As a historical archaeologist, I frequently feel a bit like a time traveller. I am often so involved in thinking about the past that I move through the present in a bit of a daze. (Unfortunately, my cooking is a testament to this distraction!) Lately, however, I have been moving around quite a bit in time, forward and back, rather like a shuttle on a loom, weaving a story about a family’s past. Sometimes that is the best way to bring together many strands of a story into a comprehensive understanding of the whole fabric of one’s history.

An example of this shuttling through time is my recent reconnection with first cousins I had lost touch with decades ago. I had already interviewed my living aunts and uncles about my grandparents, but some of my aunts had died long before I began my research and their children had moved far away. So, I needed to talk to others of my own generation, even though I was trying to find out about people who lived two generations earlier. With a bit of asking around and some Google searches I found my cousins and can report that not only was it wonderful to hear their voices after all these years, but some of them had great resources that they were quite happy to share.

Then, this holiday season I went a step further; I took a deep breath and contacted distant relatives I had never even heard of before. I had always thought I would never do such a thing, despite hearing many success stories of collaboration. It just seemed so pushy, contacting people out of the blue. And who knows what type of people they might be?! Even close relatives can be quite different and every family has at least one black sheep – what if they turned out to be people I really didn’t want to know? Why take the risk?

Well, some photos I found on-line seemed to include my ancestors, so I thought it worth the risk, since I wanted more information and permission to use those images in my family history book. To make sure these people really were likely to be my relatives, I went farther back in time (to my great-great-grandfather) and then followed a collateral branch of my family tree forward again in time to the present day (using censuses, obituaries, death records, etc.). Satisfied I had identified likely relatives, I decided to track them down. To be fair, these coveted photos were posted to on-line communities (Ancestry.ca and Genealogy.com), so the people who put them there were looking to make contact with like-minded individuals. However, one of the people was no longer a subscriber and the posted e-mail contacts were therefore expired. I pieced together clues from her on-line posts and determined her likely location and profession and then Googled her. My success in finding her should serve as a warning about the type of information you make available on-line. You never know who might find you! Again, I can report a happy ending: these very distant cousins agreed to let me use their photos and we exchanged other information and tips as well.

So, you see, sometimes when you are trying to find out about your past, you have to take an indirect looping route and wander about in time a bit, working forward and backward, to establish a pattern of family connections. This can lead to a much more colourful and vibrant family story, than if you had just pulled on one thread and followed it along.

This article was originally printed in the Bergen News and is being reprinted with permission.