RootsChat.Com

I’m in the 18th year with a pacemaker gillg.  Basically it made it so that I could keep going.  I would become so breathless that I would need to stop repeatedly when going anywhere.  It does depend on why you need it as to the difference it will make to you. 

Yes.  The informant on my father’s birth certificate was his aunt, but it was written as sister, then a line put through and aunt written.  As she would have been close to forty at the time it would have been a big gap between siblings  . She was the sister of my grandmother.

From my experience I say have a go.  They can only ignore you, but then you know.
Starting out I knew very little of my family/ancestry.  My first contact was to me by a cousin (1C1R).  Between us we managed to fill out that branch quite well and found many other cousins we didn’t know.
The first contact I made was to a great niece of a cousin killed during WW1.  This came from a photo with a NZ address on it and KIA Passchendaele.  She had written on a Belgian site remembering those who fought and died.  With a name and suburb I took a punt and sent a letter.  Back came all sorts of information about the family.
Others I have contact have had less success and some didn’t respond.  But if you don’t ask you will never know.

A couple of matches I found.  One was someone who shared my 5 times great grandparents.  When we compared our lines there were three occasions where brothers and sisters from a line married into our lines making more matches..
The other one really annoyed me.  I found a match of 300 plus cM on an unknown line.  Whacko I thought a clue.  No!  On one of her parents side my great grandparents were her grandparents and on the other her great grandparents.  Grrrr

I'm an only child, married to another only child. One of my parents was only child, other had sister. Next generation older, several "Aunts & Uncles to my parents, but only three bred. Of those three, two had no children. We're extinct - nearly!
TY

Sounds like me except Dad was one of eight.  As with larger families some split.  As that generation died off the cousins had their own lives and didn’t keep in touch, especially with those who moved away from their birth place.  A couple have contacted on odd occasions with queries about family history, but most I wouldn’t know if I fell over them.  Not nearly extinct, getting there.  Ex husbands side closer as we only had one child and grandkids have no intention of having children.