Just Sent Mail to Find Out About Distant Relatives

[Algernon Moncrieff]

I've been researching my family for about three years now (and just found this group). So Hi!!

There are different styles and goals in family research. Some want to find links to George Washington, join the DAR, find a Mayflower passenger. Some want to see how far back they can get. My style has been to find closet doors; throw the doors of the closets open; and to study the skeletons within. This makes for good story telling and is interesting, but does not always make one popular ("why would you tell people about that?&quot .

So a distant cousin murdered his wife in 1908. I'm reaching out to people who would have been her grand nieces/nephews to learn if they heard any stories over the years that weren't in the papers. The couple had an infant son at the time of the murder. He died in the early 90s. The son accidentally killed someone sixty years after his parent's murder. So I'm also reaching out to a survivor of the accident by mail to see what he can tell me, as the newspaper accounts lack detail.

I'm not certain that I will get answers, but I won't know if I don't ask. I've learned from another investigations into the past that a person can get pretty hacked off about events that took place over 100 years ago, and it was useful to remember, and to remind that person to remember, that neither one of us had anything to do with those events. History is what it is.

Have any of you dealt with finding a previously unknown marriage, or finding distant relatives involved in crimes? How did that make you feel, and how did relatives react when you revealed this information.