Reach Out and Touch Someone

William Spurling, 3rd Great Grandfather of Mark Roddy

Tuesday’s tip – connect with a cousin.  You never know what you’re going to find. 

Before I left Seattle, I reached out to a few of Mark’s relatives, just to see if I could spend a little time with them.  And did I score!  I contacted Carol and she invited me to her home tonight.  Her husband, Al, was Mark’s dad’s cousin.  She invited Al’s sister, Lois to come too.  While I was there Carol shared with me a whole file of genealogy Mark’s Grandma Nellie had prepared.  Um… why have I never seen this before? 

I’ve got much work ahead of me to sort and catalog all the details, but I’ve already found the answer to one whose-that-guy-in-the-picture mystery. 

We have scans of many of Nellie’s old pictures.  We recognize many of the people in them, and can infer others, but one lone photo has had us stumped.  Until tonight, when I saw the two pages, written in Nellie’s perfect penmanship, which began “All I can tell you of Mom’s (Hanna White) grandparents…”   Nellie relates many stories of William Spurling and his wife, Hannah Merritt, and at the end of the second page she says “I have a small snap shot of William Spurling.”   That snap shot is my scan.  And now I know.. Mystery solved.

Get out there and bag a live one.  You just might solve your own mystery.