Okay, so I didn’t blog at all. Excuse me if I was a bit distracted. I have good reason. Three new cousins found me this week and I’ve been awash in new details, photographs, and research.
One of my reason I blog is about my ancestors is to share my research experience. But equally important is the fact that it works as thinly disguised cousin bait. And, this week I hit the mother lode. I made new connections on my Azorean, French, and Irish lines.

The connections span the globe (stretching it a bit for drama) with roots now spreading to Canada.
These are the cousins who found me last week.
- A cousin from the East Coast saw my post about her aunt who is related to my Mello Castanho line. This is my connection to Gatineau, Canada. Gatineau was a prime migration destination for people from Maia, Ribeira Grande, Sao Miguel Island, Azores to migrate to in the 1950s and later.
- A cousin related to a line that married into my French family contacted me about my post on Leon Lascurettes. Lascurettes was not a common surname in California. I couldn’t connect Leon and he stuck out like a sore thumb.
- I’ve been leaving trails on my blog and on my online trees about the Coyne-Wall family in Massachusetts in hopes that someone would see it and contact me. It finally worked. I’ve learned quite a few things about the family that protested Patrick Dolan’s probate including the fact that they all knew about each other before his death.
To end the week, I got my very first email from FTDNA stating “You have a new close cousin connection”. It turned out to be a known cousin on my Breilh line and we share a whopping 199 cM. I’m hoping this will help me resolve my French DNA matches.
I’m pleased as punch to have these new connections!
Not every week is full of so many genealogy discoveries. I’m just happy to see my blogging and online family trees are paying off. If I didn’t put my information out there, these people would have never found me. Now, let’s solves some genealogy mysteries!