[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.

[mass55th]

Ancestry.com only says I have 1000+ matches. I haven’t actually counted them, so I have no idea what the complete total is. My mother was born in 1920, and never knew her father. Her parents were separated/divorced before my grandmother came from Canada to the US when my mother was a little girl. My mother had an older brother who was married, but never had children. I started my initial family search for her side of the family in 1991 after she had passed, by going to Picton, Ontario where she was supposed to have been born. She knew nothing of her family, and was never even able to get a certified birth certificate for herself. I’ve never been able to find out what happened to my grandfather (her father), nor her aunt (my great-aunt) who married a silversmith in Canada and moved to Covington, Ky. in the late 20’s or early 30’s. He died young, and the last info I ever found on her was that in the 50’s, she was still living in Covington, and working at Western Union. They have no record for her. I have no idea if she ever became a citizen either. Her husband is buried in a double plot, but her side is empty, and she’d definitely be dead by now. It’s strange that I can make all these connections in older family lines, but I can’t even solve what should be the easiest ones.