Reaching Out

 

The connections we can gain from DNA testing gift us with the ability to reach out to strangers and meet them as family. This weekend, I had the opportunity to do just that. 

Most of us might have had the opportunity to meet first cousins once removed—those family connections some of us, before genealogy, might have called "second cousins." Some of us actually do know our second cousins. Beyond that, though, very few have a personal relationship with third cousins or beyond.

One member of our local genealogical society has found a way to break through that barrier—he simply reaches out to distant DNA matches, strikes up a conversation online, and eventually makes plans to meet up with them in person. We've been regaled with his stories over the past few years. Whether that has proven to inspire anyone else's action, I don't know. But when I had a chance to fly to a distant city this weekend, I couldn't bypass the opportunity: I asked a third cousin, once removed, if she would be interested in connecting in person.

On the surface, it took not much more than a twenty mile drive to a unique coffee shop halfway between our two locations—well, after a four hour flight cross country—but beneath that simplicity was months of email exchanges, comparing notes on cousins in common, placing mutual DNA matches in their correct position on the family tree we share. We are, after all, both researchers keen on uncovering our mystery ancestors.

When we realize the power of the tools we have at hand for building our family trees, it is sometimes lost on us that that same ability can draw us closer together, personally. In my case, this relative connects to my paternal grandfather's mystery Polish roots—the back story of the life of a relative I never met face to face, a man intent on keeping his ethnic origin a well-concealed secret.

This was a chance to share observations of what details we knew about family, discovering in conclusion that perhaps those ancestors simply had no desire to ever think again about the life they left behind in their choice to emigrate. Unlike, say, the Irish who could never forget the beautiful—though ravaged—homeland they left behind, the Polish in our roots left a life perhaps deemed not even deserving of remembrance. At least for our family's journey to a new world, that consideration was left by the wayside.

Granted, any such meet-up between two strangers, even those who share genetic connections, can turn up full of energy—or lacking any compulsion to continue the relationship. In our case, we could have talked for hours longer.

In retrospect, though, this was a conversation begun months ago, just a chance to move the interactions to a different venue. Thinking back to the role model of my fellow genealogy society member—someone we've dubbed everybody's cousin—that was not a bad example to follow. In this case, it was certainly worth the time to make this connection, and to hope for many more to come.  

A Long Slide Down to the Present

 

This month began by listing what I had already learned about my mother-in-law's fourth great-grandfather, Lyman Jackson, in preparation to delve further into that man's family line and history as this month's selection from my Twelve Most Wanted for 2026. Starting from Lyman's birth in Connecticut in 1756, we followed him to his marriage in Vermont and the new family's migration westward, first to upstate New York, and then to Erie County, Pennsylvania.

It's been a lot of years since that time—not to mention a lot of miles—but this past weekend, I finally diagrammed one line of Lyman's descendants all the way to the current decade. Starting with Susannah Jackson Kennedy's move to Knox County, Illinois, and subsequent family lines moving to Kansas, then Nevada, and ultimately to Santa Rosa, California—site of that devastating 1906 earthquake mentioned in one family history book—I've finally finished that long slide down to the present, sticking close to each of those lines of descent.

Imagine my surprise, then, to arrive in our current century and discover that one Jackson descendant married and moved to an address in California which is an easy amble down the street and around the corner from where I currently live. That makes our neighbor my husband's fifth cousin once removed.

Granted, we have yet to meet these newfound Jackson cousins. I'm just in awe over being able to discover such a connection, not simply from a family with origins as far away as Connecticut, but as far removed as an ancestor who lived in the mid-1700s.

Before this month is over, there is still one more task to complete. Lyman and Deidama Dunham Jackson had yet another child whom we need to track. Tomorrow, we'll consider the baby of the Jackson thirteen, Lucy, the eventual wife of Elisha Alderman. With eight children mentioned in the genealogy drawn up by researcher Horace Mortimer Jackson, there's still a lot of missing verification left for us to find.

A Biweekly Reflection

 

It's been two weeks now since I've begun adding descendants to my mother-in-law's family tree from the line of her fourth great-grandfather Lyman Jackson. While some lines have easily multiplied over the generations, there have been others which present more challenges in confirming their place in the lineage. Still, it was a nice surprise to see just how the many Jackson descendants have rounded out her family tree.

Over just these past two weeks, I've found 419 new Jackson descendants to add to that tree. That means my in-laws' tree now includes 42,625 direct line ancestors and the descendants of their collateral lines. All of these newly-added individuals are supported with documentation.

Granted, I have a long way to go before I complete the lines of descent for each of the Jacksons' thirteen children, but this is a significant start. While the numbers look impressive, though, I had hoped it would budge the needle on the count of DNA matches for Lyman and Deidama's Jackson descendants at Ancestry.com's ThruLines tool. Not yet, apparently. The count is still stuck at 71 DNA matches.

Collaborating with DNA matches on my own side of the family tree—a constant conversation in its own right—I managed to find an additional eighteen descendants to enter on that side of the family. That grows my tree to 41,926—even though I don't plan on researching that side of the family for another five months. Despite my "Twelve Most Wanted" research plan, the truth of the matter is that once we collaborate with cousins, the questions and conversations are ongoing—and so are the results!

Collaboration is Key

 

When it comes to researching our family's history, each of us knows a little something about our ancestors that another cousin might not know. On the other hand, someone among all those cousins—or even siblings!—might have a photo of an ancestor that we don't have. To piece the story together, collaboration is key.

When it comes to my own immediate family, it might seem reasonable to assume I'd be one who has amassed the most information on those ancestral lines. Imagine my surprise, then, when in a phone conversation about family history the other day, my sister calmly mentioned, "Oh, I have some photographs about that." And she did!

