How to Meet a Fourth Cousin

With as much sniveling and whining as I do over not having any distant cousins flocking to my virtual door, you’d think I never have had such an opportunity. Truth be told, I have—well, of a sort. It’s just that, when pursuing long-lost relatives, I am invariably the one who is seeking the connections.

And yet, sometimes, it does happen. You may recall the trip to Chicago undertaken by my family over a year ago, in which my husband had the privilege of meeting up for lunch with not only his (known) cousins and a (known) second cousin but also with two third-cousins-once-removed. (Well, at least we presume they are; we have yet to find documentation fixing the relationship at that point, though we do have auxiliary confirmation.) We can thank none other than our reader “Iggy” for serving as digital matchmaker for that occasion, as he was the one who found himself providing my email address to the inquiring relative who had stumbled upon my blog post mentioning a known ancestor from her family.

Now, of course, I’m headed to Ireland in an attempt to push back the Tully family history yet one more generation. And the question nearly taunts me: will we be able to meet distant cousins over there?

After all, we’ve advanced in our track record from second to third cousin—once removed, even! Could it be possible to find any fourth cousins over there?

Since Denis Tully, immigrant from Ireland, is the connecting link for this family, I pause to ponder those numbers. Denis Tully was my husband’s second great-grandfather. Any descendants of his would lead to the level of third cousins for our generation. Of course, being that my husband was the baby of the (almost) baby of the family (et cetera), we end up meeting people who are, eventually, one generation removed from his—but still counting from the level of third cousin.

But what if we could push back the shroud of time yet another generation? That would yield, for a third great-grandfather, fourth cousins. Fourth cousins possibly living in Ireland right now.

My mind starts spinning at the numbers. I once met—online, of course; these things seldom happen in person—a ninth cousin in my own Taliaferro line. Fortunately, that is a line from Virginian colonial history that is well documented, so it was just a matter of counting on a descendancy chart. I had to come up with a way to keep the right numbers in the right columns.

Sketching these generations out on a spare napkin at a coffee shop may work for a casual meet-up with a second cousin, but add a few generations, and it can get messy. I thought it better to come up with a concise way to yield the proper (n)th cousin. Ready? The (n)th cousins have a common (n – 1) great-grandparent. So, fourth cousins would share a third great-grandparent. In our case, that would be Denis Tully’s parents, whoever they might be—or his wife Margaret Flannery Tully’s parents. And they would not be here in America. Not even back in Canada, where Denis arrived after his trans-Atlantic voyage. They would be in County Tipperary. In Ireland. Where I’ll be in two weeks.

The first task, of course, would be to locate that third great-grandparent. If I cannot find any documentation at the local level in Ballina, where the family originated in the early 1800s, I will have to hope for some great revelation when I get to Dublin. And from there, I could trace the lines of descent. After all, it wouldn’t do to just go door knocking along the River Shannon, asking, “Are you my fourth cousin?”

Once the names and dates are secured, it has never been more than a matter of spreading the word far and wide—wanted: descendant of So-and-So Tully, father of Denis Tully of Ballina, County Tipperary—to find some takers for the coveted position of fourth cousin. Post it in online genealogy forums, as I have for so many other family lines. Search for connections on the family finder devices on sites like Ancestry.com or head out to deeper, more generic waters and trawl the hits on Google. Take a DNA test, even—after all, we just connected with a distant cousin that way, though on the other side of the family. Stalk possible descendants on Facebook—even if it costs a lousy buck to send a private message. Wear a sandwich board—yes, believe it or not, I saw someone do that, here in my own city, last week—and walk down the main streets of Ballina.

However we do it—meet up over a cup of coffee, or over lunch, or even via phone or email—here’s hoping that, at least, we do it. It would be grand to meet a fourth cousin. Especially on the other side of the equation. “Across the pond,” as it is so often termed. However, wherever: Tully fourth cousin, we know you are out there.

 Above: Ireland-born Samuel McCloy's "A Fisherman's Children," an 1881 pencil and watercolor; courtesy Wikipedia; in the public domain.