Has anyone made contact with "lost" but still living family members?

[Annie65115]

Basically I am wondering whether to try to contact some people and would like to hear advice/stories from anyone who has done similar, or anyone who has themselves been contacted. What went down well? What didn't? Was the contact welcome?

In short, I was in my 40s before I found out (via a slip of the tongue) that my dad had an adopted brother, with whom all contact had been severed. That generation of the family is now all dead, but after years of searching I believe I've identified the adopted brother's children - who would be my adopted cousins, but not blood relatives of course. I believe that 2, maybe 3 of them are probably still alive and will be in their late 60s - early 70s now. I have no idea if they even know of my side of the family or if the family fracture was so complete that their side of the family never knew that my father married and had children of his own.

The situation is possibly complicated by the fact that I suspect (from newspaper reports) that my father's adopted brother was charged, as an adult, with a serious crime. I don't think this incident was the cause of the fallout between my father and the brother because the split in the family seems to have happened many years before, but it might be something that is best kept buried.

So, any advice or stories that people can share? I can't decide what to do. It's only curiosity, after all, that makes me want to contact these "adopted cousins". But it's only curiosity that drives any of us to do the family tree in the first place, isn't it? WWYD?

[Andy J2022]

If you had been proposing the contact the other branch of the family because of information contained in the Adopted Children's Register maintained by the GRO it would be mandatory to do so via an intermediary service such as an adoption charity or your local social services. This idea is intended to use a neutral professional for the first contact, which would remove the awkwardness of a letter out of the blue from you to your 'new' cousins, and would allow them to consider if they wished to reject your offer to make contact without offending you. It also reduces the chance of the other family jumping to the conclusion that you might be a scammer of some sort.

Perhaps you might consider that method even though, in this case, you have used conventional genealogical research to find this family.

More details on the intermediary scheme here: http://www.adoptionsearchreunion.org.uk/search/dap/

[Top-of-the-hill]

  Personally, I would let it lie, but then I am not an outgoing, sociable person. Others see things differently.

[oldfashionedgirl]

I found and contacted a cousin of my husbands. She was the only cousin on his paternal side despite his father being one of 6 children.
She would have been in her late 70s at the time.

I decided a hand written letter was the best approach so it gave her time to digest the situation.

It wasn’t easy to write without feeling like a ‘stalker’ but I began by saying who I was and that I was interested in family history. I explained who my husband and his deceased father were in relation to her.
I put my contact details and invited her to contact me but wrote that I understood if she didn’t want to.

She did contact me, she knew she might have a cousin that she had never met, and she came with her husband to meet us.

Her father had estranged himself from the family when he married her mother (religion) and he died in his 40s when she was 10 years old in the 1950s. Then her mother took her away to live in somewhere else.

She only had 2 photos of her dad, one of him holding her as a baby and one in military uniform. I was able to give her many more.

She was an only child and though she married she hadn’t had children so had no blood relatives that she has met.

She was delighted to meet us and keeps in touch by phone.

I realise it’s not the same situation but my only advice is ‘tread softly’

I was so excited to discover her but I really had to ‘reign it in’ as it came out of the blue for her many years after her parents deaths.

Good luck

[fiddlerslass]

I have been very lucky to make contact with relatives on my dad's side who we lost contact with due to the upheavals in Czechia and Germany at the end of WW2 . It took quite a bit of sleuthing to find an address in Germany to write to, but I sent a letter and enclosed a brief family tree. The letter did the rounds in the family until it landed with someone who was interested in family history and in communicating with me. Ironically he is French, the widower  of one of the descendants of my grandfather's cousin! We now have been emailing each other regularly for about a year and we both enjoy the correspondence, swapping photos and  he had actually written a book about his wife's childhood which he sent to me. Unfortunately he doesn't speak English but it is doing wonders for my French and German skills!

[Nanna52]

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.

[Kiltpin]

If you don't try, you will never know. 

Regards 

Chas

[Gillg]

I found an advertisement for a London firm with our family name selling pianos and knew that a distant relative had set up such a business there in the 1800s, having left home with just his portable organ.  I wrote to the firm, asking if any family members were still involved with it and received a letter back from the brother of the firm's owner.  He was interested in family history and sent me a family tree that he had made.  It turned out that he was descended from a brother of my gt-gt-grandfather.  He was able to give me a lot of information about his side and was interested to hear what I could tell him about other family members.  Better still, he did not live far from me, and we met up along with another another of his brothers and looked at the family photo album together.  We remained in touch until he died.

It's worth a try.  You may get some response, though the person may not even know about your family.  It would make sense to make contact through one of the agencies mentioned to prevent nasty surprises.  Good luck with this.  Let us know how you get on.

[Stella&NorthWestKentFHS]

Here is a letter I used, with names removed, in case it is helpful.
I only knew this lady's address so I could not use online methods anyway.
I chose to head the letter with my postal address and my email address but not give my phone number. 
I did not want to bombard her with information, but I did want to give enough to show that I was not a scammer or ID thief of any kind.

Dear M

We don’t know each other and you have probably never heard of me, but I think I am your first cousin, once removed.

I believe (unless there is a coincidence of names) that you are the daughter of W and M xxx (nee xxx).  I am the granddaughter of M xx (W’s oldest sister, known as M).

I know very little about my great grandfather (your grandfather) George S born circa 1875; I do have one photo of him, given to me by my grandmother, which I enclose.  It was taken in an artist’s studio about 100 years ago.  I also enclose a photo which I think may be your own father as a young man. I have originals of both photos.

If you are interested in exchanging information and old family photos I would love to hear from you.  If you use the internet please email me.  I have a few other photos which might interest you and would be very keen to see copies of any of yours, or other family memorabilia.

I hope you don’t mind me contacting you out of the blue. If you are not interested in pursuing the connection there is no need to post anything back to me.