A good mystery can't be left alone...not by me, anyway. For years I've been digging up roots....MY roots. I've run into some surprises along the way as to who I'm related to, usually in some off-shoot way. My recent exploration of my children's father's side of the family brought me a possible new, yet distant, relationship between an old friend and my children.
My friend's grandfather's family was from somewhere in the Bahamas. So was my ex-husband's grandmother's family. It had always been difficult for me to find anything about Grandmother Carrie except US censuses, until I purchased a subscription to the Worldwide version of Ancestry.com. There I found her in a passenger list, coming to the USA from the Bahamas with her husband and her first few of many children. I assume that they had been to visit her family there, as I knew from the US census that she'd been living in the states for years. I continued my search and discovered that her father had been married prior to marrying Carrie's mother. Lo and behold, right there in the same town, the surname of his first wife was exactly that of my friend! That news warrants further investigation.
The other day I placed a note on a genealogy site, listing the surnames of my ancestors. Another surprise came as a result. A friend with whom I've recently reconnected asked if I knew that her surname is also connected with one of my ancestral names. Again...furter investigarion is required to relieve the curiosity as to how, if at all, we are connected.
I think I should have been/should be a professional ancestral investigator, I so enjoy it! Not only do I revel in the digging up of my own skeletons, but I love the thrill of connecting others to theirs. Some may call it 'nosey', some may call it curiosity. As for me, I call it intriguing and worthy of the search. I think everyone ought to know who their family is.
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