Only a Genealogist Would Know

 

Only a genealogist would be the one to spot the appearance of a name in a family tree and realize it matches one from a relative over a hundred years ago. As I've been planning my Twelve Most Wanted for 2024, behind the scenes, I've been scurrying to complete a year-long project to confirm the relationships in my entire Tilson line—for those ever-present DNA matches, of course.

In the process, what should I run across but a twentieth century woman whose married name became exactly the same as my third great-grandmother's birth name from a century ago. Before she married, this more modern Rachel was a Clouse, but in marrying a Tilson, she acquired a name which has resonated in my ancestral history. What was more curious was that this Rachel Clouse also happened to be a Tilson descendant, herself, as well as a new Tilson spouse. How did that happen?

You know I couldn't resist this rabbit hole. I had to check out her husband's family history. It took rewinding his family's story for five more generations before I found the connection: my fifth great-grandparents William and Mary Marcie (Ransom) Tilson. I descend from their son Peleg and his daughter Rachel Tilson, while this more recent Rachel descended from Peleg's daughter Jennet through her grandson Peter Clouse's line. And that Rachel Clouse married a Tilson named Thomas, who came from a long line of Tilsons descending from—you guessed it—Thomas Tilson, son of William and Mary Marcie.

Whether they knew it or not, that Rachel, born in 1905, married her fourth cousin once removed, Thomas Tilson. They spent their life together in Texas, far removed from either the Washington County, Tennessee, home of my ancestral Rachel Tilson, or the original Massachusetts settlement of her Tilson forebears. Whether removed by distance or time, the familial connection of this Rachel and Thomas was likely one they weren't even aware of when it came time in 1924 for the couple to say "I do." Unless, of course, they—like all genealogists—kept track of their family history.

Building out that branch of the Thomas Tilson line—one I hadn't yet tackled in my year-long project—served to add several new names to my mother's tree, just in time for this first biweekly count of the new year. Make that 388 new names, to be exact. Now my mother's tree has a total of 36,599 individuals documented.

As I worked on plans for the Twelve Most Wanted for this year, I also added names to my in-laws' tree. Though there were only sixty six new names added—I stumbled upon an undone branch of my father-in-law's Kelly line—that tree is starting off the new year with 34,157 people, enough to help connect a few more DNA matches to that line.

Again for this year, I'll be checking back every two weeks to get encouragement from the mounting numbers and research progress. It helps to see the numbers. And it certainly is inspiring to find the stories—even the unexpected little details like discovering that my fourth cousin once removed married her fourth cousin once removed.