A few days ago, a distant cousin on my mother-in-law's side of our family sent me an email. We have intermittently been exchanging research notes over years—I've lost track of how long—but a new discovery through DNA seemed to reveal a lead to a brick wall ancestor's roots, and this researcher wanted to bounce the idea off me. We'll surely follow that conversation to see where it leads. Whether it becomes a productive pursuit or not, at least we've explored the possibility. You never know until you test out the theory whether it will yield a viable answer. Partnering to explore ideas and brainstorm solutions makes a difference.

Collaboration can enable us to combine details which neither researcher would have seen on his or her own, and examine possible outcomes for genealogical theories. Collaboration can make the work go faster by focusing a group on one given research question at a time. It can provide encouragement when the effort is flagging, and a cheering team when a discovery is finally achieved. And working together can help guard us from unrealistic or unsupported assumptions.

Over the decades in which I've been struggling to find my family's stories, I've met some fellow genealogists who have been wonderful collaborators, for which I've been grateful. Some are no longer with us and are sorely missed, and some, whether for a season of demanding work duties or a season of life, are not currently in the game. Others are new acquaintances, met online and messaged over time through digital means—and maybe, in some cases, will someday be a connection over phone calls or even face-to-face meetings. 

No matter how we connect, though, the important part is that we do connect—a way that enriches the research and makes the wins worth celebrating together.

Thirds

 

I once was acquainted with a woman who had married her third cousin. While it may be unusual for the general public to even understand what third cousins actually are, this couple knew how their families connected.

With the advent of DNA testing, many more of us have had to learn exactly what it is that makes some of us third cousins—or even some more convoluted connections, such as third cousins once removed, or half grand-nephews. I've had more than my fair share of such relationships—just on Ancestry.com's DNA test alone, I've got almost forty five thousand DNA matches who are beyond fourth cousins to me. But a question just the other day about relationships like these third cousins and beyond stopped me short and made me consider something.

In emailing one of the DNA matches with whom I've had a running dialog, she asked whether I had ever before actually met a third cousin. In considering that thought, I had to admit, well, no (though I am about to do so this year). Though our minds can comprehend the concept—we merely claim a set of second great-grandparents in common—this is seldom a part of most people's lived experience. We are a culture in which family members move away to new locations, then lose touch with relatives left behind as we become part of our new neighborhoods and jobs.

DNA testing may have fostered a new desire to connect with long-lost relatives. I know one member of our local genealogical society who has purposefully reached out to connect with distant cousins, eventually having the chance to travel and meet some of them in person. While "Relatives at RootsTech" or "Relatives Around Me" on the FamilySearch app may be fun ways to discover connections online, it is merely a cerebral experience. Rather than simply poking a few buttons on our phone, it takes effort—not to mention trust—to reach out to an unknown someone for the goal of actually meeting distant family, face to face.

While some of the distant cousins with whom I've already connected online come from family lines I do know and understand—my in-laws' cousin connections, for instance—this latest discovery flows from the opposite side of possibilities. I sent a message to someone from my father's side of the family—that Polish lineage which I had been seeking out of a dearth of information. I knew nothing and desperately was hoping to learn from someone who surely knew more about those roots.

Collaboration online can be a helpful, even fascinating, process, but I imagine meeting in person will introduce a different dimension to the research process. While I'm sure there will be awkward instances which people walk away from, thinking, "I can't believe we are related," I'm sure there will be meetings filled with observations about unexpected connections, too. Whichever way it goes, I'm looking forward to being part of such an experience soon.

Good Things Coming in Threes

 

What is that saying about good things coming in threes? This third month of 2026 may have been filled with lots of family history discoveries for the Firth and Rainey lines—as well as groan-worthy never-ending court case files—but that is not to say it's been the only genealogy work I've done this month. Behind the scenes, I've made some enjoyable connections with other researchers—oddly enough, in threes—collaborating on catching up with those elusive ancestors who've kept us chasing them, sometimes for decades.

For several months now, I had been noticing one researcher's name pop up, every time I pulled up another ancestor in my father's paternal line. It didn't take long to realize this woman is a thorough researcher who believes in locating records for even the hardest to find among our Polish ancestors. I decided to reach out to her, both on account of what I had noticed, and because I saw that she happened to be a DNA match of mine. We've struck up an ongoing conversation by email over the past half year, and I recently discovered our family's travel plans will soon take us to the very city where this DNA cousin lives. We are looking forward to actually meeting, face to face.

Another researcher I had been in touch with years ago has recently retired from a demanding career and is returning to family history puzzles with a vengeance. A few months ago, he reached out to let me know he is now back in the game and looking forward to collaborating on some challenging ancestors. He's got some fresh ideas about how to share the stories of our ancestors, which I think are spot on, and hope to collaborate with him as well.

Those two connections have been rewarding enough, but the third connection takes the cake. Once again, the credit starts with a DNA match, but this time it involves a close connection to an adoptee. While I want to respect this person's privacy by not sharing identifying information, our first contact was facilitated when this adoptee tentatively reached out to me. This message could not have been more circumspect for such an email. From that first contact to further email correspondence, and then phone calls, I was able to help this person connect with immediate family, as well as learn more about extended family. The conversations seemed eerily as if we had known each other for our entire lives, a most rewarding process to have become a part of.

These are apparently among some of the surprising turns of events that can happen when we learn more about our family history. Time consuming yet heart-warming, they remind me that genealogy is not only about dull, dry dates, places, and names, but about the real, live people whom those ancestors connected us to in the first place.

