When I initially wrote this story and placed it on my free Rootsweb Web site, I did so hoping to share with other genealogists -- especially amateurs like myself -- how my cousin and I achieved such success through using both a combination of the Internet and more traditional "offline" resources. Plus I enjoy writing and storytelling. I received wonderful feedback from many readers who found this article to be both enjoyable and a helpful resource.

The other reason to put up this story, as well as the results (and challenges) of all my other genealogy research, was in hopes of connecting with distant relatives and other researchers of the Betz and related lines. And that's exactly what happened.

After RootsWeb Review publicized this story in September 2000, I was contacted by a distant cousin, descended from Elisabetha's sister, Philippina Betz. This woman had been doing research on the Betz line for over ten years, almost all of it NOT on the Internet. Like Darcy and I, she had hit a brick wall when she could get no further than "Bad Kreuznach" -- the name listed on Philippina's tombstone as her place of birth. A friend of hers, another genealogist, found "My Elisabetha" on the Internet, recognized the surname, and printed out most of the story and related pages from my Web site, and shared them with her friend, my distant cousin. They contacted me first by email, then we spoke on the phone.

As it turned out, I was to be near this woman's town the following week, attending a conference. She and her brother picked me up at the airport, brought me to their home for a lovely dinner, then shared with me the results of years of her own Buffalo Betz research.

But it doesn't end there. She told me that she had a photograph of Philippina. This was thrilling, as I have not seen any images of that generation. And here was this old woman, hair tightly pulled back, severely parted down the middle, her thinning lips pursed. We went through a box of other old photographs-- none of them identified-- and we both rued the fact that we no longer had older generations in the family to turn to about identifying these ancestors. Then she pulled out one last photograph: "I think this one looks like Philippina; it looks like it is from the same time period." And she handed it to me.

My jaw dropped; I nearly screamed. I certainly exclaimed loudly my excitement. This was an exact copy of a photograph that Darcy had, a photograph we'd actually decided must be our great-great-grandmother, but on the OTHER (non-Betz) side of the family. But the fact that Philippina Betz's great-granddaughter had a copy of this same photograph shed a whole new light on our theory. This woman must be a relative of Philippina, and also related to us. Who did we have in common? My Elisabetha Betz Schmidt, my great-great-grandmother, and Philippina's sister. Here she is: