RootsChat.Com
General => The Common Room => The Lighter Side => Topic started by: ridban on Tuesday 10 January 06 09:56 GMT (UK)
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In all the time I've been doing genealogy, I've only collected one cousin - a fourth cousin once removed, on my dad's side, from Canada. They didn't know about us here in England, so that was great, and we are still in regular contact several years later.
With all my English names, though, not one contact. Sometimes I feel very lonely, genealogically speaking! :'(
My names are:
Walker, Scott & Alden from East Suffolk. Not one taker
Lockton from Lincolnshire. Nada
Lovitt from Leicestershire and Lincolnshire. Not a tickle
Panter from Northamptonshire. Zero
Cogar from Cornwall. Zilch
Anyone else in the same boat?
Linda
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Although there seem to be a lot of Wanklyn's in Herefordshire, I have only been able to contact one person - a second cousin - who we didn't know existed. No one else in the family seems to be remotley interested!
My Nan was the youngest of 17 children and so my Dad had over 50 cousins just from his mothers side.
I am fascinated with finding out about all my ancestors and how they lived - it can be lonely researching on your own but it hasn't stopped me!
Sue B
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YES :)
Despite posting frequently on Rootsweb, and here on Rootschat over the last 5 years I have found only 2 distant cousins - one in France and the other in Scotland. Absolutely NO English cousins at all. :(
Actually the French one is English but he doesnt live in England. He's married to a French woman. And he's more of a 5th or 6th cousin, our ancestors connect back in the early 1800's. :)
BD
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Hi BD,
I know what you mean,
I did find two first cousin's (my Dad's brother's daughter's) through Genes' site and my Aunt in Australia by putting an add in an Aussie newspaper but have never found anyone else looking into any of the families I'm seeking.
I have been looking into the family for over 40yrs now! I only found them last year so don't give up, you never know what will turn up.
I've got back to the 1700s with the 'tree' but the recent rellie's are the big mystery!
Good Luck
Sue
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I have had reasonable success in going backwards :o but tracing forwards is another matter. Have relations who are vaguely interested but cannot get them to either contact me with info or pass my name on to the other sidebranches, especially when the relations see them once a week in the same area and town. Would be great to link with them to give them inforamtion! It is the equivalent modern brick wall not the ancient one! >:( Not found any Smith and Jones yet which are connected!
However will keep trying. :)
John Rowley
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I'm also in the same boat, I have picked up a couple of 4th and 6th cousins but that's it. The whole reason I started was to find family as my Grandad was sent to an orphanage after his Dad died in WW1, so he knew very little about his family. It transpires that his family was very large and all living in the same area but no-one has contacted me - I've put messages everywhere including local papers.
I think we will find that we are contacted more as the years progress and Genealogy becomes a more popular hobby. The only down side is that all the older relatives that we want to brain pick, maybe getting rather forgetfull.
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I have 95 internet cousins, half of whom I have exchanged information with in the last six months. I have another dozen who are researching the same name as me in the same place but where we have not yet established a connection but send each other bits and pieces
I also have another dozen who are not online and so need snail mail communications. at which I am now very bad.
In the case of at least three quarters of them I intitiated the contact. They were found by regularly monitoring various sites, with Genes Reunited being the most successful source. Rootschat has in nine months only yielded one new contact but is far the most useful for exchanging information with other people who aren't cousins.
I would estimate that about half of my attempts to contact new cousins are successful.
The secret I think is to ensure that your name lists are put in the tables which are searched and not to rely on messages posted on boards. The lack of use by rootschat members of the SIT on this site is the reason that it doesn't yield many cousins.
When searching a site for contacts don't be any more specific on the initial search than you need to be to reduce the number of names returned. Also don't worry too much about dates being too precise. Just remember how many variants you have found of some of your dates. The more common the name the harder it is to find cousins.
