Meeting up after several years of swapping notes

[SandieCee]

I think it´s always a bit unnerving when you meet a lost cousin for the first time. I discovered my 2nd cousin though Lost Cousins site whilst researching my grandfather's "mystery" family. We had no idea the other existed. Our grandfathers were brothers making her father & my mother first cousins (who also had no idea of each others existence & sadly never met. My grandfather was born out of wedlock & brought up by his grandparents. His parents later married and had 3 more children. We still don´t know if my grandfather ever knew that his "sister " was in fact his mother or if he ever met his siblings. My 2nd cousin came out to visit me on holiday (I live abroad) & although we were very different in backgrounds jobs etc.. we got on well & she returned the following year with her sister who amazingly looks like she could be my sister! We swapped photo´s and our grandfathers looked like twins they were so similar. So all in all a very positive experience & we are in touch a lot via email.

 

[jorghes]

It’s still good. I recently met a distant cousin from a branch of the family I had never know about (and they had never known about us) because my great-great grandmother never seems to have appeared on a census with her family! (Didn’t help that they then emigrated to different countries)

 

[Margery]

We met my husband's Irish second cousin (their grandfathers were brothers but at different ends of the family) after I discovered the family through another researcher of the same name who was not related. They did not know that we existed as grandfather had emigrated to Australia aged 18 (he said he was 22!) and seems to have had no further contact. The resemblance of the two men was amazing and they have so many similar traits. When they met us at Dublin airport his wife exclaimed "their hair even sticks up at the back the same!"