Comments on: MyHeritage.com and Family Tree Magazine contest…win a free family reunion!

By: Kim

Kim — Sat, 02 Mar 2013 06:53:36 +0000

I know I’m a little late re contest, but last yr I met a relative online who was looking for my grandmother and great grandmother back in 2003 or 2005. I just happened to type in my grandmother’s name and I couldn’t believe it when I had seen that someone was looking for her and her mom. I literally took my glasses off, rubbed my eyes, put my glasses back on for confirmation. I contacted the person who turned out to be my cousin. Her grandfather and my grandmother were brother and sister. Unfortunately, her grandfather passed away prior to me making this discovery. She asked me questions about my grandmother and great grandmother. She had very little information because her grandfather couldn’t tell her much. We filled in the blanks for each other. We found out information together that neither of us had known. We exchanged pictures online and to my amazement, she looked just like my other cousin and her brother favored a younger version of another cousin. She came to my hometown with her husband and 3 children. I didn’t tell my family that she was coming. They only knew that we met online. My uncle was having a bbq in his backyard and to get my grandmother to attend, I told her about her niece coming. I brought the two cousins together that looked alike and said, “Don’t y’all look like twins?!”. Both cousins are married with 3 children. The middle daughter of the visiting cousin and the one yr old (who was not at the bbq)of my other cousin also looked alike. We’re planning a reunion in July to go to Ohio where my cousin lives and where my grandmother was born. Next year they will visit us.

By: SBA 8a

SBA 8a — Fri, 12 Aug 2011 01:17:45 +0000

I’ve been to your website before. The extra I study, the more I keep coming once more!

By: virginia van dam

virginia van dam — Thu, 07 Jul 2011 22:49:29 +0000

Incredible stories!!!!!!!!!!!!!

By: virginia van dam

virginia van dam — Thu, 07 Jul 2011 22:48:55 +0000

These stories are increible!!!!!!virginia van d

By: Deborah Smith

Deborah Smith — Sat, 18 Jun 2011 01:53:30 +0000

I realize the contest is over but I thought my story worth telling. I have been researching our family tree for over 10 years. I have concentrated mostly on my mother’s side, as my father’s side (Smith) was a little too difficult to trace. My parents are both deaf, since childhood and getting up there in age, so they could not always remember names and I have had to track a lot of misinformation through the years. Over the last year I have been going through all my father’s old slides and family pictures and having him try to remember everybody in the pictures. This has been a great goldmine, as I had not seen most of these pictures before and had no faces to put to all the names, but now i also finally had some names. I was working to put together a video for my parents 50th anniversary so i had gone through just about every photo.
I would always share all my genealogical finds with my father, finding we had a shared love of history and it also helped to bring back the memories for him. But no matter what I found or which old relative i was able to place in the tree, my father would always ask if i was able to find his cousin David. David and my father were practically raised as brothers. They grew up together, living on the same street, and spent many good times together. Going through the photos I could see that they loved hanging out together. They lost touch in the late 60’s or early 70’s when David moved out of state. My father never knew what happened to him and missed him very much.
I was unable to locate David over the years but kept trying whenever I could. I finally had a breakthrough when going through all the old pictures. there were many of David and his wife and their first daughter, a baby. I knew her name but not much else. Then I came across one picture of the daughter and apparently a baby son, and it was the rare photo that my grandmother actually wrote the names on the back of. So now having two of the children’s names I searched even harder. My father had never mentioned there was a son and i figured the daughter was long married and would be impossible to trace.
When I googled their names, i came across a post made by the daughter on a website regarding the paternal surname. the information matched up but her name was unfamiliar to me and did not match the name of the daughter I had a photo of. I did a search on facebook and found her there and when i searched her friend list i spotted the name of the son, her brother. So I believed I had the right family. I sent her a message and she replied, and it was indeed the same girl from the photos – she went by her middle name now instead of the name I had listed.
Amazingly, she remembered my father and her father, David, was still alive and living nearby. We were able to swap some stories and pictures. I surprised my dad with the news by showing him some of the downloaded pictures I had done of his slides and then I put up a current picture of David and asked him who it was. He took all of a second, grabbed his chest and said OH My God That’s David! There were tears in his eyes. He was so excited. he was also full of questions. he wanted to know where David was living and when I said Portland he was all set to drive up there. Unfortunately, it was Portland on the other side of the country, so there would be no face to face meeting. And since my father is deaf, there could be no phone call. Us daughters are trying to arrange a video or email chat for the two of them. They both have missed each other and are both 80ish. It’s been more than 40 years but the memories came flooding back for my dad and I was able to learn so much more about our family, especially with help from my new found family. We have had fun posting photos and identifying the people in them and I was able to go around and take some pictures of all the old homesteads they haven’t seen since they left the state. I had hit a brick wall and all of a sudden I had more information than I could ever hope for.
I hope to be able to arrange a face to face this summer for the two of them, but with some health issues, that may not be possible. But you never know. Genealogy has definitely taught me anything is possible. This was one of my greatest finds, sharing the spotlight with another story of recovering my uncle’s dogtags from Vietnam after 40 years because of a post on a website trying to find information on him ( He died in 1969).

