5 Steps to Making a Cousin Connection

It's easy to get sidetracked when searching for a cousin connection. Follow these 5 steps for the best results.

I've been having a conversation on Ancestry.com with a man who found his ancestors in my family tree. Let's call him CP. It's rare that I hear from someone with roots in this particular little Italian town of Santa Paolina. I'm eager to figure out our connection.

I have to remind you that my family tree encompasses entire towns. All my people came from tiny, neighboring Italian towns. Almost everyone from there has a connection by blood or marriage. That's why CP's ancestors are in my tree without a cousin connection to me.

One of CP's ancestors was Rosaria Consolazio. My 2nd great grandmother Vittoria Consolazio's paternal side came from Santa Paolina. But there's a big problem. Rosaria's death record names her parents, but there are no records for her siblings. She's a dead end.

If the most enticing lead to a cousin connection won't work, what should we do next? Let's go through the best steps to take to make a cousin connection. Keep in mind, these steps won't find a cousin connection if there isn't one. But they will build and strengthen a big branch of your family tree. Let's get started.

1. Set a Place at the Table

Work your potential cousin into your family tree in any way you can. Use the details they've told you, their family tree, and online searches. This will give you an important visual of their family.

When I fit CP into my family tree, Family Tree Maker found 2 types of relationships between us:

• 2nd great grand nephew of wife of uncle of husband of 3rd great aunt (a Consolazio) of me
• 3rd great grand nephew of husband of 5th great aunt (a Ricciardelli) of me

2. Take a Good Look Around

Find the last names among your potential cousin's ancestors that mean anything to you. Search for more details about these people and their families.

I see a few last names that I know are common to the town of Santa Paolina. (I know this thanks to the work I've done with the town's vital records.) I also see a few missing generations I may be able to find among the town's vital records. Tons of vital records are available on the Antenati website. I've already downloaded them to my computer and renamed them to make searchable.

It's clear that CP's family tree has something else in common with mine. It has people from Santa Paolina who married people from the neighboring town of Tufo. That means I need to search those vital records, too. I haven't renamed all the Tufo records yet, so some of my searches will be manual.

As I add more parents, spouses, and children to CP's family tree, I keep looking at the index list in Family Tree Maker. Do I already have anyone who may be a match for this new addition? It could help if I add someone who turns out to be a known cousin of mine. That could lead to a common ancestor for CP and me.

3. Search, Search, and Search Some More

Work through your potential cousin's closest families. Keep finding records and sources for all their direct ancestors. You need to build out their families. Find the siblings of their direct ancestors. Find out who they married. Find their children and see who they married. One of those extended family members may already be in your family tree. They could be the piece you need to solve the puzzle.

Keep your focus on the potential cousin's blood relatives. You may find an interesting lead in an in-law's family, but that's unlikely to get you the answer you need.

4. Stay on a Logical Path

Remember to think through your logical plan for each person who's missing an ancestor. Based on what you know so far, search for a person's birth, marriage, and death records. Search for their children and who their children married. Search for their siblings. Build out this one person's family as much as you can.

I had one woman, CP's 3rd great grandmother Giovanna, who was missing her parents. Here's how I expanded her family and added to CP's branch:

• I found Giovanna's death record, giving me the names of her parents and her approximate year of birth.
• I found her marriage record because I knew her husband's name and that she had a child in 1834. (I worked backwards from 1834 until I found her in the town's annual marriage index.)
• I found her 1811 birth record that shows the same parents as her death record and her marriage record. This makes Giovanna's vital records complete and confirms the information I had.
• Armed with her marriage date and death date, I located another 3 children for her.
• I moved up to her parents—CP's 4th great grandparents. I found their 1809 marriage record and learned their parents' names. These are CP's 5th great grandparents who were born in the 1760s. The town's vital records won't let us go any further back. This generation died before civil record keeping began.
• I looked for death records for CP's 4th great grandparents and found two of them. One was Domenico (father of the Giovanna who started this journey), and he was in my tree already. Until this moment, I didn't have enough facts to see he was the same person. That led to my next step.
• I searched for details about Domenico's three wives and his children. I found a ton of facts and added 45 people to CP's branch of my family tree, all based on vital records.

I still can't find a common ancestor for CP and me. We're either completely unrelated or our connection goes back to the 1700s. That's too early for Italian vital records.

5. Use DNA

You can certainly start with this step—you may get lucky. Use what DNA tells you as you run through the previous steps.

If your potential cousin and you have taken a DNA test, are you matches? If so, use your DNA website's estimated relationship to figure out where your connection should be. Consult this relationship calculator to see which of your great grandparents is key.

CP and I are not DNA matches. He's not a match to my mother, and his son is not a match to my mother or me. This could mean we have no connection, or it could mean our connection is too distant. Once again, my research is stuck because I have no vital records to connect our ancestors from the mid 1700s.

My earliest documented Consolazio ancestor from Santa Paolina was born about 1725. Buonaventura Consolazio was my 7th great grandfather. CP and I could have a connection through Buonaventura or one of his children. If so, we'd be 7th or 8th cousins. So far I can't prove anything.

These 5 steps are very important to making a cousin connection. I'll continue to build out my many family branches in the little towns of Santa Paolina and Tufo. You never know what you'll find.