Saturday Night Genealogy Fun: Which Family Members Stayed in Contact with Your Family?

Randy Seaver has a very interesting topic for this week's Saturday Night Genealogy Fun.

Come on, everybody, join in and accept the mission and execute it with precision.

1.  Most genealogists try to stay in contact with their aunts, uncles, and cousins.  Who among them made the most effort to stay in contact your family?  Did they write, use the telephone, send cards or gifts?  Did they visit you, and/or did you visit them?

2.  Share your cousin experiences in your own blog post or on your Facebook page.  Be sure to leave a link to your report in a comment on this post.

There was a significant difference in the contact maintained by my mother's side of the family versus my father's.

My siblings and I grew up knowing many of my mother's relatives.  We saw her parents on a regular basis.  We lived in the Los Angeles area and they lived in Las Vegas, which made it easy for visits in either direction.  I don't know when my grandparents moved to Vegas, though, because now that I think about it, they still lived in Florida when I was born.  But not long after that they must have moved, because we saw them a lot while growing up.  When they came to California, they often took us to Disneyland.  My earliest memory is of a train trip to visit them in Vegas when I was about 2 1/2 years old.

My grandparents also visited us while we lived in Australia (this was made affordable by the fact that my uncle was working for National Airlines at the time, and they were able to fly for free).  After they retired, my grandparents moved back to Florida, and when my family returned to the United States we went to Florida, so then we were in the same state, but we were actually farther away from each other than when we lived on the West Coast (Los Angeles to Las Vegas is about 270 miles, but Fort Lauderdale to Niceville is 600 miles!).  But they came for everyone's graduations and may have visited a few other times also.

We regularly received cards for holidays and birthdays, and my grandmother and mother talked on the phone a lot.  After I finished 9th grade, I went to stay with my grandparents in Fort Lauderdale for about a month.  So there was lots of contact between us all the way around.

My mother had two younger brothers.  The older of the two married in 1967 in Coral Gables and their first son was born in Miami in 1971, so I don't think we saw them much, but they had moved to California by 1975, because my other cousin was born in San Jose that year.  But I remember my aunt visiting us in California before we moved to Australia, probably around 1970?  And I went to college in Los Angeles and visited them a lot after I moved back to California.  I know we received cards from them for holidays.  I don't know how much phone calling there was.  But I'd say overall we were in pretty good contact with them also.

The younger of my mother's brothers moved to Las Vegas with my grandparents and graduated high school there, so we must have seen him on visits to Vegas.  I remember him visiting us once while we lived in Pomona, before we moved to Australia.  I don't remember a lot of regular communication with him growing up, but after I moved to Berkeley, California, I saw him semiregularly, because by that time he was living in Reno, Nevada.  Not as close of a relationship as with my other uncle, but there was still regular contact.

My mother also stayed in touch with her uncles and their wives, and I grew up knowing their names, the names of my cousins, everyone's birthdays and wedding anniversaries, and lots of information about the family.  My mother took the three of us kids with her to Florida for her first cousin's wedding in 1969, which must have been an adventure.  I remember bits and pieces of the trip and things that happened during our visit, such as my sister and I getting our hair done for the wedding.  (I still have the widget that was used to make my hair stand up and be poufy.)  Another of my mother's first cousins helped take care of us kids while we were there.

For my grandparents' 50th wedding anniversary in 1989, there was a huge family gathering in Las Vegas (I think it was in October?).  I think the youngest person there was my nephew, who was born in August, so literally a babe in arms.  Probably around 100 or so people came.  We had aunts, uncles, grandaunts and granduncles, cousins of all types.  It was a great family event.

So it's clear that there was lots of contact with relatives on my mother's side of the family.

My father's side?  Not so much.  My father may have loved his relatives, but he wasn't close to them.  I knew about them, because my mother made sure we knew about them all, but for the most part knowing about them was the sum of it.

I remember my paternal grandfather came to visit us in California, I think in Pomona, once.  We might have visited him and his wife in Florida before we moved to Australia?  But I don't remember regular contact with him.  When we moved back to the States, we went to Niceville, Florida and lived near him.  At that point we saw him regularly, because he was in the same city and because he was our introduction to everyone.  But his wife didn't like having us around.

We also saw my aunt, his oldest child, and her family.  I remember one time they visited and had a camper in my grandfather's yard for a while, and we met our cousins.  I don't remember when my aunt moved to Niceville, but it may have been after I moved back to California.

I knew about my other aunt, between the older daughter and my father, but I don't remember meeting her for quite some time.  I don't even remember now when I met her.  It may have been after she moved to Niceville.

I also knew about my youngest aunt, younger than my father, but I didn't meet her until many years later, after I tracked her down so I could return family photos to her.  My father didn't like talking about her until 2005, when she reached out to him.

I did meet my paternal grandmother.  I think it was just once.  I vaguely remember a family visit to her in Florida, so it was probably after we moved back from Australia.  She was living in Jacksonville, I think.  That's about all I remember.  My father told me that she came out to California after I was born and helped my mother for a while, but I obviously don't remember that, and I don't think she was still in California when my brother was born.  (Hey!  Why didn't my father take any photos of us together?!)  But I did used to write to her after that, and I still have her letters from when I started asking about family history.

My father had a much older sister from my grandmother's marriage, prior to her living with my grandfather.  I never met the sister, but I did meet her daughter, my cousin.  I knew she lived in the Minneapolis-St. Paul area, so when I was going to a conference there, I arranged to meet her.  We stayed in touch for quite a while and I visited another couple of times.

My father's aunts and uncle on his father's side?  They were nothing but names.  I didn't even know my grandfather had a brother until the brother died and Grampa went out of town for the funeral.  I never met that uncle or the older of my grandfather's two younger sisters (Grampa was the oldest in the family).  I found out the younger of the sisters was still alive from a chance conversation with my aunt and reached out to her by phone.  The next time I was in Florida, I dragged my cousin across the state just so I could meet my grandaunt.

Because I am my mother's daughter when it comes to family.  When I used to travel regularly to conventions and conferences, I would always figure out which relatives were in the area and make efforts to visit.  I met my mother's favorite cousin on a trip that was actually to Milwaukee but had a side visit to Chicago.  I went to Atlanta for a convention and took a short trip to Toccoa (where DeForest Kelley lived at some point in his life!), just so I could meet my father's younger sister.

I stay in touch regularly with my brother, sister, and half-sister.  I even used to write and talk regularly with my half-sister's mother!  (There really should be a term for your parent's spouse from before the relationship that produced you.  Not a stepparent.  Maybe a preparent?)

I also have tried to stay in contact with all of the relatives I have met during my travels.  I used to send out big envelopes to everyone I knew every year for Christmas or Chanukah (depending on which side of the family) with all the updates I had made to the family trees.  Now I'm connected to many of those relatives, and even more I have found, on Facebook and by e-mail.