By: Howard Coblentz

Howard Coblentz — Fri, 17 Jun 2011 01:42:11 +0000

I been able to meet more than 50 relatives that I never new they existed. These relatives live in all the Americas and Europe. I have made contact with all of them directly and each one have answered me and welcomed me as a cousin.
At the same time recently I was able to bring two coblentz sisters who shared the same father but for 50 years did not know of each other. Now both Coblentz sisters are friends in Facebook. My story was published as a blog by your offices.

It would mean the world to me to go to Europe and vistit my cousin Andre Coblentz who has the largest Coblentz tree in Europe. We only met each other via computer. Both of us have spent countless of years in work and thousands of hours in making our tree a reality.

I am proud of our Jewish heritage. I have traced all the Coblentz who came to America and know pretty much the great infuence these Coblentz have done in the Americas.

It would mean the culmination of my work to visit and make a reunion in Europe. I am writing a book on the Coblentz and thanks to Myheritage I have done all. Many of the Coblentz in FRance are good people and have made good in their own. I am retired in the USA and can not afford to go. A trip would be very nice. I hope I win the contest.
I am proud to have the largest tree of the Coblentz family in the world thanks to my heritage.com

By: Howard Coblentz

Howard Coblentz — Fri, 17 Jun 2011 01:40:13 +0000

I am proud of our Jewish heritage. I have traced all the Coblentz who came to America and know pretty much the great infuence these Coblentz have done in the Americas.

By: Barbara (McKinnies) Kennedy

Barbara (McKinnies) Kennedy — Thu, 16 Jun 2011 05:52:46 +0000

Okay, this may be one for the books, or maybe not.
My dad was born and raised in Golden and Grand Junction, Colorado. His mother’s family were all from Colorado as well; different parts, but, all ended up marrying and living next door to each other, or around the corner, etc. They were tight knit and I have pictures of when my dad was small and he, his aunts, uncles, cousins, parents, and grandparents were off to a summer picknick, or some other activity.
One of my dad’s cousins, Ernie, ended up moving to San Diego, CA when small because Ernie’s dad got sick and needed the warmth and air quality of southern California. They lost touch for probably 30 to 35 years. In the time apart, both of Ernie’s parents died within a year of each other, leaving Ernie and his two older sisters orphaned. It was Ernie’s other side of the family who stepped in and raised the children, even possibly changing Ernie’s name from Charles jr to Ernie, after an Uncle on that side of the family.
Somehow my dad’s oldest brother, Gene, knew where Ernie and his sisters were living with their families in Garden Grove, CA., and while on a visit to our family here in southern California (LA County), reunited everyone. Ernie had a couple of teenage children, I was only about 5 or 6 and have two older brothers, and Ernie’s wife was pregnant. About two years later, we had Ernie’s family over to our home, and the baby, Jami, toddled up and down our staircase all night while I watched her to make sure she didn’t fall, and our parents visited. I didn’t see any of them again after that and we lost touch until last year.
So, in the meantime, I married, moved to Lake Elsinore, CA. for about 8 years with my family. My dad retired and my parents moved to Sun City, CA. Both cities are in Riverside County, CA. A place I knew nothing of before moving here. After 8 years in Elsinore, my family moved to Murrieta, about 2 cities to the south. My father passed away and my mother moved to a senior home in Chino Hills, CA, away from Riverside County.
Last year, in the spring, I had a young friend help get me into swing with my genealogy. In so doing, he sent me a link to a site for finding the graves of loved ones. He had found graves of some of my ancestors. I noticed that one of the people helping to upload information and pictures to that site was here in Riverside County. She had placed several of my family members information from Colorado, so I thought maybe we might be related. I quickly emailed her and asked if a relation could be possible. The next thing I knew, my phone rang and the woman on the otherside was the one I’d just emailed. As we spoke, we discovered so many exciting things. First off, this was my 2nd cousin Jami. Ernie’s baby who toddled up and down my stairway about 46 years before, in Los Angeles County. Secondly, she moved into the area we had moved from (the Elsinore area) the very year we moved out. Her next door neighbor and best friend is a common friend of ours! And lastly, her parents moved to Sun City the year my mom moved to Chino Hills, and, they moved just down the street from my mom’s old home, on a street that crossed her’s at the end of her old street!
I LOVE Jami! And it has been so awesome to discover her and so close by. She is a huge genealogy buff and has shared so much with me, which I am, of course grateful for. But, more than that, it is like having a sister discovered. And watching her; her mannerisms, hearing about decissions she’s made, etc, are all so much like watching a home video. We are definitely related. Even with her father having moved away from the rest of my side of the family when young. Even with her father having been raised my the other side of the family upon his parents’ deaths, Jami and I are definitely related! The way she speaks, the opinions she has, her gestures, words she won’t use because she finds them inappropriate, etc, I would think I was with my little sister if I didn’t know better.
It’s so marvelous to me and such a genuine blessing to have her in my life, though, we don’t get to see each other as much as I’d like too. And, I guess I took for granted all the things that are unique about my family until meeting her and seeing these same qualities shine through. Even though her father was raised by different relations, even though so many years have gone by, even though we both are obviously influenced by our mothers’ sides of our families as well, which would dilute the unique quality we share, the sameness between us is what stands out to me and I love it to pieces. I love Jami, she is an amazing young woman!
Thank you for letting me share my story.

