Wisdom Wednesday: New-to-me Cousins

My life at the moment is full of new-to-me cousins. Some have been found by connecting through Ancestry Member Trees and to be totally accurate, most found me. It's nice connecting that way because we can look at each other's trees and spot the connection pretty fast. Patti messaged me about a possible connection a week ago wondering about our relationship because we had so many matching people on our trees. I took one look at her tree and spotted a remote connection, went to Mom's GEDCOM on Family Tree Maker and looked at our cousin relationship... and it's so far distant I think it broke FTM. Kidding, of course. We're connected through Meshack Browning and you can read about him here.

Another new-to-me cousin is cousin Norma. We share a great grandfather and found each other on the Facebook group, You Know You're From Frostburg When... after I posted a photo of him in his Frostburg Fire Department uniform and you can see a post about that here. The historian from the FFD is still trying to determine the date range of the photo but meantime, it's hanging in the new Day Room in the fire house! Norma and I have been emailing and it seems we're about the same age and she still lives in Frostburg, as does Mom. They run into each other all the time at the Food Lion, but for the life of me, I don't think I've ever met Norma... or maybe the ol' memory is going:) Yeah, that's probably it.

DNA cousins are dropping in so often it's become an everyday occurrence. Am I becoming jaded about the magic and mystery of my DNA? Not really. It's just that as I come to see how powerful testing is and how important your results can be, I'm more impressed all the time with the marvel of the science of it. Perhaps in the not-too-distant future it will be something every genealogist does automatically at the very start of their quest to find family. Last weekend at a seminar here in San Diego I had the delight of sitting next to a man who found out that his presumed grandpa wasn't. But the next door neighbor's descendants were about as close a match as you'd every want. Now that's impressive. How would you ever know that otherwise?

It makes me super happy when I connect up with a new cousin. And about the happiest I can get is when I can share by email a PDF of their family tree. More and more I see that it's all about sharing your work... and those wonderful old photos!

New Price Day Room at the Frostburg Fire Department, in Frostburg, Allegany, Maryland.

(Our donated photo is in the upper right by the bulk head.)

 

Here's the image!

 

 

Many thanks to GeneaBlogger's for their blogging prompt called Wisdom Wednesdays.

 

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