Finding distant rellies

[Abiam2]

I have today been 'found' by a second cousin once removed!  This was through GR and they have served me well.  Several 3rd cousins 2 or 3 X removed but this one is the closest. 
GR does have some problems for people but still worth the money
Abiam

[shellyesq]

Genes Reunited has mostly been a bust for me.  I don't have a membership, so there may be more hot matches that are actually matches but haven't contacted me yet.  I did find one person, but I'm not entirely sure how she connects to me and her info was on a lot of different sites.

Lost Cousins seems like such a good idea, but I've never had a match and I'm not holding my breath.

I've found a few people off of the trees and message boards on Ancestry.  One was the grandson of my grandmother's sister, so a fairly close cousin.  He had some cool old pictures.  I've found two cousins, one of which my mother knows in real life, from their trees on their own webpages.  I found a very distant cousin of my husband's on a MSN message board.

[jaylay]

I have found a second cousin (once removed) living around the corner from me!!  Also I have found, through US phonebooks, and the benefit of an unusual surname, a few distant cousins.  We have exchanged letters and photos, and I have received an 18 page autobiography of one of my ancestors from one of them!  So it's definitely worth seeking distant relatives out!
Jaylay

[Paul Caswell]

Hi Marie,

I have accounts with both GR and Ancestry. The way I see it:

GenesReunited - Finding living people using dead people.

Ancestry - Finding dead people using living people.

RootsChat - The difficult stuff.

If you want to find living rellies, get a GR account. I have had dozens of contacts through GR including two second cousins, one third cousin snd umpteen fourths and above.

If you want to find out how and where your ancestors lived get an Ancestry account. Here you can firm up your conjectures with facts.

If you want anything else, come to RootsChat.

Paul

[MarieC]

Paul

That seems like a very good summation and recommendation - thanks!   

Elizabeth

I know very little about curiousfox.  I wonder if any other Rootschatters have had success with it?

GR is still well in the lead in the voting.  I do also think webpages are very valuable for finding living people, and this is showing up in the voting also!  Two of my most valuable contacts have come this way.

MarieC

[trish251]

I found a 5th cousin through family search (and his address was the same as when he submitted his data to the LDS folks 15 years ago!) - he lives 20 minutes away.

I found a "surname" web site through google and the person who created the site put me in touch with 2 relatives (3/4 th cousins) one in NZ and one in Australia.

I found another website through a RootsChatter (who found it through google) and although a very distant connection, the website owner put me in touch with 2 more cousins - a third & a fourth - one in Canada, the other in Australia.

I have been contacted by a couple of other "cousins" who were given my name by a third party (snail mail even)

And writing this out - I didn't realise how quickly the numbers add up - I haven't joined any of the sites designed to find family, so if I had to name a method to find folks, I would think Google is close to the best option!

Trish

[aspin]

Maria,

I entered loads into curiousfox only one came up
Elizabeth

[chesters]

From what I can remeber most of mine were found from surname interest lists. I also found a couple from the ancestry family trees and one from a DNA project website.

Chesters

[Pinetree]

I think my most amazing contact resulted from a visit to the records office.  I was using a film for a particular village when the archivist appeared with another researcher who needed the same film.  I'm sure you can work out the rest 

Pinetree

P.S.  I voted under "other" for that one!