Maybe it isn’t the proper thing to do, and maybe I am the only one who has done it, though I doubt it, but I do have my favorite surname to research, my favorite branch in the family tree, and my favorite ancestor.

Family trees grow exponentially as you research. A good genealogy quote is that “whenever you solve one problem you gain two more.” So, it is logical for a genealogist to choose a part of the family to specialize in, at least for a time.

Choosing a favorite ancestor, I believe, happens more by accident. I have several favorites, to be honest, and all share certain qualities, but one particular ancestor stands apart from all the others.
 

Her name is Sadie; and if you know me at all, you knew that already. Few friends or relatives have not heard me speak of her, and most could tell her story as well as I do. I notice that many of my favorite ancestors died young, often without heirs, and often as great genealogy mysteries. I adopt them because they have no direct descendants to look up the family tree to them. I bond with them in the course of discovering who they were. I tell their stories the most often because they are the most likely to be forgotten. Sadie suffers from the most dangerous symptoms of the forgotten ancestor disease, because first of all, she was a woman, trading her family name for a new one on her wedding day. When she died at the age of 21 she left no children. The dear husband who left her an epitaph worthy of great respect from her relations, failed to keep his promise to be laid down beside her; as the bereaved young man inscribed his message to Sadie he could not have foreseen that a new wife and baby girl were in his future, and that his eternal rest with them a state away would be the only appropriate course.

Sadie (Buchanan) McConnell at her Waynesburg College graduation in 1868.1

Sadie was born into a good family, money wasn’t hard, and she had the opportunities of religion, education and fine company. Such circumstances did not prevent tragedy though; an older sister and two younger brothers died as small children, so that only Sadie and her sisters Harriet and Mary grew to adulthood. The three girls graduated Waynesburg College in the 1860s, Sadie in 1868, her graduation photograph preserving her image and drawing my attention to her early in my genealogy search.

I’m not an advocate of leaving anybody out of the family tree; I think tracing every cousin is essential. But I do know that those unintended favorites will quite possibly get a little more spotlight than some of the other ancestors.

It is interesting to me to understand why I am so intrigued by an ancestor like Sadie. She is not a direct ancestor, she is actually my first cousin 4 times removed; yet, I know more about her than I do about many of my great-grandmothers or grandfathers on the family tree.

My conclusion is fairly simple. Sadie is one of several favorites, all of whom are eternally young due to unfortunately short lives. While they all share an element of tragedy, it is really the stories of the lives they did live that interest me. I began my genealogy at the age of 14, and I am now just 25. I realize that these young people are the most like me, though in their own time. I relate to them as though they are my peers. And, undeniably, deep down as much as I do not want my story to be lost, I do not want to allow their stories to be lost either. I have also always been one to route for the underdog and so it seems the more likely an ancestor’s story is to be lost the more interested I am in discovering it.