This story was sent to us by Liora Cohen. Helping families like Liora's stay in touch is what keeps us all going at MyHeritage. But read for yourself:

We finally had our family meeting! It was a direct result of having a family site at MyHeritage. The idea of a meeting came after we started our site and saw that the family, however distantly related, is showing interest. We currently have 132 members on our family site at MyHeritage.com of whom about 100 have visited the site. We have 698 names on the tree, about 220 of them are alive.

This is the first time we've held such a reunion. The reunion was held in the Blue-Bay Hotel in Netanya, Israel Oct. 30-Nov. 1, 2008. There were 65 participants - 44 Israelis and 21 from Australia, US, Austria and Hungary. Between themselves people spoke English, Hebrew, Hungarian, German and some Slovak. One person flew in from Ohio just to be there for one day!

Our family name is Frankl. Originating, (or as far back as we could find) from a little place called Mliecno, today a part of Samorin in Slovakia - Austrohungary by then. We called the reunion Frankl 28 due to the fact that my Great-Grandmother was one of 28 siblings (one mother, one father, no twins). Our tree is very well documented thanks to my parents who updated it for the past 30 years as well as other relatives before that.

There are not enough words to describe...

This story was sent to us by Paul Cockrill, who has traced his ancestors back seventeen generations. With his research have come many interesting stories. He shares a few of them here.

I started getting interested in my family history over 13 years ago when I received some old files that a relative (Jack Anderson) had started back in the 1930's. He created a Newsletter called 'The Clansman' which he would sell for 25 cents. It was like a family newspaper: he would gather information from relatives on births, deaths and who was doing what and then published it in a newsletter for the whole family to read.

Later on, a grand aunt started to compile the family tree of my mother's family, the family we refer to as the Paynter clan. I became so interested in their history that I asked my Uncle Peer Paynter if there were photos of my ancestors.

He sent many, even some of which date back to the 1860's and that really started my research of family history.

I had initially started compiling the family tree with PAF software and then progressed to Family Tree Maker and now Family Tree Builder. I have used many web sites researching my ancestors over the years,

At MyHeritage we are always interested in hearing your stories. In fact, we have been running some of the stories we have heard about from you, our users, on our blog.

Previously, Paul, who has traced his family back an impressive seventeen generations, shared family anecdotes with us that he came across while researching his family history, while Liora told us how she brought 65 of the 132 family members she has on her MyHeritage site together at a family reunion.

So if you have discovered any distant family through MyHeritage, have rekindled a relationship through the site or have another nice, funny or intriguing story for us, email linde (at) myheritage (dot) com, because we would love to hear and write about it..!

Got any Valentine stories? With this special day coming up we'd love to hear them.

Wanda E. has been conducting genealogical research online for so long that she can no longer recall when she first signed up to MyHeritage.

Wanda's interest in genealogy runs in her family, with her parents already trying their hand at researching the family's history, before they decided to pass on the information to her. Wanda says: 'My parents were giving up their home and downsizing so they gave me the bit of information they had put together. It looked interesting so I just started from there and have gone on.'

Now Wanda has got an amazing family tree. An enormous amount of research has gone into that. She says:

This story was sent to us by Terry Dean Oscar Romstad, a keen genealogist and convert to MyHeritage's SmartMatching. His matches have allowed him to find and get in touch with relatives all over the world in places ranging from the Channel Islands to Norway. He's even placed some of his father and mother's ancestors together in 15th century France. He writes:

It all started in 1976 when my father Oscar retired and needed something to occupy his time. I gave him a Commodore 64 and a Roots program; he went on from there entering data and information from local family relatives and more generally learning about the world of genealogy. Once a year I returned home from my military service to help him by solving computer issues but also getting a list of people I could visit in my travels to help him with his research. By 1999, my father's vision was failing and I took over the controls from him. We made email and chat connections over the Internet which thrilled him to no end. Imagine what MyHeritage would have meant to him had he not passed away at age 94 in 2004.

When my father had to stop his research because of ill health he had 1,800 people in his files.

This Story was sent to us by Hasan Altaf Saleem, who has managed to get 221 relatives as members on his family site. Next are plans for a family reunion. Read his story here:

A couple of years ago I was away from home, thinking about where my family came from and who actually constitutes the "whole" family. I made a basic immediate-family website but was not satisfied with it. With renewed resolve I started out making a little overview using charting software (omnigraffle and visio) and soon, I had my immediate family all mapped out and wanted to grow it. In order to keep it organized and readily accessible, I went online for some genealogy services. That is when I came across MyHeritage.

