I wonder....did my great aunts and uncles really know each other

[LizzieW]

ThrelfallYorky - I did know who everyone was in my mother's address book, it was just that I hadn't kept in touch with most of my cousins.   I knew all my uncles and aunts but I only knew one of my maternal grandfather's siblings and none of any of the other grandfather (he lied and said he was an orphan) nor any of my grandmothers' siblings.  My mother was next to the youngest in her family, so most of her aunts and uncles had died long before I arrived on the scene.

[lydiaann]

I don't think they did.  A letter from 1855 came to light, where a woman wrote to her cousin to find information regarding their fathers' (2 brothers) family.  My 3xGGF had moved from Wakefield to Alnwick (as a single man) and married there, producing a family of 10 children.  One of these children wrote to her aunt to find out about her father's siblings; a nephew of the aunt, thus the cousin of the original correspondent, wrote back with some information.  Surprisingly, he wrote that his dad (my 3XGGF's brother) was most upset that he had not been informed about the death of his brother some 8 years previously!  My grandfather was rarely in touch with his siblings and, until I started researching her family tree, I knew nothing about my grandmother's family; even my mother didn't mention her cousins or aunts/uncles.  And it was the same with Himself's family - although when I first started my father-in-law was alive and was able to give me a little info, but really very little.  A different world nowadays it would seem.

[DavidG02]

There are one set of cousins I have no memory of ever seeing. They lived/live in WA and even when I moved there for a decade I never caught up with them.

I would not know them if I walked past them