Internet Genealogy is a Wonderful Thing

Awhile back I wrote about the family trees I have posted on Ancestry.com. When I did this I had hoped to share some information and of course, to gain some information. I have several trees online--my mother's lines, my father's lines, both my hubby's adoptive and natural lines, and a couple of lines of friends of mine. In the past couple of weeks I have gotten several emails which have been really neat.

One was a guy looking for a line which I had listed but wasn't a direct line of mine. It was actually a cousin's mother's line. I was able to prove that his line and her line connected and I put him in contact with her.

Another email came from a young lady looking for another line of which I'm not connected to. She was connected to a line of one of my first cousin's husband--the Bowies. (Not sure if Jim Bowie is on this line or not.) I didn't have much for her but I could give her some birth, death and marriage dates which she didn't have.

The third email was from a guy who was related to my friend Bob. When Bob's wife, Marilyn, passed away last year, I kind of took over her research. She had done a wonderful job and was so organized. So with Bob's permission, I posted it on Ancestry.com. This man wrote to me and when I explained that I wasn't related but was taking over the search, he praised me for it. Then he proceeded to send lots of information and pictures of Bob's g.g. grandfather and g.g. grandmother which Marilyn or I had never found. Obviously, this all got sent on to Bob and his kids.

And lastly--I said that my husband was adopted. Thanks to a very informative adoption record, a lot of research, and some pure dumb luck, we found information on his natural family. I was able to contact several. We found that he had a half sister (still living) and a half brother who had died some years previously. The other day, I got an email from his brother's son. He didn't really know who I was but when he found out who we were, he opened up his Ancestry.com tree to me so that I could see the living members of the family. (Ancestry does not post names of living people--they are only listed as Living.) Because of this I found lots of cousins we didn't know we had. I also was able to give him lots of information on his ancestors which he didn't have.

As I said, Internet genealogy is a wonderful thing. I have found so many records, people, etc that I would never in a million years found or knew existed. It sure beats traveling all over the country digging through dusty court records, tramping through muddy cemeteries, sitting for hours in front of a microfilm machine, etc. But, I still do the courthouse thing, the cemetery thing and the library thing too. I just can't give that part up totally.