RootsChat.Com
General => The Common Room => The Lighter Side => Topic started by: Annie65115 on Wednesday 08 January 25 20:39 GMT (UK)
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Basically I am wondering whether to try to contact some people and would like to hear advice/stories from anyone who has done similar, or anyone who has themselves been contacted. What went down well? What didn't? Was the contact welcome?
In short, I was in my 40s before I found out (via a slip of the tongue) that my dad had an adopted brother, with whom all contact had been severed. That generation of the family is now all dead, but after years of searching I believe I've identified the adopted brother's children - who would be my adopted cousins, but not blood relatives of course. I believe that 2, maybe 3 of them are probably still alive and will be in their late 60s - early 70s now. I have no idea if they even know of my side of the family or if the family fracture was so complete that their side of the family never knew that my father married and had children of his own.
The situation is possibly complicated by the fact that I suspect (from newspaper reports) that my father's adopted brother was charged, as an adult, with a serious crime. I don't think this incident was the cause of the fallout between my father and the brother because the split in the family seems to have happened many years before, but it might be something that is best kept buried.
So, any advice or stories that people can share? I can't decide what to do. It's only curiosity, after all, that makes me want to contact these "adopted cousins". But it's only curiosity that drives any of us to do the family tree in the first place, isn't it? WWYD?
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If you had been proposing the contact the other branch of the family because of information contained in the Adopted Children's Register maintained by the GRO it would be mandatory to do so via an intermediary service such as an adoption charity or your local social services. This idea is intended to use a neutral professional for the first contact, which would remove the awkwardness of a letter out of the blue from you to your 'new' cousins, and would allow them to consider if they wished to reject your offer to make contact without offending you. It also reduces the chance of the other family jumping to the conclusion that you might be a scammer of some sort.
Perhaps you might consider that method even though, in this case, you have used conventional genealogical research to find this family.
More details on the intermediary scheme here: http://www.adoptionsearchreunion.org.uk/search/dap/
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Personally, I would let it lie, but then I am not an outgoing, sociable person. Others see things differently.
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I found and contacted a cousin of my husbands. She was the only cousin on his paternal side despite his father being one of 6 children.
She would have been in her late 70s at the time.
I decided a hand written letter was the best approach so it gave her time to digest the situation.
It wasn’t easy to write without feeling like a ‘stalker’ but I began by saying who I was and that I was interested in family history. I explained who my husband and his deceased father were in relation to her.
I put my contact details and invited her to contact me but wrote that I understood if she didn’t want to.
She did contact me, she knew she might have a cousin that she had never met, and she came with her husband to meet us.
Her father had estranged himself from the family when he married her mother (religion) and he died in his 40s when she was 10 years old in the 1950s. Then her mother took her away to live in somewhere else.
She only had 2 photos of her dad, one of him holding her as a baby and one in military uniform. I was able to give her many more.
She was an only child and though she married she hadn’t had children so had no blood relatives that she has met.
She was delighted to meet us and keeps in touch by phone.
I realise it’s not the same situation but my only advice is ‘tread softly’
I was so excited to discover her but I really had to ‘reign it in’ as it came out of the blue for her many years after her parents deaths.
Good luck
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I have been very lucky to make contact with relatives on my dad's side who we lost contact with due to the upheavals in Czechia and Germany at the end of WW2 . It took quite a bit of sleuthing to find an address in Germany to write to, but I sent a letter and enclosed a brief family tree. The letter did the rounds in the family until it landed with someone who was interested in family history and in communicating with me. Ironically he is French, the widower of one of the descendants of my grandfather's cousin! We now have been emailing each other regularly for about a year and we both enjoy the correspondence, swapping photos and he had actually written a book about his wife's childhood which he sent to me. Unfortunately he doesn't speak English but it is doing wonders for my French and German skills!
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From my experience I say have a go. They can only ignore you, but then you know.
Starting out I knew very little of my family/ancestry. My first contact was to me by a cousin (1C1R). Between us we managed to fill out that branch quite well and found many other cousins we didn’t know.
