have you ever found a family member on the Internet

hollydolly

hollydolly

SF VIP
Location
London England
..that's no longer with us. ?

I've just found a picture of my father on someone's Youtube Video...The video is a short history of my city, and my father is in it.... . I already knew of the pictures' existence but it's very odd to see it on youtube and posted by someone I don't know.. I mailed them to tell them, that was my father.....Have you ever been surprised by seeing a family member or someone you know well on the Internet in some capacity... ( not faKebook ) ?
 

It's not the same thing, but I found my grandfather's family, a good friend of my mother's, and some distant relatives on the internet.

My mother was a small child in Germany during all of WW2. Her father was killed in Hungary during the war. She didn't know much about him - his name, and that he was a musician. Her stepfather was the "real father" she knew. He, too, died during the war.

I decided to find her father's family, as a surprise to her. I have no recollection of how I did it, except that I used a German search engine. I finally found someone who posted something that was a clue that he might be in her father's family. I contacted him, he responded, and my mother traveled to Germany to meet him and his sister. They were her first cousins. I used a translation service to contact her cousin, since I knew he was from the former East Germany, and a lot of older people from there can't speak English. Thank goodness, he could because he responded to me in English.

Another time, I found the woman who had been my mother's best friend when I was 10, and my dad was in the USAF, stationed in Alabama. Again, I used search engines and, following a clue, found her. She and her husband, and my mother, immediately started visiting each other again. She lived in Florida and my mom lived in Atlanta. They renewed their friendship for at least 5 years, before the woman died. They were both so surprised, and really enjoyed their time together.

Then I found a relative I didn't know about. I was trying to find out the name of my grandmother's father, who was supposedly a full-blooded Native American. Instead, I found a lady on Ancestry.com, who was looking for the same thing I was. I contacted her - she was in her 80s and very nice, a close relative of my grandmother's. She had set up a fake name and email address for her search, as I found out later. Through her, I found another relative (not so close) who lived in Washington DC. Both of them knew about this Native American, same as my family did.

Then I did a DNA test, and there was no sign of any Native American DNA, same with my kids and my half-sister. My extended family was not happy to hear that, and they still think they are all part Native American, and that 23andme screwed up. And maybe they are, maybe the genes skipped me. I know hardly anything about genes.

I wish my grandmother was still alive, for many reasons, but also so I could ask her about this.

I also wish I could have found out information about my paternal grandfather, but having scoured the internet many times over the years, I never found out anything about him. I knew his name because my father was a Jr.
 
I put a name search into Google, trying to find a long lost cousin. Switching to image search, I saw a kid with the same last name, sitting in a cockpit. Too much of a coincidence to ignore, so I contacted him. It was my deceased cousin's grandson. We exchanged a few emails. Well, to be truthful, I think I was the one who stopped responding when he sent a picture of himself standing proudly in front of a rebel flag. It was obvious that we didn't have much in common. /-;
 

I did not know much about my maternal grandfather's family because my grandmother was separated from him before I was born. Nobody mentioned his family ever. I found his whole family on Ancestry. Then I found my mother's cousins who were my grandfather's sisters' families. I am friends with many of them now on fakebook (and that is a big reason why I stay on it). I am planning on meeting them all in person later on this year.
 
Yes. My paternal grandfather only had 1 (older) brother who died in 1920, which was before my mother was born. All I ever heard was that he had drowned, which was likely because the family lived along the Ohio river and a lot of folks did "river work".

Digging around on the internet, I found that he had married in January of 1920, and he died in May of 1920. I then tracked down an obit for his young widow, who had remarried a few years later, and had died in her late 40s. Turns out she had a son in November 1920, which means my great uncle was the father. That son, who did have my great uncle's last name, died in the 1970s and is buried here in Florida. He was a first cousin to my mother that she never knew she had. I do not know if he had children, who would be my second cousins.

Many years ago, while looking thru one of my mothers old, old photo albums, which contained a few pictures she had inherited from her parents, I found (and scanned) a small (approx 5x7) studio portrait of a lovely young lady, well dressed, holding a small posey. My mother had no idea who it was, but it was not one of her mother's many sisters. I now believe it was a picture of the long forgotten wife to great uncle, and mother to my mother's mystery cousin. Her name was Adra. Now I have to look around to find the scan of her picture...
 
My mother and father were separated almost from the beginning. In the early 2000s my daughter emailed me a news photo of him in the early 60s; he’d done some daredevil stunt. My ex must have been doing some ancestry type thing to have found this.
 
I know my stepfather's nephew has a page up with pictures of their family.

I googled my bio dad's name to confirm if what I had been told by my oldest brother, that he was a POW, was true. He came up on several sites. I was born with a more unusual last name.

Not sure why I did so. He never did much for me.
 
On Ancestry, I was connected to two of my cousin's granddaughters. One is in NY and the other in FL. I had no interest in keeping in touch, since they were so far removed from me geographically and generational.
 
OneEyedDiva said:
If you're not counting Facebook, then no. But how cool that you came across that YouTube video.
Click to expand...
I know.. it's not as if I was looking for him at all. The YT video is just one of probably dozens if not more that people have uploaded of the city where I grew up.. and I just randomly clicked on this one when it came up in my feed...
 
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My dad was almost 59 when I was born in 1960, he died in 1980, and I never knew a thing about his family until my own daughter started researching our family tree around 2015. She came up with a few photos and one was of my dad and twin brother, and his parents, I never even knew any of their first names. Eventually she discovered where they are buried and even came up with a picture of his parents gravestone.

Very neat for me to see. None of that would have ever happened without the internet.
 

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