There are now nearly 800 Leggs on my Ancestry.com Jerry Ban(n)ister Family Tree, strongly outnumbering even the Ban(n)isters. Every day a few more names get added to the point where there are now over 20,000 connections that I have found. For months now I had been searching for a 3rd cousin named Larry Bogue, one of the close DNA matches that had yet to fit on any branch of this sprawling tree. I went to Facebook and found the name associated with Purdue University. Even though he now lived in Colorado Springs, I had the feeling that he was originally was Indiana and my hunch was right. His family grew up in Tipton County that is directly in the heart of the Central Indiana Ban(n)ister nest. After finding an obituary for his father on-line, I then discovered that his grandmother was a Legg and added him to my tree with a green “DNA MATCH” tag. 

Although the name Legg is obviously a popular one in Ban(n)ister heritage, it was not common in my circle of friends. However, as an adoptee I grew up as a Johnston, not a Bannister as listed on my birth certificate. I did once work with a Bill Legg  – the only time I’ve run across it outside of tree I’ve constructed. Personally, when I think of Leggs it’s the popular Z. Z. Top song “she’s got legs, she knows how to use them.” I have written about other Ban(n)ister connections to the Legg family in this blog. (See Post #635 and Post #1104). They also have a good sense of humor with nick-names like “Bird” and “Bent.”

In the process of all this, I may have uncovered a mismatch, where a 2nd cousin relationship identified with a green “DNA MATCH” tag for Charles Leonard “Mousie” Hines could be wrong. Mistakes often happen on tracing genetic roots since the same common birth names are used over and over. It now appears that there are other Hines named Charles in the mix, so additional research will be required to pin-down this association. Furthermore, when I get more time, I will continue to explore Legg lore, since Bill Legg was from the Richmond, Indiana area. There may very well be a relative connection I will find. I know he now lives in South Bend and we continue to be distant friends through Facebook. I’ll have to send him a message.