WHEN RESEARCHING MY GENEALOGY, I wonder if some coincidences—if not all—should be examined closer. In PART 1, I explained that I thought it merely coincidental that the name, Amos York, had belonged to another person, unrelated to my family. Here is my email to the volunteer photographer (on FindAGrave.com) of that grave marker:

Well, perhaps an important lesson for me as a new genealogy tracker... I am not so sure I have the right Amos York at your cemetery. I've checked all my records, and it seems that the "Martha" listed as Amos's wife (on the tombstone) is not listed in my records. I have 3 Amos Yorks in consecutive order, and their wives aren't Martha... I need yet to learn how to track better, so as not to send people on wild goose-chases.

It so happens that the Amos York on that tombstone, upon further research, is my first cousin, three times removed. Our common ancestor is my 3x great grandfather, who was his grandfather. This Amos York’s father (Nehemiah York) was my 2x great grandfather's brother. So, the information sent to me by the kind soul in Ashtabula, Ohio was valid and vital to my research after all. Too many Amos York’s exist! Thank goodness for Ancestry.com and a little time to dig.

Something I like about Internet genealogy research is the chance to connect with other researches of the same family lines. I confess that most of the Yorks in my database came from other researchers' work, and have yet to obtain all sources of reference and citations. Nonetheless, it seems obvious that the York name is a common one in early New England (since the 1600s), and many researchers’ family trees on Ancestry.com go back several centuries, even to Plantagenet royalty of the 1200s in England.

And so I hunt alongside other Yorks, who know my own ancestry better than myself, in order to uncover (discover) some of the twists and turns that brought me onto this planet.

TAGS: York