A New Cousin

The phone rang within minutes of my arrival home. "Hello!" I answered. "Hello" said the voice on the other end of the line, "my name is Zane and I think we might be cousins." Ever skeptical of strange phone calls, my reply was "I don't think so." Yet as Zane began to tell me his story, he convinced me. He lives in Idaho and is doing genealogy research on his family. He started reading off a list of names asking me if any of them sounded familiar. They were the names of my great-grandmother, grandmother, mother, aunts, uncles, on and on. The guy was for real! His great-grandmother was the sister of my great-grandmother, so that indeed, makes us cousins...a few times removed (you can figure that out!). I'm sure for most of you this wouldn't be a momentous phone call; you are probably surrounded by extended family. I'm not, though. Almost all of my mom's family is gone; we never knew much of anything about my dad's family. So, to make this connection with someone who is doing the family research was very exciting. He called and talked to my dad who has the phone numbers/names of the few remaining Phifer/White clan and he promised to send me the information he's gathered. He's traced the family line back to our common great-great-grandfather who served and died in the Civil War. How fun is this??

I sent Zane this picture. It was taken of my grandmother, Jessie Belcher, when she was 16 years old. She would be his great-aunt, I believe. I'm amazed to have acquired a brand new cousin with just a phone call out of the blue!