How I Met My 4th Cousin

Modern technology is an awesome thing!  It's given people the ability to connect and form relationships with anyone on the globe. One of the most fascinating aspects about genealogy research is that although we are searching for the dead, we often come across the living.  It was March 2011 and I had been building my tree and doing a little research on Ancestry.com.  A hint appeared.  Normally I would just look at the little shaky green leaf and ignore the hint.  Most of the time the hints were regurgitated information or family trees that had family members who had the same or similar names as my family members.  Well that day in March I opted to click on the leaf for my 3rd great grandparents Charles and Cynthia Hendricks.
To my surprise there was a user who had my exact Hendricks line connected to her family tree.  I figured it was worth a shot and I reached out to this person.  We instantly hit it off!  She was just as happy as I that we had a familial connection.  Thus began what is now a 4 year friend and kinship.  We were obsessed.  We collaborated together to find information day and night.  We probably chatted days on end non-stop in the beginning.  Our love for genealogy and family history evolved into getting to know each other on a personal level.  We'd talk about our families and our current day-to-day and then we'd manage to do some research in between time.  Facebook has really been our only method of communication and I must say that it has been a Godsend.  We'd complain about the lack of originality that our ancestors had with naming conventions.  Name recycling was killing us slowly.  How many times were we going our relatives going to name their children John,Nancy, Carnelious, Andy and Eliza? We'd often get people mixed up and spend several minutes trying to get it all straight.  We'd laugh and gasps at the family secrets that we had uncovered and then we would try to make sense of it all.  We'd have all these working theories trying to unfold a relative's life.  If there is a genealogy conspiracy theorist group, we should be President and VP's of the group!  Some of our theories panned out and others were flat out outlandish.  They didn't seem outlandish at the time, but we definitely let our passion dictate instead of reason.

It's been 4 years and I feel as if I've known my cousin all of my life.  I'm glad that we've been on this adventure for as long as we have.  Genealogy isn't just a hobby for me or a distraction to get away from the normal chaos.  It literally is a way for me to connect and to stay connected.  I'd like to think that my 3rd great grandparents are looking down and smiling at us.  I think they would be proud of us.  So kudos to you Jennifer!  I'm glad that I've found you and I'm so proud to call you my cousin!

 Ain't she cute, ya'll!  LOL