Relatively Speaking - Cousins that Blog

Today begins a new once a week blog post experiment by the WO’s. I guess the first thing might be to explain the WO’s a bit. WO’s is an abbreviation, but of course, for Wild Ones. We are a group of researching friends/cousins that banded together many many moons ago and took on that moniker. The name started partially as a joke, quickly caught on and has proven over the years to be an apt description, so it stuck.

Currently there are 4 of us, one WO does not blog, that would be Diane, Three of us do blog, yours truly, Karen and Anne.

Anne and I became friends while we volunteered at a LDS FHC. We were friends for quite some time before we discovered we were also cousins. 8 or 9 times removed, but, hey, we are cousins. Believe me 8 or 9 times does not alter the fact that we share some qualities and some faults! That is what being cousins is all about.

Karen and I actually met via the internet many years ago, we were researching the same family name, Kessler, exchanged data, figured we were also cousins of the nth degree (we are actually 7th cousins 1 time removed) and wandered along, loosing touch. In 1996 or so, Diane and I met on line as she was hosting the Lenawee County GENWEB site, and I had just moved to Lenawee and wanted to help out behind the scenes. As chance would have it, Diane and Karen were friends, via the Ford Genealogy Club. Next thing I know, Karen and I are back in touch, cousins re-united.

Over the years, we became friends, good friends, the kind that support you no matter what, our own personal sounding boards for family research and family matters. We attend weddings, baby showers, funerals for our respective families. We have Christmas parties, we send horrible jokes to each other. We scream delightful finds and sorrowful failings. Sometimes we offend each other, we do not always agree. We remember the surnames we are each researching, and have on occasion found a great little tidbit for each other. We share research tricks and internet sites, we learn from each other. We each do things such as sourcing a bit differently, but, you will hear all of us on a large tall soap box insisting that you MUST source your research.

And we became family. We keep discovering more lineages that we have in common. Anne and I are cousins, Karen and I are cousins, Karen’s DH, Mark is somehow related to both Diane and Anne. Mark has some convoluted lineage that connects to one of my lines (does not make us related, just have the same names in our data bases). Karen and Anne are both researching the Early clan (unproven link here). Man, Mr. B (Anne’s DH) and Chuck (Diane’s DH) have no lineages that will provide more cousins within the group (YET).

The Wild Ones and Husbands, 2008, Tennessee

From left:  Man & Moi,

Anne & Mr. B. (trying to hide, didn't work Mr. B.),

Karen & Mark, Diane & Chuck

Friends and family, and now blogging together too! Watch for Relatively Speaking topics on Mondays on Gene Notes, Genealogy Frame of Mind and Reflections From the Fence. We might talk about Genealogy, some of the WO online email discussions and of course, the families that link us together.

.