The first contact I made was to a great niece of a cousin killed during WW1. This came from a photo with a NZ address on it and KIA Passchendaele. She had written on a Belgian site remembering those who fought and died. With a name and suburb I took a punt and sent a letter. Back came all sorts of information about the family.
Others I have contact have had less success and some didn’t respond. But if you don’t ask you will never know.
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If you don't try, you will never know.
Regards
Chas
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I found an advertisement for a London firm with our family name selling pianos and knew that a distant relative had set up such a business there in the 1800s, having left home with just his portable organ. I wrote to the firm, asking if any family members were still involved with it and received a letter back from the brother of the firm's owner. He was interested in family history and sent me a family tree that he had made. It turned out that he was descended from a brother of my gt-gt-grandfather. He was able to give me a lot of information about his side and was interested to hear what I could tell him about other family members. Better still, he did not live far from me, and we met up along with another another of his brothers and looked at the family photo album together. We remained in touch until he died.
It's worth a try. You may get some response, though the person may not even know about your family. It would make sense to make contact through one of the agencies mentioned to prevent nasty surprises. Good luck with this. Let us know how you get on.
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Here is a letter I used, with names removed, in case it is helpful.
I only knew this lady's address so I could not use online methods anyway.
I chose to head the letter with my postal address and my email address but not give my phone number.
I did not want to bombard her with information, but I did want to give enough to show that I was not a scammer or ID thief of any kind.
Dear M
We don’t know each other and you have probably never heard of me, but I think I am your first cousin, once removed.
I believe (unless there is a coincidence of names) that you are the daughter of W and M xxx (nee xxx). I am the granddaughter of M xx (W’s oldest sister, known as M).
I know very little about my great grandfather (your grandfather) George S born circa 1875; I do have one photo of him, given to me by my grandmother, which I enclose. It was taken in an artist’s studio about 100 years ago. I also enclose a photo which I think may be your own father as a young man. I have originals of both photos.
If you are interested in exchanging information and old family photos I would love to hear from you. If you use the internet please email me. I have a few other photos which might interest you and would be very keen to see copies of any of yours, or other family memorabilia.
I hope you don’t mind me contacting you out of the blue. If you are not interested in pursuing the connection there is no need to post anything back to me.
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I contacted cousins successfully, initially didn't go well but the brother and father contacted me and I actually met them in London researching, worked out very well, sadly the father and his son are now deceased so there is no one for me to correspond with about our research, I miss them both
LM
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I have been contacted by distant relatives and have contacted people myself. Unless I have an email address, I always write a letter similar to Stella, but I do enclose a stamped and address envelope for them to reply. I have had great success.
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Thank you all.
I was thinking of something along the lines of the letter that Stella suggests, but I think, Stella, that you have probably worded it better than I would have!
OK. We'll see how this goes ----
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I've had unknown relatives make contact with me twice, and twice I've made contact with relatives of my OH.
One of the rellies of my OH was inquisitive without proffering any help/info/contact himself. He asked for too much personal information, in my view. I even write out by hand a complete family tree of that side, and posted it to him in Australia, never getting a "thank you" or aknowledging the many hours of careful work involved. He sounded rather unpleasant in his e-mails, his written English was poor, and we have heard no more from him, for which we have no regrets.
The other rellie of my OH was delightful, sought me out through an online group, later visited us, to be shown round some old time haunts of her grandfather, with her own parents, one of which proved to be my OH's cousin, and proffered information on their own links, which he had known nothing of, previously. We are still in touch.
What a contrast!
On my own paternal side, one very pleasant contact, with a cousin of my father, which has resulted in a gentle "keeping in touch" ever since.
Either way, you never know until you essay it.
TY
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I once stupidly gave someone a whole lot of info about a well respected person in my family, I was sorry I gave so much in one fell swoop, I felt after little and often would have been a better idea, we live and learn.
LM
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I exchanged a photo for a newspaper report, which was most helpful.
Annoyingly, the recipient has added totally incorrect information to her tree on Ancestry.
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I was researching my friends grandfather for him and when I made contact with his elderly aunt discovered that she considered him a long lost baby.
He had no idea that his aunt's and cousins had looked for him after his mother removed him from their care and moved towns without leaving an address.
