A picture is worth a thousand centimorgans

These are my mother's paternal grandparents (thus, my great-grandparents), Markus Hanna and Zahra Solomon:

They originate from Shebbah, in Lebanon, which makes getting documentation for them and their families rather hard to come by for an armchair Internet researcher like myself, who doesn't even speak Arabic. Therefore, so far in my research, I've been relying on family oral history combined with documentation from the countries that they and their families immigrated to.

One marvellous source of family oral history is the notes that my grandfather took when interviewing his sister Jean about the Hanna family history. I wrote extensively about one of the research rabbit holes that these notes led me to in an earlier post, Who the heck is Zaidain?

Here are a few fantastic pictures of my grandfather (honestly I don't think he took bad pictures ever):

And here are some pictures of his sister Jean:

Oh heck, here's the whole family: Marcus and Zahra, with their children Mary, John, George, Nick, and, youngest of all, my grandfather Constantine, aka Ted:

One of the hints in Auntie Jean's family notes was about Markus's oldest brother Nicola and his family. In doing research on that side of the family (see above-linked blog post for all the gory details), I added a whole bunch of incidental people to my tree - people who were not related to me, but to Nicola's wife Annie. Even people who were only related to Annie by marriage made it into my tree as I followed the paper trail.

One of these people was the first wife of Annie's nephew Joseph, whose name was Karimy Shaar. Joseph's second wife was named Salamia Shaar - I theorized she could be a sister of Karimy but had no way of proving it. But I was able to find out a bit about Salamia's family - her parents were Camille Shaar and Farida Saumah, for example.

This was a real side deviation from my own research, obviously, but all these people were from Shebbah, which is a small town, and it's entirely possible that there were family connections to be discovered that I didn't know about yet, so I put all these people in my tree anyway, even if they weren't (yet) related to me.

This turned out to be a very smart decision, because late last year, I was contacted by a gentleman who wanted to know why I had his grandfather Camille Shaar in my tree. I explained that there was no real connection except by two marriages, and happened to mention my theory that Camille's daughter Salamia was the sister of her husband's first wife, Karimy.

No no, this gentleman assured me, Karimy was the daughter of Shaheen Shaar, not Camille Shaar.

But...wait.

Shaheen Shaar? Because I had a Shaheen Shaar in my tree already!

Like...the Shaheen Shaar, who was also known as Michel Charles, who married my great-grandmother Zahra's sister Kharma Solomon?!?

Yes, he responded, the very same.

Mind. Blown.

Suddenly I had intertwining connections on my tree that I had never known were there! I knew of several children of Kharma and Michel, but did not know that Karimy was one of them! But my contact was quite sure. (In fact, he also mentioned that Karimy and Salamia were connected as first cousins once removed, because Shaheen/Michel was Camille's nephew.)

This information of course made Karimy much more than my great-granduncle's wife's nephew's first wife. She was actually my great-grandmother's niece! This great-grandmother:

This also meant that Karimy was a first cousin to my grandfather! This grandfather:

Karimy would therefore also have been a first cousin to my grandfather's oldest sister Mary:

And his other older sister Jean:

And all his brothers:

Such as his brother George:

It also meant that Karimy is a first cousin once removed of my mother, and all her siblings, for example, my late uncle Mark:

Now, as nice as all this was, I had zero documentary evidence - just some person who contacted me out of the blue on the Internet. But I put the connections in my tree anyway and resolved to (hopefully) find documentation to confirm or refute it in the future.

As a start, I took a look at everything I had on Karimy Shaar.

As mentioned, she was one of two wives - she had a few children, then died, and then her husband remarried and had more children. And all of them up and moved from Canada to Australia around 1925 (so that Joseph could be with his aunt Annie, because her only child Ferris had died and she was alone in Australia with nobody).

Joseph and Karimy's oldest son was Felix Joseph Hanna. And he actually has a WWII military record available at the National Archives of Australia! This was actually new information, because when I originally went looking for information about him, only the index of his WWII record was available; but in the intervening time, someone must have paid for the whole file to be scanned, which meant it was now publicly available (the NAA are amazing that way).

And this newly-accessible military record? Includes a picture.

Felix looks like this:

When I saw this picture, my mind was blown. He looks like EVERYBODY I know who is related to my great-grandmother Zahra (who is Felix's grandaunt). I've shown this picture to a variety of individuals in my own family, and their reactions were all the same - they started naming people that he looks like.

Of course I still want documentation to connect Karimy as the daughter of my great-grandaunt Kharma, but honestly, my heart doesn't need it - this picture says it all.