Family History is All About Connections

 

Family history can sometimes seem like a solitary pursuit: the lone researcher, sequestered in her office or musty archive, poring over documents long forgotten in search of that elusive brick wall ancestor. That certainly is how it feels, at times. This week, though, one instance of a person reaching out to send a message set in motion a chain of events connecting several people who had never before met each other.

It all started with a message received on my Ancestry account. A genealogist was reaching out from a family association, in hopes I could connect her to a woman I had listed in my family tree. The genealogist wanted to find this woman in order to access photographs the woman had, years ago, written the genealogist to say she'd be willing to share, if ever the genealogist got around to writing the promised book on the woman's own family line.

Well, now was the time to write that book, but obviously, if the genealogist could find that woman's name in my family tree, it meant only one thing: the woman was no longer alive.

Despite her passing years ago, I clearly remember speaking with that woman when she was still alive, because she herself had published a book on my own family's McClellan line. It was a well-researched book, and I was so excited when I had found it that I purchased not only one copy for myself, but several more to give to family members.

Apparently, I gave away one too many copies of that book. Years later, looking for my copy, I couldn't find it. Nor could my sister find her copy—who knows what happened to the other copies. Trying to purchase another copy was unsuccessful; it was long out of print. Besides, by then, the author had passed away.

But then came that message at Ancestry from this other book-writing genealogist looking for the author of my family's story. And here I was, having moved on from my Florida-based research project last month, yet still looking for the descendants of those Townsend and Charles lines—one of which happened to marry a McClellan.

This month, I was still inputting Townsend, Charles, and McClellan descendants into my tree at Ancestry.com when up popped one of those ubiquitous hints: someone else also had that McClellan ancestor in their family tree. Usually, I don't use that hint option, choosing instead to rely on my own document-based research. But hey, wait a minute: the tree's owner was someone with that same surname. I think I found a cousin!

Looking closely at that tree, I realized the Ancestry subscriber happened to descend from that same specific branch as the McClellan author. Taking a chance, I reached out to that tree owner and told my story about the genealogist from the family association wanting to get copies of those pictures for a soon-to-be-published book. Could this person help? And, oh, by the way, any idea how I could get a copy of that book I lost from the tree owner's immediate family contacts?

There is something magical about posting a message online at night, then waking up the next morning with the answer I'd never expect to receive. I usually give my email address in notes I send via Ancestry's messaging service. What had just happened overnight was that that McClellan contact sent me a digitized version of the book I had long since lost—and promised to work on gathering those family photographs for the genealogist back at the family association, the one whose initial message had gotten this whole search rolling in the first place.

Each one of us sits on a treasure trove of our own family's history: the photos, the keepsakes and memorabilia, the stories. Those details are not just ours, though; they belong to all our cousins, close as well as distant. The blank spot in our tree might be the labeled photograph in someone else's pedigree; the letter passed down to us that was saved by our great-grandparents might have come from another cousin's great-grandmother.

Just as our families intertwined in those past generations of our greats and great-greats, so we can do once again in our interconnected world now. From fun family tree apps like FamilySearch's "Relatives Around Me" or the recent "Relatives at RootsTech," we have quick and easy tools at our fingertips to reach out and touch someone else's life—or at least their family history progress. Connections with cousins can make it possible for us to know the rest of our family's story.  

Putting On the Brakes

 

There is nothing that can put the brakes on genealogical progress like entering into hitherto unexplored regions. For me, that unexplored region—still!—is Poland. There is so much yet to discover.

No surprise, then, that taking stock of my progress in the past two weeks showed a less vibrant count than I've seen when documenting, say, my roots reaching farther back in America's history than the starting date of this country's establishment. Yes, "Poland" (or its previous iterations throughout history) has been around for far more centuries than the United States, but finding the records for all the people living there is much more of a challenge.

So, how did I do, having shifted my research course this month to chase my father's Polish heritage? While I now have 38,526 documented individuals in my family tree, only sixty nine of them were added to that list in the past two weeks. Between jumping from website to website, trying to patch the record gaps in available digitized documents, then adding that information to four separate trees online, progress has been far slower than in the past.

Still, I feel good about what's been done this month. For one thing, realizing that sharing is part of the challenge—hey, I'm all for "cousin bait"—I want to put those names of newfound ancestors out there where others can find them, too. Who knows? Maybe my second great-grandmother was your second great-grandmother, too. Now, I can point the way to a little-known website which provides scans of the records we both are seeking.

Not that I haven't given up on my in-laws' tree. Even though we made the shift from my father-in-law's Irish roots at the beginning of October, I still had some research business to wrap up on his lines, plus some details on my mother-in-law's family that I stumbled upon this past week. For my in-laws' tree, just ten more names were added and documented, but no matter how small the increase, every one represents a research victory I'm glad to celebrate. My in-laws' tree now includes records for 36,853 ancestors and collateral lines. Maybe some of them are distant cousins of yours, too.

In less than a week, we'll move into another month, and the chance to research another branch of my Polish ancestry. Progress will undoubtedly be just as slow as it's been this month, but I count this as yet another opportunity to become a trailblazer, in hopes a cousin here—or somewhere else around the world—will realize our connection. 

Finding Four Sisters

 

When struggling to find information on a brick wall ancestor, I turn aside to the mystery ancestor's collateral lines. In that way, I often can coax out information on my direct line which might not otherwise become apparent. Yet I generally find more success in that method when I look to the brothers in any given line—not the sisters. But in the case of my second great-grandmother Franziska Olejniczak, when I sidestepped her line to explore her brother's line, it was his four daughters who led me to additional records, not his two sons.

Finding those sisters of the less-than-helpful brothers may have been easier for many reasons. Perhaps, in a place with such a history as war-torn Europe, the brothers might have been drafted to do what young men are expected to do for their country. Or perhaps they just died young, yet left no paper trail for me to find.

