The theme of Week 6 of Amy Johnson Crow's "52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks" is social media. I haven't found an ancestor on social media, but I did find a cousin. It was after posting to this blog (which I do VERY INFREQUENTLY) about my grandpa Herrick's first cousin Grant that several months later I was contacted by Grant's granddaughter, my third cousin Vicki. Vicki and I have met twice, and she showed me around my dad's birthplace — East Palestine, Ohio, which just a few weeks ago was the site of a major train derailment and toxic chemical leak.
The "52 Ancestors" theme can also encompass the social columns of our ancestor's newspapers. It was such a social tidbit that broke a brick wall on this line. The column mentioned that Mrs. C. P. Morgan went to East Palestine for a family funeral. Katherine Morgan (Vicki's great-grandmother) and Margaret Herrick McCabe (my great-grandmother) were sisters. While investigating whose funeral Kate attended, I found a surname of interest which then led to discovering Kate and Margaret's eldest brother, Robert Donlon — someone we'd not heard of before, although my father had told me about several of Margaret's other siblings.
So don't discount those social columns. By compiling and analyzing the social items pertaining to your ancestor, you may be able to reconstruct a family unit that had been unknown to you.
