I must be a favored child for my ancestors. Ideas come to me and I act on them immediately before I get those senior moments .
Well since I wasn't getting anywhere with 'cracking the code' of one of the surnames, I decided to revisit ancestry.com where I keep a membership. I again encourage, use the COLLABORATION icon in your family tree named page. Send emails to every contact person you think may be a part of your family tree. If they don't respond--oh well. But it has helped me. 2 different people did contact me. One had canceled her membership, but I didn't know that. I sent her a piggyback response from our last contact. Ancestry forwarded it and you know what, Today, I found out she is a true cousin and lives right in my city less than a 5 mile drive from my door. We are OMG-ing each other on each email. The other person who contacted me on Ancestry once lived in the city where this one lived NY. They both lived in NY at one time. So I am impatiently waiting for everybody to read my last posting to both of them. DONT GIVE UP. Oh yes I add little tidbits of information to make them keep interested. Hey u do what u gotta do.