I'm meeting my second cousin for the first time next Sunday and

[wnylib]

6. Several years ago, I met a 2nd cousin

on a surname message board. I recognized the couple he had posted a message about He was doubtful at first since his family was in OH and mine was from PA, so
he checked with his grandmother. She remembered a cousin who settled in my PA hometown and I recognized her cousin's name as my great aunt. He sent me a photo of our gg-grandparents which I fowarded to my uncle, who was delighted to see a resemblance to his mother (my grandmother).

I was surprised to see a strong resemblance between gg-grandpa and one of my brothers, who did not resemble the rest of us much.

But that correspondence was brief. We had nothing in common besides some genes

A couple years later, I met a couple more second cousins from the other side of my family, also at a message board. They did not know of my branch until I joined the conversation. I was able to send them photos of some relatives they knew and ones they did not know. They had more info than I did about the ancestry of our g-grandparents. I had the story of how and why our g-grandparents came to America. It's a nail-biting tale of escape from political persecution (for being liberals, of course), which fascinated them.

It was great fun to exchange info, but we never met in person and the conversations fizzled after a few months.

I put all the info I had, along with some stories I had discovered about some of our ancestors, and fowarded it on to my brother, who passed it on to his children and grandchildren.