I suppose I'd better reply to that letter from that American woman about the family history, it's been lying here a fortnight or three weeks already; cows calving, floods, weddings, elections; it's all been happening this last while. I can put her straight about one thing anyway; our lot are not the same as her lot. Those Gortmullan ones were different; they were A. Catholic OR B. feckless; they were fiddlers and drank and lost the home farm that was my great great grandfather's, while my great grandfather was a very hard worker and made a success of the farm he bought for himself to get away from the noise of fiddle music night and day OR C. they all emigrated and we stayed here so they must have been different OR D. we know they were different because we know that their grandfather came to Gortmullan as a servant with the minister of First Ballyness who moved from Tyrone and it just happens that they had the same name as us. Anyway, I'll write and tell her what I know, which is very little really and she might not want to hear the real reason her great grandfather left; that trail of weans that that woman up beyond Gortmullan said were his. It's all a bit difficult to put down on paper to someone you don't know; it's hard to explain life here to someone not from here and it might offend her if I told her what my granny said about her granny. Maybe as well not mention the broken lock on the chest where the money used to be. I suppose if I've started I'll have to finish it one way or the other. Must remember to tell John to tell his young lad to bring an American stamp home to me the next time he comes from the town; that's if the Post Office is ever open again after the IRA bomb at that side of the street. Right; letter written, though dear knows it's hardly worth putting a stamp on, because I don't really understand what she's after. Why she's talking about the "ould sod" and shamrocks and feeling homesick on St Patrick's day, sure that's all old guff, our ones never went in for any of that. So where does this go to then? There's nothing on the letter; the address must be on the envelope. Where the hell is the envelope that her letter came in? I kept the letter right enough, somebody must have used that envelope to light the fire or something. There's no way I can write to her now, probably just as well anyway, I would only have disappointed her because I can't tell her the whole big story about her ancestors that I know she wants to hear

I've had a couple of emails about this message which have made me think that in trying to be amusing, I didn't manage to strike the notes I meant to. I wanted to say to descendants that if they don't always get a reply to an initial contact, there might be several reasons why, and to point out that things might look different from this side of the Atlantic 1. Sometimes the recipient of your letter might mean to reply, but things just make it difficult, and once you don't reply to a message for a few weeks then it gets embarrassing to pick it up again 2. After years of research, you might well feel that you have established kinship with the folk in Ireland, that you already know them, but your letter comes out of the blue to them; they don't know anything at all about you, and if it is hard for you to imagine their lives in co. Antrim, so different from yours in Arizona, it is equally hard for them to imagine you. People in Ulster might well feel reluctant to write a letter which might have to discuss potentially upsetting topics like illegitimacy, money, land, to someone they don't know in the slightest 3. When all is said and done, most people in Ulster don't know that much about distant ancestors; most people in rural areas know a lot about recent connections, say back to their great grandparents and may know generally who was related to their family within the last 50 or 60 years, but before that, there is in general very little exact knowledge. People in the towns, may often know less than people on farms. And thus they don't want to have to write back and disappoint someone, who is keen to know about people who left 200 years ago. they might not want to have to write a letter saying, "no, sorry, I don't know anything" when they instinctively know how disappointing that will be for the recipient 4. Mention of DNA links might be a bit offputting for many people in Ireland; almost no-one understands it or wants to get tangled with it. If they have heard of DNA at all, it would be in connection with crime investigations and paternity cases. Much better not to mention DNA in a first approach. 5. I failed especially badly to get my message across in the section where I was talking about the kind of "Oirish-American" lingo which is a turn-off for many people in Northern Ireland (for obvious political and historical reasons; and of course I realize that the group who read and write Scotch-Irish Rootsweb postings wouldn't make such an egregious mistake as to use such language in writing to Ulster relatives!), and so I want to make it clearer to you all that many people in Ulster very often do feel very strongly the connection with a place and with a lineage. I personally hope that what I have been doing in genealogy on the internet will help others make that connection for themselves. This is something which is a vital part of my heritage, and I realize how lucky I am that I do know who I am and where I came from. Knowledge of ancestral places is a wonderful personal strength for me; everyone who wants to, should be able to find that knowledge of who and where. I would suggest to everyone that even if you can't make direct contact with distant kin relatives in Ireland, that it can be almost as satisfying to make contact with the place itself; to see the same horizon that your ancestors saw. And also to make contact with descendants of other families from there, that your ancestor would have known. People interested in Ulster Scots ancestry should be aware of how inter-connected all the families in a given area of several townlands would have been; if not related, everyone in a five mile radius would have been known. It can be immensely satisfying to make contact with people whose ancestors were from the same area. 6. And finally to say; don't take it personally! there might be reasons why they didn't reply. If your initial contact doesn't get a response, wait a while and try again, maybe with a Christmas card, or a postcard from your hometown. And make sure it too has your return address; I really have heard of several enthusiastic "American letters" which didn't have return addresses on the letter itself I hope this clarifies what I was saying in my post of a week ago; I hope no one has been offended. Linde L