#52Ancestors, Week 32: Delayed Family Reunion

A few months back, my co-blogger (Cuzzin Heather) and I collaborated on a post concerning our direct ancestors, Joseph and Benjamin Pearson.  Click the link if you'd like to read more (PLEASE!), but I'll give you the abbreviated version.  Joseph and Benjamin were brothers.  In the 1850s, Joseph left the family home in Virginia and put down roots in southern Illinois.  For years, he and Benjamin corresponded, and Joseph would implore that Benjamin join him. After the Civil War (in which Benjamin fought for the Confederacy and Joseph did not fight at all), Benjamin finally made his way to southern Illinois to reunite with his brother.  The exact date of their reunion is unknown, but we place it some time in 1872.  Benjamin married a "local gal" in 1873 and she helped him to raise (and add to) his family in close proximity to his brother. The brothers got roughly a decade of time with each other before Joseph passed away in February 1882.

That was a family reunion of sorts but not exactly the one I want to discuss in this particular post. Something I appreciate about genealogy is that it helps you "add" to your family.  They were always your family, of course, but every once in a while, you make a real connection with one of them.  Sometimes this connection is purely familial and peters out after you have exhausted your discussion of family tales. Occasionally, though, the connection is personal and you end up finding a good friend in someone who also happens to share some of your DNA.

Heather and I connected through a shared relative in 2012.  The three of us (as well as several other peripheral relatives) communicated via group email for a few months.  Heather and I continued a lengthy email exchange for the next two years. Years later, Heather and I recognized each other in a Facebook genealogy group (big surprise, right?). We started helping each other research shared relatives.  And then, we started helping each other research ALL the relatives. We shared strategies, frustrations, genealogy memberships... Making headway in our trees was important, but so was the comradery. As the years passed, very few days would go by where we didn't at least touch base with each other. 

And then we started to talk about meeting up somewhere.  We threw around the idea of doing some joint genealogical research in southern Illinois, but that didn't pan out.  We talked about a midway meet-up in Chicago, but my vehicle decided it needed an overhaul that summer.  We considered getting together over this past Memorial Day weekend, but we couldn't make it work with our schedules.  Finally, as I pondered where we might road trip this summer, it only made sense to include Cuzzin Heather in our travels.  And so, a few days before my birthday, we finally saw each other in the flesh!  This post's picture is from the beginning of a day of Minnesota sight-seeing. 

In a sense, through us, Joseph and Benjamin were reunited once again.  I'd like to think they enjoy the fact that their descendants still find comfort in each other's company, and maybe they even awwwed when my daughter was talking to Heather and said "love you" before handing the phone back to me.