When the lost are found

Most of us have many lost relatives in our trees. As a rule, the sisters seem to disappear more often than the brothers.

Men rarely change their names. Perhaps they were called by their middle name as a child and then used their given name as an adult or vice versa. Not always, but often enough, there's enough clues to tie the given and middle name users together. It's much harder if it's a female who was known by either a given or middle name as a child, then switched to the other as an adult, usually about the time they took a husband and brand new last name.

Marriage records can be found, but sometimes, often enough it's almost impossible to find them on some of our relatives from long ago.

In my case, I knew my great, great grandfather had an older sister. I had a fairly good idea the names of his younger sisters, but no clue what his older sisters name was, or might be. All I knew was in the 1830 census there was a female and in the 1840 census there was a female that might be this sister. The age wasn't exactly correct, but I'd long suspected that she was born during a census year, so if the enumeration happened prior to her birthday, the age would fit.

Still, it's very hard to track down a person when the only information you have is a probable year of birth and a surname.

Deep down, I suspected she lived to adulthood. The reasoning behind this belief was that there's a cemetery where all the family was buried prior to when she would have reached adulthood. There was not a female that fit her buried there. Her baby brothers were buried there. Her mother was buried there. A cousin was buried there. A probable infant aunt was buried there. But no one that would fit her information was buried there, even as limited as the information was.

I couldn't find a marriage record that fit her.

I expected she would be the great unknown. The one I never located or knew anything about.

Then last week my cousin stopped by and we compared genealogy notes. There was so much information being passed back and forth. He gave me a copy of the notes he was working on regarding another shared family line. I glanced at it, but didn't read it at that time. It was a line that I've only flirted with, but haven't really studied. I set the notes aside for another day.

Early in the week, Monday or Tuesday. I believe it was Tuesday. I found the notes and read through them. Buried in the notes pertaining to another line of our ancestors was a name that I hadn't seen before that pertained to my great, great grandfathers line. Who was this woman.

Since the family she was staying with had been misspelled it took some time to find the actual image of the census where she was listed by name. Also her surname was misspelled. There she was. The probable sister of my great, great grandfather. The one I suspected would be lost forever.

I emailed a distant cousin. The one I share all my finds, proven and unproven, with. She mentioned that someone by that name married Oscar Smith. Off I went to find Oscar Smith in the next census for that area. There they were. A probable step child suggesting that my great, great grandfather's sister was a second wife, plus two children who were probably blood relatives. The son did not appear to live to adulthood. The daughter did. She married and had 8 children, six of who appeared to live to adulthood.

As I did a quick look at family trees for this new line, I saw names that I've been studying for so long, assuming my family had married into them at some point.

I can't say with 100% accuracy that this is the family of my great, great grandfather's sister, but I'm 95% sure it is.

Accept that some of our family might never be found, but learn what you can about them so you will recognize them if they do appear.

Now if I could stumble upon what happened to Uncle Milton McCune.