When I was a college student in Los Angeles, CA, I was goofing off instead of studying and looked up my name in the phonebook. To my surprise, I saw someone with the last name of Vermette (the same as my last name) listed just above me. My family had moved to Southern California from the mid-west just after WWII so I really didn’t know my relatives that well and had never met a Vermette that was not related to me. If you had asked me back then what my ancestry was, I would have answered “Californian”. The short version of this story is that I called the phone number and met my wife. Both her maiden and her married name are Vermette. Many years later, after discovering so many common factors in our histories, I decided to find out once and for all if we were related. It turns out that we’re eighth cousins, once removed. Our last common Vermette ancestor born in 1636. As many amateur genealogists discover, it’s hard to find an end to documenting your family history. This website shares the results of my research to date.