Regardless of the cause, I'm glad to have the opportunity to trace the family of this collateral line of my second great-grandmother. Cousin bait, remember, can lead me to possible DNA matches, those descendants of such mystery ancestors who are living in our current time.

With that, I have four options to pursue. Bartholomaeus' eldest child, a daughter with that now-familiar family name Franziska, was born about 1864, as I gratefully discovered through transcriptions at one Polish website, BaSIA. After Bartholomaeus' two sons were born, Franziska finally got a sister: Marianna. Again, thanks to Polish websites, I learned her date of birth was July 27, 1871. Third daughter, making her appearance on November 6, 1873, was Catharina. And the apparent baby of the family, Josepha, arrived on February 3, 1876.

The good news—at least for my DNA testing purposes—was that each of these sisters eventually married, producing documentation which enabled me to follow their stories a bit further. And in that continuing story, some of their children also helped point the way for me through their own baptismal records.

Is that as much as I'd hoped? Of course not. I'm still wrestling with a gap in records, falling far short of any privacy protections that might have been instituted on behalf of the living. But at least with these lines of descent from my second great-grandmother's brother, I can begin to trace connections.

We'll take some time this week to trace each sister's family connections, just in case that leads to any future serendipitous encounters with long lost family. Cousin bait candidate number one: Bartholomaeus' eldest daughter Franziska.

Building a Ladder of Connection

 

It may seem odd to watch someone research the family history of the grandchildren of a second great-grandmother's brother, but this I do with one specific purpose. I'm building a ladder of connection between the generations in hopes that someone may reach up and grab on to the rung I've been dangling out in space, in hopes someone will catch on and climb up another generation, too. 

Using another analogy, that's what we call "cousin bait." I'm dangling the "bait" of ancestral names, and I'm hoping others out there will come fishing for that specific family name—a name which fits into both my tree and theirs. Hopefully, I'll provide the missing link which will help others move one step further in their own research progress on their direct lines.

Each time I go through this process, I inevitably hit a brick wall. Last time I revisited this stuck genealogy project, all I had was my second great-grandmother's name, Franziska Olejniczak. And that was only thanks to her daughter Marianna's 1879 marriage record, recorded in Żółków, then a town in Prussia. Since then—and discovery of such new documents seems to come in waves—I've found more on the Olejniczak family.

This time, researching the collateral line of Franziska's brother Bartholomaeus—or Bartłomiej in Polish—I've worked my way through records for one son, Walenty, and another possible son, Jan. But there the record sources dried up, and I am stuck at this new stopping point. If I am willing to revisit this research question again in a couple more years, more records will likely surface and I can push the generational line forward another step or two.

While trying my best to find more on Walenty's children ended in frustration, there are certainly other collateral lines to explore. After all, Walenty himself had four sisters whose records might already be available online. We'll explore those possibilities next week. In the meantime, whether that exploration brings success or not, I'll focus on the fact that every name added to these collateral lines will either help surface another distant cousin seeking the same roots, or at least help me make more connections, once additional records become available for researchers. It's all part of building a generational ladder of connection through collateral lines.

Meanwhile, Back on the Matriline

 

It's interesting how one successful find in our deep ancestry creates a desire to find more of the same. Finding Joseph Howard's wife not only in his will, but in her own will dated several years later, following  a second marriage, has been encouraging. Discovering that she made mention of a sister's married name helped cement the connection to the sisters' father, William Ridgely. But I can't forget that my goal is to once more push back through the generations on one specific line: my mother-in-law's matriline. After all, I have her descendant's mitochondrial DNA test to lead me to the ancestry of any exact matches to that specific DNA test. I just need to push back far enough in those never ending generations to make sense of how the matches actually connect.

Right now, that mother's mother's mother's line has led me to Rachel, my mother-in-law's fifth great-grandmother. I have the potential to push back three more generations—but that is only thanks to reliance on reports from century-old genealogy books I had found when I worked on this same research path a year ago. Now, I need to find documentation to confirm what those writers of the past century had claimed. Thankfully, the FamilySearch Lab's new Full Text search capabilities are helping expedite that process—but it is still a slow process.

In the midst of all that bleary-eyed reading of handwritten wills recorded in colonial Maryland, I received a reminder of why genealogy blogging has not outlived its purpose. Yes, so many people complain that blogging is now so passe, but I haven't yet yielded to pressure to join that bandwagon. And with what happened this past week, I think it might be worth it to remember one other reason for blogging about genealogical discoveries: our blogs are cousin bait!

Was it simply coincidence that this week brought me messages that someone out there was also researching this same line of my mother-in-law? And is quite willing to discuss discoveries in current research on our mutual lines? I'm delighted that someone decided to reach out and connect—after all, so many times we do send messages to fellow researchers and in return get...nothing. In this case, however, we've exchanged some notes on our recent discoveries and found out each one's work can bolster the progress of the other.

Research tools are useful—and sometimes fun to use, too!—but nothing else comes quite so close to top billing in my book as finding a distant cousin who enjoys family history as much as I do.

Croissant Cousins

 

It's been a long time since I last attended an in-person genealogy conference, but when I recently discovered the title of one book published before the pandemic, my mind flew to those awkward feelings about networking. True, those moments between conference sessions or at event meals place conference attendees among strangers who love the very same things we do. Why do we dread them so?

Granted, this is a book I have not yet read, so be forewarned: it is only one glimpse of the book's content which caught my eye. No guarantees about the rest of those two hundred pages. However, here is the thought nugget of Robbie Samuels' Croissants vs. Bagels concerning networking and croissants, as introduced to me through an article published last month at NPR. Author Andee Tagle mentioned eagerly anticipating a post-pandemic networking event—until stepping inside the venue and realizing it was filled with "bagels." 

