[mass55th]

Thanks for your reply. How wonderful that you were able to connect your Australian cousin with her real mother. That must have been such an awesome accomplishment. Although my DNA Matches are well over a thousand, I only share a common ancestor with a handful of them, and they’re only on my mother’s side of the family. None on my father’s side at all. I am DNA matched with two 1st and 2nd cousins, and two 2nd and 3rd cousins. The rest are all 3rd and 4th cousins...and so on.

[Verginius Rufus]

I'm surprised that you don't have more matches if some of your ancestors were in America already in the 1600s. I think I have over 20,000 matches on Ancestry, over 4,000 with MyHeritage, over 2000 with FamilyTreeDNA and over 1000 with 23andMe. Sometimes the same person shows up on multiple lists. Most of mine are on my mother's side since she had ancestors here before the American Revolution--my father's side are more recent immigrants.

The cousin in Australia had fine adoptive parents but they are now dead. She was conceived because her mother was raped--that was in the 1950s when giving the baby up for adoption was the thing to do. There were other people involved in helping her find her mother but I had some genealogical information which was valuable. Her mother was contacted first by a third party to see if she wanted to meet her daughter (she had married and had 3 children)--the mother was worried that the daughter might hold it against her that she gave her up but that wasn't an issue. The daughter sent me photos of their reunion (they live 80 miles apart)--ever since she learned that she was adopted she had wondered about her real mother. I was very happy to help make the reunion possible.