It's amazing what crops up sometimes in this endless quest for family history. I've found out a lot about the genetics that have passed on so many chronic ailments ... high blood pressure and cardiovascular issues in every generation since the 1800s, for instance. What an eye opener that was. Killed my maternal great-great-grandfather at only 35 years of age. Not even sure if he was aware of my great-grandmother's existence, as she was born 7 months later.
The latest finding was definitely a surprise. An email from one of my genealogy sources stating they had a connection to me, giving me an obituary for a man with a name that wasn't on any of my lists of those I was researching.
Many times, they give you possible connections, maybe somebody way back when with a birthdate in the same month, and year, bearing the same name as someone you are researching. I wasn't really that excited as it was in America and my ancestors were all British inasmuch as, as far as I've traced so far, despite my DNA including other countries (most of which had plundered Britain centuries before). I thought this link would just turn out to be a mismatch.
However, it turns out we are connected through my great-great-great-great-great-grandmother, Sarah Summerville who was his great-great-grandmother, and apparently it was his great-grandparents who came to the US and settled in Utah. Sadly, he died in 1992 and his daughter died in 2008, apparently unmarried and without siblings or children, so it looks as though that line has now died out.
His line was from Sarah's son John, where mine was from another of her sons, Henry.
John's daughter Charlotte Burgum married Frederick Weight in England in 1850 but her child, Martin Burgum Weight, was born in Utah in 1852, which is also the year she died, so I am not sure if she died in childbirth or something else. My curiosity has been piqued though. She may not be in my line but I want to know.
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