Not necessarily next in order was connecting with my Dad’s youngest cousin, Clyde. He was a musician and about 13 years younger than my father. So I figured that Clyde was still around.
So I Googled his full name and I found that he had spent some time in Hawaii making music. I discovered that he was a member of the musician’s union in Honolulu. His email address wasn’t available – so I emailed the secretary of the union and asked him to forward my “introductory” email to Clyde, which he thankfully did. Clyde emailed me back in about a week and was ecstatic that I had reached out to him. He had me confused with someone else, but after a phone call we got that straightened out.
TIP – USE INTERNET SEARCH ENGINES
Internet Search Engines are your friend. Subscription genealogy services such as ancestry.com and footnote.com are incredibly useful, but you can also discover a great deal with simple Internet searches. Try it – you will like it!
Clyde and I shared a few stories and began sending information back and forth. He told me a few things about his grandfather (and my great grandfather) Isidore Heyman and some of his inventions, including a clip-on tie that he made in the 1940s (Isidore had other more useful inventions, some of which he had patented – not the greatest businessman – he didn’t get rich from his creativity). The best thing that Clyde did for me (other than emailing me back) was to send me an article about a State Senator in the family named Samuel Braunhart, who was his mother’s great uncle. Feisty old Sam was the first Braunhart I had ever heard of.
And finding more about the Braunharts became my obsession for the next 7 years!
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