George Anne Locates Long-Lost Cousin in the eBay Café!

She went to the eBay Café hoping to meet a cyberpal. She left with a new relative!

The very first night George Anne ventured into the Café , she started chatting about Jadite glassware, growing up in Nebraska and South Dakota, and other topics with a friendly eBay user. "I was talking to one gal named Janney, and she and I had similar backgrounds. We decided to email each other with a bit more personal information, and lo and behold, we discovered she was my cousin! I was in TOTAL disbelief! By the grace of God, and eBay, here was my cousin! A lovely, loving gal—about my age—with a toddler the same age as mine!"

They soon learned that George Anne's grandmother and Janney's grandmother were sisters. "I didn't even know that my mother's sister had a daughter, so I would never have gone looking for her," George Anne says.

George Anne explained that her grandmother died in 1936, and her mother, then three years old, was raised by her grandfather's side of the family. She was kept away from her mother's family, and grew up feeling alienated and outcast. "I have since learned from Janney and her mother that my mother has always been wanted and loved by my grandmother's side of the family, and they did everything they could to try and get her to live with them. My mother has spent 60 years not knowing this," she says.

"I'd always been spooked by chat rooms—too many scary stories," George Anne says. "But I had been bidding on eBay for months and everyone I met had been just wonderful, so I decided it might be time to join in. Ever since Janney and I first corresponded, our relationship has been nothing but wonderful. Over the year that I have known her online, we have exchanged birthday and Christmas gifts for ourselves and our kids. Janney has even sent me family photos. She has filled in so much about my past; talking to her is like having a huge piece of our family puzzle dropped in my lap."