Bagels? Yes: "the tight clusters of people who gather in seemingly impenetrable circles at networking events." 

So what about croissants? What are they? "If someone opens up their body language and makes space for others to join the circle—voila! Croissant."

"But I'm not in the business of sales," you might be saying. You may not be involved in any networking efforts—at least, that is what you may be thinking. After all, we have all been slow to open up to in-person gatherings post-Covid. But that doesn't mean we don't have opportunities to connect—especially if we are taking cousin connections seriously in our pursuit of family history. Yes, connecting with cousins is important for research—think DNA testing, if nothing else. But when we reach out to connect, we need to model our efforts more like Samuels' croissants than like bagels.

Aim to connect, then include within our already-established circle of cousins. Open up to expand your own research circle on a specific surname or location topic in your family tree. Collaboration certainly helps move our research further along, but it will be the "croissant cousins" among us who will be the instigators and facilitators leading our cousin circles forward.

Don't be a bagel cousin. Take a tip from this networking book's title and aim to become your family's croissant cousin.

 

Capturing Connections

 

There is a lot which can be learned about genealogical research by reading about marketing techniques. I already realized that, but I don't think I really felt it, deep down in the core of my being, until I stepped through this impromptu research goal for the last week of November.

I stood a lot to be gained by this McClellan cousin connection unfolding over the past few days. Information on ancestors, yes. But more than that, I gained some insight on just what these McClellan ancestors were really like. I got to hear the stories captured in the memories of their now-aging descendants. And I realized something: the way to inspire others to fall in love with their ancestors is really through their stories—but not just any stories. The stories which captivate, which trigger an emotional response, which draw others in, rather than away, are the ones we need to highlight.

The marketing advice is this: when you write or talk, focus on key words which trigger an emotion. Let that key word or phrase be the theme of the vignette you are sharing. What resonates with your relatives? How can your ancestor's story harmonize with that?

Of course, to accomplish that, you need far more than just the dates and places where your ancestors were born, married, or died. It may require you to become familiar with local history, or to read between the lines on key events in an ancestor's timeline. To say, for instance, the family moved first to Oklahoma, then after a while moved to California is far less interesting than to say your destitute ancestral couple and their ten children had just plunked down their last few dollars on their mortgaged farm in Cimarron County, farthest west portion of the Oklahoma panhandle, when the Dust Bowl conditions caused them to lose all. Names and dates we have trouble relating to, but losing everything in the face of a natural disaster is a story evoking memories of our own tragic experiences. When we hear stories full of emotional experiences, then we can relate.

It has been an eye-opening experience for me, getting my older cousins to talk about their childhood memories of the grandparents, grand-aunts and -uncles whom they knew personally in their younger years. Of course, I am interested in gathering such stories of relatives I never met, but that is because I am interested in family history—I assumed. But I have come to realize that it is stories of this sort which we can use to get others in the family interested in our heritage, as well. We need to focus on those words, those stories which trigger emotions—memories of exceptional challenges, near-misses, deep feelings. Very few people can relate to names and dates, but we all have had experiences we'll never forget. Those are the keys to introducing vignettes of our heritage to the rest of our family, of providing the link to connect us with the strangers who were once our ancestors.

Partnering With Cousins to Tell our Story

 

With a smile—and perhaps a twinkle of the eye—some researchers talk about "cousin bait" when they discuss strategy for working on brick wall ancestors. It all seems so far-fetched, this hope that a total stranger who happens to be a relative might know more about an ancestor than we do. After all, we are the diligent researchers, doing everything possible to find that elusive answer to our research question. But think about it: even if your immediate family wasn't the one to inherit great-grandmother's treasure trove of family photographs, surely somebody did.

That is the cousin we all want to find.

Face it: our family story would not be complete without the addition of all the voices in that family. Even those cousins for whom a two minute talk about genealogy would sent them into spasms of "MEGO" (My Eyes Glaze Over). The challenge is not only to find those cousins, but to inspire them to become part of the family history conversation.

Some cousins may want only to share a picture, then back out of the research project. That's fine. Every little step is still a step forward. One clue can lead to another. That old sales question—"if you're not interested in buying, could you refer me to someone who would like this?"—could apply here. Never leave one participating cousin without securing a referral to another cousin who might know more.

Others, though, may offer up one gem, then another, and pretty soon you realize you have been bestowed with a wealth of family information.

Those contacts may arrive after a well-planned "cousin bait" campaign, or they may come at you unbidden, at the least expected time. The other day, I mentioned meeting up unexpectedly with a distant McClellan cousin while touring a local genealogical society's library holdings on a visit to my great-grandfather Rupert McClellan's birthplace in Wellborn, Florida. While I descend from Rupert McClellan's grandfather George, this cousin claims George's brother Henry Young McClellan, also a Florida pioneer. She was quite willing to give me a printout of her McClellan line from her desktop genealogy program. Since I set aside this last week of November to work on my McClellan roots, I've revisited that document and am slowly working my way through it, confirming details as I add the information to my tree at Ancestry.com.

As I work through this gift from a cousin I never knew, I'm reminded of all the other times I've benefitted from collaborating with cousins. Some cousins have turned out to be longstanding research partners, each of us working on parallel projects, then sharing our results with each other. It makes for a more enjoyable exchange.

But how do you find such willing cousin collaborators? Years ago, when I first moved my research online, I relied on those genealogy forums—remember RootsWeb and GenForum?—where people could post their research queries in hopes of connecting with The Cousin Who Has All The Answers. Many times, those efforts gained me nothing. But other times, the results were like striking gold in the mother lode.

