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The Search for Our Ancestry: Collateral Lines and Distant Relatives

Angelo Coniglio | Nov 21, 2012, 6 a.m.

Each genealogy researcher has his or her own reasons for wanting to find information about his family. The Roman orator and consul Marcus Tullius Cicero (106 BC – 43 BC) put it this way: “To be ignorant of what occurred before you is to remain always a child. For what is the worth of human life, unless it is woven into the life of our ancestors by the records of history?”

For many, the search is important only as it pertains to family members known by the researcher—father, mother, grandparents, and so on—and they show little interest in earlier generations, feeling no firsthand connection with them.

Others are very interested only in their paternal line, the one that carries their own familiar surname. Still others search for both paternal and maternal lines but restrict their research to direct ancestors.

I believe these approaches reduce the rewards genealogy can bring, and whether I am doing research on my own family or on families of others, I like to include “collateral lines.” These are lines or branches of a family tree that spread “sideways” rather than back in time. Your grandfather’s brother’s family and descendants are in a line that is “collateral” with yours, as are the families and descendants of the siblings of any of your direct ancestors.

But even for those who want to know only about their direct ancestors, a little time spent on researching collateral lines may help you find valuable information about your direct line. Here’s an example.

Say your great-grandfather was Joseph Baker, and his only child was your grandfather Sam Baker. You know he’s from a country (Ireland, Sicily, Greece, etc.) in which a man named his first son after his father, so you can reasonably assume that your great-great-grandfather’s name was also Sam Baker.

But you don’t know Joseph’s father’s birth year or Joseph’s mother’s name. You do know that Joseph had a sister Rose, who married Peter Potter. You try multiple sources from the hometown of your great-grandfather and his sister, but the birth records are missing for the years in which they were born. If you insist on following only your direct line, you seem to have hit a “brick wall.”

But if you’re flexible enough to bend your research to include your great-grandfather’s sister Rose, you find that she had two boys and two girls, her second boy named Sam and her second girl named Mary. It’s reasonable to think that she followed a naming convention, and her parents (who were also your great-grandfather’s parents) were named Sam and Mary.

Further investigation of Rose’s history yields a record of her marriage to Peter Potter, and that record states her father’s name as Sam Baker, deceased, and her mother’s as Mary Miller, still living at the time of the marriage.

You now know the names of Rose (and Joseph) Baker’s parents and whether they were alive or dead in the year of Rose’s marriage. You’ve cracked the “brick wall” and may now to be able to find records for your great-great-grandparents Sam Baker and Mary Miller.

Following through with this collateral line, Rose Baker and Peter Potter’s children are your grandfather’s cousins, making them your first cousins, twice removed. Their children are your second cousins once removed, and their children are your third cousins! You would know about none of these blood relatives if you did not research a collateral line.

I’ve had several personal experiences involving collateral lines. In one case, I helped a friend who was mainly interested in the relatives he personally remembered. I convinced him to trace back a little further, and we found that he had a great-great-grandmother named Luigia Coniglio. I had never heard of her, but when we traced her line (a collateral line, to my family), we found that she was a descendant of my fourth-great-grandfather, and that my “friend” is actually my fifth cousin!

Another advantage of tracing collateral lines is not only that it may, as in the case above, reveal distant living relatives. Those relatives may also have done research on their ancestors, who turn out to be your ancestors, and thereby may be able to give you information about your direct line that you did not previously have.

This latter reason is why I post my family tree on sites such as Ancestry.com and RootsWeb (www.rootsweb.com): a distant relative may recognize a name in the tree and contact me with new information.

 

  Write to Angelo at genealogytips@aol.com or visit his website, www.bit.ly/AFCGen.
He is the author of the book The Lady of the Wheel (La Ruotaia),
based on his genealogical research of Sicilian foundlings.
For more information, see www.bit.ly/SicilianStory.

Angelo F. Coniglio's 50Plus Author's Page

 

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