He now has a big family in Wales having been brought up as a single child of a divorced mother .
He didn't know paternal cousins either . Though they knew about him .
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I have contacted and been contacted by various distant cousins and am still in touch with a few of them, sharing information and research.
I was also contacted by a brother (from another mother) of my mother and aunt. (I was aware that he existed, so not a surprise "uncle", but never mentioned ) He was very pleasant and just wanted to know if I had any information about his mother and my grandfather. His father (my grandfather) had died when he was 11 and he didn't know whether his mother and father were married. I gave him as much info as I had, but then he said he would like to meet my aunt, my mother having died by this time. I decided, rightly or wrongly, that it would not be possible to give him the contact details of my aunt. She was in her 90's by this time, he was at least 30 years younger than her,(not much older than me) and her parents split had been a very difficult time for my grandmother, mother and aunt and I thought it was in her best interests not to drag up the past. He was fine with this, and as far as I am aware he made no further attempts to contact her.
You can only give it a try and take from there, depending on the reply you receive, if indeed you receive one.
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Some years ago I wrote (a letter, not email) to someone in my wider family tree after seeing a number of articles posted by him on the Internet. I found out that he had passed away a couple of years previously when I received a rather stern letter from his widow informing me of his death, she also said that family history was his thing and she had no interest in it. She said that his work might be passed to one of their grandsons if they had any interest in it.
I felt awful that my letter had upset her and also rather sad that his obviously extensive work might just go in the bin.
Go carefully!
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When I began my research almost forty years ago, I knew my maternal grandmother was born in Essex, although she grew up in Kent. I wondered if there was any family still in Essex, so I wrote to the local newspaper in the town where she was born. My letter was published and I heard nothing for a couple of weeks, then I received a lovely letter from someone unconnected but interested in family history, she offered to do anything she could to help if I had no response from family. I wrote and thanked her but said I had luckily received a letter from a first cousin once removed a couple of days after her letter.
A neighbour had shown the elderly cousin my letter in the paper and asked if he thought there was any connection, because he had the same surname I was enquiring about. The cousin wrote to me and we proved the connection. He then sent me lot of information, also the address of another cousin in Wiltshire who was researching the family.
As a result, my late husband and I went to Essex and met a lot of previously unknown relations, several of whom are now deceased.
I wrote to the cousin I was told about, then living in Wiltshire. This resulted in years of
Collaboration, with phone calls and eventually emails to and fro between us several times a day, we share photos, certificates, wills and a lot of expenses. We met and have become great friends, all as a result of the letter I wrote to the newspaper.
As a result of random letters, I have also met other previously unknown relations in England, Canada and Australia.
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Wow Jebber , what a result?
My first contact was by phone, only 3 people with the surname in England, it was a frosty conversation but the following evening I had a call from his brother, within the hour the father rang me, we were indeed related, I met one son in London then the father a few weeks later in London where we walked the streets our grandparents/gt grandparents walked, it was a great friendship between me and the father, his own father was a younger sibling to my grandmother, she was one of the eldest, 12 children born within 24 years, so we each had different stories from each sibling, sadly 2 of the men have sadly departed, I miss the correspondence and now there is no one who appears to be as interested, my brother isn't interested at all.
LM
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Shy Bairns Get Nowt, unless you ask you will never know, but always be aware you may not get an answer and indeed have no right to expect one.
A good few years ago, I saw an obit for a lady who died in Canada. The details matched the info I had been able to find from old records and she was the widow of one of my Mam's cousins. Her grown up children were all mentioned. Contact with anyone in that branch of the family was lost decades earlier.
I waited a year and then sent an email to the funeral home. I explained who I was and my relationship to this family and also explained I'd waited as just after the lady's death would have been insensitive.
I asked the funeral home if they would be willing to pass my mail along to whoever had made the arrangements (thereby giving them the option to reply or not as they wished) but I would understand if doing that would have been outside their remit.
I actually didn't have great hopes, but the funeral home lady replied and said she would pass it on.
It resulted in a very beneficial, to both sides, long exchange of info, documents and photos and we are still in touch.
It may be viewed as an odd thing to do but I'm really pleased I did it.
