Fun with Genealogy

A dismal day, so let's have fun with genealogy. It can be very fun you know. Really. Just wait.

Tomorrow Bill and I are going to go to Corvallis to see my "family" down there. My father married my step-mom when I was 11 years old, and this is my step-mom's family I am talking about. As some of you know, Rainy Day in Oregon is my "cousin". Her mom and my step-mom were sisters. I've known Jeri since she was a bit older than her granddaughter, Gracie. So, over the years this family became my family too. Then I got interested in genealogy and I've done my family, my husband's family and I started to continue the research Jeri's mom had done on their family. Which, by the way, is a really, really interesting line. Lots of good New England stuff there.

Which brings me to this image that you see. Rowland Lovejoy and his wife had several children. The second son John left England for a new life in Andover, Massachusetts and was the progenitor of the New England branch of the Lovejoy family. The first born son, Robert stayed in England but his grandson, Joseph left and went to Prince George's County, Maryland and became the founder of the "Southern Branch" of the Lovejoy family.

So...here's the "fun". I am descended from Joseph Lovejoy as my grandmother was born a Lovejoy. My Corvallis family descends from John Lovejoy, the New England branch. After all these years, it wasn't that long ago that I was able to connect the Lovejoy dots and find out that my step-mom is my 10th cousin once removed and Jeri and her sister are my 11th cousins. That means that 11 generations ago, we had a common ancestor in Rowland Lovejoy.

My stepmom and my mother, both having been married to my dad, were 10th cousins, if I've figured that out right. Now, you can't tell me that isn't fun...can you?

There are actually two other instances where their and my family come together. Their Teagarden family lived in the same county as my Lovejoy's and I've seen them on the same census reports, and country histories. They may have known of one another. And they are distant cousins to John Smith and on my father's side, the Stewart family were some of the early Mormon (LDS) who traveled with John Smith and then Brigham Young to Utah. I am related to the Stewarts and the Udall family, which gave us Stewart Udall, Secretary of the Interior to JFK, plus a lot of other Udall politicians. Anyway....I thought it was fascinating how our families intertwined a few times and then we really did become cousins!