How I Met My Cousins On Ancestry.com.

My mom and I sat down and had a conversation about ten years before she died.  I asked her to tell me the names and information about all my ancestors that she could remember. I hardly knew any of my dad's family.  We had spent some time with my mom's sister's families.  I was the eighth of nine children and my parents were a little older when I was born, so I probably knew less than my older siblings.  I really wanted to know more.

About nine months ago I started working on Ancestry.com.  I have found loads of family information there.  It was a start and helped me to know where to begin searching.  I then went to health departments, court houses,  and libraries.  My son and I spent quite a bit of time at the Indiana State Library this summer doing research.  I found names on Ancestry.com, I wanted to make sure I had connected to the right people.

I have met a few cousins on  Ancestry.com.  I met a male cousin from Colorado one night.  I realized he was researching my mom's aunt.  I went to look at this tree.  After looking at his tree I determined he was my mom's first cousin's son.  At that time I didn't have a single picture of my great-grandmother.  He sent me the first one.  Talk about being excited !  Wow! Since then I have rounded up several more.

Later on I had been entering information about my dad's much older half-sister.  One night I got a message from someone saying I had the last name spelled incorrectly and that was why I wasn't finding any information on this person.  She also included information telling me where I could find her in a couple of census records.  I immediately responded and asked how do you know so much about this person.  She said it was her great aunt, her grandmother's sister.  I realized not only had I found information on the person I was looking for, I had also found a descendant of her sister.  

She wanted to know how I was related.  I told her the person was my father's half-sister, a child of my grandfather.  She said, "James Plummer is your grandfather?  He was my great-grandfather! How old are you?"  When I told her that I was more than 25 years younger than her she was really confused. I told her that my dad was one of James Plummer's children but he was much younger than the older children.  Then to top that off my dad was forty-five when I was born.  One we determined that we were really related, and we were first cousins once removed, she wanted to talk.

It wasn't long before we were on the phone.  She knew my grandfather!  She also knew some of my dad's  older siblings.  She knew them when she was much younger.  It was great to hear her tell stories of people that I only had names for.  I was able to tell her about other descendants that she didn't know anything about.  What a great time.

After she had given me the name of my aunt, I was able to find the death certificate.  She wanted to know how I had found it.  She had been looking for it for years.  It wasn't long before we were on Facetime so we could see what the other looked like.  We had a time set up to meet recently, but a snow storm came in.  Now she is away for the winter, so in the spring I hope to meet my cousin in person for the first time.

This is my cousin's grandmother's family from Ancestry.com.