Facebook may be passe, but you can make some astonishing connections

[malthaussen]

3. My mother's uncle did a geneology of the family in the 50's...

... and claimed the first known ancestor of the family was a Covenanter martyr whose descendants fled to Ireland and then Pennsylvania circa 1750. Around the turn of the present century, the Internet allowed me to exchange a few emails with the head of the family still in Scotland, who was quite frank that the connection was probably spurious, since there was no unambiguous chain-of-evidence to link the family members. Not quite the same thing, although facebook has made it possible for me to post pictures of the little monument that has been erected to our putative ancestor for the delectation of the surviving members of the family on this side of the puddle.

-- Mal