Serendipity Sunday - Two Steps Forward, One Step Back

I connected with a new-found distant cousin this week, and it reminded me....
sometimes going forwards, helps you to go back.

I was stuck with my genealogy on my father's side of the family, both his mother's family from England and his father's family from Ireland. There were no member trees on Ancestry with the same family to even give me a hint of where to look.  On the paternal side I did have an Irish Pedigree for the family and the names of my 2x great grandparents in Canada, but no proof of connection between the two. I didn't know how they met, where or when they married, or who her family was. On the maternal side I was stuck in Bath.

So I started back at the 2x great grandparents and researching all siblings and aunts and uncles I worked my way forward to try to find living relatives. I posted on Ancestry message boards, I contacted owners of trees who seemed to have a common person, I left messages on other forums, and I left my surname list on facebook groups for my area of research. It took a while but I finally got bites and each new relative I connected with had a piece of the puzzle, or in one instance with 3 of us newly-acquainted cousins brainstorming we were able to put together the story of our family. 

In both family cases, it was like a big dam holding everything back, and when I could finally poke holes in the dam, all my ancestors came flooding through, happy to finally be discovered and tell me their stories!

Not only did I discover more about my ancestors, but my living family has grown, with cousins all over the world. Here are some relationships of the ones that keep in touch:

2 - 2nd cousins   
3 - 3rd cousins
1 - 1st cousin 1x removed
1 - 2nd cousin 1x removed
4 - 3rd cousins 1x removed
1 - 3rd cousin 2x removed   
2 - 4th cousins


There are many more distant cousins and wives of cousins that exchanged their stories with me too.

Two steps forward, one step back..... and back, and back...