Barbara, Michigan, USA

I happened to log in to ancestry.com, in order to install the app onto my android smart phone, and I realised that I had some messages in my inbox. One of them went on the lines of....

Hello, I think that we might have a common ancestor. My great-grandfather was from Malta (XXX Barbara). His family owned an olive oil business in Sfax, Tunisia, where he was actually born. My aunts have visited Malta and really enjoyed it there. I have several names in my Barbara line. I would love to connect.

Dated 20 January 2012. I read it on 25th November 2012. WHOOPS! I sent an apologetic email and immediately got a reply. Turned out I had communicated with her aunt some 8 years back, and she had sent me a copy of her surname pedigree but I had not had any links there yet. I gave her niece a link to my blog and a couple of links to the online diocese archives and sent them to her by mail. Then after a few email exchanges, she sent me:

Jon, I think we are distantly related!! I checked it out, and Ancestry says that Giuseppe Barbara (born 1789) was my 4th great-grand-uncle. I am descended from his brother, Ignazio. Their father Antonio was my 5th great-grandfather. He was married to Catarina. I have names and marriage dates going back to 1550 for the Barbara line. Check out my tree and compare it with yours... I think we're distant cousins  

I couldn't beleive my eyes.

In my earlier post, Continuing the Journey, I had shown a crisis point when the records in Bona, Algeria, said that the mother was named Catarina whilst the marriage record I had found back in Malta listed Rosa as the mother. And here I find a Catarina for Antonio, apart from a sixth cousin!  

Some more research in the pipeline!