Dear Kathy Bemisdarfer: I have a similar tale. There are seven of us. My biological mother had three brothers. My oldest siblings kept in touch with where us younger ones were and through one of the adopted mothers was able to stay up with us and we reunited in l976. But we never knew about our biological uncles whom we thought were all dead. About 3 years ago, we found out that one of my uncles, who had been at Pearl Harbor when it was bombed, had just deceased leaving an estate of 400 to 450,000 dollars. The money was to go to the next of kin. The only relative still left alive that it could go to would be our mother. Since my cousins knew that my other two uncles were dead, they thought our mother was dead also. They were told to produce death certificates of my uncle's brothers and sister. My cousins proceeded to look for a death certificate on file for our mother. When they could not find one, they began to get excited because they wanted to reunite with our mother. When they found that she had had seven children, they really got excited. When they found my oldest brothers and learned from them that our mother was still alive, they were overjoyed. Because of one greedy brother, they never got to see my mother before she did pass away. Needless to say, all seven of us inherited the estate. But what has been even more wonderful is that I was able to meet cousins and relatives that I never knew I had. And what is even more amazing is that one of the cousins had done quite a bit of genealogical research before they began to look for our mother. A professional genealogist wanted 40% of the estate to find our mother. My cousins said no. That they would find her and they did using the one cousin's knowledge of genealogy and the family history that she had already put together. Now I am trying to put together the family history of my biological dad's side. So I say keep looking, you never know what or whom you might find.