My female relatives can be as slippery as secret agents. They pop up on my radar, only to blip out again. They use nicknames, aliases, and other sorts of identity tricks. With chameleon-like proclivities, the women in my searches have pushed me to the limits of my skills and over the edge of frustration. Consider the case of my father's cousin about whom my generation knew virtually nothing.

I began my family history search more than a decade ago with a hand-drawn diagram of four generations of family made by my father's cousin Paul, the eldest of our clan. I sorted out the uncles, aunts, and cousins I knew from childhood and, in the intervening years, discovered cousins the family had lost touch with.

Now I was left with a single unknown. Under the neat boxes for Paul's uncle John, and his wife Rose, was a daughter noted as Alice “Addy.” I had no dates or locations, but Paul did remember the name of the man she married.

On a research trip to...

[ Read More ] - Click Here