Minerd.com Feature: Helping Connect with Cousins and the Community

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Helping Connect
With Cousins and the Community

Since its launch in May 2000, Minerd.com has helped many cousins, friends and communities across the nation to connect with families and discover their own histories. It also has helped us develop new research sources as these new contacts offer to share their own data. Examples include:

~ Community ~

High school and college students have used Minerd.com biographies as research sources for classroom and 4-H "personal heritage" projects.
A Western Pennsylvania cemetery manager asked for assistance in the effort to find old photographs as part of the restoration of the cemetery's Civil War section.
A New Jersey man, gathering input for a book about one of our cousins, asked for information to broaden his knowledge.
A Florida contact cited our website as a source in a comprehensive book about the Means family of Fayette County, PA.
With permission, representatives of the Younkin, McCabe, Seneff, Means, Barnhouse, Dennis, and Burkholder families used Minerd.com information in their own websites and publications.

~ Cousins ~

A Colorado cousin learned the name and lineage of his late grandfather, after a lifetime of separation caused by divorce.
A Pennsylvania woman learned that a former neighbor, from across the street whom she has known for 34 years, is in fact a cousin, and that five different families at her church are all distantly related.
A Hawaii cousin found the name and lineage of her long-estranged, little known, late grandfather.
A Massachusetts cousin printed out the biography of her late grandfather, whom she never knew, to share with her own two young children.
A Delaware cousin learned the fate of her estranged late grandfather, and how he fit into the broader family.
A West Virginia cousin, having read biographies of her grandmother and great-grandmother (whom she never knew), began her own writings, which she calls "humorous memoirs of family happenings."
A Michigan cousin saw her great-grandfather's name on the website, learned how she fit into the clan, and attended our 2000 reunion.
A Fayette County, PA cousin used the biography of her great-grand uncle as a source for a school term paper.
A cousin of Somerset, PA, found photos she had never seen before of her great-grandfather and great-great grandfather.
An Oregon cousin, hoping to compile a book on western pioneers, tapped into at least a dozen cousin biographies to use as source material.
Working as a team, cousins in Illinois and Texas, with help from a contact in Florida, identified the adoptive parents of two orphaned cousins circa 1915, found in the public records of Fayette County, PA.
A California couple utilized the Minerd-Miner-Minor Archives to find the precise location of their ancestor's farm in Fayette County, PA.
A cousin in Farmington, PA, used the website to re-discover the oldest known family gravestone in Western Pennsylvania, of a 3-year-old boy who died in 1852.