That was then, but this is now, you might be thinking. True, genealogy forums have morphed and migrated to social media sites, with results not quite as spectacular. There is, however, another way to find cousins, something many of us have accessed for a quite different reason: DNA testing. After all, what do you hope to get lots of when you send in your DNA test kit? Lots of cousins. Yes, many of them only wanted to see if they could exchange their lederhosen for a kilt and will never reply to messages from matches. But there are many other DNA testers who are quite interested in connecting with their DNA cousins. 

These can be our best potential collaborators if we can approach them tactfully and interest them in at least beginning to compare notes. Those who are truly interested—and able to equally share in the research process—will make themselves obvious in the process. Though some will not follow through, it is so worth the investment in time to find cousins who are willing to enter into an ongoing research conversation to discover all we can about our missing—or misunderstood—ancestors. 

Continuing Cousin Collaboration

 

Out of the blue last week, I got an email from a distant cousin. This was a cousin whom I only met online due to our DNA match at Ancestry.com. We had quickly figured out that his grandmother was the very woman known throughout the extended family as the clan's storyteller. Once we had determined just how we connect, it seemed communication dropped off—until this week's letter.

It seems this cousin inherited a stack of family photographs, which he was busily uploading to his family tree at Ancestry. I took a look and indeed, on his site there is now a wealth of pictures of distant cousins. Now I have faces to match up with the names which I've become familiar with over years of research.

The email this week? A request for help in labeling those photos. You know how it is: we all could be a bit better about passing along this information to unsuspecting younger family members. Several faces in this collection still had no names attached. Who were they?

The one glitch in this process was asking someone like me. This cousin in question links to the Florida branch of my maternal line. My problem is that I never even set foot in that state until only a few years ago. I, the one continually bemoaning my lack of family photographs, am ignorant on such a subject. But I did have an idea.

That idea was to pass along the emailed photos to another cousin whom I know still lives in Florida. She is the daughter of a diligent family historian, and even though her researching dad is no longer with us, she has a good idea of who was who in that family.

Sure enough, the photos prompted an avalanche of information. The more we talked, the more she remembered. And the more stories I learned. I guess the result on her end was a prompt to check into those stories even further. We spent an afternoon volleying emails back and forth with details as she recalled them, leading me to discover even more as I cross checked online and added information to my own tree.

The best discovery was when this cousin stumbled upon an online memorial for another family member, posted by a funeral home. The unexpected discovery was not only a transcription of an obituary, but an actual posting of a video, the kind made to be shown during the memorial service. That video included pictures from that relative's childhood. Whoever thought a funeral video would become a source of family photos for distant cousins?

As the one cousin shared names to attach to the other cousin's family photos, I relayed the notes back to the cousin who had made the first inquiry—kind of like a relay race, only for family history. Now, however that cousin first acquired those photos, they are posted online for all interested family members to share, complete with names to go along with those faces. Collaboration can increase productivity in so many ways—and make an enjoyable way to work together with family.

When Cousins Come Calling

 

The last couple weeks have brought me some surprises: distant cousins finding me via this blog and wanting to talk Tilsons. Yep, cousin bait works. Tilsons, on the other hand, may not be that easy to track.

For one thing, there are a lot of them. My particular branch migrated ever so slowly from New England to the outback of colonial Virginia, and finally to Tennessee. All by the turn of the century—the nineteenth century. The journey, supposedly, began with their ancestors, whose roots reach back to the Mayflower—if only I can find the documentation to demonstrate that oral history.

I'm not the only one bemoaning that little issue. Apparently, these two Tilson cousins are also working on that paper trail. They want to talk. Tilson.

Meanwhile, perhaps it is no surprise to see that while I am supposed to be working on research regarding my husband's Stevens roots, in the past two weeks, I have managed to add 138 more names to my own family tree. And yes, you guessed correctly: each one of those new names connects to that Tilson line. My tree has suddenly grown to 29,012 people, and I'm barely started with this impromptu exploration.

To put it in focus, in the same two week period, I managed to add 127 people to my in-laws' tree, though certainly not all owing to the research project I'm currently tackling on John Stevens. Since that task requires more broad-based exploration, it hasn't really produced specific names to add to the tree, though it has grounded me in some social history of County Mayo during the Great Famine. Some projects encompass different goals than simply building out a tree. Nevertheless, my in-laws' tree now includes 29,924 documented names.

Working with distant cousins can prove rewarding when each one shares resources which might not be available on the usual websites. Mostly, that means researching locally—or at least stumbling upon a serendipitous discovery. We'll likely start with a discussion of "I need..." and "I can share..." as an inventory of where we've already explored. I'll pull out my notes from my last trip to the Family History Library in Salt Lake City to see if any material is salvageable (although the discoveries that pre-Covid year were less than satisfactory, and it's obviously been a while since I've been there). And, of course, I'll take another look at any Tilson DNA matches, just in case.

It is often a treat to meet a distant cousin online who has spent considerable time pursuing a research question. Make that a double treat in this instance. Perhaps this time, working together, we will all break through that brick wall and be able to document our Tilson connection to the Mayflower passengers.

Connecting With Distant DNA Cousins

Most people are death on the wholesale copying of online family trees—and I get that. There is no sense perpetuating erroneous material. As we use DNA to fill in those stubborn blanks in our pedigree charts, though, there can be much to learn by partnering with distant cousins through their trees to discover more about our family's past.

Lately, I've been writing a different sort of letter than the ones I've been hoping to discover from ancestors. I've been reaching out to contact DNA matches and others with Ancestry subscriptions whose trees show possible family connections. My goal, right now, is to find others interested in tracing their Falvey ancestors back to the specific townlands where they originated in County Kerry, Ireland.

