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Do you have a Cousin Eddie in your family? You know Cousin Eddie. He's the unemployed, lecherous cousin of National Lampoon's Griswold family.

In the family vacation movies featuring the Griswolds, Cousin Eddie pops up like a persistent weed, making life miserable for the long-suffering family patriarch Clark Griswold.

Cousin Eddie isn't really all that bad - you just don't want in him your house sitting on your furniture. Most of you probably have a Cousin Eddie lurking somewhere in your family tree.

We may want to put some distance between ourselves and our current Cousin Eddies, but we shouldn't neglect our ancestors' cousins.

Sometimes, the path to ancestral paydirt runs right through Cousin Eddie's grimy doorstep.

In the genealogy world, we have lineal family lines and collateral family lines.

Lineal lines refer to direct ancestors or descendants. These lines focus on parent/child relationships.

We spend most of our time researching lineal lines: our grandparents, their parents, their parents, their parents, on and on.

Collateral lines, on the other hand, refer to family who aren't directly or lineally related to you. These are the cousins, aunts and uncles.

I pay the most attention to collateral lines when I come to lineal dead-ends.

For example, I couldn't find the first or last name of Polly Fowler's mother.

I searched through probate records hoping to find Polly mentioned by one of her maternal relatives. Jackpot. I found Polly's cousin. Fortunately, her cousin never married and had no siblings, so this bachelor farmer left all of his property to his three cousins - Polly and her two sisters.

Discovering Polly's cousin led me to his father who happened to be a brother to Polly's mother. Sound confusing? Collateral research can be confusing at times. But, the payoff is worth it. Not only did I find the maiden name of Polly's mother through her cousin, I also found a whole new lineal line to trace.

I'm especially interested in collateral relatives who, like Polly's cousin, never married or who died young without children. We typically think those lonesome relatives don't have much to offer our research efforts. But, they are the ones who named their parents as their next of kin on their military records, and they are the ones who left their property to their sisters, brothers, and cousins.

Research the collateral relatives just as you do your lineal relatives. In addition to finding useful clues in wills, I've also found collateral clues in obituaries and census records.

Tracing Cousin Eddie is important because, like it or not, his lineal line eventually merges with your lineal line, and you can find real ancestral treasures along that collateral family tree.

Web Site of the Week: Charts and definitions of cousin relationships