Googling May Cure Boredom

Last week I got an email message from a woman named Gail whom I'd never heard of.  She had been sitting at her computer and must have been bored, she said, because on a whim she Googled the name of her great-grandmother, Ludmila Pinkas.  Gail knew nothing about her except her name and so was completely blown away to find there was information about Ludmila out on the Internet, including a relatively comprehensive family tree.  My name and email address were attached to it because Ludmila Pinkas was my great-grandmother too.

So my second cousin Gail and I have been corresponding back and forth.  I have supplied her with additional information about her grandmother, who was the sister of my grandmother.  And she has cleared up some confusion I had about her grandfather.

During the first 25 years of my genealogical searchings, the shortest branches on my family tree were on my father's Bohemian side.  I knew the names of my father's parents, and I knew his maternal grandparents' names, and that was it.  Then in 2004 I was able to engage the services of an amateur researcher in the Czech Republic (who charged a dirt-cheap $5 an hour, compared with professional genealogists who get between $50 and $400 an hour).  Now I have the names and dates of my Bohemian ancestors going back five and six generations.

And so does Cousin Gail.