Connecting with DNA matches can have its drawbacks, as many researchers have shared with me. When the topic comes up in conversation, it is often accompanied with groans. How many of us have sent out introductory inquiries, only to wait...and wait...and wait. How to get around that impasse?

Thankfully, there are a lot of tips available from the world of genealogy blogging. If you want generic guidance on contacting DNA matches, you can't go wrong with the crystal-clear advice of "Your DNA Guide" Diahan Southard, who compares composing that introductory letter to setting up a first date. Legacy Tree Genealogists offers thirteen "secrets" to improving the odds of getting a response from a DNA match. For those who have tested specifically at AncestryDNA, going right to the source with their blog and Crista Cowan's video on this topic provides some product-specific direction, like sending your message straight from your AncestryDNA match page, so the message will link the recipient directly back to your own kit.

There are still pitfalls in the process, as witnessed by the opposite approach taken by Amy Johnson Crow—considering possible reasons why a DNA match might not be responding to your email. But for as many deep and complex reasons as Amy may have mentioned, some reasons are so simple, they are simply overlooked. Kitty Munson Cooper discovered that for a while, Ancestry subscribers relying mostly on the app had no way to see that they had received a message. Thankfully, that glitch has been fixed, but who knows what other tiny tech details derail our attempts to get connected.

For quite a while, I had given up on contacting my DNA matches. I tend to go overboard with the word count when getting enthusiastic about a match discovery, but perhaps the avalanche of information, for a newbie, was like taking a drink from the genetic genealogy fire hose. I seldom received responses to my inquiries. With this new Falvey project, though, I'm noting specific research approaches, and communicating them in my decidedly more succinct emails to matches.

This project is not just limited to directly finding DNA matches, though. Somehow, I realized that the "Shared Matches" choice on AncestryDNA's readout doesn't necessarily include any "distant" cousins. And yet, my premise in building these connections back in County Kerry is that the matches include two vital details: a Falvey surname in other people's pedigree chart, plus at least a very small but still possibly useful ten centiMorgan segment shared with my husband.

That means, for one thing, that if I utilize the ThruLines™ option at Ancestry, the two distant matches who do show up include little if any "Shared Match" listings. However, if I go back to my husband's general match listings and search there for any matches containing Falvey in their tree, I will get "Distant Cousin" matches, once I check their DNA results—and yet they, once I click on their "Shared Matches" button, will show none. It seems, for these low-ranking connections, that there is no way to get "there" from "here."

Despite the small connection, I have reached out to these matches anyhow—and, delightfully, am receiving responses from people willing to contribute what little information they have on their distant Falvey ancestor, as well. I'm quite convinced the answer, for all of us, will come much like crowdsourcing efforts do: if we all work on this together, we may more quickly arrive at an answer that none of us, on our own, might have uncovered.

Counting on Connecting

The one good thing about maintaining a genealogy blog is that it can attract interested cousins. "Cousin bait," we call it among our fellow genea-bloggers: one of the main reasons we make our research conquests—and foibles—so public. We hope to attract like-minded distant cousins to the joint pursuit of our ancestors.

Thus, with the shifting goals of my current research pursuits, the more I connect to one branch of the extended family, the less I end up working on another branch. But I'm okay with that. Connecting with family is important. We need to share what we've found, and collaborating with cousins can accelerate the search.

Though I had intended to spend the last two weeks zeroing in on consolidating two trees on my husband's side into one—the better to link to DNA matches, now that we can tag these in our Ancestry account—I also ended up making the acquaintance of some DNA matches on my own maternal side, so my progress count will reflect those small victories as well as the duplication of records moved from my father-in-law's tree to that of my mother-in-law.

It is hers which will become my husband's all-in-one tree for DNA purposes, so while the numbers seem inflated, it really doesn't represent any new progress on her lines. The 224-name increase is really just that many people copied from my father-in-law's tree to hers. With that almost done—I have another two weeks of double-checking work on that project ahead of me still—her tree now stands at 19,076 names.

While I've been working on the same exercise on my own side of the family over the past month, this time the increase wasn't quite so pronounced. I added forty six names to my mother's tree, which now stands at 22,429 people, but it was mostly because of emailed inquiries I've received from cousins who found me via this blog. As I go back to review those lines, I discover updated information which allows me to add more names and documentation.

If we look at the trees I've maintained for both my father and my father-in-law—the ones now being folded into their respective wives' trees—you can tell by the numbers whose tree actually gained new individuals. On my dad's tree, which has only 715 people, I added not one new person in the last two weeks. On my father-in-law's tree, the one for which I'm currently grappling with the mystery of the far-flung descendants of his Falvey ancestry in County Kerry, I've added seventy eight new names in the past two weeks. Looking at his tree by itself, it now contains 1,812 individuals. And I still don't know how to connect them with Ireland; I've just found more descendants claiming that same mystery line.

The best part about this scenario, though, is the fact that there are other cousins out there, yearning to connect as they research their roots. Some of them have been found by genetic genealogy connections, since we have tested at all five of the current DNA companies. Some of them have wandered by, thanks to the airing of popular television series such as CeCe Moore's The Genetic Detective, which pique people's interest in finding their own roots. But some of the ones who have connected have been distant cousins I never even knew, who also are keen to find more about their family's story. Connecting with them has helped multiply our efforts to gather those details.

Cousin Season

Sometimes, it seems like I write and write for years, then...nothing from any inquiring cousins. Somehow, I get so used to the silence that it actually startles me when I find a comment to a years-old post added overnight from a distant cousin. If genealogy blogging is really all about cousin bait, you'd think I wouldn't get so surprised.

