Saturday Night Genealogy Fun! A challenge posed by Randy Seaver of Genea-Musings.
1) Decide which of your (many?) genealogy research adventures was your "very best" (your definition).
2) Tell us about it in a blog post of your own, in a comment to this blog post, or in a Status report or comment on Facebook.
It started last March with a call from my nephew's wife. Her father (Tony) was told in December that he had been given away at birth. Tony was fighting a recurrence of cancer and wanted to try to find his birth father. He had always felt that something was missing from his life. There was little information to start with. His father's family was from the San Antonio, TX area and entered the country from Mexico at Eagle Pass, TX. The family name was Benevidas and Tony's father was named Ismael. While Benevidas is fairly common, fortunately Ismael is rather unique.
Using genealogy methodology, I did a search on ancestry.com. I found an obituary that mentioned Ismael as the brother of the deceased Erasmo. Erasmo and Ismael's father was also named Erasmo. I found the Erasmo Benevidas family in Cibolo, TX in the 1930 census.
Using whitepages.com I located some of the survivors of Erasmo Benevidas. Armed with names, addresses, and phone numbers, Tony's daughter began making phone calls. Within two days she had located Tony's two half brothers. Unfortunately, Tony's father had died but the brothers were aware of his existance. In May the three brothers had a meeting and couldn't believe the family resemblance.
While maybe not true genealogy, this was a very gratifying use of my genealogy skills.
This sounds like the very best use of genealogy to me - and what a wonderful gift.
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