Off to IMHO.
bibliophage
moderator GQ
Just a couple of months ago, I reconnected with a branch of the family which emigrated from Latvia/Lithuania to South Africa around 1900, and have since redispersed all over the globe. (I posted a thread on it not too long ago.) They are now in South Africa, Israel, Australia, the UK, the Netherlands, Spain, France, and at one point even Indonesia and Iran. It was very cool! I’m now corresponding with them on occasion.
I have exchanged emails with a couple of cousins of mine, one in Florida and the other in Seattle, only 20 miles north of the racer72 estate. I met them both through a geneology site. I hope to meet the cousin in Florida someday, she lives only 3 miles from Disneyworld. The cousin in Seattle asked me for money in only her second email, I haven’t heard from her since I told her no.
I found a half-first cousin once removed by emailing someone who left a “sticky” on a genealogy board. We’ve been corresponding a lot and sharing genealogy info.
My grandmother’s father left his family in West Virginia and moved to Washington State in 1910. He started another family there and lived until 1936. My father wrote the LDS Family History Center in his locality, and the nice lady at the FHC went to the cemetery where g-grandpa was buried to record some information. FHC lady an into a descendant of g-grandpa at the gravesite - phone calls and letters followed. So my dad got back into contact with elderly half-cousins he had never met.
I didn’t meet this person on line, but a couple of years ago I worked in a video store <retch> a fella comes in one day and I says “hello”, he gets all defensive about the fact that I don’t have a “local” accent and vents his spleen in a rather bigoted manner. I walked away, and when I came back 20 seconds later he’s still standing there, so I asked him if there was something I could help him with, he says he wants to sign up for a membership, so I give him the form. His surname is the same as my mother’s maiden name, I remark on this, He looks shocked, and asks where she’s from, I tell him, and lo and behold (after some discussion), turns out he’s a 3rd cousin (or summat). Bet he felt a right arse having cursed me out of it for “not being from around here” …
My sixth cousin and I correspond from time to time. He has been doing quite a bit of genealogical research, and passes it on to me. I have recently been able to trace another branch of my family to the year 1250 in England…I am the twenty-second consecutive male to carry my family name…pretty damned cool…
Several years ago, my husband got an email saying, “If you’re Caucasian, then we’re probably related” (we have a very unusual name for white folk). Sure enough, he was a distantly related genealogist who already had most of our branch’s information. Mr. genie did some useful computer work for him (he had everything, hundreds of pages, stored on an ancient TI machine), and we got some great information.
We also found out that the British side of the family is based in Sheffield, and that their major genealogist lives there. We had just returned from a once-in-a-lifetime trip to the UK, and had spend a few days in Sheffield. Life is just not fair.
Several years ago, my husband got an email saying, “If you’re Caucasian, then we’re probably related” (we have a very unusual name for white folk). Sure enough, he was a distantly related genealogist who already had most of our branch’s information. Mr. genie did some useful computer work for him (he had everything, hundreds of pages, stored on an ancient TI machine), and we got some great information.
We also found out that the British side of the family is based in Sheffield, and that their major genealogist lives there. We had just returned from a once-in-a-lifetime trip to the UK, and had spend a few days in Sheffield. Life is just not fair.
Everybody I’ve met online is a distant relative. With some people, that’s a rather horrifying thought.
But seriously, I haven’t met any, although I could probably trace exactly how I’m related to most Icelanders if I had the time, since the entire country is obsessed with genealogy. On my Finnish side, one of my mother’s father’s cousins (I think) traced us back to some guy born in 1699 and listed a lot of descendants, so it might be possible to trace how I’m related to other Finns.
My last name is very unusual, so when I find somebody–we’re related. Period.
I’ve got a distant cousin who teaches economics in Texas. He was nominated for the Nobel Prize. No lie. 
I’ve never encountered any family online, but one of my great aunts was very keen on large family gatherings, so I’ve met many of my second cousins (and more distant relations) through those.
The majority of them we don’t have much contact beyond Christmas cards with, but some of these relationships have developed into more regular contact. My “immediate family” (Mum, Dad, brother, first cousins, aunt and uncles) is fairly small and it’s nice to have a few extra aunts uncles and cousins. One of my second cousins is roughly my age and I count her as one of my closest friends, much much closer than my actual cousins (who are all a lot older than me).
Yes, in a way. We were contacted last year via email by an Englishman who was married to someone with our last name. His wife is a “grandmother” of sorts, based on what we were able to determine. She is the great-great-granddaughter of my great-great-great-great-grandfather’s older brother. Which is actually a close relation, by Indian standards.
I’ve made contact with distant cousins online through searching genealogy websites for my ancestors, but haven’t actually met any of them. I have facilitated one meeting, though - my mom and a distant cousin I found online eventually met and had a great time. It was rather beneficial for all of us; I helped our cousin fill out another branch of our common ancestor’s descendancy, while she got me info on some of his ancestry which put us back into Germany in the 17th century.
I’m the genealogist in my family and I’ve exchanged e-mails and data with cousins where our last common ancestor was in the 1600s.
I call them cousins but I don’t really think of them as family until I’ve kept contact with them for a long time. And since I’ve known some of them for 7 years I feel we’re pretty close.
I email back and forth with a third cousin on the other side of the country. I actually had met her parents at my grandfather’s funeral, but I hadn’t met her.
And I took a very distant cousin on a cemetary tour a few years back. We share an unusual name a few generations back, and he had found me on a genealogy website. (I share primary genealogy duties with my grandfather.)
I’m not very close to either of them, but it’s always nice to find someone you’ve got a connection with.
I have a rather unusual (married) last name. About 6 months ago, I started receiving emails (about four in total) from a man whose username was “paul+same last name as me.” He mistakenly directs these to me, as it appears I have the same first and last name of his (adult) daughter. The first one was all about their family vacation - I wrote back that I thought Cancun sounded great but unfortunately, I was not his daughter and, therefore, could not go.
He has since sent me a recipie (which I replied sounded delicious but “you have the wrong number again”), work story (“that’s too bad but you have the wrong number again”), and general chit chat (you have the wrong number again).
Anyhoo, AOL made this guy a buddy so I saw that he signed on one night. I instant messaged him and said, hey we both have an uncommon last name which is my husband’s and I keep getting your mail…I’m wondering if we’re related somehow"
He never answered and has never responded to his “wrong number” messages. Apparently, that was the humorless side of the family?
Yes, dozens. My aunt and I are compiling a family history book and we’ve contacted relatives from all over the globe. I tracked down my great-uncle (my grandmother’s brother) on the 'Net too and we email from time to time.
Not really meet, but I did reconnect with my half-sister online. We didn’t grow up together so we only got to see each other a few times every couple of years. About two years or so ago she found my livejournal and sent me an email. Turns out she had an lj as well. We quickly discovered that despite being 13 years and 2500 miles apart we are so alike it’s scary. Common interests, beliefs, ideas, ect. We think we got some recessive freaky genes from our father.
I’m going in December to visit her in Portland for a second time since we reconnected.
Oh! I forgot to mention one of my more surprising finds – a Neree cousin of Hermann Göring (yes, unfortunately we are both related to that infamous Nazi). Very nice fellow, lives in Spain, we chatted several times.
What’s a “Neree cousin”?