Serendipity

I had no idea that helping my mother-in-law with her computer could lead to finding a cousin, but that's what happened the other day.  While helping her with her computer, I noticed that she had an email from a 'Frank WEHRLY'.  When I asked her about it, she told me that he was a classmate of hers who now lived in Florida and they were correspondending about reunion information.

Having a surname like WEHRLY and being from Marion, I wondered if there was a connection to my Jay County branch.  There couldn't be that many WEHRLYs in east-central Indiana that weren't related, so I went home and searched in my database for a Frank WEHRLY.

I found one, a first cousin of my grandfather, who would have been about the right age to be this Frank's father.  Using Ancestry.com's directory searches, I found the family listed in a Marion, Indiana directory in the 1950s, and emailed my mother-in-law, stating that if her classmate had grown up on Harmon street, etc., then I was sure we were related.

Bingo!  It wasn't too long before my inbox had an email from my newly found cousin, Frank, telling me that he would like to meet when he comes back from Florida for the class reunion, and discuss genealogy, etc.  Turns out he would be my dad's second cousin, though they've never met, and his mother had previously done some genealogy work.  Can't wait to sit down and see what information we can share on this line. 

You just never know where you may find a new cousin....

© 2010, copyright Travis J. LeMaster http://tjlgenes.blogspot.com