About Us

Our goal: bringing cousins together.

LostCousins is about bringing people together - not just people who share an interest in family history, but people with a shared interest in the same families, people who share the same DNA.

There was a time when the only people who were interested in genealogy were those who came from 'noble' families. The sequencing of the human genome and advances in DNA testing have underlined the fact that we all, no matter how humble our origins, inherit many of our characteristics from our parents and grandparents, as they did from their own parents and grandparents.

Keeping in touch - the LostCousins newsletter

It's crucially important that we keep in touch with members on a regular basis, because if you forget all about LostCousins you might not tell us when you change your email address. That might not sound so serious at first, but remember that if we can't contact you, neither can your cousins.

That's why the free LostCousins newsletter is so important - it not only keeps members up to date with what's happening in the world of family history, it also makes it less likely that you'll forget to update your details when you change your email address. Members tell us there's something special about the LostCousins newsletter:

"I love to receive your newsletters and it is the only one I subscribe to that I actually read the whole way through as it is always so interesting."

"Thank you for your regular informative newsletters which I always look forward to and find very useful."

"I never cease to wonder how you find time to produce such excellent newsletters and I make use of many of your tips."

Who is behind LostCousins?

Peter Calver came up with the LostCousins concept in 2003, and built the site into a community of over 90,000 registered members - a remarkable achievement for a project he ran single-handedly (though it would never have got off the ground without a friend who ran a web design company).

In 1978 he founded one of the first companies to publish software for home computers, growing it into one of the UK's leading developers of sports simulations - and the world's leading developer of cricket games. After selling the business he studied at the Open University Business School, gaining an MBA in 1999. Peter has been interviewed on radio and TV many times over the years, and has given talks on family history.