Rabbit Trails...

I do this every once in awhile, I find a thread that is interesting and have to follow it to the end and further if it stays interesting.  My most recent trip down a rabbit trail though has been quite some time in the making.  I'm not sure I can even explain the whole thing, but I am going to try!

My maternal grandfather's sister Nina married Ross Guffey.  They married later than most and the kids were younger than my mom and her generation (the one they belonged to), in fact Nina's youngest daughter was my age and we were fast friends, just like we were first cousins really, we had the same name (Kathy) and spent much time giggling together!  So I knew that I had cousins named Guffey and Uncle Ross was not my relative, but he married into the family.  Several years ago, when I first started seriously looking for relatives, I found a Rebecca Guffey in the family tree of my maternal grandfather, his ggggrandmother was a Guffey, and I wondered if they could be related.  I was very busy trying to trace the main branches and the kids were still at home and you know how it goes!  Every now and then I would be walking in one of the cemeteries in Putnam County MO and wonder if this or that Guffey was a relative.  Recently I finally got around to asking one of the cousins for the information they had on their branch and decided to take the trail and see where it led me.  I just was convinced that all these Guffeys had to be related - and I was right!  Woohoo!  I found the common ancestor for the two families and it really is an inter-tangled mess!

Much of the research was made easier by Mr. A Joseph Guffey who was a prolific writer on all things Guffey and answered a lot of questions on genealogy forums like Genealogy.com.  Mr. Guffey passed away a few years ago, but his body of work lives on on the message boards and he gave enough information to do a lot of narrowing of searches.  As soon as I get this information collated and in a readable form (not just notes on lined paper!) I will post the whole tree - probably on the website with a link to here.

Sigh....I am a happy camper!