An intriguing family mystery of sorts

A while back, I talked about my own genealogy research.

And then this week, I got a random letter about some property a distant relative owned.

So I opened up the Family Search history and poked around, curious about whether this person was related. It turns out that my paternal grandfather had a sister, which I knew.

She travelled from Newfoundland to NY, at some point to room with my grandfather, which I did not know.

And later, she married and had a daughter. That would be my dads first cousin, who lived in NY.

And, my grandfathers sister lived in NY and died in the mid 70s. So she outlived my grandfather.

I asked my mom about it and she remembered that my grandfather was "close to his sister" ... and yet my mom doesn't think he saw her after he moved to Florida, in about 1942. And she doesn't recall my dad ever meeting (or even knowing about) his cousin. Or having seen his aunt.

Aside: my dad spent some of the summer in NY at the worlds fair in 1964, and didn't "look her up" while he was there, most likely because he didn't know she was there.

That's just strange in a way.

I also poked around my grandfathers other siblings, and they each had children, and they'd be dads first cousins as well. They were in Canada, so I get why we never saw them. But I didn't even know about all of them.

We met some of them a number of years ago, but there are more than we knew about.

It's weird how family simply drifts and loses touch. Or at least used to in this pre-connected world.