I guess I'll be the first non-Ancestry.com person to christen this board <grin!>

I log into Ancestry.com every few days just to play around sometimes. I'll drop in names and see what happens. A few months ago I entered Obiltschnig, which is a family name from souther Austria. I came up with two people listed in the Florida obituaries.

This was interesting since I've never met anyone with that name, nor is it that common. I followed up by contacting a Rootsweb volunteer in Florida who sent me copies of their obituaries!!

After receiving that, I logged into 411.com and checked for their daughter's married name. While her name didn't pop up, someone else's did. This was another non-common sounding name in Pennsylvania.

I figured "what the heck!" I called, but got his voicemail. Left a msg why I was calling and asked whether he was any relation to the daughter. He called back a couple of days later and left a msg. He was intrigued by the "strange" voicemail he got while he was out of town.

To make a long story short, we finally made contact and talked on the phone for almost an hour. His great-grandfather was my great-great-great-grandfather!!

Small world eh? Apparently we've got another "cousin" in Toronto that he's going to introduce me to one day. Apparently, she's done some further family history, so I'm excited about talking with her!!