Boo
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I have made contact with a number of cousins near and distant but only if they have been researching themselves and have managed to keep in touch with a few good friends mostly by email as we are in many countries. However quite a few I find after passing on info not everyone keeps in touch but the ones that do are a pleasure to have got to know and we can find out quite a bit about famlies when helping each other.
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Yes and No.
Lost, Canadian and Australian Cousins found, they were not so much lost as we had never had contact with each other but now we are in regular contact.
The No element is that I am now in contact with, and meet regularly a Sister who was not so much Lost as we never knew each other existed.
We have a lifetime to catch up on.
Seeing her this Monday.
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I've contacted several second cousins through Ancestry to start with. I've visited two a few times and been contacted by another who reminded me that I'd met him at his mother's home when I was about five. I was also contacted by the executor of a second cousins husband and visited him in Croydon and was given several documents and photographs. I've never had any luck in messaging people with a DNA match though.
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Yes dna matches are a different breed. They often don’t want to know. As a product of a previous NPE I contacted many in the line, but received no reply. One I did contact insinuated that didn’t happen in her family. I found my great grandparents from another product from a NPE.
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I have contacted a few through Ancestry and go some reply, but to others I got no reply. I found someone had a person with a rare surname that they said they had through a common DNA testing who was born in Suffolk in 1660 and died in Norwich in 1744. My own research seems to refute this, a namesake person is more likely, but likely a cousin of some sorts of the 1660 one though due to the rare surname. I sent the person a PM and got no reply even though it had said "Read".
I have not done DNA testing for Ancestry, yet, so this centimorgan and other stuff is gobbledygook for now.
I have a direct ancestor sent to Australia but he died soon after arrival so had no children there and left his family back in England.
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Over many years I have made contact with many distant relatives from branches that had lost contact with ours. In a few cases I have been contacted but others who have found me (happy events in all but one case- where I had to explain that while certain people were still alive I did not wish to maintain any contact).
One example-
After reading a newspaper obituary for someone with the same surname as my mother-in-law I waited a few days after the funeral and sent a letter asking if they might be related. To give a bit of background, the surname and distant town matched a family story about relatives going there but ... the ancestor would have been a daughter not a son.
Heard nothing for several years then out of the blue came a phone call the day after Boxing Day. Seems my note arrived and was placed on the mantel for a few years until daughter of deceased remembered to give it to her cousin interested in genealogy.
Turns out that his ancestor (sister of mother-in-law's ancestor) married a cousin with the same surname! We've exchanged photos, old (some we each had) and new, and kept in touch all these years, gradually adding to the family tree and finding more previously unknown and forgotten relations.
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I started investigating my father’s family in the mid 1990s all I had was a tatty family tree I’d drawn with my father in the early 1960s. It showed my grandfather’s siblings. I’d heard of two of them. My father and his brother both died in 1993 but on a Christmas card to my aunt the following year she told me I needed to contact Cousin J and gave me an address in Southport.
I wrote to Cousin J and it was wonderful. He and his wife were full of stories of my father’s family and had loads of photographs. With their help I’ve met or communicated with many different family members, from the USA, Canada, Australia, the U.K. mainly Lancashire. I even moved over the Pennines to Southport to be near the area were my family were from.
Of all the people I’ve met or communicated with only one of them I really didn’t like! I even had an Familymeet up. It turned out we have the same shaped ears!
As my surname is not that common I think that helped me in the beginning. I’ve done quite a bit on my paternal grandmother’s family. I really need to make an effort on my mother’s family and to update bits of my father’s family.
Breast Cancer and developing a rare side effect from the treatment and being extremely vulnerable during Covid somehow put me off family history. However I’ve decided that once I’ve tidied up my study it’s back to family history! I might meet some relatives on my mother’s side. Or more on my paternal side.
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Funnily enough. I started off with a hand-drawn tree done by my father's cousin - it wasn't actually very accurate, but he'd made a lot of effort - and that set me off on the trail. Like you, Southport figured in the history.
When my researches proved the errors, I got the feeling he wasn't very happy at all!
I have met / renewed contact with some family, most of them really positive. Far better than some of my OH's mob!