My immediate family has been living in Pakistan since before India's partition. My earlier ancestors, however, moved from India to what is now Pakistan. They moved to, and set up industry in a city called Chinyot. I was born in Multan, and brought up in Faisalabad not very far from Chinyot (though, I have never been to Chinyot). In 1992 my family moved from Faisalabad to Lahore where we have lived ever since.

This story was sent to us by Maarten Thomas v. Balluseck, whose passion for genealogy awoke at a family reunion. Having reconstructed his family's history back to the 18th century, he is well placed to share some of the discoveries he made about the roles his ancestors played in history:

I have been interested in my family's history for quite some time, but I really started my investigation after a family day, two years ago at my grandparents'. There were about 78 people there (the entire Dutch line of my family), but I knew almost none of them, so I met a lot of what appeared-to-be aunts and uncles I had never seen before. When everybody was present, one of the uncles I just met told us the story of the founder of my family, Fedor Andrejewicz Balluseck, who went to St. Petersburg and became the personal doctor of Prince Friedrich Karl Eugen Paul Ludwig von Wuerttemberg.

Andreas Friedrich (in Russian: Fedor Andrejewicz) von Balluseck was born in Berlin as the son of a button-maker. In 1809, he finished his medical studies in St. Petersburg and became a doctor in the poorhouse of the city. When Napoleon invaded the Russian Empire in 1812, all the medics had to serve in the Russian army. In that role he did an outstanding job and was rewarded for his bravery with an order of St. Vladimir. This order provided Russian hereditary nobility.

This story was sent to us by Douglas Henry, the genealogist of his family. Using MyHeritage Douglas has brought together many family members and has even got a great deal of them to start their own family tree on the site. This is what he had to tell us:

I became excited about our family history as a young child. I had a great uncle, (my dads uncle), who used to tell many stories about our Scottish heritage, his father being conceived in Scotland and born in Canada. As I grew older, I became even more curious about our family ancestors, and the name of our Clan and wondered if our last name had changed over time. Around 2003, I was told about a couple of websites on which I could search our family in Scotland on which I found several family names. I researched many areas on the internet but realised that everyone wanted money and a long term commitment up front. Then I hit a goldmine, I found MyHeritage.com... and best of all it was free to a great degree! That was all I needed.

It's been almost a year since I started my family tree on MyHeritage.com, and I can say with confidence that I am not only our family historian,

Guido Cole is located in Mexico, while his family members are in Belgium, but if anything it has motivated him to research and re-establish family connections. And there was also the mystery surrounding his grandparents which needed solving.... read Guido's story below.

I started building my family tree at the beginning of this year but I already have 1590 people in my tree, about a tenth of them have been found through the internet. We've got 61 family members on the site.

I have lived in Mexico for the past 30 years and have lost many connections from my youth, even family connections. When I retired in 2006, I was interested in reviving those. Also, my Mexican wife has a very elaborate family which I never fully understood. To make sense of it I had the idea to build a family tree for it, an idea that than transferred to my other family too.

When I was building my tree I ended up at two family members with who I had contact sporadically in the past;

Nikos Pentheroudakis has used MyHeritage to build 3 family trees about his family and village in Crete. Join him as he discovers the origins of his family and tries to resolve a blood feud that has lasted 114 years!

Up until 1717, the surname Pentheroudakis didn't exist anywhere in the world, not even in Greece. The name first appeared in Crete, and all the people with that name and their families ultimately come from Crete. I set off to find all the Pentheroudakis' in the world, and my findings have been very remarkable!

Before 1717, my family ancestors had a different last name, as Crete was under Turkish occupation and Cretan names were not recognized by the government. Back then, the family name was either Sifis or Sifakas, which first appeared around 1460. These families came from the village Imbros, in a very hostile area of the province Sfakia. Around 1600, due to Turkish oppression, they moved their families about 10 miles east to Rodakino, a village in Rethymno province.

In 1717, Sifis, a boy from one of those families, changed his surname in order to avoid having a Turkish name. He chose Pentheroudakis, which comes from the Greek word "pentheros," which means "father-in-law."

This user story reached us from Italy and it is a very touching one:

Miss Daniela Ciani and her husband, Mr. Alessandro Tessi, lost their daughter during the autumn of 2008. It has been a tough experience for them. While Daniela has always had a lot of relatives in her life, Alessandro has a small family, or at least he only knew a small part of his family.

As a consequence of their loss they both decided to start their own family tree, becoming MyHeritage users in November 2008. Soon after that, MyHeritage found smart matches between their tree and another Tessi's family tree in Australia. To his surprise Alessandro found a cousin of his in a photo, and immediately wrote to him. They had lost contact after the Second World War.

It was the beginning of the construction of a great family tree, which now has about 150 members from Australia, Hungary, Germany, Canada, and of course Italy.

