2021-10 Oct - Find Your Cousins

Oct 7, 2021 family history cousins

From your Ward Temple & Family History Consultants:

Find Your Cousins

Close family is great. Direct lines are great too. But, don’t forget your cousins. For Oct 2021, we invite everyone to find a cousin on FamilySearch.org. Especially if your family history chart looks mostly filled out. This is a surprisingly productive way to add more people.

What is a fifth cousin, twice removed anyway? See https://www.familysearch.org/blog/en/cousin-chart/?cid=lihp-ftc-8051 for a good explanation.

Serendipity or Blessings? You decide. For me, this was a blessing. Here is the story of how I found this approach.

A year or so ago, I found that by sticking to one small town where one person in my family was from that I could find lots of information easier because as I became familiar with more of the names in that smaller network of people, the connections became clear enough to document in familysearch.org.

So one day (perhaps Aug 2021), wanting to tithe some time to family history, but not knowing where to apply myself, I picked a state I knew our family had lived and searched for all death records for that family last name. I figured, well even if these are not my people, it might help someone related to them able to take their names to the temple if I figure out the relationships. So I did twenty or so people, finding their spouse, father and mother’s names on the death certificates. Linking the certificate-identified relationships in familysearch revealed other records and find-a-grave entries, which often had obituary entries with more leads. That lead to census records which showed other generations sometimes. Other times, I simply found the link back to a line someone else had already documented in familysearch.

Anyway, after a few times of finding their grandparents lines already done, I thought I’d try the “View My Relationship” function at the top of anyone’s person page. I was dumbfounded! It turned out that 19 of the 20 people I thought I was donating time to were, in fact, cousins that no one had yet identified as related to our family. What a blessing!

Having had some success, next over the next weeks, I did all the death records in one state from 1700 to 1900 and probably 90% were related, though some more distantly. That many took a while, but again I found cousins. The “View My Relationship” was the reward when it worked. For those that I could find no one further back, it was “No relationship found”. Then I did this for two other states I knew our family had migrated to way back and got similar results.

I found this finding-cousins approach by accident. You are welcome to try it or create your own approach. I’m just sharing my cousin-finding travels because of how good it felt.

HOW TO

1. Start with a prayer for help from heaven. I have had countless times of inspiration to check this or that, which lead to another person in my family tree.

2. Select a less common name in your tree. For example, I have Baker and Jones and there are thousands of them. So I started with my last name instead.

3. If you know the general part of the world your family lived, pick a place. For example, I knew we had some of my family in Missouri, so I picked the entire state of Missouri as my start point.

4. Go to Familysearch.org. In the top of the page menu, select “Search”, then “Records”. The site has changed recently so the page may not seem as familiar yet.

5. Enter the last name, and state (or other wide geographic area you pick). Then select the “Search” button.

6. Notice the “Advanced Search” window on the right of the screen. Go there and select “Death”.

• NOTE: I’m picking Death records because they more often include Father’s name, Mother’s name, and Spouse’s name.

7. For the year range, pick somewhere between 1700 and 1900 for easiest effort. Picking more recent dates results in living people which complicates things and does not help take names to the Temple. Then press the “Search” button.

8. On the results page look for ones WITHOUT the linked icon (that shows someone has already linked this record to a name on the familysearch family tree).

9. Open another window on familysearch, but for this window at the top of the page menu, select “Search”, then “Family Tree”. Type all you found out from the death cert (birth date, birth location, death date, death location, spouse, father, mother) and press “Search”. Sometimes you’ll find the person already has a record. Other times you won’t find it.

10. If you find an existing record, link the death cert you found to their record.

11. If no record, select from top of page sub-menu Recents, and at the bottom select Add Unconnected Person. Then make a record for this person.

• CAUTION: Sometimes when you’re adding the record, you’ll find other records that may or may not be them too. You’ll have to make a judgment call. I often add the record, link the death cert, and only then do I check for other partial person records that could be them too.

That’s all folks (Imagine you hear the Looney Tunes cartoon sound track in the background).

To me, this approach felt like finding an old mine and seeing a streak of gold that had not yet been mined out. Woot! I hope you find it as rewarding for your cousins as I did for mine.

Yes, there were some people for whom I’m not related and I ended up donating time for them, but my secondary benefit of that is that in future family history work, I won’t get confused when I run into that name again and wonder who that was and whether or not they were in our lines. So over all, my cost-to-benefit analysis for me shows this was a worthwhile approach. You decide for you. Let me know if you find people too.

HERE A LITTLE, THERE A LITTLE - Feel better by doing small & simple things. Great things come to pass over time, so don’t give up. We can help you start!

Happy to serve you,

Your Ward Temple & Family History Consultants (call, text, or zoom any one of us for help with your family history)