52 Ancestors Week 5: Branching Out

 From Amy Johnson Crow: The theme for Week 5 and for February (for those of you doing the 12 Ancestors in 12 Months version) is "Branching Out." Have you branched out your research into looking at your collateral relatives? Made any good discoveries in records beyond the usual census and vital records? Or maybe you've discovered an ancestor who branched out in his or her education or occupation. Be creative!

Sometimes you need to see the big picture

   

     THIS JUST IN! Before I begin this week's blog I have a very exciting announcement to make! As of this morning, February 3rd, 2022, my 2nd great-grandmother Domenica Gullo is no longer a brick wall. After months and months of asking the commune office in San Pietro a Maida who her parents were, I finally got my answer when I woke up and checked my e-mail. Their names are Francesco Gullo and Caterina Butruce. They were born some time in either 1849 or 1851 (Or even earlier). I will definitely be looking for them as my friends and I in WikiTree's Italy Project have been sorting out births in the town from 1800 to 1861. This is HUGE and I wanted to share my excitement with everyone! It's only February and this has made my top ten discoveries of 2022! Now for the rest of the blog.

    Branching out is a very important thing to do in genealogy. I can't think of any time when I didn't want to add cousins and build my way down to the present. When I started my tree on Ancestry, I didn't just add my direct ancestors. I added my aunts and uncles, their kids (my first cousins), their kids and so on. It didn't take long before my tree became a forest and at the time of this writing it's at a hefty 7,898 people. About two hundred and sixty of them are DNA matches. Just so you know I am not a hoarder of trees by any stretch of the imagination. I just come from very large families. VERY large families. My mother alone has over fifty first cousins!

Melvina Lefebvre

    Beyond first cousins, branching out is important when you work on a site like WikiTree because you never know who you might bump into while you're adding a profile here or there. A cousin may contact you out of the blue and would hopefully be nice and ask "Hey. Why do you have ____ on the tree?". That's why the site makes for great cousin bait. Here is a recent example. This is Malvina Lefebvre. She was the wife of Pierre Cardran. Pierre was the son of my 3rd great-grandparents, Pierre Cadran and Marie Eulalie Bibeau. I created the profile in February of 2019 and it sat there for three years before someone attached the photo and contacted me on Find a Grave about Malvina.

    I explained that I was connected to her via her husband Pierre and that I was growing the tree. I like including all of the children a couple might have and I like building the tree down to the present day. It gives the tree a sense of completion. I don't like leaving people out. I've even included infants who unfortunately died young. It's sad. But, it needs to be done. No one gets left behind on my watch!

    You might have noticed Pierre has a little "DNA" icon next to his parents' name on WikiTree. That indicates that the profile has been DNA confirmed via a DNA test. You can do DNA confirmation on Wikitree up to your third cousin. In this case, the source is one of my mother's third cousins who descends from one of Pierre and Melvina's children. As it happens, the person who messaged me was a descendant of one of their other children and is also a DNA match on Ancestry I hadn't added to the tree even though Pierre and Melvina had been there for years!

Josephine really liked fancy
hats.

    We got to talking via e-mail about the Cadran family. I asked important questions like "Why is the family name spelled so differently all over the place?" Seriously. I've seen it spelled "Cardran", "Cardrant", "Cardrin", Cadren" and who knows how many other ways. I haven't got an answer back. But, I'm sure I will. There has to be a definitive answer for that name's spelling. Or it could just be one big mess. My grandmother spelled it Cadran in her genealogy book. Is it accurate? Who can say? Only the French-Canadians know for sure.

    My cousin and I exchanged photographs and since he shared many of Melvina's pictures with me, I decided to share this one of Josephine Cardran and her husband, Noah Robidoux. Josephine was Lucie and Pierre's sister and we both have DNA matches who descend from those two. It was only fair since he shared so many pictures and I really wanted to pay it forward, you know? It was the least I could do. I put his great-grandmother up on WikiTree.

    As it turns out, his wife is quite the genealogist. They have photos, documents and who knows how much stuff in their possession. I then took it upon myself to ask a question. "Do you have Lucie Cadran's photograph?" It was only fair to ask because they might. You never know. My cousin said he'd look in his archives to see if they had one. I am hoping they do because it would be so awesome and another one of my great discoveries of 2022 and we're only in February! With so many discoveries being made already, I feel like this year will be one of the best on the genealogy front! Here's hoping I get more discoveries.

   

Now available on Amazon!

    The Cadran story is one of many stories I have where branching out proved to be a great idea. When you have a tree on a site like WikiTree you'll definitely want to include all siblings because of things like cousin bait. Now, would I build the tree there to the present? Eh....maybe not because of privacy issues and everything. That doesn't mean you shouldn't do it on a site like Ancestry. Like WikiTree, living people are kept private and you can build it down to your DNA matches without a problem. I've done it and it's greatly helped me to understand the family dynamics, who is connected to who and how we're all related. You need a scorecard to sort through the mess and my tree is no exception!

   Of course building a tree downward to DNA matches isn't the only way I branch out the old family tree. Books like "Italians in Haverhill" provide information on my relatives I wouldn't have been able to get otherwise. In fact, it prompted me to create a study of the book. You can check it out here. While I may be connected to a little over fifty people in the book (so far), looking at it helped me to understand Haverhill at the time my ancestors were around and even take a peek into their FAN club because chances are good Vincenzo Ferraiolo, Maria Tedesco, Giuseppe Carrabs and Clementina Forgione were friends with or were relatives of the people inside those pages.

   This is all just the tip of the iceberg. Sufficed it to say I've branched out in many ways because I believe it actually helps the tree. Sure you can add your parents and the direct lines and everything. But, where's the fun in that? I think it's much better when you've added more people because it adds meat to your tree. (Eww. Meat tree. Gross.) When you build it out like I have, it makes for great cousin bait as evidenced by the Cadran story and using books like "Italians in Haverhill". There are many tools in a genealogist's arsenal. Do whatever it takes to make your tree grow into a forest. How far should you take it? That's up to you. Personally, I like including everyone because I'm a bit of a completionist. Come on. I read comics. Did you honestly expect less of me? It's not hoarding if you're connected to the 7,000 people in your tree somehow.

 See ya next time!