National Siblings Day Pop-Up Challenge!

Question

HAPPY SIBLINGS DAY!

April 10th is National Siblings Day in the United States and Canada, an unofficial holiday established in 1995 to honor and celebrate the unique bond that exists between siblings. Other countries, such as Australia, Brazil, Canada, Ghana, India, Ireland, Japan, New Zealand, Nigeria, the Philippines, Singapore, South Africa, Sweden, and the United Kingdom, now also recognize a Siblings Day at some point during the year. 

Today, WikiTree honors our siblings with this One-day Pop-up Siblings Challenge: 

Beginning with your own profile and working your way back up your family tree, create as many new profiles for your ancestor's siblings as you are able. (If you don't want to work on your own tree, pick a "Notable" or other profile to start with.) Throughout the day, feel free to share with us here on G2G, any interesting sibling stories you may come across. Then, at the end of the day, let us know how many sibling profiles you were able to add.

(Remember, your sibling profiles, like all profiles, should be properly sourced. Please don't skip this step in your zeal to create more profiles.)

Answer 1

We have five siblings in our family. Four of us live within a few miles from each other and the fifth flies into town for work every couple of months. Despite this, life gets busy and we rarely have a chance to all get together. Thus, we make a point of gathering in one place a few times each year for each of the major holidays. But now with our kids all grown and additional grandchildren populating our family tree every year or so, we find ourselves pulled in so many different directions that it's getting harder and harder to meet that objective.

Yesterday, after much finagling, we managed to accomplish it and were able to all sit down for Easter supper together. Then someone stepped on the dog, dinner came to an abrupt end, and we found ourselves sitting in the Animal ER. Melody, our "drama dog," had been limping pretty badly until she saw the vet, got excited, and the limp magically went away. The doctor thinks she may have been faking it for attention.

Another memorable sibling dinner is now in the books.

Comments

Great story! We had a dog like that too! lol

Answer 2

My only siblings were twins with adventurous spirits. They both committed suicide a year and a half apart. (Please speak up if you are suicidal. I am passionate about ending the silence associated with speaking about this.)

How have others handled suicide with regard to profiles? I am uncertain whether their manner of death should be mentioned, and if so, it’s a difficult balance between being honest and also being tactful toward sensitive people reading their biography.

Comments

I am so sorry for you losses. Suicide is a very difficult topic to address in a genealogical profile. My personal opinion is that we should  generally be as transparent as possible without sensationalizing. My great-grandfather committed suicide when my grandfather and his sister were still young. That event has had a profound impact on the family which lingers to this day, 80+ years later. I think it would be a mistake to ignore this part of our family's story.

That said, we have to be super careful when reporting such events if there is any chance they can negatively impact still-living family members. I personally would not report details of such a passing as long as a parent, sibling, or child is still living, without the express permission of those individuals.

This is just my personal opinion and is not intended to reflect the official views of WikiTree.

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I agree with David about being careful and transparent at the same time. If there is a newspaper article about it I would link it but not transcribe it.

If someone commits suicide we need to do what we can to be truthful but at the same time respectful of others feelings. I know of one suicide that is close but I haven't added it to the profile before I don't feel comfortable with adding it as there are close family members of the person that are still alive.

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I'm glad you've brought this up. I've found some in my research, and have not been sure how to work with this information. I agree, it should be transparent, but how to be tactful with that depends of a lot of factors.

This kind of situation does have a ripple effect through generations of a family, for sure, and it would not be an accurate portrait of a family to not know about such events.

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My great grand aunt's father died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound (how I worded it), I have an actress who died by her own hand (again, how I worded it), and the uncle of an author who shot himself (I said, "passed away", but also added an extract from the newspaper report of his death where it states he shot himself - he left a note saying why).
All three of the above died after losing a much-loved spouse, and feeling they could not go on without said spouse.
I think we don't know enough about how grief affects people.

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Thank you to all that gave thoughtful responses on how to create appropriate biographies. I appreciate the examples given.

Answer 3

I did 22 siblings today; maybe 23 or 24. I had to add a few parents, then I had a couple of siblings marry siblings, so difficult to keep up. Thanks for a fun little project that hopefully increased my CC7 a little.

Comments

Congratulations Margaret! That's also 22+ additional opportunities for someone else to connect to your branch of the tree.

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Yes. I am working hard to add all of these folks to share with family and cousins. I love it when I receive a message or note that we connect.

Answer 4

I am in the process of getting the Birth and Death certificates for my dead brother. He would have been 41 years old (and 6 days) this year if he didn't die after two days. It is something my mum never did at the time.

I also have been connecting some Wikitree Family Member badged members through their relatives siblings which shows how wikitree can help connect people.

Comments

For those who are not aware, WikiTree has a project called Remember the Children. Their mission is to help improve the often overlooked profiles of children who died before reaching adulthood. If anyone is interested in helping out with this project, leave them a comment on their G2G Welcome Post.

Answer 5

I grew up with 4 siblings - 2 sisters, then 2 brothers, then me. I was an aunt by the age of 10. My Dad had polycystic kidney disease (PKD) and died of it back in 1977. Unfortunately, 4 of us inherited it and my remaining sister had breast cancer (almost 24 year survivor). For those of us with PKD, 3 of us ended up on dialysis. My oldest brother first, then me, then my oldest sister. I was the first to get a Liver-Kidney transplant in 2014 (from a deceased donor). In 2015, my oldest brother became too sick for a transplant so he stopped dialysis and died in August. A week later, my other brother received a kidney from his wife. It had been planned for a while. My oldest sister finally received a Liver-Kidney transplant in Nov 2019. Unfortunately she died unexpectedly in Mar 2020. I’m now left with only 2 siblings.

As for genealogy, my mother has 17 siblings, mostly half siblings. Only my mother (in palliative care) and the two younger than her are still alive. They are all on WikiTree. I always try to add all siblings at each generation.

Comments

Such an unfortunate set of circumstances that have befallen you family. I'm really sorry for your many losses. I'm glad you've chosen to honor the many siblings throughout your family tree with their individual profile pages.

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Thank you David. I am the only one really into genealogy research from my family, following in the footsteps of one of my maternal uncles who had been given a bunch of information over the years. If I don’t remember my family then  maybe no one will.