TY
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I was very fortunate as the surname I was researching only had 3 living people listed in england, so it was quite easy, but, I know my gt grandfather was born in Sweden yet Sweden does not show up in my DNA, bit peeved to say the least but I am 94% English
LM
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I feel that the more records come online, the easier it is to find more candidates which can throw doubt into the mix of your own or others family trees that have already been researched. 20 years ago i found a tree online on Rootsweb which had researched that a John Lucking who died in 1786, age at death listed as 64, in Foulness Essex was the same guy born in an adjacent parish in 1722. Seems good, but I then found another John Lucking baptised in 1725 to a different couple in Shoebury, the fathers may have been brothers but as yet unconfirmed. And what I have researched seems to point to the 1725 one not the 1722 one. As said they may have been cousins.
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My friends grandfather recently died and left money to grandchildren including a cousin noone had heard of before so they've asked me to look if I can find any records ...I feel like someone off heir hunters
I may have found missing cousin on electoral rolls providing he didn't change his surname to his mother's maiden name or a step fathers surname ( 1 potential remarriage for the mother ) .
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Back in the late 1990s I mentioned on a Christmas card to my late father’s, late brother’s wife I’d been doing some family history. She wrote back and told me I needed to contact cousin Jack and enclosed an address. After Christmas I wrote to Cousin Jack explaining who I was having worked out who he was. I didn’t give a telephone number just my address. A couple of evenings latee I got a telephone call from Cousin Jack who’d got my telephone number from directory enquiries. He was so excited and talked about my father as the big boy who’d played with him.
I went to see them and they knew so much about my family and had loads of photos. For around 3 or 4 years I visited them often and then when I had to retire due to physical problems I moved to be near them. Both he and his wife have now died but I’ll never regret the years I knew them and all the stories we shared. Jack and his wife loved hearing all the new bits of information I found and I loved hearing all the stories about people who were just names on paper.
I have no regrets at all that I contacted them.
PS I live about 100 metres from the church where my great grandfather was the first baby baptised at the newly built church in 1857.
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20 years ago I left a note in a church visitors book about being descended from a local family in mid Suffolk and left a contact address, and got in touch with a few distant cousins and we have kept in touch since.
I am stating to take my genealogy in a new direction and perhaps should start researching sideways and researching far and wide, such as more distant cousins, as opposed to just the direct line or ancestors siblings. Often the direct line dries up after a time.
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Many times different artifacts and information have been passed down through different branches of a family.
Several years ago after getting DNA matches, I was able to get in touch with three 4th cousins, I was told their BIG family secret- that their grandfather (not blood relative of mine) 'passed' as white. When I said that wasn't a surprise as I'd known that for years they seemed to get upset that my father's cousin had told me about 40 years earlier. Haven't heard from them since :-\
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I found this difficult. One because of the age of the person and two because of scandalous family stuff. I found out the whereabouts of my paternal grandmother's last surviving sibling. Should we make contact? It turned out we eventually made contact with one of her children through a relation who was active online and we had done the right thing not contacting her direct because of her age they didn't want her to be contacted.
I was tempted to write to some other relations even typed the letters and had the addresses but put it off and like the other situation came across a relation of them active online and with a family tree which was promising. Unfortunately they stopped communicating when they realised how we were connected. Maybe someone told them not to dig into that stuff. It was disappointing as I hoped for more photos of my paternal grandfather but it wasn't to be and I let it go.
Some other relations I found online were easier to communicate with but a probate matter came up after a few years which meant a relation by blood but not by legal paperwork had left some money. The money wasn't the issue it wasn't much but the fact that we were excluded because my grandmother didn't give the correct father's name on a birth certificate kind of ruined the bond built up with these lost relations.
C
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As the person who started this thread, I have stories both good and bad.
Of course, I've had contact with very distant relatives - 3rd, 4th cousins - but at that distance I don't really feel a family connection. We've helped each other out with our trees but contact fades away after that, and that's OK. However, a very kind person sent me a lot of photos, family letters etc about someone who was allegedly my great-grandfather. Since my mother had never known her "real" granddad, this caused some excitement. Sadly, DNA eventually showed that someone else (who was known to my mum!) was the true grandfather, so the photos have been put away again. But I remain grateful to the person who helped me.
