Sometimes it pays to enter a little extra

I really think I must be related to over 1/2 of Lehigh County, Pennsylvania.  The other day I entered information on a Schlosser family.  This is NOT a direct line of mine, but I have several in my database.  Because of having so many, I went ahead and entered parents of the Schlosser...who didn't match any in the database.  I discovered the next generation of parents' names and enter them.  Still no matches.  Found another generation...they were in the database.  Related.  So the Schlosser marrying into the family was/is actually another cousin.  Distant cousin marrying a distant cousin.  I did not check to see if they were distant cousins of each other. There is a possibility of that.

Oh, by the way, your husband's sister-in-law is my cousin, too.

Today's adventure started out with an obituary.  Nothing unusual so far.  As I entered locations of the children I realized the one daughter (my distant cousin) was listed without a husband.  I knew she was married at one point so either they were divorced or he passed away.  I googled him and found his obituary.

As I have pointed out before, I list parents and sometimes siblings from obituaries as I seem to be related to over half of the people in the county.  I double checked his siblings against my database.  There's a possible match.  Richard H.

I check more details.  It is a match.  But why is Richard H. and his wife listed in my database?  He has no parents listed, no children listed.  I click on his wife.  OMG.  His wife is my 5th cousin. 

Maybe I'm related to two-thirds of the county!

(The other brother, Ronald, is not in the database...yet!)

I wonder if they are cousins to each other...

William, a 4th cousin 1x removed, married Ruth.  After I entered Ruth's information I noticed have her name twice in my database.  I check.  Sure enough.  The two Ruth's are the same.  Ruth is my 6th cousin.  Just for fun I ought to check and see what cousins they are to each other since they are in the same branch of my family.

As I check I discover I am related to Ruth twice.

I am pretty sure William and Ruth are cousins. 

Ruth is his 6th cousin.  I wonder if they knew...

What's the Story?

I suppose it's really none of my business, but I still wonder.  Stella and George had a daughter together and then divorced.  The daughter, Cordella, is listed on the 1920 census with her maternal grandfather, mother and step-father.  She is on the census with her mother and step-father in 1930 and 1940.  In 1940 she is listed with her step-father's surname.  Did he adopt her?

I found her obituary and she lists her stepfather as her father.

I found her biological father on the census.  He remarried shortly after 1920 to a woman with the same name as his first wife.  They had two children together.

The half-brother and sister are not listed in Cordella's obituary.  Did she know about them?

HOLY MOLY!  I just discovered Stella's second husband is my 6th cousin.  She is my 4th cousin 1x removed.

I'm so confused.

The website shows Claude with one wife and one son.

The Ohio Divorce Index shows him divorced from a different wife in 1997, married in approximately 1974.  Hmmm, apparently he was married twice.

The son's obituary shows his mother's maiden name as Cox instead of Lee.  His father is listed as a survivor.  There is no mention of a step-mother.  Oh my, he has a SISTER! 

As I enter data, Ancestry is finding possible matches for me.  Now I have a couple of family trees to look at. 

There is a third wife....and another daughter.  Is this wife the mother of the sister mentioned in the obituary?

Claude's obituary lists another wife and says they've been married 37 years.

Something is not right here.

Later.....

Well, I'm still confused.  I've been researching all of them trying to make sense of all of this.  Now I've discovered the one daughter is NOT Claude's (unless the wife's second husband adopted her or she used his name).   The Ohio Birth Index lists the other husband as her father.  She is not listed in Claude's obituary.  Her 'birth' father, Jerry, didn't marry her mother until four years after her birth.

Bad Words! Bad Words!

I entered family information fast and furiously for a week and then went out of town.  I discovered a family website with connections to my family.   I thought I would enter the data and then go back and document it.

I posted earlier about the back up problem, well, that was minor in some ways. 

I discovered the program has been storing my file on my c hard drive.  I always use the external drive and assumed the program was opening the file on the external drive.  WRONG! 

At this point I'm confused.  I don't think I can explain what all I've done to cause the confusion, but I've done a great job of it.

After I discovered the 'main' files on the c drive I backed up the two I determined to be the most recent and tried a merge.  I fell asleep during the merge and the computer also went to sleep.  Big mistake.

Today I tried the merge again and as soon as I spent an hour and a half going through flagged entries the Windows shut the program down.  I have to assume the files are damaged.

I restored the backups and re-backed them up.  I'm trying the merge again.  If it doesn't work this time I may want to consider re-entering the data for a third time.

The first time was on one file and had no sources other than the family tree.

I could not find the file with the week's worth of data entry.  (Damn, I wish I would have realized at THIS point about the c hard drive!)  So, the second time was on a different file and entered with sources but I didn't finish entering the data as it took longer since I documented as I entered.

The third time?  Well, I'm hoping there is no third time.  Please merge work!

Same name problems

When googling a distant cousin, I found articles that horrified me.  More investigation taught me my cousin shares a name with someone else in the area.  I feel for the cousin as we had problems in our small town with someone with the same name as my husband.  We had to get an attorney to straighten some of it out.

Not only do I feel for my cousin who probably has to constantly explain he is not the same person as the one who committed the awful crimes, my heart breaks for the child involved.