SUCCESS STORIES
I live in (City / County): Hope, Hamilton, NY
Name: Diane Stewart rnbwsend@klinknet.com
Date: 2000-09-11
My Favorite RootsWeb Tool: WorldConnect
Please contact me: yes
My Success Story:
A year ago I started doing genealogy. Rootsweb was one of the first sites I found and it gave me eenough information to get me hooked.About ten years ago my father admitted that he was married before my Mother and had a child. About three months ago I was in Maine at the state archives looking for documentation on ancestors and when I asked the nice gentleman there helping people with the microfilm machines about birth records from the fifties I was told they were on microfilm and how to go about finding what I was looking for. I found the birth certificate and finally my sister had a name. A check of the brides registry gave me her husbands name and hometown. A check on the library's computer gave me a list of people in that town with the same last name. Two phone calls later I had her address and phone number. I went knocking on her door and was welcomed with open arms and many tears. I went to Maine to find info on dead ancestors and found a sister who I never thought I had much hope of finding. I urge anyone looking for someone to never give hope. My sister lives in Hope Maine and I live in Hope New York. A conincidence? I really think not. She is recovering from cancer surgery and treatments. We both have a whole new outlook on life, and we both have the sister we always wanted. She did not know about me until she answered her door that day. She had a picture of our father in his militay uniform, and I had the copies of her birth certificate and mine. Also the marriage records from both of our fathers marriages. I want to thank Rootsweb for getting me started in my search for family. Diane Stewart

 



I live in (City / County): Watertown, Jefferson, NY
Name: Jo Rodriguez jrodriguez@a-znet.com
Date: 2000-04-06
My Favorite RootsWeb Tool: Mailing Lists
Please contact me: no
My Success Story:
JUST A SCRAP OF PAPER Whilst searching through some things that had belonged to his mom, my brother-in-law found a small scrap of paper that had only the following information on it: "Born Tyne Valley,P.E.Isl.Dec 2nd 1888 Married 1st Winnipeg, Manitoba 1911 Married 2nd Waterford Ont.1918 My age at time of marriage 6" Naturally he wanted to know who this referred to, and asked me if I could find out. I talked to family members and learnt that my husband's great grandmother had been married twice and that one of her sons was born in Waterford, Ontario. Her name was Olive McKINNON. I located Tyne Valley on Prince Edward Island, and learnt that it was in LOT 13. With this information, I was able to do a search of an Online index of heads of households in the 1891 Prince Edward Island census.The search results showed a number of McKinnons living in Lot 13. Everything suggested that the paper referred to Olive and I was feeling pretty pleased with my detective work. It was at this point that it occured to me to type Olive's name into the WORLDCONNECT site and that's when things really came together. There were only 2 "hits" for the name Olive Mckinnon and when I clicked on the second one I knew it was my lucky day. There on the screen in front of me were the names of Olive, her 2nd husband and her two sons.When I clicked on Olive's name up popped the names of her parents and siblings and next to Olive's sister it said "born Tyne Valley PEI"!!!!!! I was ecstatic. I e-mailed Wayne, the guy who posted the gedcom, and learnt that my husband has a first cousin twice removed living in Buffalo! I also have family photos that he e-mailed to me and transcriptions of many newspaper annoucements that he has. So I am posting this story as a BIG thankyou to rootsweb, for creating WORLDCONNECT, and to Wayne for posting his Gedcom and being so willing to share his knowledge.

