Tracing the Connections

 

It's not just the direct line connection to a First Families ancestor that fascinates me. It's tracing the connections of all the collateral lines of that ancestor which makes this exploration interesting. While one First Families application may gain recognition for a specific ancestor, just pointing to that name, that person, allows others to find their way to that connection, as well.

Take yesterday's case of John Hutchins, the Canadian immigrant who crossed the Great Plains with his family to seek his fortune in the California Gold Rush. John Hutchins arrived with his Irish-born parents as well as five siblings—each of whom likely had descendants who also can qualify for our county's First Families program.

As for John Hutchins' wife Anna Nevin, she too arrived in California with family. Her father, Alexander Nevin, had lost his wife Sarah in 1854, long before the journey westward, but by the time of the 1870 census, both Anna's father and another Nevin relative lived in the Hutchins household in California.

Any one of these several siblings in either of the two families joined by the Hutchins-Nevin wedding could have become the ancestor of direct line descendants who might not even realize their connection to a couple eligible for First Families recognition.

Being able to point the way by a publicly-shared tree or document diagramming such relationships could help others realize their connection to local history. Multiply that possibility by each of the First Families programs currently in operation throughout the United States, and we'd have some amazing resources to help researchers find their way back through time and connect with their own family history.

Because I'm curious, I'll be checking these connections in the Hutchins and Nevin families, and adding them to our genealogical society's fledgling online tree of our county's First Families notables.