E-Mail Correspondence

[JMMalley]

Greetings!

I posted a version of this in the Embassies and Consulates forum, but I wanted to share this with you all in case anyone wants to do the same thing:

Browsing a website for Settefrati, where my paternal grandfather was born, I found an e-mail address for a woman named Andrea with our family name. I sent her an e-mail and crossed my fingers. A couple of days later, I received a reply from her. She's a Ph.D student at the University of Rome, and her father is the mayor of Settefrati! So we've exchanged e-mails. In the meantime, I talked by phone with a distant relative in my hometown. He filled in some limbs on our family tree. (My daughter is using a free online program called Genoom to build our family tree.) Then, I got an e-mail today from Andrea. Looking at family names, it appears her great-grandfather and and my grandfather were first cousins! We're already talking about meeting in Italy in the future. It's exciting to know about family in my ancestral home. To think I could have started this process many years ago.

Joe