And there is the story of Cary Christopher, who thought his great-grandfather was a German soldier during WWI but found out he was actually an American naval hero.

Well, recently we had a follow-up to Cary’s story that made it even more interesting. After we put the clip of Cary telling his story on Ancestry.com, we were contacted by one of Cary’s old friends and shipmates from Cary’s own time serving in the Navy.

Owen, Cary’s former shipmate, was also a member of Ancestry.com and his wife saw Cary’s video while doing some research on Ancestry.com.

According to Owen, he was reading the paper in one room when he heard his wife yell from the other, “It’s him. Honey, it’s him!”

“Who?” Owen yelled back.

“Christopher.”

“Chris who?”

“You know—him!”

When Owen finally figured out who she was talking about, he was ecstatic. He contacted us to see if we could put him in touch with Cary.

We took down Owen’s information and passed it on to Cary, in case he wanted to contact Owen. He did, and the two had a fun time connecting after so many years apart. They spent several hours on the phone catching up.

I love these kinds of connections because they just go to show you how doing your family history has a domino effect–one connection leads to another, which leads to another, and so on. Who knew when Cary made the discovery on Ancestry.com about his great-grandfather that it would help him reconnect with a former friend and crew member from his own life?

You can read the rest of the story about Cary and Owen’s reunion in the Learning Center. Plus, you can get some tips on how to make your own connections with family–past and present.

Note: This article was originally published in the November Ancestry Monthly Update.

In the article I was reviewing, the author mentions that civil war pension records are filled with aliases. (The number one reason? Marital not-so-bliss–apparently way back when it was far easier to just change your identity than to go through the legal rigmarole of divorce). So I went to the Civil War Pension index at Ancestry.com and dropped in the keyword “alias” as my only search term. My reward? Eighty people with hundreds of assumed names between them. Using “known as” as my keyword gave me more than 5,000 additional possibilities. Sometimes it was the soldier with the alias. Other times, the widow filing for the pension, who may have picked up a few other husbands along the way, was the one with the changed name.

Some of the aliases are on the up-and-up, simple spelling aberrations. But the best ones? The folks with four or five different, I mean really different, names. Who in the world needs that many names? And how confusing was it for them to remember who they were in any given situation?

You’ll find the answer to these questions as well as tips on spotting an alias in your own family tree in the November/December issue of Ancestry Magazine, due to hit newsstands at the end of October (magazine subscribers will get their hands on it a bit earlier). In the meantime, I’ll keep you posted.