Friday, December 16, 2011

"My God, there's more of us!!"

my sister exclaimed when I forwarded to her an email from a third cousin we had never heard of. It has been a very eventful week. For years we have been trying to figure out our family tree only to get almost nowhere. Out of the blue, I get an email from distant cousin Irene. It immediately started a flurry of emails back and forth between Irene, my sister and me. Irene has done a phenominal job. My great grandmother's maiden name was Kiley. Irene is descended from my great grandmother's mother's sister.....What a mouthful.



Our exhanges have been cordial and helpful. She sent us 14 pages of our lineage. Unfortunately, we don't have a lot of things in writing, but we do have a lot of family lore handed down orally. Some of it a bit off color. :-) Wonder what Cousin Irene will think of us when we tell her some of the stories?? We hope to meet up in the spring after the snows recede from upstate New York.



One of the biggest stumbling blocks was in the spelling of our last name. Fore some unknown reason, my Grandfather changed the spelling of his last name, which is what completely threw me off when I tried researching anyone prior to his generation. I'll be busy again on the weekends updating my tree on Ancestry.com for sure.