My Interesting Ancestors

This past week has been crazy. I've had several shows, booked a bunch of shows, watched as my Carnegie: Magic Detective Blog hit it's highest one day number ever thanks to Harry Houdini's birthday, and I've been working on my family tree.

I've mentioned the Ancestry thing before but it's really taking off. I found the mysterious missing relatives that were part of my Mom's side of the family, though to them, WE were the missing relatives. A cousin from my Dad's tree got in touch with me and we've been writing daily. Actually, several members of my Dad's side of the family are now in touch with me. The interesting thing is, he had no idea that some of them existed, and others he hadn't heard from in 50 years. But again, to some of them, WE were the mysterious missing relatives.

Here is a happy couple, my Great Great Grandparents. Never expected to ever see a photo of them and now I have seen five different pictures of them in a week! I also found a church cemetery in South Dakota where probably half the people buried there are related to me in some fashion.

As of now there are several people along with me working on various parts of the tree. It's rather exciting when you find a new gem of information. The crazy thing is how many people have little parts that when you put them together make up the entire story. It's wild and I've got no idea where it will end up.

Just so you know, there are almost 250 in my family tree at the moment. Some branches go back to the 1600 and 1700s.

The toughest story of the week was finding out the tragic fate of my Great Great Grandfather on my Mom's side who was killed by a train. Though I must admit the ongoing saga to find out the story of my Uncle Charley has been filled with ups and downs. But I think we've got it mapped out pretty well, thanks to my two new cousins.