/etc.
The same skills that I have developed to connect to my distant cousins can be
used here.
I was contacted by one of these cousins that I had connected to asking
if I could help her husband, who was adopted (*15). As you can see in that
story, I was able to do so. This will not be in a TV show, but it has had a
profound impact on those involved. This is the true value of this “sideways”
research – making a difference in your life and in others!
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