Genealogy is not just about reaching out to find dead ancestors. It is also about connecting with living relatives. This concept was highlighted recently when a gentleman came into our Tuesday afternoon Genealogist Is In session.
His name is Smith and he was looking for a long lost cousin also named Smith...
GROAN!
For anyone who doesn't already know, SMITH is the most common surname in the United States., with 2.376 MILLION people having the name. That is half a million more than the runner-up surname: JOHNSON. So tracking down a SMITH can be problematic just because it is so common.
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SMITH is the most common surname in all but a handful of states.
Map and key found on WikiCommons, contributed by User:MB298/Maps |
Another complication is that the gentleman believes that this cousin is still living. More recent records, of people still living, can be harder to find just because of various legal restrictions put into place to protect privacy and inhibit identity theft.
But the gentleman had a fair amount of information, so I was willing to try to help him.
This is the information he had:
His cousin's name at birth was Doris Jean SMITH, born around 1945 somewhere near McKeesport, Pennsylvania. Her parents were Kathrerine (WALLACE) SMITH and Denis SMITH. She had a brother named David. She married a man named KENNEDY and they had a daughter named Michelle.
OUCH! KENNEDY? Another fairly common surname. Oh, well, we carried on.
McKeesport is in Allegheny County in Pennsylvania. You might be more familiar with another city in Allegheny County - Pittsburgh.
So, we are searching in the vicinity of a major metropolitan area for the surname KENNEDY, nee SMITH.
Kathryn and Denis had divorced and were both deceased. Kathryn never remarried. The gentleman had many little stories about the family and shared a handful of family photos. Everyone in the photos shared the surname SMITH.
We searched in both Ancestry LE and FamilySearch.org, but was only able to turn up one item that
might be Doris Jean SMITH. It was a yearbook picture from Indiana University of Pennsylvania that said the individual was an Elementary Education Major and was from Clariton, PA. Clariton is also in Allegheny County. The record indicated that her birthdate was 1947, a few years off. However, there wasn't a clear link to
his Doris Jean. But she was a possible.
We spent a full hour searching from different angles, like looking for her mother's obituary, but still wasn't finding anything. He shared that he had several living cousins, one who organized the family reunion, that he could call and ask. As we had run out of time, I encouraged him to phone his cousins and wished him luck.
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The Genealogist Is In! is a weekly program held at the Medina Library
every Tuesday from 1-4 p.m. One of the staff genealogists works with
members to help solve family research problems. |
He came back the next week. He had called his cousins and they had no information on Doris Jean.
Then he pulled out one of the little snapshots he had shown me before that included his cousin as a young child. And he pulled out the yearbook photo we had found. The smile, the dimples, the nose, the eyes were the same! While it wasn't a positive identification, there was a definite resemblance.
He shared something that he hadn't before, Aunt Katherine was known by the nickname "Kay". So we started searching for that name, hoping that her obituary would list information on her daughter. We weren't turning anything up, but then I noticed a detail that made all the difference. Katherine spelled her name
Kathryn. Now both Ancestry LE and FamilySearch.org return close matches when displaying their results, so I didn't think it would have made that much of a difference. But it did!
Now, we were finding high school yearbook pictures of Kathryn WALLACE (maiden name) and those photos also bore a striking resemblance to the lady, mother of Doris Jean, in his snapshots.
So we went back to looking for her obituary, using the correct spelling of her given name. And WE FOUND IT!
Now we were making some progress. The obituary listed her daughter as Doris Jean KENNEDY, wife of John and her granddaughter as Michelle. But seriously? John KENNEDY. We knew he hadn't been president of the United States, but still there had to be scores of John KENNEDYs.
And there were. DOZENS of them showed up in the
Reference USA White Pages Directory for Pennsylvania. We tried cross referencing for Doris Jean KENNEDY and only 3 appeared. But none of them shared an address or a phone number with the dozens of John KENNEDYs.
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Reference USA is a subscription database available to Medina County
District Library card holders. It is primarily a database for business
statistics, but has a very reliable White Pages section. |
The obituary also gave a nickname for Doris Jean. "Dee".
Then we tried what I often try when hitting a brick wall. I Googled "Doris Jean Kennedy Pittsburgh Pa". And one of the first sites that popped up was the site Spokeo. Now I am not a huge fan of Spokeo, but one of the things it does is groups together people who might be related based on other records. And there they were: Doris Jean Kennedy, also known as Dee J. Kennedy. David Kennedy. Michelle Kennedy. John Kennedy. All the people we know are Doris Jean's relatives.
And locations: Lived in: Pittsburgh, PA. Notice the past tense? Liv
ed in? And then we looked at the current location. A totally new location. But a totally plausible location for someone of retirement age.
Back at the
Reference USA database we did a new search using the new city and state name and found a listing for Doris Jean KENNEDY that totally matched up with a John KENNEDY at the same address. And a phone number.
Now the gentleman is only a phone call away from reconnecting with his cousin.
Remember to utilize all types of techniques when doing family history research! Don't limit your searches to genealogy resources.
NEW BOOKS!
The following books were added to the local history collection in the month of April:
April 2018:
- First Congregational Church of Lodi
- Granger’s Greats in Coddingville Cemetery
- Granger’s Greats in East Granger Cemetery
- Granger’s Greats in Reid Hill Cemetery
- New Lakeshore Electric
- Trolley Trails through Greater Cleveland and Ohio
- Trolley Trails through Greater Cleveland and Ohio from 1910 to Today
SOURCES:
Ancestry Library Edition
FamilySearch.org
Findagrave.com
Reference USA - White pages
Google
Spokeo
Surname frequency in the USSmith surname