 



I live in (City / County): Hamlin, Monroe, NY
Name: Clarke M. Mahaney relee848@aol.com
Date: 2000-04-15
My Favorite RootsWeb Tool: Mailing Lists
Please contact me: yes
My Success Story:
When I was 3 years old, my mother and father mysteriously vanished from our lives. For years I had tried every way that I could think of to try to find them. Although my brother and I were raised by our mother's parents, they knew no more than we did. Then, nearly 50 years after my parents disappearance I found out about RootsWeb mailing lists and I put out a plea for help on one of the list that I had joined. I got a response from a man that said that he would check the SSDI if I had social security numbers. I gave him my mother's and soon found out that she had died the previous year. In checking with the local Social Security office, I found out where she was last known to reside and sent for her death certificate. On the certificate there was the name of the person reporting the death. When I called her for further details about my mother's death, she said that she would like to know why I wanted that information before she would tell me. I said, "She was my mother." She was quiet for a couple of minutes then said, "She was my mother, too." I then found out that I had a sister and a brother that I never knew about. Since then, my sister has come here to meet me and we keep in touch sharing things about our mother. I have not met my brother yet but we have talked on the telephone. I don't know if I would have ever found my new family without RootsWeb. My next project is to try to find my father's family.

 



I live in (City / County): Rochester, Monroe, NY
Name: Susan DeVelder develder@frontiernet.net
Date: 2000-05-25
My Favorite RootsWeb Tool: Social Security Death Index (SSDI)
Please contact me: no
My Success Story:
Some time ago I was looking at a list of links on Rootsweb and saw a geneology site that I had not visited. I went to that site and eventually signed up to receive messages by e-mail from a list service. I look at all of the messages about once a week, but never find anything related to my families. One day I saw a message from someone with a title "I'm baaaaack!". This drew my attention and I became curious. I looked at the message and found that the person had been on a trip to a nearby city (one which I remembered hearing my father speak of as having had family living there) and she had purchased a book of obituaries. She did not give a time frame for the obits, but I thought I would give her a try anyway. I gave her the last name of my father's family and asked her to do a fast check in the book. To my surprise, she found my great grandmother's obit with numerous details of her parents, husband, and children.

 



I live in (City / County): Mahopac, Putnam, NY
Name: Judy Christopher AjuntascJudyC@netscape.net
Date: 2000-12-28
My Favorite RootsWeb Tool: WWI Draft Records
Please contact me: yes
My Success Story:
I have been posting a message about every month or so looking for the Family Haverbeck descendants. I would get some response, but always the wrong answer. On Dec. 27, 00 I put what genealogical information I had on Worldconnect. On Dec. 28,00 I received an e-mail from another Haverbeck searcher and lo and behold I found a cousin. We will now speak by phone and get to know each other. I will share with him all the research I have done and all the data I have found. I cannot thank Rootsweb enough for your resources in helping me to find part of my family and perhaps my roots in Germany. Judy Christopher I will keep searching Rootsweb for the rest of my history.

 



I live in (City / County): Glen Oaks, Queens, NY
Name: Mike McCormick MMccorm100@aol.com
Date: 2000-04-06
My Favorite RootsWeb Tool: Mailing Lists
Please contact me: no
My Success Story:
My grandfather and a brother and two sisters were orphaned in Germany when he was 2 years old in 1878. They were farmed out to relatives (unknown) and when he was old enough, he was placed in a family as an apprentice tailor. When he turned 16 years old he left for America to avoid military service. He had one sister here already and the other stayed in Germany. The brother died as a small child. My mother is one of 11 children, but none of them knew the name of their father's village or their German aunt's married name. My aunt told me that when her father died, she threw out photos of her German relatives as they only had first names on them; cousin Anna. Even, the 1920's photos of two of their cousins only said "cousin Anna's wedding." My uncle went to visit his mother's family at the end of WW II. He told me that his father didn't know his mother in Germany, but lived just up the river a village or two. I called my mother's only living American cousin and asked if she knew her German cousins names or the village and she said "no." I asked if she had seen the photos and she had copies of them. I copied them and had them published in the German newspaper that had the largest circulation for the region I suspected he was from. I started a international incident. The newspaper couldn't keep up with the phone calls. My mailbox had 5-6 letters a day from Germany. I got a call from a cousin in Tacoma, WA who thought her grandmother (my mother's cousin) was senile when she told her to look for her cousins in America. I received some very warm letters about my grandfather that nobody was aware of. After WW II, he sent food, clothing, religious articles for First Communions that they still cherished. Mike McCormick