Digging up relatives to hang on my family tree has been a part-time, on again, off again pursuit over the last 12 years. Over the preceding years, I have been successful enough to have traveled the path back four generations, finding various related cousins along the way.

To make research a little more difficult, my sisters were 20 years older than myself. This is not really particularly different or more unique than a number of other people; however, the twin factors of birth order and the large age gap between sisters did influence my ability to meet and talk with living relatives.

When I was growing up, I didn't have the advantage of meeting my paternal grandparents, my maternal grandfather, aunts or uncles and certainly, no cousins. With very few facts about the years of birth and death, location, and relatively little oral history, I started my journey without much information, checking out every avenue available to me.

Children of Charles Jr.

Two years ago, when a genealogy software company put out the call for family group sheets for inclusion in the World Family Tree, I sent my family names into their database.

I learned if you have a strong desire for something, put it out there into the universe. The answer will come back. So, I put it out there and then forgot about it. I continued to read genealogy magazines, search the Internet, check the genealogy boards for names and subscribe to family and county lists.

Already, I had added many family names to my group sheets but had not been able to progress on one particular line. I had come up against a brick wall with my mother's brother, my uncle.

Family legend had Uncle Kenneth disappearing to Hamilton, Ontario, Canada. In 1992, I contacted the Ontario Genealogical Society in Canada. Although they were very helpful, no name match was ever found.

They did, however, suggest I contact the National Archives of Canada, regarding any military service. In a letter, the answer came back, "unable to locate any record relating to the military service of Kenneth Van Court."

Grandchildren of Charles Jr.

I had been looking in what I thought was the right place, Canada. I still couldn't find the family name, and consequently had no luck with finding my long lost uncle, Kenneth VAN COURT.

At that point, I didn't know what else I could do, short of hiring a professional researcher, which is exactly what I did. And, since my uncle's trail stopped for me in Chicago, Cook County, Illinois, I hired a research person who was an expert in Cook County Records.

It turned out that she was very helpful. The Van Court family was found in the 1900 Federal Census for Cook County, Illinois, listing Kenneth as a boy of 10 years old. The best information I learned from the research was that Kenneth was not his first name. It was actually Charles Kenneth Van Court. All along my research trail, I had no idea that his first name was actually Charles; the family had called him Kenneth, never Charles Kenneth. Shortly after receiving this information, I decided I would contact the National Personnel Records Center in St. Louis, Missouri. After all, he might have joined some branch of the military service.

In September of 1992, I received records from the Navy stating he had served on the USS Constellation and the USS Vermont from 1907 until he was discharged on April 6, 1910 at Fort Monroe, Virginia. He had been given a travel allowance to Chicago, a total of 964 miles at four cents per mile, totaling $38.56.

Charles Kenneth had joined the service as a boy of 17. When he came home to Chicago in 1910, he was 20 years old. Unable to move beyond this period of time in Charles Kenneth's life, my formal research ended. Although ever vigilant and on the lookout for any reference to the family, I had nearly given up hope of finding even so much as a small clue.

Sunday afternoon, March 15, 1998, all that changed dramatically. I was just putting the Sunday paper down, thinking about a story I had just read, when the telephone rang. The usual hello was followed by, "You don't know me, but I think we are related."

Then she said IT, the magic words, Charles Kenneth VAN COURT, my lost uncle's name. He was found nearly 84 years later. The caller was Trish SIMMONS-HARPER, whose father was Charles Kenneth VAN COURT, JR. She had seven siblings.

The way Trish explained it, she had a friend with one of the CD-ROMS from the genealogy software company, the same one I had sent my information to, over two years ago. She had asked her friend to look up the name "Charles Kenneth VAN COURT," and, as you guessed, there, after all these years, was the connection.

Trish had been doing research on the family name for about six years and is the only one interested in family lore in her large family. We were both so excited we could hardly get pen to paper to write down all the details from those missing years.

She was so moved she wanted to cry, and I was so excited I wanted to do cartwheels on the front lawn. Over the next week, Trish sent family pictures via the Internet; e-mail flew fast between our two houses, and I made trips to the copy store so that Trish could have some of our family pictures.

All the time I had been looking for my elusive uncle, I had been looking in the wrong places. Yes, Charles Kenneth VAN COURT left Chicago but he had moved to Buffalo, New York, not Canada.

He married Anita Gray on December 17, 1914, and they had one child, Charles Kenneth VAN COURT, JR., Trish's father. In 1921, when she was just 25, Anita Gray passed away of tuberculosis, leaving Charles, Sr. with a six-year-old son.

Charles, Jr. was adopted by the Simmons family and legally became a Simmons. He later married and had eight children: six daughters and two sons.

The original family mystery has been solved. And a new one has taken shape. Charles Kenneth Van Court appears again in the 1940 Buffalo city directory. He had been a piano player in a local bar called Metzger's Brauhause in the city.

Where did he go between 1921 -- when he disappeared after his wife died and he gave up his only child to be adopted -- and 1940? I don't have the answer to these questions yet.

Whatever information turns up with this new mini-mystery, I am going to be happy with my recent successes, at least for a little while anyway. And, when the time is right, I can again plunge back into the research with the added benefit of knowing I can enlist the help of my new found cousins.