Last week, I looked up to the upper right corner of my computer screen while taking a brief peek at Facebook. Full disclosure: I mostly abandoned my Facebook account about the time of the last presidential election season out of weariness over the continual divisive political harangue. I'm a person who believes in the value of opposing viewpoints, but I also believe in civility in discourse, and the Facebook crowd was just not delivering on that aspect of being "social"—so I stopped looking.

There was one thing that kept me coming back to check, though: our genealogical society had set up a closed group, and, well, when you're the president of the group, you kinda gotta take a look every once in a while.

So there I was, looking at my Facebook group when I saw, in the top right corner, that I had a message. That doesn't happen very often, and when it does, it is usually some form of spam, so I was about to ignore it, but thought better of it. What harm is there in just taking a quick look?

I'm glad I did. What I found was a group message from a mother and daughter who relate to my Broyles line—the family who once lived in the lovely home called Ashtabula in the western mountains of South Carolina. I cringed to think how long that message went unheeded by my inattention, but was relieved to discover it was there only about a week's time. Hopefully, we'll connect and pursue our shared heritage together.

That wasn't all. Quite literally on the heels of that discovery, another mother and daughter duo reached out to connect with me, both via comments to blog posts from years ago and, thankfully, also via an attempt at connecting via Facebook. This time, the common ancestor is from my maternal grandfather's family in Tennessee, sending me back to my family tree, where I haven't updated material on that side of the family for years. Hopefully, once again in following through with a connection to distant family—in this case, a second cousin and her daughter—we'll find ourselves exchanging information on details of the relatives we do know.

While there are so many social media outlets for connecting with other researchers, it seems that sharing has become more generic than specific to family lines. I do miss the camaraderie of the old genealogy forums where we could post inquiries specific to a family line, and then connect and collaborate with those cousins. Those have been some of my most helpful and productive research connections. The quick in-and-out of current Facebook groups doesn't seem to engender the same sort of long-term collaboration.

As all things evolve, though, perhaps we'll see a gradual improvement in how researchers connect with others researching the same roots. Who knows? Perhaps the current quarantine will inspire others to take more time delving into their online connections with more substantive results.

For now, I'll just be glad that a new "cousin season" is opening up for at least two lines of my family's history. It will be fun to compare notes and share what we know. At least in one case, I have a family Bible that someone might be interested in seeing—and I'm always happy to share.

Cousin Bait Connects Again

In an era now, in which genetic genealogists bemoan the lack of responses from their own DNA matches, it may be hard to believe that only a few short years ago, there was a community of family history enthusiasts who thrived on their online connections. In the online forums of the 1990s and early years of this century, genealogists were quite eager to share those troublesome research details which stumped them. There would be notes from people trying to locate information on ancestors who seemed to disappear from the paper trail, requests for death certificates, marriage records, or even wills. Folks seemed quite happy to share what they could find for each other, all thanks to online connections.

At some point during those halcyon days, I must have posted a comment about the hard-to-find surname Gramlewicz on one of those genealogy forums—which was a good thing, because I had just found a puzzling record concerning Annie Gramlewicz, the niece who had been living with my great-grandparents, Anton and Mary Laskowski. Though Annie had reported in the 1915 New York State census that she was born in the United States, the record I found was a passenger list reporting her arrival in New York from Poland.

Anna, sailing from Bremen, Germany, aboard the SS Friedrich der Grosse, arrived at the Port of New York on December 3, 1913. In the passenger records, Anna gave as her date of birth June 24, 1897. Born in Brooklyn, New York, she was returning to an address at "Grenpoint" on Long Island. This would not be a surprise to anyone who knows that Greenpoint, a neighborhood in Brooklyn known for its concentration of Polish immigrants, was once nicknamed "Little Poland." It was not long after her arrival in New York that Anna showed up in the 1915 state census, not in her parents' household, but in the Laskowski household.

Just why she ended up there—or came there from Poland instead of the more reasonable location in one of the neighborhoods of Brooklyn—would have remained a mystery to me, except for one fortunate connection. Because I, as had many other researchers before me, had taken advantage of online resources for genealogists and posted my questions about the Gramlewicz family, someone else had spotted my questions and decided to get in touch.

You can imagine my surprise when I received a message from someone with the surname Gramlewicz, writing me from Sicily, claiming to be a possible distant cousin from a family in Poland. But as we discussed over the course of a very helpful correspondence, there was a reason for Anna's passage, though a U.S. citizen, from Poland in 1913. At some point after the Gramlewicz's disappearance from American census records—I couldn't locate them after the 1910 census—they had decided to give up the immigrant struggle in the rough and tumble neighborhoods of New York City and return to their homeland. The whole family left; the only one who requested to return was Anna. That 1913 passage was what must have been the result of her very difficult decision.

Her parents and sisters, however, also faced some difficult times: that family split happened on the eve of a brutal war. Yet, the family fared well enough to welcome into their home a new son, Hieronim, born in Żerków, Poland, in September of 1912. That new son eventually became the grandfather of the woman who had contacted me, thanks to the cousin bait I had posted on one of those genealogy forums, years ago.

Annie—the one who came back to America—herself went on to marry and have a family of her own. Thanks to other connections from those now-outdated forums, I've been able to connect with relatives from this branch of the Gramlewicz family, as well. And the cousin who originally contacted me from Sicily mentioned remembering the older relatives exchanging letters in English with the sibling who went back to America—until one day when the letters no longer came, and, remembering, she always wondered what became of her American relatives.

Cousin bait, in the end, brought each of us together, and gifted us with the answers we were seeking.

Above: Line from a 1913 passenger record reveals that sixteen year old Anna Gramlewicz returned alone from Europe to live, once again, in Brooklyn, New York; image courtesy Ancestry.com.