However - a friend of mine was contacted by a surprise half-sibling. This has not turned out well for anyone, and really disturbed family memories of a generation who are no longer here to explain or defend their actions.
I haven't contacted the people I mentioned at the start of the thread -- yet! I think I'm going to talk about it with a cousin (a first cousin, that is, related by blood and who I've known all my life) who actually still lives in the relevant area. I don't know if she might want to be involved too. Strength (of resolve!) in numbers.
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Good luck! You'll never know until you try. We'll all be interested to know how you go on.
TY
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there are some "discoveries" very difficult to decide on, when I sent for my grandfathers cert I was very surprised to find a different surname, now I nor any family had any knowlege of this and no marriage has ever been found.....years after I finallly decided to to DNA and am 99% sure I know who my great grandfather might have been but decided not to contact family as he had been a married man with family, I am happy with my decision and I am sure you will be whatever you deside. good luck
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A few times I have had contact but it has faded away once we have exchanged initial notes on our family trees. I guess even though they are distantly related to us, they are still strangers. But as said, I have kept in regualr touch with one certain distant cousin, her father and my dad's father were first cousins.
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Well, thanks again to all who replied. I hope you don't feel your time was wasted, but I've decided to let sleeping dogs lie.
I've given it a lot of thought and your responses helped me do so. But on reflection, I think that these people may never have heard of me, or they may have heard of my dad and whatever caused the split between him and their father may be something that they don't want bringing up, or they might feel angry about etc etc etc.
My feelings have been swayed by my friend's experience, alluded to in a post above, where a lot of upset has been caused by a previously unknown family member getting in touch. That's been very "active" again recently and it's causing all sorts of illfeeling for my friend's family.
This adopted brother, his wife and offspring are now on my Ancestry tree so if anyone from that line wants to do FH, they may come across my tree and approach me. And I'm going to add the name to my list of surname interests for the same reason. But I'm not going to be any more proactive than that.
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Everyone has to make their own decisions on how to proceed and there's no right or wrong answer. :)
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Sometimes they may not always want to make contact due to the fact if they do meet with you, they may not want to be inundated with endless questions about the family history, and they feel like it is an interrogation. They may have this "It was a long time ago" strategy.
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But sometimes they are happy to meet up and share their family memories with you. When I met two descendants of my gt-grandfather's brother they brought along their family photo album and gave me lots of extra details and anecdotes, even offering to make copies of any photos I wanted.
I guess I was lucky that they too were interested in the family history.
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I was very lucky after a shaky start.
LM
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I had a bad experience but my cousin who has her own complicated family history reached out to a half sibling online and they were very generous and welcoming, sharing photos etc. It depends on the people concerned and how open they are and how they respond to family stuff.
C
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I had a DNA match pop up from New Zealand - we made contact and it turned out she had a couple of photos of our shared ancestor (my G-G Grandmother). No-one in my extended family in the UK had ever seen a photo of this person so it was quite amazing to see.
Even better was that she decided that I should have them to make sure they didn't get thrown away "when she goes" .....and they arrived in the post a couple of weeks later.
Now safely scanned, circulated amongst relatives, and stored away carefully.
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How wonderful! A cousin of my father let me look at a load of photographs she had, but when she died, her husband didn't seem to , and when he died, I found that the photos had all gone! No chance of ever seeing them again, she was the custodian of three at least generations before her, and - all gone.
TY
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I have written in today's diary that yesterday I had a phone call from a relative whose father kept a letter I wrote to him in 2002, her parents have since died and she has contacted me, i dont know her, so I am now going through my family tree trying to give her a copy, I don't want to pass over living people as yet.
LM
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TY, that is a real shame.
I have been given a stack of photos by a cousin who didn't know who they were, I have showed various members of my family and no one has any idea, what to do with them,? so many done in studios around the Norfolk area, by the looks of the photos the people are long gone.
LM
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I've got plenty of those, too, LM. I keep them in the hope that some distant relative may recognise some of them. In the meantime I look for faces which resemble each other and may be related.