David
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Actually I forgot the third cousin who found me. She lives in Australia and is connected to my Scottish family. :)
I'm choosing not to pay out exhorbitant amounts of money for GenesReunited just on the off chance that I MIGHT make a connection, especially when I have to scroll through heaps of pages of rubbish to maybe find one name. Its not worth my time. I do wish that we can make contact with members before we have to fork out the cash to look at thier trees. And with all the complaints I hear about GR, I'm satisfied that I'm not missing anything by not joining. I call it highway robbery. Besides I did put my relatives up on Lost Cousins - which reminds me, I need to add some more names to that.
Besides
If someone really wants to contact me, they can read the message boards and find me that way. :)
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Actually I forgot the third cousin who found me. She lives in Australia and is connected to my Scottish family. :)
I'm choosing not to pay out exhorbitant amounts of money for GenesReunited just on the off chance that I MIGHT make a connection, especially when I have to scroll through heaps of pages of rubbish to maybe find one name. Its not worth my time. I do wish that we can make contact with members before we have to fork out the cash to look at thier trees. And with all the complaints I hear about GR, I'm satisfied that I'm not missing anything by not joining. I call it highway robbery. Besides I did put my relatives up on Lost Cousins - which reminds me, I need to add some more names to that.
ABout the SIT - I think someone just needs to advertise it more thats all. I dont consider it "lacking in use" There are hundreds of names there. And gwoing all the time.
Besides
If someone really wants to contact me, they can read all the message boards and find me that way. :)
BD
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I don't see how anyone can regard less than ten pounds a year as exhorbitant. The only grumbles seem to be about the automatic matching system which I agree is useless but you can just turn that off.
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Two people mentioned the "SIT", and I had no idea what they were talking about. I had a look round Rootschat and found it but couldn't get on to it - no amount of clicking opened it up, so maybe that's why it's not used much:-
(a) it doesn't seem to work (Or is it just me?)
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(b) I've been posting a Rootchat for a while, but I had no idea it was there. A little more advertising needed?
Linda
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Go to the bottom of the page and click on "your surname interests"
This gives you access to the surname interests table
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Go to the bottom of the page and click on "your surname interests"
This gives you access to the surname interests table
Unfortunately, it doesn't! Well, not for me, anyway.
All I get is - surname.rootsweb.net could not be found.
Linda
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Trystan has been doing a little work on the Rootschat.net server and from memory I think the SIT table is on the same server as the webspace, so I would expect that is why it doesn't work at the moment.
I too don't consider the GenesReunited subscription to be an exorbitant price and yes it has given me 3 definite contacts from different branches of my family who have in turn put me in touch with others so it has been a very good starting point.
I think the reason why you don't encounter cousins on the Rootschat boards is because we are all in the main, searching for our ancestors whereas on GenesReunited, or at least the way I look at it, people are looking for other living relatives. If we listen to grumbles people have of trying to post genealogy queries on the messageboards of GR we hear that nobody bothers to answer them, so perhaps each site has its own place and benefits.
I know I have a small tree online with GR and it is for that very reason, but for serious research into my ancestors, I know which site I prefer.
Mary
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I am going to be grumpy old man again and disagree again. I don't think that most people on GR are looking for living relatives. There are a lot of people who go on there and start trees which never get back beyond the middle of the 20th century. That is because we are involved in a hobby which requires persistence, which a lot of people don't have.
Mind you I must admit I don't use their message boards which is probably where you find these living enquiries. The really useful feature is the advanced name search.
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Hello behindthefrogs,
I see you are researching Buswell - are they Northampton Buswell's?
My gg-aunt, Ellen Knight (1847) married Alfred Buswell (1849).
Susan :)
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I will send you a message about my Buswells
David
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One of my great uncles emigrated to New Zealand in the 1880s and lost touch with his English family. I put my name on to London Ancestors and was contacted by the widow of one of his great grandsons.She has given me the names of over 100 NZ cousins plus some English ones I didn't know. I've had no luck with either Genes Reunited or Lost Cousins but live in hopes. Trouble is with a common surname you get so much useless stuff, so I've stopped looking at Hot Matches.
