Plan B
A few weeks ago, I posted about Moses Osborne and the possibility that he might be part of the North Carolina Osborne mystery that has plagued my family’s research for well over 70 years.
In a genealogical frenzy than could only be matched by the Tasmanian Devil, I tracked down Moses’ descendants. I was determined to find someone to DNA test to see if there was a link with my Christopher. I’d been contacted by one of Moses’ descendants, but he was not an Osborne so I couldn’t ask him to do the test. I did ask him if he knew any of his Osborne cousins and he did not. So I was thrilled when I found another descendant. It was a female but her birth name was Osborne and maybe she had brothers or uncles.
I composed my letter (despite my best efforts, I couldn’t find an email). I had to re-write that letter after I asked a colleague to read it. He works with me and he’s a great sounding board because he all this “genealogy stuff” is new to him. He’s very interested but he’s very new. He indicated that I might want to not mention the DNA test in the first letter. 
He was right.
When I heard back from my contact, she, as she said, “couldn’t be of much help.” Actually, though I didn’t make a contact for testing, she did help quite a bit.
I learned a lot from this experience. Assumptions, as we all know, can be dangerous, but I was making all sorts of them. One assumption was that because this line had stayed in the same region for generations, they all must know their family history. And, because this sort of research is central to my being, I assume that everyone is interested. That is just not so.
So what is Plan B? I have the names if not contact information for a couple of other Osborne males. I’ll see if I can find them. I’ll also keep working on looking for additional descendants. It is interesting to me that there’s not much information out there about this Osborne line–they are “dead-ended” at Moses, which adds to my belief that there is some connection between he and our dead-end Christopher.
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