Making contact with strangers

[Rebecca Steele]

I would just like to say in response to my previous posts that I have now had a response from my mums cousin!!!!  and he's being quite helpful!

In fact I've just written him another letter asking for some more info, hoping he'll be able to help me with my brick walls!!

[cookie]

Hi all.

Im new to rootschat but i have emailed quite a few strangers and so far they have all replied back. Most of them with a "sorry but we are not related" but at least they bothered to email back which they didnt have to do.
If someone emails me i always email back, 1 out of curiosity, 2 just to let them know if we may or may not be related and 3 just out of commom courtesy.

Cookie

[DebbieDee]

Like many of you, I didn't take this up as a serious hobby until I had access to the internet.  The funny thing is one of my initial motivations was to find out about my Nan's family as they had such an interesting surname: Assender.  I was also very proud of this Welsh heritage, my Dad having been born in the Assender family home in Abertillery.

Well practically the first thing I did was google 'Assender', came up with a New Zealand family historysite and sent an email to someone researching the same name.  It turned out he was in Wales! He had originally gone through the phonebook and written to people with the same name and found someone straightaway who had already researched the family right back to 1600s 

This chap and I are descended from two brothers in the mid 19th century so not that distantly related.  He sent me a copy of the tree and while very grateful for all the hard work saved, I was gutted 

The family had wandered over to Wales from Birmingham via Herefordshire in the fairly recent past   

So all my 'Welsh blood' gone out the window from one email!!  Oh well..

[tarnee]

Hi all,

l sent an email to someone on the Chesire Society site who was searching the surname Graham from Birkenhead but have not heard back. When 192.com had a free week l found what l thought was my married cousin they had no phone number but gave the neighbours so l phoned and the chap said he would pass on the message. Well he did and this woman phoned me from England(l live in Australia) unfortunately  wrong lady. l went back to 192.com to get another number but offer was closed so missed the boat there. l
 think some people just don't care about the past as we addicted people do, l don't really know if l would have the guts to do it again.

tarnee

[Michelle Kemp]

I have to say i dont mind contacting people , i go on the got northing to loose but loads to gain theory.

Most experiences have been positive , i recently found a distant cousin (we share the same great great grandparents) via a website that she had put a notice asking for info re my family, the names she had given were obviously my rellies only she did not leave her email address.  I felt really frustrated but contacted the owners of the site and they managed to put a notice on there asking for her to get in touch and she did.  Now we email almost every week, she is in Canada and i am in Scotland.  We have shared loads of info and we go on the assumption two heads are better than one.

Also recently got in touch with a distant cousin on my mothers side who was really helpful. 

My nan died in February and i have discovered she kept in touch with a cousin whom she had never met so i am going to have a bash at contacting her for info.  She must be in her 80s but hopefully she will be helpful and wont mind me contacting her.

I did have one bad experience, i contacted a few rellies by getting there details from a phone book and they were prepared to see me.  My aunt found out and was very upset claiming they were not nice people, she still maintains this.  I decided that i did not want to upset anybody close to me so did not persue this but it did make me wonder what she was hiding.

Michelle

[Lindy Lou]

I have tried and thought I had a good contact.  We had agreed to send a ged.com file of our family trees, guess what I sent mine and they never sent theirs.  In the end I got fed up of asking for it by email. 

It appears they were not interested in supplying me with any information on their line.  Apart from telling me they were a 3rd cousin twice removed, and
added that the family line I am following was their baby.   The sting in the tail was last week when they emailed me saying they were planning a family reunion and were going to use my ged.com file.  Still in a quandry about how to respond. 

Don't get me wrong I am quite prepared to share/assist and help other family researchers (infact helped one on this site yesterday by doing a look up for them) but do not intend to be used like that again.  I am sure this person is a minority but it has made me very wary about contacting people who say they are researching the same family names as me.

Lindy Lou

[snowwhite77]

I have been more lucky than poor Lindy Lou.

I have managed to get in touch with 2 peolpe researching the same family. We email back and forward and i feel as though i have made 2 new friends too.
Glad to say we have been sharing information and assisting each other in our research.
What a shame Lindy Lou has been let down. I would be furious about it too!

[kerryb]

I've had some really good contacts when I have emailed people on genes reuntied and various other websites in general but I have to say last week I emailed a lady who had her email for a surname I am interested in, on the Sussex surname interest site and I have had no response. 

I know I need to be patient but what is the point of having a site to register surname interests if people are not going to reply when people send emails. 

It was everso polite too!!!!!!!  I have had several emails from other people from various websites and even when I know I cannot help I always reply - must have been my upbringing!!!!!

kerryb

[Burrow Digger]

While I have had tremendous luck on one of my lines, I have others that have stayed very stubbornly silent.

My one successful contact online via Rootsweb (sorry but I've been there for the last 4 years),  found one of my Scottish lines that had been a very frustrating brick wall.

My second Scottish line, and my Burrow line from Devon are both proving to be huge brickwalls.

I've left all my Burrow rellies at lostcousins, and I've had not one single response.

I'm sort of tired of doing this on my own, but it seems that none of my Burrow relatives in Devon have any interest in Genealogy at all. I so desperately would like to contact them, but have no names more recent than the 1901 census. I wouldnt know how to "connect the dots....".  So I bravely soldier on.