In our attempts to locate living relatives, we sometimes ignore those ancestral siblings and cousins who left no children of their own. After all they have no descendants with whom we can make contact.
That is true, but records on the childless relative may provide more details on earlier family members and how the estate of the childless relative was disbursed may mention previously unknown relatives.
And completely researching the relative without children is always advised in order to obtain a complete picture of the family.
3 Responses
Yes, and some of those childless children might be genealogists who leave research online or in a library for others to find, study, and continue 🙂
That’s a good point as well!
Those childless relatives might also have had estates that they left to their siblings, nieces and nephews, or cousins. I’ve verified a couple of relationships based on the probate files of spinster aunts.