A number of years ago, I was working on my husband’s family, made more difficult by the fact that his grandfather had been married three times, and had children with each wife.  My husband’s father’s oldest half-brother had been born in 1888 in Illinois but moved to Valentine, Nebraska, where he died in 1937.  The family had long ago lost contact with him or his family.

I had no idea whether he had any living descendants or not, so I found the address for the Valentine newspaper online, and sent a letter to the editor. I explained that I was trying to find relatives of this person, who had once owned an auto dealership there. The very afternoon that the paper came out, I had a phone call from a great-granddaughter of the person I was researching.  She told me of all the relatives, and from then on I had constant contact with them.  I still maintain contact with one of them.

In addition to that, a couple of weeks after my letter appeared in the Valentine paper, I had a letter from a man living in Amarillo, Texas.  He still took his hometown paper, and had seen my letter.  He had grown up in Valentine, and told me of going to the auto dealership with his father, as a small boy, and things he remembered about this long lost relative.

So sometimes something as simple as a letter to the editor can bring about dramatic results.

Myrna Schosser

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