Week 12: Popular

I am just barely making it in under the wire here on week 12 of the #52ancestors challenge:  Popular.  What direction to take this?  The most colorful of my ancestors seem to have been unpopular.  Popular names seem to have followed the trends of the day (except for that surfeit of Cecils and Cecilias.  What were they all thinking?).  But one thing I had not expected when I started researching family members with the help of DNA was the popularity of this test with the Howdeshell side of the family.

My father's mother was Olive Gertrude Howdeshell.  There are (or were) a number of Howdeshell cousins that I never met who appeared for my father's memorial service, much to the surprise of my sister who had no idea that these people existed.  (I was not able to be there, but I spent time with Dad before he died.)  Why Dad had never kept up with these cousins is still a mystery but the fact is the Howdeshells were a pretty numerous family as my research began to show.  And once I did the Ancestry DNA test, it became clear that they were also curious about other family members.  I would guess that initially a full third or half of my matches were Howdeshell connections!  I still get a lot of hits on the Howdeshell side (found one today in fact) so obviously they have questions too. 

I'm not sure that I'll ever solve all of the mysteries of the Howdeshell side, but a few questions have been answered because of the curiosity of all of these other people.  I'm so glad that the Ancestry test has been popular with the descendants of Henry Howdeshell and his wife Elizabeth Baxter:  since they had at least nine children that has been a pretty rich trove of information!

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