This week’s 52Ancestors challenge is ‘cousin bait’. What is cousin bait? It’s any way you are sharing your family tree, stories and information that allows other family members to find it (and you!). When you connect with others researching the same tree, you can share information with one another. There are bound to be things each of you didn’t know. There may even be artefacts, photos and documents passed down to another branch of the family that you hadn’t been able to access before.
A case in point – the family bible that was pivotal in solving my longest-standing brick wall, the Vaughan family. It was through a third cousin who I had been in contact with for several years before she realised that I might find its contents useful. We had originally connected through the discovery of our similar trees online. The family lines had long since lost track of one another in real life. Once the bible was shared I was able to solve the mystery that had held up both of our research.
Cousin bait tools
- Online family trees
- make them public so your cousins can find you
- consider more than one site, different people fish in different ponds
- make them wide as well as deep, your cousins may recognise their families’ names or those more closely related to them
- Website or blog
- share your names, places and stories
- ‘cousin bait’ is a major and unashamed motivation for this blog! I’ve shared stories and information about several family lines, usually containing some useful (I hope!) ideas on how to approach problems or resources to use. Unknown cousins who Google our surnames and places in common will be greeted with a story about our mutual ancestor in the search results and a way to contact me!
- Social media
- join groups that cover genealogy for your places or surnames and post a query
- also join general groups such as The Genealogy Squad, as they can have large member numbers across the globe. They also provide lots of guidance on methodology, tips and resources to help you!
- DNA
- again, make sure you are on as many of the sites as possible, to maximise those fishponds. Test at a company that doesn’t allow uploads (e.g., Ancestry or 23andMe), then use your raw data from that test to upload to the others who allow it (e.g., MyHeritage, FTDNA, LivingDNA, Gedmatch, Geneanet, Geni.com)
- Mailing lists
- many of the old Rootsweb lists still survive, at least the ones that were active! Most of them are now over at groups.io, and can still be a great source of information and connections
- Lost Cousins
- The Lost Cousins site will match you with people who have ancestors who’ve flagged the same census entry as you. Therefore, when you connect with them you already know where they fit into the tree! There’s also a very useful fortnightly newsletter as an extra benefit.
Do you have any other tried and true cousin bait tools in your tackle box that I haven’t mentioned here? What works for you?
Send messages to those who are linked to you through a branch of their tree that is missing. They usually have a brick wall they want to break down, and there’s often a story.