If You Post It They Will Come
Eighteen months ago when I decided to restart my family history I bought the software that accompanied the BBC series 'Who Do You Think You Are?' To be honest I hadn't been thinking about getting back into it but whilst walking round the local IT superstore I noticed they had the programme on special offer for £9.99 and being a tight arse I handed over a tenner and gave the change to some charity or other.
Well this happened to coincide with an e-mail from Friends Reunited telling me about Genes Reunited. To cut a long story short I posted my basic family tree onto the site and thought nothing more of it - until a fortnight ago.
When I checked my e-mails I had one notifying me that somebody wanted to contact me and there was a message waiting for me on the site. When I opened the link it was a message from my cousin Frances who I last saw in 1974. She said she'd seen my Mum's name listed and her Dad was married to a woman with the same name and was I Paul who has a brother Nigel, she added 'I think you must be my cousin'.
She had only joined the site that afternoon and within a few hours she'd found a long lost relative, she now lives in Crete with her husband, two dogs and a cat. The reason we haven't seen each other since '74 is due to a family bust-up that ultimately led to my Dad being made bankrupt and us losing our house. Quite how much Frances knows about this, she was 5 at the time, I don't know and don't intend bringing the subject up.
Well last night I get home and there's another e-mail from Genes Reunited telling me I have a message etc, I open it and find I've got a distant cousin living only about an hour away who had also made the connection.
Nathalie is beside herself with the news, she's always felt that she's missed out on something in the relations department by being an only child. I know it doesn't make sense but when do they make sense? This all comes on top of the news that I found a website devoted to my Grandmother's family that confirms my research back to 1690 and says I have 570 relations in New Zealand. Nathalie is now asking people how many cousins they have and when they reply with '10 or I don't know, 14 maybe' she goes 'loser, I've got over 600'
Anyway tonight there's another e-mail from somebody who has made a connection with my Grandfather on my Mum's side and he tells me there are 16 other people out there with a common ancestor.
As I said to the lady who contacted me last night, if only I had this luck on the lottery!
3 comments:
Lucky you that Nat takes an interest and I am happy for her that she feels that she has a much bigger family connection out there than she thought she had. My daughter (age 7) takes an interest too and I nurture this carefully!
I don't like Genes. Just something about it, can't quite put my finger on it however it doesn't matter because my Uncle with whom I collaborate with research has posted lock, stock and barrel on there. We got one very lucky break on there with a branch of which we and immediate family and this one man, are the only surviving twigs. It was good to be able to tie a branch up.
I've had far more success with One World Tree on Ancestry and Rootsweb. I have not posted my tree with them because it becomes their copyright (!!!!) but I check regularly my names and have made some useful contacts, although most are distant cousins.
My best success at tracking down a first cousin, twice removed (close enough just a generational thing really!) was by writing snail mail to Canada to an address from the telephone directory and a hunch. The hunch was right and I now have 19 newish cousins over in Canada and Texas.
It's all good fun.
I'm more into dead relatives...i.e. damn, thsoe double entendres again...Mags, that's your fault! looking up family history etc. I know this may sound like complete bullshit but I try to avoid too many sites. Never even heard of Genes and don't go to Friends reunited or similar.
Yes I agree about Genes Mags, but as I said I only posted on there because I didn't have any software at the time, I use Ancestry via the software I have now.
One World Tree is very hit and miss in my experience, they have one of my direct ancestors dying on there before she gave birth to another of my direct descendants!
I signed up to Friends Reunited when it started years ago but have never posted, my name doesn't even appear anywhere that anyone would think looking!
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