Part of the Family

My research into the life of Nelson Evans occasionally goes in odd directions, but none quite so surprising as the turn it recently took.  Part of my Memorial Day weekend was spent at a reunion of my dad's family.  As seems to be typical of reunions, some of the family brought along photo albums.  One of these albums contained genealogical research one of my cousins had done.  Now, I've done my own share of such research into my family, so I was a bit surprised when I saw among my cousin's research the surname of Hysel.

As told in one of my earlier posts about his marriage history, in 1909 Nelson had eloped with Helen Hysell to Michigan.  Since both were living apart by the end of the year, it appears that the marriage ended in annulment, if not divorce.  I knew that Helen's family was originally from the southeastern part of Ohio, not terribly far from the area my own family resided at the time.  However, I didn't recall anyone by the name of Hysell or Hysel in my family tree.  That bit of mystery was solved on another page of my cousin's research: there I saw the name spelled as Hisle, which was familiar to me.  But could it be the same family?

When I was back home the next day, I started to investigate.  Fortunately, I had already traced the Hysell and Hisle families back to the late 1700s.  Taking a closer look at the earliest ancestors in both lines, it quickly became clear that there was indeed a connection: both families were living in the same county at the same time, both came from the same town in Virginia, and both were using the Hisle spelling.  However, I still needed to find the common ancestor.  Again, that proved a bit easier than I was expecting, helped by the fact that my great-great-great-great grandfather's name was Nimrod.  Going by birth dates, it seemed possible that he was the brother of the earliest ancestor I had found in Helen's family tree.  And it turns out that I was correct: the common ancestor was Leonard Hisle, my great-great-great-great-great grandfather and Helen's great-great-great grandfather.

I don't think this discovery changes my approach to my research into Nelson's life, but it certainly makes me more curious about Helen, someone I already found interesting.  Knowing that she is a (very) distant relative seems like reason enough to start finding out more about her, too.