A Cousin Found Me!

Earlier this year I put a page online with the many surnames I am researching.  It was one of those things I had been meaning to do for ages and kept putting off.  One of the reasons I was finally motivated to do it was that my genealogy society has a page where members can have links to their personal genealogy sites, and I figured that would give it extra exposure.  But I guess I never really expected anyone to just "find" it.

Well, today a cousin actually found me!  She was looking around online for her maiden name and found my page, then followed the link to my blog.  She sent me a message asking if we were related and included some of the names in her family.  I thought her name sounded familiar, and when I checked my family tree program she was there!  **cue happy dance**

She even mentioned my post about the documentary Jubanos.  She appreciated my acknowledgment of the special culture that Cuban Jews have.  She's from the branch of my family that ended up in Cuba when they were fleeing the problems in Europe leading up to World War II and the Holocaust.

We're distant relatives -- fourth cousins once removed -- which I hope doesn't turn her off from wanting to communicate.  I had that happen once with a cousin in St. Paul, Minnesota.  I had found him through research, and he was excited to hear from me until I told him what the exact connection was; I think it was about the same, something like fourth cousins.  Boy, did he shut down fast.  Just stopped talking to me, and has never responded to me since, not even to tell me what the problem was.  The best I could come up with is that maybe he didn't think fourth cousin really counted as a relative.

Well, fourth cousin or fifth cousin or sixth cousin definitely counts as a relative to me.  I hope my newfound cousin feels the same.