Part of Why I Do It

I just noticed an article on Yahoo about the various celebs and politicians that Obama, Clinton, and McCain, can call cousin. I find this stuff interesting, how people are connected, and it's part of why I'm interested in genealogy. I started working on my family tree some seventeen (count 'em!) years ago, thinking I'd be finished with the tree by Christmas for my parents' Christmas present that year. Funny thing is I've never stopped, at least not for too long.

Last fall, when I got a new computer, I test drove a couple of genealogy programs, picked the one I liked best (RootsMagic), and started researching and entering data again. In January, I accidentally merged someone else's whole database with mine (instead of just one family), and since I'd done too much editing without backing up when I did that, I've spent the past couple of months cleaning up my family database! Yikes! It has helped me get familiar with my larger family tree again, never a bad thing, and now I have a little over 21,000 names in my database, covering both my parents' sides of the family.

I haven't found any politicians that I'm related too, but I do have a Huckabee line that I haven't researched in a few years. Who knows, maybe Mike Huckabee is a cousin! The closest thing to celebrity that I've found is that I'm related to Sarah Ann and Adelaide Yates. Wondering who they are?! They were sisters from Wilkes County, North Carolina, who married Eng and Chang Bunker, the conjoined twins from Siam--the "original" Siamese Twins. The sisters are my first cousins, 6 times removed, as well as second cousins, 5 times removed.

I have a lot of double cousins in my family tree! In fact, my sister and I are also fifth and seventh cousins! :)