As professional genealogists, we help people learn about and connect with their ancestors every day. But did you know that we also help people connect with living relatives?
One case we worked on involved a family of eleven children who were split up after a tragedy in the early 1900s. The children of the youngest daughter, only a toddler at the time, had grown up never knowing they had a large extended family of aunts and uncles and cousins. We were able to trace almost all of the ten siblings as they moved forward with their lives, separating to follow various occupations across the western United States. The client and his sister received a whole new family that welcomed them with open arms.
Genetic genealogy has brought similar results for clients who were finally able to identify their biological father and have subsequently been accepted into the extended family as a long-lost brother.
We have also successfully been able to track down living relatives for clients in their ancestors’ country of origin. This has been especially helpful in obtaining crucial background genealogy information to jumpstart researching their family history in that particular country.
And finally, we are sometimes even able to connect one client with another. A recent client was going through some materials that had been passed around the extended family and discovered an old report we had put together. Having worked with us herself, she requested that we give her contact information to the other client who had ordered the old project. The clients then connected with each other and confirmed not only a distant cousinship, but also a shared love of learning about their family history.
Our work brings families together, literally. Lives are touched, families strengthened, and people find common ground when they find common ancestry. We love what we do!
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