COEUR d'ALENE — Distant cousins could be sitting right across from each other at a restaurant or walking by one another in the grocery store and they might never know they're related.

Through genealogy and research, those distant cousins could go from perfect strangers to bonded family members who discover they share the same nose, the same middle name or the same sense of humor.

"It’s that connection. It’s that feeling that you get when you find that you’ve got a cousin here,” Hayden Lake Family Search Center Director Tammy Lively said Saturday morning. “If everybody realized we’re all related, we’d be a much more congenial and loving people ... We treat cousins different. Because of that connection, it makes us want to share the love."

More than 200 people visited the Family Search Center in Coeur d'Alene to participate in the "YOUniting Families Across Generations" Family History Discovery Day 2023. The day featured workshops such as "Beginning DNA Research" and "Discovering People and Stories in the U.S. Census Records, 1790-1950."

Novice, amateur and experienced researchers alike worked with volunteers and experts from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints international nonprofit FamilySearch to track their ancestors and find information missing from their family trees.

"I love it. That's what keeps me sane in the winter," said Terry Peterson of Coeur d'Alene.

Peterson is passionate about uncovering more about her family's past.

"My mom died when I was 1," she said. "I'm born in Idaho, in Genesee, farming family, but when my mom died I didn't know much about her family so that I'm interested in. And I found out on my other side of the family, I thought I was Swedish, because my last name is Peterson, but I found out I do have Swedish and Norwegian, but I'm more Scottish, Irish and English."

Shawn Hostetter, a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints Hayden Lake Stake High Council, said it is helpful to research family histories with others rather than going it alone.

"There's a difference when you come together with people that have knowledge and experience," he said. "It empowers people. Doors open, miracles happen that couldn't happen when you don't come together like this."

Roadblocks that occur during research can sometimes be quickly removed when people work together, Hostetter said.

"I was here last year, and I only have my ancestor on my Hostetter family back to my great-great-grandfather, and we found my great-great-great-grandfather just by being here by somebody who helped me," he said.

Keynote speaker Mike Sandberg, who worked for FamilySearch for eight years, offered research tips and guidance and emphasized the significance of making connections between family members and across generations. He encouraged attendees to go where their ancestors lived and worked to see what they once saw; to revisit their belongings and artifacts to touch what they once touched; to look through diaries and journals to read what they wrote; and to prepare family recipes to taste what they tasted.

He said one family shared how their grandmother made tortillas every day, a recipe and technique handed down to her children and beyond.

"'I learned so much about my family while we were making tortillas together,'" Sandberg said, sharing some of this testimony.

"It wasn't just about the tortillas," he said.

The Hayden Lake Family Search Center Director is in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints at 2293 W. Hanley Ave. Research services are free and available for people of all denominations.

Info: familysearch.org