Barbara
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i have found a few distant cousins through GR, one of whom lives in oz. got a great deal of info on that side of the family from her. my most successful contact was only a few weeks ago, though. my second cousin, luckily she was researching her tree also. so i think gr has it's place, but so does rootschat, both for different reasons. keep up the good work.
steve
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Aaah, my dream to find long losts. I have one, who yielded a large family to me, and two more generations. but I persist. I know there are more out there, especially on my Hayes side. Interestingly, a lot of the branches that I have now did not produce many generations. My father's father's generation had 5 children. My great-uncle had two daughters, one died early, never married, and the other was born with some disability and never married. The 3 sisters never married, one a nun and 2 teachers. And the generation before that, close to the same thing, with loads of priests and nuns mixed in. My mother's paternal grandfather had 2 brothers and 2 sisters. One sister had children who had children and I am trying to locate them. But, the last name was Call and two were girls, so that makes it harder. I do yahoo people searches and then send out letters. That's how I found my one long lost. And I did the same thing in Staffordshire, trying to locate my Hayes line. I had one lovely man reply that we aren't connected, but he would be happy to go around to cemeteries and whatnot and look for things for me. Haven't heard back, but who knows. He could have woken up this morning and gone to the cemetery in Rugeley. I always hold out hope.
Kathleen
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I met my third cousin once removed, the day I joined RootsChat. We havnt stopped chatting since.
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I have been lucky and had quite a bit of success with GR. Found a first cousin, a few second cousins and some distant cousins, a great-uncle, and a possible cousin soon (just waiting to confirm where in the line!) ... and all in the past 12 months.
Not had any luck on Lost Cousins though, got loads listed but not a single match.
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I have to say that I dont do a lot of cousin searching on different web sites. I just know that eventually everyone is going to see the light, register with RootsChat and then I will have more cousins than I can cope with!!! Its just a question of waiting for them all to arrive and I shall be waiting for them.
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I am so glad I'm not alone in lacking new cousins!
I have three "new" 4th to 6th cousins. One was found by someone else for me on GenesReunited (I'm not a member); one found my webpage and emailed me; and one was found by chance, just through conversation at the dinner table of a mutual friend! All have led to some new information, and in the last case, she spends part of each year in France, so I am hoping she will look for our mysterious French ancestors!
But on Rootschat and Lost Cousins, not a thing, despite lodging lots of names!
I am hoping Linmey is right and they will all come to Rootschat eventually!
MarieC
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I dont find genesrunited expensive at all (I am into my 2nd term) and have found cousins in Canada NZ and UK ....... I even found a 1st cousin that I have been searching for for 50 years ......... of course she had married and there was a name change but her daughter was a GenesReunited subscriber and the information she entered was 'precise' (as opposed to myriads that aren't).
Dont get me wrong ........ I have had tremendous success from rootschat also but I really think that entering 'precise detail' is the only way to go irrespective of which one you elect to use.
joboy
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Its funny how peoples experiences in finding family are so variable. I dont think I expected to find anyone so finding someone on RootsChat the day I joined was a total suprise. I know people have sucess with other sites but I dont know how many actually meet up on RootsChat. I come across a lot of people having a good old go.
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Hi Linda
I don't know if you still check these message boards as it was a while since you last posted... but I'm related to the Cogar's in Cornwall and I have William Tye Phillips and Frederick George Augustus Cogar in my tree, so it is likely we are distantly related. It would be lovely to get In touch...
Gerry
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I've collected about 40 dead ones today alone thanks to ancestry but in recent years only about 4 living ones. My greatest joy was making contact with a second cousin in Ontario via the net after trying to locate my family that went out to Canada at the turn of the last century. Still would be nice to find marchlenskis, more russells and mallaires ... the Mallaires went to Ohio and have been very difficult to trace.. Any decendents of Annie Mallaire nee Russell, Gladys Marchlensky, Nelly Woodward (settled in Hamilton / York) Toronto , John or Fred Russell ( settled in Montreal)are welcome to contact me!!
