I'm So Excited!

My mother started reseaching our family genealogy back in the 1980's. She was able to follow some of the families back to the late 1700's, but others stopped after a few generations.

Since a lot of genealogy information went on line, I've been trying to follow up what Mom started. Just this past Friday, I visited an O'Keefe family site to see what questions had been posted. Much to my surprise, someone was looking for my Dad!

I've begun emailing the person who was looking for Dad. It's rather exciting, and somewhat frightening, to suddenly discover you have family you never even knew existed.

Has anyone else had this experience? I am really excited, but a little bit wary, to be communicating family information to someone I don't know (even though the person had ALL the right information about Dad and his parents).

That is exciting!! But a little scary, too! I would be very careful what additional information I gave to this person, but I am sure you already know that! Let us know what happens!

Cindy - that's so cool. Finding out you have distant members of your family you didn't know about! It's always something I wanted to do - but the one stab I made at it didn't reap any results.

I guess Debby's right though. It could potentially open a can of worms . . .

Go careful and have fun (sounds like something from a corny sci-fi film!!).

Y

I remember when both of my grandmothers decided to research the family. I am German through and through. As far back as either of them went, there was one person not completely German who married into the families. One of them found out about a Polish Jew who married into the family and thought it was really neat. The other found a German Jew who married into the family and decided that she didn't want to research any further, and no one was supposed to know about the "shame" of having a Jew in the bloodline. I lost a lot of respect for my grandmother when she did that.

Christy, how exciting for you. I would love to research mine but it would be very difficult with my some of my family's last names - way to common.

I've heard back-and I'm even more excited. The woman (who is a cousin, a few times removed) sent an extensive genealogy, tracing the O'Keefes back to the first couple who immigrated to Canada. She also sent several pictures of my great-grandfather and his family. I was nearly in tears-my Dad takes after his family so much.

I'm glad that this worked out, and it's not some con artist trying to get personal info to steal my identity. Now, I have to get all of my Mom's information on the other half of the family together to send it back.

Now, if I can only find someone who's family came from Eastern Poland and who is related to me...

That is really cool! I'm glad this person was on the level!