Page 5 - Cousins - Celebrities, Saints & Sinners

Perhaps the greatest discovery of this “Genealogy Reawakening” happening in the second half
of 2019. At that time, our son Sean decided to test his DNA with a company called 23andme,
and to everyone’s surprise, discovered a close family tie to a previously unknown relative.
Several weeks of phone calls and email messages subsequently revealed that she was my half-
sister and my father’s daughter. We also learned that it is likely that our father never realized
that his encounter with her mother in 1944, resulted in her birth approximately one and a half
years before I was born.

The genealogy-related event that sparked this writing attempt also followed a circuitous route.
On a couple of occasions our daughter, Arliana, had told us about a genealogy-based TV series
known as Relative Race. My wife and I began watching the show, which is on the BYU television
network, and it rapidly became one of our favorites. Again, on Lia’s prompting, I also signed up
for their Fans of Relative Race Facebook page. Some months later another member of the page
mentioned an online program sponsored by the Mormons through their FamilySearch
genealogy Web site known as Relative Finder. It sounded interesting and after some searching, I
was finally able to find it in November 2019.

I have connected to the FamilySearch site for years through my Family Tree Maker software
and have pursued their family matching “tips” on several occasions. I also recently uploaded my
GEDCOM to their database and went through a matching process that cleared up several
genealogy inconsistencies on both their side and mine. As a result, even though their database
is generally viewed as one of the largest and best, I know for a fact that you do run into
inconsistencies from time to time. Regardless, the design of their Relative Finder program is
unique and provides genealogical connectivity on a level I have never encountered before.

As you look at the personalities highlighted in this book your immediate reaction will be that
this cannot possibly be true; no one could be related to that many prominent people! However,
very few people have added their family tree to a database that connects them to over a billion
people in this way. For example, most genealogists tend to follow their family tree “vertically”
as you sift through the generations that came before you. Using myself as an example, I spent
years tracking my Armstrong ancestry back for six generations. However, all our trees have
branches as the brothers and sisters of our ancestors begin their own families who, in turn,
produce additional generations of descendants. It is an ambitious researcher, indeed, who can
find the time to research all these additional cousins and their families, especially when large
families of five to ten children or more was not unusual just three or four generations ago!

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