Genealogy Challenge Accepted!

I've been working day after day on my ultimate genealogy goal. I'm busily fitting Grandpa's entire town in Italy into my family tree.

It can get tedious sometimes. There are a lot of steps involved in adding a person to my tree with their vital records and source citations. And I want to do it right.

Then a string of genealogy challenges came my way. At first I didn't want to be bothered. Then I accepted those challenges and had a lot of fun completing them!

My first reaction to this genealogy challenge was, "so what?" But it quickly got interesting.

Genealogy Challenge #1: Is He Our Relative?

Recently, my father pointed me to a stranger's obituary out of the blue. He was a 90-year-old man in Ohio who was born in my Grandpa's hometown. The obituary provided plenty of clues. The man himself is not in my collection of vital records from the town, but his parents are. And each of their birth records includes a note in the margin confirming who they married.

I kept searching generation after generation until I found a match in my family tree. The man's last name was familiar to Dad and me. But his blood connection to us was through his mother. That connection led to Dad's 6th great grandfather, Giancamillo Martuccio, born around 1667.

This challenge went quickly, and in the end, the man in the obituary Dad found was his 7th cousin. It made me think I should be scouring obituaries for familiar names! I wrote back to Dad with a chart showing their relationship. They were born two years apart, and the man died in a city where Dad once lived.

Genealogy Challenge #2: Who Are My Cousins?

My old friend is a private detective. When an adopted woman came to him for information about her birth family, he referred her to me.

She knew her parents' names, and their families happen to come from a town just north of me. I used a free trial of newspapers.com to learn about her birth mother, including a close brush with disaster.

With access to the woman's DNA matches, I was able to point out three of her 2nd cousins and a possible half-sibling. Now I leave it to her to decide if she wants to make contact.

For me, it was a confidence-building experience.

Genealogy Challenge #3: Who Were His Parents?

I belong to Facebook groups dedicated to my two grandfathers' hometowns in Italy. Once in a while someone will post a photo of an ancestor from the town.

That's irresistible to me! In one case, the photo showed a married couple. Now they're in my family tree. In another case, I helped a distant cousin in South America piece together his ancestors.

Then someone posted a funeral card with a photo of the man on it. I saw the reactions from group members who had fond memories of the man. He was a traffic policeman in the town, which seems strange, knowing how quiet the town is.

I decided to find his ancestors and see if this nice man belonged in my family tree. Luckily, he was born in the second-to-last year of available birth records from the town. Now I knew his parents' names and was ready to keep climbing.

I rarely learn anything about my Italian relatives, so this challenge had a big payoff.

It took almost no time to find a blood connection. The man was my 1st cousin 3 times removed. My color-coded family tree told me at a glance that he is on my paternal grandfather's branch. And his last name told me that Grandpa's mother is the connection. This nice man, so well loved, is the first cousin of my great grandmother.

His mother's family stretched into another town, but I kept building her tree. And the man's wife, whose name is in the margin of his birth record, turns out to be my 5th cousin once removed.

My 26,907-person (and growing) family tree makes all the townspeople relatives!

Do people sometimes ask you to put your genealogy talents to work? Accept that genealogy challenge if it intrigues you. Solving the puzzle can prove that you are the go-to genealogy resource.

Keep your mind open, put your skills to work, and accept that genealogy challenge.