What are the ethics of tracking down unwitting relatives?

So, I recently noticed on ancestry that I have a couple of second cousins that I don’t know. After doing some sleuthing, I believe that my great grandpa had an affair with their married great grandma (they were next door neighbors), which produced their grandma.
I reached out to both of these second cousins on ancestry but didn’t get a reply. It looks like neither still use the site. I also know first hand that it’s easy to miss an email notification from ancestry.
I’ve found both of these second cousins Facebook accounts, and I’m thinking about reaching out via Facebook, but I don’t know the ethics of it. Here I am, trying to track them down just to blow open their family history and expose their great grandmas secret. In some ways, I feel like this isn’t my story to reveal. But at the same time, our grandparents were half siblings! And I really want more information for the sake of my own family story. I have been going crazy thinking about it and not being able to dig into it more because I’m hesitant about doing the wrong thing




on 2025-01-15 03:15:16
Dradius has been a Family Tree Circles member since Dec 2024.