Met Found Relative!
OCTOBER 9, 2006
This weekend, I had the pleasure of meeting a cousin, Gerry Farren, whose grandmother was my father’s grandmother’s sister, that I found through a website. We spent several hours getting to know each other and looking at all of our beautiful family pictures and the like. There were interesting stories shared and Gerry had a great memory for keeping everybody straight. I have a better idea of this area of my familiy now so all of the people he explained to me were are a little closer to my soul now. It seems so odd that someone out there in the vast void of things could have all of these pictures of my own family and I did not know of him. I suggest anyone who is searching for their family history to meet, when they can, new found family members. This upcoming weekend, I will have the good fortune to meet another cousin from Texas (now Iowa), whom my father found and became acquainted with before he died. I am looking forward to a nice family time again as I get to know another found cousin.
Gerry also invited me to look at a website of his father’s family name (Barker). Check it out, it is a very nice work in progress, with a lot of information.
The picture on the left was Left, Patricia Harvey, middle my daughter Sara, right Jim Harvey, who is my dads 2nd cousin, and they share the same great grandfather. The picture on the right shows Patricia on the far left and her husband Jim Harvey on the far right next to my mom, Garnetta. My brother Doug and his wife Shirley and my daughter Sara are in the middle. I had the pleasure of meeting them last weekend. My dad found them on the Internet when he was doing some genealogy work and became acquainted with them. It was so much fun getting to know Jim and Patricia. I had only 2 regrets: that my dad could not be there with us, though in spirit I think he was, and secondly, I wish we would have had them in our lives sooner. The good part was that it was like a little piece of Dad was there in seeing Jim. Though they are only 2nd cousins, and shared the same great grandfather, there was some curious similarities. They share a lot of common interests and there are some uncanny similar mannerisms, but you would have had to have known my dad pretty well to see them. My brother Doug commented on this this week weekend on my birthday about it so it wasn’t just me. Anyways, Jim and Patricia were a delight and I hope we will get to see them some time again in the near future. 