Through MyHeritage Daniela and Alessandro also found out that

Tintin Medel is from the Philippines and has a real passion for sharing pictures and stories with her family. In 2008 she discovered MyHeritage as the site to do so and the result is a sizeable tree, a family site that she shares with many family members and plans for a family reunion. This is what she told us:

I've been interested in my family's history for as long as I can remember. My father often tells stories about his childhood days and I have always enjoyed that.

I traced my ancestors back to my great-grandparents through talks with my father's cousins. There are close to 200 names in our tree but is not yet complete. Our tree really grew in January 2009 when I met my father's cousins and their children who live in California. We met at a family wedding of my second cousin and after that they became members and contacted relatives to communicate with me to update the tree.

We use the site in English, mostly and Filipino sometimes since it is the mother tongue for most of us. I really enjoy meeting new relatives even if it is by email and/or text message. My close relatives think creating a MyHeritage website was a great idea. And everyone is excited to share their pictures on it. Most of their pictures are taken during birthday parties when relatives gather, such as the ones published here,

Joan [Robertson] Symons is of Scottish-English descent and lives in Kingscliff in Australia. She is 82 and with her age come a lot of stories. Find some of them below.

My interest in genealogy began when my children asked me about the first World War medals that they had worn to school for the ANZAC ( Australian and New Zealand Army Corps) services. My maternal grandmother had given them to me and I knew of the tragedy behind them that was never spoken of because it was so painful to my grandparents.

My grandparents had come to Shepparton, Australia in 1912, from Wiltshire, England with their three daughters. Their daughter Gladys married an Englishman who had come to Australia as a young boy because work was scarce in the agricultural area. He became a soldier, and when he returned from service they were given soldier settlement land near Shepparton, in Victoria and wanted to start a family. Sadly both my auntie and her baby died during childbirth. After this tragedy, my uncle was unable to settle in Victoria and returned to England where he was born.

Jack Gilchrist is a MyHeritage.com member from Michigan. He has brought all those in his family who are family historians, genealogy hobbyists or just interested in the family, together on his MyHeritage website. The result is an impressive tree of over 2000 people, 200 members and hundreds of photos. Even more so considering he only really started building it in 2009. Read about it here:

The Gilchrist 2006 Reunion

I started with MyHeritage in February 2009. It was my first venture into genealogy or any major effort to document my family tree, its history and old family stories and mug shots.

I got into genealogy because my kids asked me a few years ago to jot down some of the stories I liked to tell about growing up in the "Good Old Days". So I wrote down over 40 pages of what it was like growing up in a neat family in the 40's and 50's. I then gave each of my four children a copy as part of their Christmas gift that year. It captured a lot of the old family stories I could remember from being born in 1941 to around 1965, when I finished college and started my first full time job.

The exercise got me thinking about my family history in general and the other stories that others likely had that I had never even heard. Then I lost my oldest living uncle in 2008 and it dawned on me that if I didn't get going my elder relative's stories would soon be lost for good.

Juergen Ulloth born in Kassel in Germany in 1946, has pieced together his past over a period of fifty odd years, finding out about the family secrets hidden from him. Now, at the age of 62, he knows all about the family's ancestry and has reconnected with his American family. Read below the truly incredible story of Juergen, a user of MyHeritage.com.

Juergen Ulloth and parents

The first indication I had that I was not a child like the others was in the beginning of 1954 when, as part of a school project, my teachers asked me to map out my family tree. Consequently, I asked my maternal grandma about the family and she told me everything she remembered. I found out that her family came from the Cologne region of Germany over 100 years ago. But when asking my paternal grandparents about the Ulloth family history, their explanations about my father, grandfather and so on were confusing to me. That should probably have been an indication that something was not right in the family, but I only found out years later what it was they were hiding from me.

The story is that of my German mother and her impossible love for an American soldier in the Second World War, a history which

Phil Wood, 64, from Whittington, England, has been with MyHeritage.com now for quite a few years. Having done extensive research into his family history, he's come across a number of interesting stories, including a rather dark tale from his family's distant past. He shares this story with us here.

Phil Wood at age 7

A very distant relative of mine, John Westwood, was born 1802 in Hammerwich and married Sarah Parker at the age of 20. The couple subsequently had seven children so life was hard, and making ends meet was a daily task. Thus, to help with their money John and Sarah rented out a room to a lodger, Samuel Phillips - a Nailor who was employed as a farm labourer come harvest time. Years went by and the family was on good terms until one day John found out Samuel had been romancing his wife. A fight ensued, witnessed by the whole neighbourhood, which John won. Afterwards he became possessive, ordered his wife to stop going with Samuel, and tried locking her indoors. But Sarah proved a defiant wife, swearing at John, threatening to leave him and continuing to see Samuel.