Exploring Genealogy (dad's side)

When I started to make progress on my mother's side of the family tree, I realized I wanted to learn more about my dad's side as well. On my dad's side, I remembered that my great-aunt had compiled a wealth of information into a book about the Little family. In fact, I'd helped my mother retype and update this book when I was still living at home. But I didn't have the book with me.

I contacted my sister and she was able to email me a copy of the Littles book. With that, I began to fill in my dad's maternal line on my tree. I looked at the paternal side with some frustration. I lived with Grandpa Earl and collected his stories in a notebook that is stashed somewhere at home. I felt like I should be able to recognize his family a bit further back.

Once again,  I took to looking at other people's public trees. It was while exploring these "hints" on ancestry.com that I found a picture of my great-great-grandfather, uploaded by another user. I knew that I had seen the picture before. But even more telling was the source of the picture - a book, "500 Years" by Laura Meyer and Ethel Koelling. Laura and Ethel were my grandfather's sisters. I had known both of them, albeit only as a child. I had the vague idea that I'd seen a copy of that book. Indeed, there might even be a copy in the house I shared with Grandpa Earl. But, of course, I am in Abu Dhabi.

So I contacted the user who had uploaded the picture. I asked if she had an electronic copy of the book. She did! She was able to send it to me using DropBox. As I looked at the book, I became certain that I've seen the book before. The scanned copy had even been updated to include my siblings and I under my father...in my mother's handwriting. That's a bit eerie, under the best of circumstances.

I was able to use the book to fill in some details on my father's paternal side of the tree. And as I continued to chat with the user who had uploaded the picture, I was able to clarify some details down my line as well - she had a different date of death for my grandfather, which is something I have clear memories of and an obvious time/date stamp in my mind because his funeral was the day before my law school graduation.

She sent me a black and white copy of a picture that she wasn't able to identify. I wasn't either (I'm terrible with faces, honestly), but I sent it on to my parents. Dad promptly identified his aunts, the authors of the book, though he didn't know the other two. My mom responded with a picture of her page in the book, with a color copy of that photograph.

In a common trend, she is also researching back through her husband's family tree. I think she has found our connection, but I'm still struggling to understand how ancestry.com's family tree works for this purpose. I have to draw things out to figure out the relationships.

Following the trend of finding wives researching their husband's family trees, I connected with another person on 23andMe. This wife manages the husband's profile. But her husband is predicted to be my 5th cousin on my father's side. Neither of us go back far enough to figure out what our connection is, but maybe we'll find it!