By: Tony Morgan

Tony Morgan — Wed, 15 Jun 2011 21:33:30 +0000

I met my late father’s maternal Uncle Sidney Fargo for the first and only time in 1979 at his nursing home in Santa Cruz. He had run away from home in England, changed his name from Jenkins to Fargo, and became a merchant ship captain, living most of his life in the US. I was working in San Francisco at the time and he passed away in 1980. Recently, I have been downloading and expanding my family tree on MyHeritage and I was determined to find out more about Uncle Sidney. Through a very helpful lady in Carmel, CA, I was able to learn some more of his life but the very pleasant surprise was that I was quickly put in touch with Uncle Sidney’s grand-daughter, Christie Murphy and her brother, Dan, second cousins I had never previously heard of. We have exchanged family news and photographs and Christie was particularly interested to see a couple of photographs I sent her of two of Uncle Sidney’s sisters, one of them my paternal grandmother. She had never seen photographs of her great-Aunts before. Also, my daughter, Gilly, who was born in San Francisco in 1979, now lives close to where we lived in Tiburon, CA, when she was a baby, and she and her husband have a 2yo daughter, Piper. Christie is looking forward to meeting her new US relatives and I am looking forward to meeting Christie and her brother at a family reunion in the US. We must have almost crossed paths, when in 1978-1981 I did a lot of travelling on thhe West Coast and on frequent visits to Seattle, never realised that I had a relative nearby on Vashon Island.

By: Laura Cesare

Laura Cesare — Wed, 15 Jun 2011 05:42:49 +0000

After an episode of “Who Do You Think You Are,” I received a message from someone saying she had been inspired by the show to start searching for her ancestors. She immediately found her grandparents listed on my family tree on Ancestry.com. She was shocked because they passed away some time ago without revealing much about their past and she was sure she wouldn’t be able to find much on them. But she was in luck–I have been researching the family for quite some time. I had been puzzled by some “mysteries” on her side so I did some extra research on them and have even written up some long narratives about the family and their arrival from Ireland.

Fortunately for me, Jill was able to clear up some of the mysteries for me. We have a great-great-aunt, Aunt Kate, who was a suffragette and was the Secretary of the National American Woman Suffrage Association at the headquarters in Washington when the women suffrage amendment was passed in 1919. I had heard of her but couldn’t find much information on her. It turns out that Jill actually KNEW her! When Jill was a small child, she spent summers at her grandparents’ house and Aunt Kate lived there awhile, too. Jill told me that Aunt Kate had changed her first name to Caroline. Suddenly, I was able to find a good deal of information on this “famous” aunt.

I would love to go to Chicago to meet Jill, my second cousin, and to see the city where my great-grandparents met (in 1894) and raised my grandmother.