In February 2015 I wrote a blog post titled The Benefits of Genealogy Blogging. In this post I listed several benefits of writing a genealogy blog. One of the benefits is that my genealogy blog acts as cousin bait. Basically, cousin bait means that if a relative of mine searches for one of our common ancestors online, they may find my blog and then contact me.
Over the years of writing this blog, I have had quite a few previously-unknown cousins contact me because of this blog. I actually have used Evernote to help me keep track of these cousin connections and how these cousins found me.
I wrote about one of these cousin connections in January 2015. This was quite an exciting and unexpected cousin connection because this newly-discovered cousin is not a distant cousin, but a very close cousin on my mom's side of the family. If you'd like to read that post, click HERE.
Today, I'm sharing exciting news about another cousin connection. I recently received an email from another previously-unknown cousin. He told me that he stumbled onto my blog and then shared two obituaries for our common ancestor, Ole Anthon Christopherson (my paternal 2nd great-grandfather). Ole was born in Norway in 1837. He immigrated to the United States in 1866.
In these obituaries are details about Ole's life that I didn't know about, including his years sailing the world as a merchant marine. Fascinating! I will be sharing these interesting details about Ole's life in future posts.
Genealogy blogging really is so beneficial in so many ways. I'm glad I began this blog. Thank you to my newly-discovered cousins who've contacted me and shared wonderful information and photos with me.
Thanks for stopping by!
Jana
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