contacting living relatives

[bonfirebrian]

Trust everyone had a very Merry Christmas. Very best wishes to all for the New Year.
My question is: can anyone suggest an idealish questionnaire that I could  send to distant relations?

Regards

Brian

[Kazza]

Brian,

Good Question. 

I will move this into the main Beginners Board to make sure it is seen and answered.

Kazza.

[Amy K]

This is a copy of a letter that I send out to suspected distant rellies, it ususally gets a good response.

Dear XXXXXXX

I have been tracing my family tree for several years and I am writing to you because I believe we may be related. Before I explain how I think we are connected I want to reassure you that I want absolutely nothing from you. My only desire is that you would consider sharing some family information with me.

Now, let me explain how I think we are connected:

Your mother was XXXXXXX. She was born in XXX and married XXXXX. Your mother was the last daughter of XXXXXXX & XXXXXXXX. This couple had seven other children; the oldest surviving son was XXXXXX. He is my great, great grandfather. I have enclosed a copy of our family tree in order to illustrate this connection.

I would really appreciate it if you could let me know if this information is accurate. I am interested in all kind of details about our family. Unfortunately, my granddad died before I was born, and this means that I know very little about his (and your) parents, aunties, uncles and grandparents. For example, do you recall any of their occupations? Where they lived? What they looked like? Can you remember who they married and what their children were called?

I will understand if you are too busy to reply, or simply if you don’t want to. I can imagine it is strange to receive a letter out of the blue, asking you to share personal information with a stranger. On the other hand, if you are interested in exchanging information I have same interesting things I can share with you, such as XXXXXX.

I have enclosed a pre-paid envelope for your convenience, should you choose to reply (which I really hope you will!) however, please feel free to telephone me on the above numbers if you feel more comfortable with that and I shall call you back immediately to save you the cost of the call.

Thank you so much for taking the time to read this letter, and I hope to hear form you soon.

Yours sincerely,

XXXXXX

[Amy K]

Obviously I tailor the relationship part. I include my telephone number and they uusally call instead of write. I find the best thing is to reassure them that you are not a golddigger and only want information and possibly photos. Don't bombard them with questions, when they call you let them talk where their mind takes them.

Hope this helps.

Amy

[Nick Carver]

I did something similar except I did't know if the people I was targeting were related or not. So I gave a list of the 1840s to about 1900 family that I knew of and sent it to about 15 Carvers in the Hull telephone directory, asking if they recognised any of the family relationships. I got one reply immediately and a referral to American relatives. Since then I have found that although I have identified all the second cousins, there are third cousins and probably fourth cousins who still need to be linked into the tree. It's always nice when this happens.

I also had a PM last week from a new Rootschatter who is a fifth cousin. Chalk another one up for this wonderful forum!

[Ticker]

Hi Brian

Amy's is a super letter to send to people where you think you know the relationship and I would suggest you use something along those lines if you are in that situation.

About 15 years ago I wrote to every member of the Tymon family I could find in the UK telephone directory (about 60) and obviously had to use a different approach.  I sent something like that set out below (after starting off with a few pleasantries about contacting them out of the blue - hope they don't mind etc):

I have been studying my family tree for a few years and have traced the Tymon family back to my great great great great grandfather John Tymon who was born in Ireland in about 1790.

I am now trying to link some of the other branches of the family in England.  There are occurrences of the Tymon name in Scarborough, Wigan, Selby, Nottingham and one or two other places.

Most of the information I have which would allow me to link the branches up goes back to about 1860 to 1900.  Do you know your family history back to those dates? I would love to hear from you even if you don't have any details.  I would of course share all my information with you too if you want.

The basic information I need is your father, grandfather, great grandfather etc. (on the Tymon side of course) and any extra information you have on these people such as names of wives, children, and any locations, professions etc.  I enclose a form to help you with the information I would ideally like.

Thank you for reading my letter – I hope to be able to tell you that we are distant cousins one day!  If you are on email please contact me that way.  My email address and telephone number are shown above.

I think it is very important to include some sort of form for them to fill in, otherwise you get all sorts of suspect information back that doesn't make much sense.

I got about 20 replies and am still in contact with some 15 years later.

Hope this helps.

Ticker

[bonfirebrian]

Brilliant replies by everyone.

VMT

Brian

[Amy K]

Hi Ticker,
I really liked your letter and might use something similar to contact KITCHER people. Can you possibly post a copy of the form you sent them, if you still have it.

Amy

Hi Amy

Sorry to be so slow replying but I have ben trying to find my questionnaire but I'm afraid I can't - it was a long time ago.

Basically if I remember rightly it had columns for Full name, Maiden name, DOB, Place of Birth, Date of Marriage, Place of Marriage, Occupation, Fathers name

And rows saying You, Your spouse, Your children and their spouses (several rows), then Your father, your mother, your fathers father etc. etc.

I spelt it out as clearly as I could but stilll people filled it in wrong!  The main problem I had was if the wife (who had married into the Tymon family of course) filled it in and then proceeded to tell me about all her non Tymon ancestors!   

Hope this helps a bit

Ticker

[Steve Ley]

In my family history software "Legacy" they have a questionnaire i can print out and send off to people.
I have also seen some fro free on the net but i cannot remember where



Steve.