Bowen Cousins at the Intermediate Classes

I love sharing stories of cousins found at the CGS library! Mary Mettler informed me earlier this year that she had met some CGS cousins at the Intermediate Genealogy classes. You will recall that Mary shared information about some of her New England lines last summer in her Tuesday Tales series. Mary and Kristen Netterblad found they shared Richard Bowen (born about 1589 in Wales, died 4 Feb 1674/5 in Rehoboth or Swansea). Mary told me she was "sure we probably share some other lines, as the land-owning Baptists stuck together." They met for lunch and an examination of Mary charts when Kristen's mother was in town in March. I was able to snap this photo when they came by the library.

Kirsten Netterblad, Mom and Mary Mettler.

Here's Kirsten's summary of how the cousins met:

You never know who you're going to meet at a CGS class. As a 2008 Christmas present, I promised my mother I would break our Emily (Bowen) Smith (1806-1870) and/or Philip F. Cyphers (1826-1890) lines. Since I'm under some time pressure, I took the Spring Intermediate series of genealogy classes to help me along. I'm a bit of a talker and started chatting with the people around me about my project.

It turned out that Mary Mettler, the person who was sitting next to me, is a distant cousin off my Massachusetts Bowen line! She provided help connecting our trees and after comparing our additional lines in more depth, we're related in about a dozen different ways (Terry, Smith, Trumble, Loomis, Wright, Sheldon, Belden, etc).

Now that I've learned Emily's parents were Peter and Martha (Norton) Bowen, I'm just sourcing my information as I take all of my new lines back to the immigrant (my people are old New England, so I need a consistent stopping point).

I guess the moral of this story is that everybody is related to somebody else. If you don't take the time to chat with the people around you, you might miss out on an important family connection and new genealogy friend.

Emily Bowen Smith brought the cousins together.

Image of Emily Bowen Smith courtesy of Kirsten Netterblad.

Photograph of Emily's descendants by Kathryn M. Doyle, 3/14/2009, Oakland, California.