Genealogy Jottings

Some DAR chapters run book clubs, and mine has one. This month we read a new biography, The Revolutionary, Samuel Adams by Stacy Schiff. During our discussion, one member of the club reported that she is an Adams descendant.

With Massachusetts ancestors myself, I wondered if I, too, might have a connection to this illustrious family. I turned to the Connection Finder tool on the WikiTree website to find out.

I had set up a family tree on this site a few years ago when I began corresponding with some relatives in Finland. They used this site to post our Finnish family tree. I have added other lines since then. Doing so gave me the clue I needed to identify my Mayflower ancestors.

When I ran the WikiTree search for a connection to Samuel Adams, I found no match. I am not related to him.

Next, I queried for a connection to Samuel’s cousins, President John Adams and his son President John Quincy Adams. There I did find a connection, not through the Adams family but through the family of Abigail Adams, the wife and mother of the Presidents.

She was born Abigail Smith. WikiTree located our common English ancestor several generations before Abigail. Our kinship is quite distant, but WikiTree does claim one. It also found a relationship by marriage in a later generation. Whether these connections are valid or not depends on the accuracy of the genealogical work done by the people who posted the family trees.

I hope I am related to this famous First Lady. She seems a worthy family connection to have.