Some parts of your family tree are easy to figure out. Most genealogists can fill in the blanks for their parents and siblings without having to think much about it. Things get a bit more complex when you try and sort out how you are related to your great-aunts.
I recently attended my sister’s wedding. As expected, there were plenty of relatives that came to the wedding. It has been a long time since I had seen or talked to many of them, so it was really nice to have the opportunity to catch up.
Even though I haven’t been “back home” in years, I found it easy to recognize some of my relatives. My sister and I have been sharing photos with each other, and many of her photos includes our parents, our brothers, and one of our uncles. I am connected with one of my aunts on Facebook, and have seen recent photos that she posted of herself, and of some of my cousins.
Some of us have gotten a few more gray hairs, but, for the most part, my relatives still look the same as they always did. The photos really did help me to recognize these relatives when I saw them in person. I was told by more than one relative that I look “the same”. Perhaps they have been looking at the same family photos that I had seen.
The difficult part was when I was with relatives who I had not spoken with, emailed with, or viewed recent photos of in several years. I basically had to be re-introduced to them before I was able to recall who they were, and how they related to me. I did not immediately recognize my two great-aunts. I think that the last time I saw them was at a funeral, sometime in the late 1990’s.
I’ve been trying to figure out exactly how I am related to these two women. I know that they are on my mother’s side of the family tree, so I decided to start the connection process there. I am the daughter of my mother, Kathy.
She is the daughter of her mother, who I believe might have been named Katherine. I knew Katherine, (if that is the right name), as my grandmother. She died when I was very young, so I might not have accurately recalled her first name. That would be something I should look up when I decide to put some effort into creating a family tree.
Katherine (again, if I got the name right), is either the sister, or the half-sister, to the two women I spoke with at the wedding reception. I cannot remember which one is true, and I think I have heard it said both ways. Rosie and Eileen are sisters to each other, this much I know for certain. This makes Rosie and Eileen the aunts of my mother, Kathy. Or, it could make them Kathy’s “half-aunts”.
According to the Free Online Dictionary, “great-aunt” is defined as: “an aunt of your father or mother”. This means that if Rosie and Eileen are my mother’s aunts, then they are also my great-aunts. If these two women are my mother’s “half-aunts”, then it makes them my “half-great-aunts”. Either way, it was wonderful to spend some time talking with both of them!
Image by Lars Christopher Nøttaasen on Flickr