52 in 52 "Favorite Discovery" The Unknown Sister (7 of 52)

I've thought all week about what my favorite discovery has been.  It was hard; I've been doing genealogy for about twenty years now, and I've discovered a lot!  Proving (or disproving) family lore, figuring out why my DNA doesn't reflect my Italian roots, many notable Weller's (whiskey makers, pottery makers, long lines of reverends...) even a murder.   The best discovery though, has been much closer than the rest: my husband had a half-sibling he didn't know...and we found her using genealogy!

I started working on my husbands tree around 2013, he wasn't (and still isn't) near as interested as me, but I plugged away anyway.  When researching his dad, we had a wealth of information  Robert had been a lifer in the military and we had hard copies of all his documents.  He'd been the youngest of five, and passe when my husband Kevin was eleven.  Kevin was telling me of an aunt that came over when he was about nine, and he'd been around eighteen; he'd given his room so she could stay and it made an impression.  The thing is, I knew he didn't have an aunt that young,  his only aunts on his dad's side were older than his father, and he was positive she was a Simpson.  So, we called him mom.

Joann wasn't a wealth of information, but she knew who he'd been talking about, and she knew the girl hadn't been Kevin's aunt - she'd been his half sister.  Joann and Robert had met in Jersey co, Illinois and married in 1964, but she'd been his second wife.  She didn't know much, but she knew he'd lived in Connecticut, his first wife's name was Helen, and they'd had two kids, Robert jr and Linda.  And that's where I went to work.

  Robert in Elsa, Illinois in 1968

I found Robert's first marriage pretty quickly,  to Barbara Helen (Joann had been close!) in 1955.  Being as everyone was still living except Robert, I knew it would be harder to find who I was looking for.  I did find a Bristol Connecticut city directory for Robert Simpson, and knew it wasn't for Kevin's dad, so it had to be for his brother.   I searched and searched for Linda Simpson and wasn't finding much, until I got a hit on a Bristol marriage license (knowing that's where Robert Jr was and that's where Robert Sr's family had been from, Bristol had been where I centered my search) for Lynda and Allen.  Score! And it showed her birth year - just nine years older than Kevin, eighteen when he'd been nine.  

I started searching for Lynda using the correct spelling and her married last name (I'm omitting last names and specific dates as everyone is still living) but I wasn't getting any relevant info other than a residence in Connecticut around the time of her marriage, and then I came across a death record for her husband.  This really just complicated things, because I had no idea then if she was using her maiden name, married name, or if she'd married again, but I wasn't finding her in Bristol anymore.  I started using Facebook, google, ancestry, and family search using both her married and maiden names.  I finally found a second marriage license in 2001, and started Googling using the second married name.   SCORE!  I found Lynda and her second husband living in Litchfield Connecticut!  I couldn't find an email or a phone number without paying for it, and anyway, what would you say?  "Hi, I'm your brother you may not have even know you had"  We did get an address, wrote a short to the point letter, and gave Kevin's phone number in case they wanted to connect with us.  Joann said Robert hadn't been close to any of his Connecticut family and we had no idea if they wanted anything to do with us, so we wrote, and we waited.

The next week Kevin got an unknown number about 7pm - it was Lynda.  She'd been looking for him for YEARS, she didn't remember where Joann had lived, and she didn't know where to search.  Simpson is a popular last name, there's thousands out there, and without a place or birthday, a search is near impossible.  She and her husband Kyle were planning a trip from Connecticut to Northern Illinois to pick up a car he had bought, and they wanted to stop and see us on the way back.  It would be the first time they'd met in over 30 years.

We met at a local restaurant and it was the best outcome I could have ever asked for.  Lynda and Kevin were definitely related!  They have similar mannerisms,  the same sense of humor, and the Simpson hairline!  

Lynda and Kevin meeting for the first time in 30 years

Lynda and Kyle moved to Florida a year or two later, and we went down to see them, meeting Kevin's last remaining uncle, Skip.  We talked genealogy, saw pictures of he and Robert and the siblings when they were small, and connected with a whole set of cousins he didn't know he had.  Unfortunately, we lost Skip in 2017, but just after we moved to Florida ourselves, and now live just about seven miles from the sister that my husband didn't even know he had.  

Lynda, Kevin, and Skip w/ family