Hi all!
I am a match with Stephanie Knight through our DNA testing - a close match. However, I don't know of any ancestors who went to England. I have tried to contact her, but alas, she doesn't respond through the channels I've tried and I've hit a brick wall. She is in her 70's. You now have all the details I have. What's the best way of finding her? contacting her? learning how we are connected? Thank you for your help. 
Stefanie
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Stefanie Holzman
sholzman1@...
Researching Holzman, Holcman, Ciechanowiezki
from the area around Wyszkov, Poland

What channels have you tried?

Myra Fournier
mjfourn@...

Stefanie, how strange that you both have the same first name.  There is a site www.192.com which is a people finder resource, you have to buy credits, I keyed in Stephanie Knight and got 100 possibilities so not ideal unless you have an idea of location.  I have found people using a government web site that contains details of registered limited liability companies.  So if you match is a director or secretary the details are searchable here: https://www.gov.uk/government/organisations/companies-house

The above is free.  it’s a long shot either way but you never know………..    Good Luck

David Cantor

Firstly, I have to say that the majority of people you match with on DNA channels (I do not bother beyond 3rd cousin) or any paper trail channels do not respond to requests to get in touch, for whatever reason.

I have found a search on Linked In or Google to be the best way to make contact worldwide.

Jill Whitehead, Surrey, UK

I would consider searching for an obituary that mentioned her name as a family member, and perhaps through that you can identify where she lives, or some younger generations in the family who might be more willing to be in touch with you.
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Emily Rosenberg
Oakland, California

KESNER in Amsterdam, London, Chicago
STODEL in Amsterdam, London, USA
KAWIN in Suwalki and Poland
RUBINSKY in Suwalki and Poland

If you can find a mailing address, that may be a better way to get a response from her, if she hasn't responded to anything electronic. 

I have had pretty good luck contacting older but more distant relatives via an old-fashioned letter. I include enough details about my family tree on both sides, including where my family came from in the old country, and where they settled into in the US. I've also listed out the surnames of all my great grandparents, in case any sound familiar to the recipient. Also, in case the person is interested, I give them the name of my family tree on Ancestry.com, and tell them I can issue a free guest invitation, in chance they want to have a look at the tree themselves.

I have tested on Ancestry DNA, and my track record there is that 90% of my semi-close DNA matches don't respond to my messages, or they don't know much of their family trees, so aren't any help in figuring out how we are related. Most people who have their DNA tested are either interested in their ethnicity breakdown, or they are doing testing for health reasons. 

I want to add - I also believe in respecting people's privacy. If they don't respond, I don't pester them. 
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Michele Lock

Lak/Lok/Liak/Lock and Kalon/Kolon in Zagare/Joniskis/Gruzdziai, Lithuania
Lak/Lok/Liak/Lock in Plunge/Telsiai in Lithuania
Rabinowitz in Papile, Lithuania and Riga, Latvia
Trisinsky/Trushinsky/Sturisky and Leybman in Dotnuva, Lithuania
Olitsky in Alytus, Suwalki, Poland/Lithuania
Gutman/Goodman in Czestochowa, Poland
Lavine/Lev/Lew in Trenton, New Jersey and Lida/Vilna gub., Belarus

There is a Stephanie Knight on Ancestry DNA and she has put up a family tree with parent and grandparent names. Try researching the names of her family to spot any possible links. It worked for me when my relative had changed his name and so became unfindable until I saw him on a passenger list visiting my grandparents' address in 1926 from the US. When I messaged the relative's granddaughter she confirmed the original name.

Best wishes
Carol Cambers

   I have a parallel situation, also in England, except that my match is much younger -- about 28. 
I emailed about 20 people with the match's name on Facebook, and one responded that 
she had tested on Ancestry, but didn't have a tree. 
   I've sent several other messages, offering to help with her family information and
trying to pique her interest, but she doesn't respond.
   Through searching, I learned that she lives in Manchester, her date of birth, etc.
   Now that Ancestry has identified her as being on my mother's side, my theory is that 
my maternal uncle, who served in Europe after WW II, fathered a child, etc. 
Unfortunately, he died recently, so I can't ask him about the possibility and I doubt 
that his children know about it.  My next step will be to ask his son to test on Ancestry 
and see if there is a close match with her. 
   Perhaps you have a similar possibility. 
Phyllis Gold Berenson
pberenson@...

Phyllis Gold Berenson writes: 

"... my theory is that my maternal uncle, who served in Europe after WW II, fathered a child, etc. 
Unfortunately, he died recently, so I can't ask him about the possibility and I doubt 
that his children know about it."

One of the very many problems of DNA genealogy described in a nutshell. Telling random people you don't know and who don't want to respond that their father is not their father, or opening the door to that. 

Aubrey Blumson
UK

To the original poster - 

You say the woman Stephanie Knight is in her 70s - so it sounds like you know her approximate birth year. Would she have been conceived between 1942-1945?

And as some have alluded to above - Do you have a father, uncle, grandfather, or brother(s) of your grandfather who served in the Armed Forces in WW II and fought in Western Europe? 

You may not have relatives who settled in England, but there is a high likelihood that you have older male relatives who passed through England during WW II. I myself have both a father and a paternal uncle who served in Western Europe, as well as several first cousins of my father. My uncle spent nearly the entire war in London.

From the flip side of this coin: There was a recent post on the Facebook Jewish Genealogy group 'Tracing the Tribe', in which an English woman wrote that she had found out that her mother, born in Jan. 1945 in a little village in Northamptonshire, was found to be unexpectedly 50% Ashkenazi, via DNA. The woman asked if anyone had a father or grandfather who had served near the little village in the spring of 1944 (she was unaware that Americans don't know much about the names of little villages in the English countryside).

https://www.facebook.com/groups/tracingthetribe/posts/10160290186430747

The woman was completely surprised that her married English grandmother would have had some type of relationship with an Allied soldier or airman during the war, but there you have it.  She was advised to use her close DNA matches to at least narrow down the paternal possibilities to a group of brothers or first cousins. I later looked up and found that in the spring of 1944, there were 1.6 million Americans serving in Great Britain, in the run-up to the invasion of Normandy. Jews made up 3.7% of the US population in the 1940s, so that means about 60,000 Jewish American men were on British soil in the first half of 1944. Of course, the Jewish man in question could have been British, Canadian, or South African; hopefully the locations of the close DNA matches would sort that issue out.
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Michele Lock

Lak/Lok/Liak/Lock and Kalon/Kolon in Zagare/Joniskis/Gruzdziai, Lithuania
Lak/Lok/Liak/Lock in Plunge/Telsiai in Lithuania
Rabinowitz in Papile, Lithuania and Riga, Latvia
Trisinsky/Trushinsky/Sturisky and Leybman in Dotnuva, Lithuania
Olitsky in Alytus, Suwalki, Poland/Lithuania
Gutman/Goodman in Czestochowa, Poland
Lavine/Lev/Lew in Trenton, New Jersey and Lida/Vilna gub., Belarus