Inspired to Bond with Distant Cousins

An online overture from a distant relative enlivens an interest in their shared history.

By Stefani Twyford, Houston, Texas

As appeared in

Photographs, yellowed newspaper clippings, a dog-eared journal. Birth and death certificates, genealogy charts. Years of family history were spread out across my table.

I’m a personal historian and a filmmaker. I record family histories on video to connect future generations to the people who came before them.

As a Jewish woman, I knew all about the importance of history. For thousands of years the Jewish people have protected our culture, laws and traditions in the face of exile, oppression and the threat of annihilation.

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We can’t know everyone who came before us personally, but we can learn about them and honor our connection.

I turned to my video monitor to watch an interview I’d done with an elderly widow. “The first time I met my husband, we were at a high school dance...” she began.

I imagined future generations of her family watching the video, meeting her for the first time. In telling her story she was giving them a piece of history they could carry into the future.

I thought about my own history. My family—the Elkorts—hailed from New York. Not long before I was born my own parents took off across the country in search of adventure. They ended up in California, thousands of miles away.

Dad kept in touch with his relatives sporadically, but all those cousins were just names to me, people I’d met once at my wedding if I’d met them at all.

They didn’t feel like family, I had to admit. Not the way my parents and siblings with whom I’d grown up did. But I treasured everything I knew about them.

Like the story of how our name became Elkort. “We’re really Ilkowitzes,” I remembered my dad telling me when I was little. “But Aunt Adele thought Elkort blended in better in America, so we changed it.”

This is my family, I thought when Dad explained what happened. The name I carried, the great-aunt I’d never met who gave it to me. And the great-grandmother who refused to change anything for the sake of blending in.

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They were all part of me, whether I actually knew them or not.

I logged into Facebook. Someone had sent me a friend request. Jacqueline? “I’m your father’s cousin’s daughter,” the message said.

Of course! I recognized the name from the genealogy charts I’d studied. Jacqueline was my second cousin. Since I’d never actually met her, it had never occurred to me to contact her.

I accepted her friend request and checked out Jacqueline’s page. I saw pictures of her family, read updates about what was going on in her life. One by one I put faces to the names on my charts and birth certificates.

It was so much fun I sent a friend request to Jacqueline’s brother. Why not?

The next time I logged onto Facebook, an update from Jacqueline popped up on my page. She was visiting friends. I left her a comment saying hello. A couple days later she left a note on my page. She asked about my business.

A few weeks after that first friend request we found ourselves online at the same time and hopped into a real-time chat. We talked about our family, our favorite foods, places we liked to travel.

For the first time, when I heard the word “cousin” instead of thinking of names on a chart I thought of funny conversations I’d had with Jacqueline.

“It’s funny to think our name wasn’t always Elkort,” I said to her one afternoon.

“I know,” she said. “We used to be Ilkowitzes.”