Greetings: So many times I would read the happy stories of others who made connections to long lost kin via Rootsweb. I used to think that it could never happen to me as my family group was from Bohemia in the Austro-Hungarian Empire. How do you make a connection with a place like that? What if my surname was changed during immigration? My only male in that generation, Charles Erban, died 2 weeks after having his first child here in Providence in 1895. I was beginning to believe that he lied on his immigration papers. I had thought that none of his family information had passed to his English widow as he died so unexpectedly at age 40. So for years, I enjoyed other people's discoveries while I stood up against my brick wall. Several months ago I posted a query for the surname of his sister's spouse. And voila! An answer came in recently and as unbelievable as it seems the person answering my query is a 4th cousin with dozens of old documents and letters written in German, Czech, and Russian; dating from 1825 to 1891!! More unbelievable is that she knows my father from high school in the 1940s but admits she didn't realize that they were living within 3 miles of each other for over 50 years. Can you imagine? My great grandfather's information did not pass to his widow, it was safely tucked away in a shoe box in the possession of his sister's descendants. Much to our mutual delight, we have connected 2 branches of a very elusive family and made the world just a little smaller by finding the name of my gr.grandfather's birthplace in what is now The Czech Republic. Many thanks to Rootsweb for making this service available to all of us amateur genealogists! Sincerely, Dianne Erban Varr 15 July 2000