Saturday, October 22, 2011

Finding a Cousin Connection in an old National Geographic

In order to spend our 17th wedding anniversary together today, my husband and I took a drive through the mountains to visit a small, quaint town about an hour south of our home--Westcliffe, Colorado. We had a nice lunch and stopped to browse in an antique shop before heading home. I'm always drawn to the books in any store, so I was thrilled to find a long wall covered with a book case loaded with books. Many were just paperback fiction, but I noticed a National Geographic among the offerings. I pulled it off the shelf and saw the date: July, 1927. An 84 year old magazine! It was in excellent shape (better than the magazine in the above photo) and on the cover I read that the contents contained a story titled "Strange Habits of Familiar Moths and Butterflies", by William Joseph Showalter.
I knew that my husband's 4th great grandmother was named Veronica Showalter. Okay, to be honest, I knew "some great grandmother" but had to look up the number! 
From my research when I got home this evening I was able to develop this chart showing how my husband Larry Jamison is related to this author, William Joseph Showalter.
They are 4th cousins 4 generations apart (or as people say 4th cousins, 4 times removed). I usually don't use those terms because most people are totally lost when we start using the "times removed" terminology. The chart above shows simply that if we go back 4 generations from Larry to his great, great grandmother Veronica Morris, that she was a 4th cousin of William J. Showalter. 
By the way, I picked up this magazine for a mere $3 and tonight I see it listed on eBay for $17. That's a good investment. 

1 comment:

Bill West said...

Love the serendipity! Great post!