Week 38: Cousins #52Ancestors

Growing up, I always marveled about the small size my extended family, especially in comparison to my Catholic friends. My parents each had only one sibling and my mother’s became a Catholic Priest. My grandfathers died before I was born and my dad’s sister had three children. I vaguely remember some second-cousins on my father’s side, but we were not close to them despite living relatively near-by. Compared to your “typical” Catholic family of the day, ours was minuscule.

One lovely aspect of researching your family’s tree is that you get to meet “cousins” from all over the world. In Week 28, I mentioned my third-cousin once-removed who came with his wife to our family reunion. I’ve also “met” (via email) other distant cousins in England, Long Island, Oregon, Chicago, and Texas.

From a shared love of genealogy, I am fortunate to have developed great friendships with two of my husband’s cousins: sisters, Kay and Ellen. I love working with them to solve family mysteries, but mainly I just love them.

These days, a good 75% or so of genealogy can be done on-line and the tools available are amazing. Cousin Kay was an early pioneer in the genealogy field. When Kay started, I think her only tools consisted of the phone book and lots of stamps and envelopes. A couple of years ago, she lent me her genealogy files so I could see what she had gathered those many years ago. OMG. There were four banker’s boxes jammed with letters and replies and Xerox copies made at court houses and churches. What a treasure trove!

Cousin Ellen is no-less impressive. Before she retired from teaching school, Ellen’s genealogy work was relegated to the weekends and the summer. Now that she’s retired, I get notices from Ancestry several times a week that she has made a new discovery or added a new ancestor to her family tree. Ellen also has keen insight into details and perseveres beyond where mere mortals would have thrown up their hands in defeat.

I’ve been fortunate to have attended several genealogy conferences with these two remarkable women, learning much and having great fun. Several years ago, I was preparing for a pie contest by making a couple of pies a week to see which would be the winner.[1] I invited Kay and Ellen over one day to be taste-testers. We dubbed the meeting “The Pie Summit” and have vowed to continue the tradition to eat pie and help each other with our respective “brick walls.” After all, who doesn’t love pie?

[1] No, my pie did not win.

Cousins Ellen and Kay with their parents and brothers.