Our Crazy Connections

Over the years of researching the ancestors of my family and that of my husband, I’ve discovered that some of my most thrilling moments come when I discover CONNECTIONS. Yes, I love the stories and the photos, but I seem to get most excited when I’m researching a family line and see a name that I remember being connected to another family line that I’ve researched. I have a pretty good brain for remembering names. Last night I was corresponding with my friend Jill by email and learned of another connection to my husband’s family. My husband Larry is colored blue in the above pedigree. Jill is “in the pink”.

The connection she told me of is not even represented in the above diagram, but just for the record I’ll explain it here: Near the bottom right is the name Annie Kendall, wife of Henry Metz. After Henry died, Annie married George Baker. Above Henry’s name in the pedigree is the name Margaret Dixon, wife of William Budge. Margaret’s mother, Mary Ann, was married first to John Dixon, but after his death, she married that same George Baker.

I’m just blown away when I learn these facts. And I don’t want to hear that common response “Well, we’re all related anyway!” When anyone says that to me, my reply is “Show me how”!

At the bottom right of the pedigree is Eleanor Kendall, wife of Dennis Campbell and sister of the above-mentioned Annie Kendall. You might be able to see that Eleanor Kendall’s 3rd great grandson is my husband Larry Jamison.

When Annie was first married to Henry Metz, she had a daughter Mary Ann, who had a daughter Viola Hawkins, who had a daughter Marie Boice, who had a daughter Gene Marie Linford. I’ve colored her name lavendar. Although Gene resides in Alaska, she and I have corresponded a lot by email and she’s provided me with quite a lot of family information, stories, and wonderful old photographs.

The pedigree shows that Gene’s mother Marie had a sister Eva Boice who married Melvin Knight. Melvin’s father was John Miner Knight, who first married Florence Cornell, and second married Mary Budge, daughter of William Budge and Margaret Dixon, again, the great-grandparents of my friend Jill “in the pink”.

As I was looking at the ancestry of John Miner Knight I saw that his grandfather was Minor Grant Atwood. I remembered the name Minor Grant Atwood from research I’d done about 8 years ago! A quick review of my database proved me right, as I found that Minor Atwood was the great-grandfather of Harold David Preece, who is married to Phyllis Batchman. If you can see the pedigree above, at the top left you see that Phyllis’s mother Esta Becker was a sister of my grandmother Nannie Becker. I’ve colored Phyllis’s name yellow and mine is dark pink. Phyllis is a first cousin to my mother Ruby Flanders so she’s my first cousin, once removed.

Another connection that I have not shown in this pedigree diagram is the Batchman connection between Phyllis Batchman at top left and Priscilla Radke, mother of Jill Budge. Priscilla’s grandmother was Mary Ann Batchman, and Phyllis’s grandfather was Mary Ann’s brother Franklin Nicholas Batchman. This makes Priscilla Radke Budge and Phyllis Batchman Preece second cousins.

In about 30 minutes before I went to bed last night, I created the above pedigree diagram in Publisher so I could get all these connections drawn out and pieced together to show my husband, who “reads in pictures”, as I’ve discovered. He’s a visual person and was pleased with the picture I created to show him these crazy family connections. It looks like a maze, but is interesting to see how two of my wonderful genealogy friends are connected to me and to my husband and to each other.

Maybe I’ll develop the diagram further to show the connection through the Haught family line from Jill Budge to Larry’s grandmother Rhea Haught (shown in the center of the bottom above). Or the connection of Jill’s mother Priscilla Radke’s great grandmother Catherine Stockdale to her great, grandniece and Larry’s aunt: Sara Lee Thompson (wife of his uncle William Jamison).

Whoa, maybe I’d better stop where I am and leave it as a maze, rather than turn it into a spider web! Oh, these crazy connections. I love discovering them and studying them. And yes, I even love developing the diagrams to illustrate them!