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I have collected 50 or 60 (live) cousins, mostly from my side rather than my husband's, although one wonderful contact on his side was from Genes Reunited. Otherwise I didn't find GR much use. I have had one contact on Lost Cousins although I think it is a great site and always recommend it to people, not least for the newsletter. Most of my contacts have come from the trees on Ancestry and most are on my maternal side. My latest but one contact, whose 5xggmother's brother married my 4xggfather's sister, turned out to live in the same town, which was a surprise. I love getting new information. Everyone has something valuable, claytonbradley
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I have had contact with few distant cousins in my research, but none with my own surname, there are oodles of them in my tree and they have lived in my home town since God's dog was a puppy, not one :-\
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The Langley's on my fathers side has loads of relations on Genes and as for Green family mostly from Cheltenham, mothers side, once again loads of relies.
I put my Husband's family on ancestry, all from northern Ireland.
louisaS
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found about 5 cousins in America and Canada - we help one another on different aspects of the tree - i was sending my cousin some of the relationships i have in my tree for eg -
wife of 1st cousin 1x removed of husband of 2nd great grand aunt
sounds a stretch but thats because my great grand aunt married a cousin and when i delete the relationship the above relative is different and becomes a cousin instead
I correspond via e mail most days with my cousin - our gr gr granfathers were brothers in 1793 - i have had an article printed in the local paper to see if there were any more local people with the same name who were researchig but had no replies - i think we are 3rd cousins - it has been a wonderful experience for both of us to share the info as we have a lot in common - i have been locating graves and sending them to her but couldnt find the exact ones for her side of the family that she needed (i think there are a lot of damaged graves)
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I have found 3rd cousins in Canada ,South Dakota and various places in USA with a lot of help from rootschat and ancestry ....don't find Genes Reunited much help ...
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I have a distant cousin here on RC.
We've not yet figured out the exact relationship, but we've exchanged a fair amount of information on our common ancestors. I think we're probably of the order of 4th cousins once removed, but it might be closer.
I've made contact, through genealogical sources, with a number of other distant cousins in Wiltshire, the United States, Canada and Ireland.
Most entertaining, however, is the discovery that a large chunk of my family was originally (and unexpectedly) from the very area where I grew up and went to school; and the list of my family names from that part of the country reads EXACTLY like a roll-call of my classmates. I must have been at school with a LOT of distant cousins, without knowing it!
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I've found a number of cousins of various degrees of relationship from Ancestry, and a couple here too - a thread on a particularly tricky family turned up a number of struggling family historians all trying to sort out the tangle - and I am in touch with several on Facebook, and otherwise via the research.
But I'm always hoping to find a cousin with a cache of stories or photographs which will enable me to resolve some of my brick walls, and not much luck with that, yet! ;)
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I haven't had any luck at all , nobody replies lol.
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But I'm always hoping to find a cousin with a cache of stories or photographs which will enable me to resolve some of my brick walls, and not much luck with that, yet! ;)
This is my hope too, and with surnames like Archer, Walker, Spencer - you would think I'd have found a few cousins over the years. But 'bupkis' is all I've got after 40+ years of looking. ;D
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My Surname is very popular, and indeed there are quite a few people (on the web) with the combination of my First and Surname.
I joined Rootschat a few days ago as i'd found a post in the message boards relating to my parents. I am now in touch with the poster (1st Cousin) who is in touch with 2 other cousins!
My cousin had posted my parent's full names (unusual) and it was that that brought me to the site (i'm not that great at spelling, and may have missed before due to different spellings of my mum's name).
My cousin's post was from approx 2 years ago. So if you're waiting for your eggs to hatch, don't give up hope.
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Hello CPVH and Welcome to Rootschat!
Glad to hear you have found some cousins already - you may like to add the surnames you are researching both to the SIT (Surname Interests) board, and also to the bottom of your messages.
I've had some approaches from people who've read my replies to threads and noted my surname researches and contacted me that way! ;D