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It is good to chat with these family members about certain brickwalls with a shared ancestor, or the fact that someone is elusive on a certain census. The American censuses are also the same as the British ones, many people cannot find their American relatives on a certain census, such as the 1850 census, or the April 1930 US census for example. In big cities it must have been hard word for the enumerators, so it is a given that some residences were missed, or some tenements, apartments were missed, plus many other reasons.
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You just never know with people. I found a cousin on GR - actually my mother's cousin but we are similar age. We hadn't met since childhood. He rang me at once and was very effusive about how great it was to be in touch again. We had a long chat and he promised to send me some photos.
Since then - nothing. He has ghosted me. I sent a Christmas card and much later messaged him on Ancestry when I added my tree. Nothing. He hasn't died or anything because he has visited another cousin of mine.
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Not a relative but a 9 year old called me auntie in 1987. He was from Senegal we lived in Algerian Sahara he was with his uncle staying with uncles friend & wife & baby .
We spent a lot of time together he was allowed in my kitchen & play with the gadgets also I gave him control of cassette player + he recorded himself singing and percussion on table ? + I treasured a recorded conversation of us looking at a picture book me speaking french him teaching me Oulof
When I went to Senegal the following year my friends did not know where he or his uncle was.
But somehow a card and cut out cardboard house got to him
I only know that because my friend messaged me in February to ask if I remembered the little boy and would I like his contact details.
First whatssap he sent a photo of us together in Algeria,+ the postcard that I don't remember
He's now a vet and yesterday I learnt that he'd funded a village to get training to produce it's own soap washing liquid + bleach
He has ason who looks just like him & a daughter . + Can't speak English
We remember different things + are equally surprised that we had each tried to look for each other
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What a lovely story, brigidmac!
In my childhood it was common to call my parents' friends Uncle or Auntie, so I grew up thinking that I was actually related to them all. It took an interest in genealogy to sort out which ones were related and which were not. That kind of naming created a group of people who were not related, but who were closer than just acquaintances, a third tier of relationship, if you like. Nowadays, of course, youngsters just use forenames quite freely and this kind of quasi-relationship doesn't exist.
My friend's parents who were not in the Uncle-Auntie group, were politely given the titles of Mr and Mrs.
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My godmother and her husband fell into that group of honorary aunts and uncles. I had another apparently honorary aunt and uncle to whom I did not realise we were related, because nobody had actually explained the connection to me. We knew them well because of a small company where my father shared an office with the uncle.
It turned out it was the aunt who was my father's 2nd cousin, and her husband had been invited to join what was a family business at the end of the 2nd world war, owing to a lack of men to fill the gaps. I had been at school with their daughters without realising they were my 3rd cousins.
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I've just been having a phone chat to a 2nd cousin that I've not seen since the 1950s.
Her niece matched me as a 2nd cousin 1R on Ancestry - she'd lost touch with her aunt and I offered to help. I did some sleuthing and found details over the weekend! We had a chat about the olden days and exchanged contact details.
:)
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If you had the wrong identity due to unknown adoptions etc. and other things then many people seem "lost"
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I had a hand written letter awaiting me when I returned from holiday a few weeks back from a lady in Australia who was looking for a cousin and our address was the last contact she had for her. We bought in 2023 and moved in later that year. The previous owners were here 10 years and not the name she was looking for and most of the immediate neighbours have been here between 2 and 12 years with just 2 exceptions and they'd only been in the street 15 years. One recalled the name but no details of where she had gone but the other got back to me, after initially no recollection of the name, after thinking about it a memory was triggered of her shifting in with a son before moving to a retirement village and even remembered which one.
As an email contact was included in letter, I passed the neighbour's memory on and suggesting it would be worth contacting the village with hopefully some more information that could possibly help. I had also already perused obituaries but no name match.
Today I received a lovely email from Australia to say she had heard back from the village and that her cousin is still there and is well and happy and she would be writing to her :) Apparently both are of similar vintage, as she also said they had gone to school together when she was living in NZ before moving to Australia at 17.
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my mother wanted to find out if dhe had cousins on her mothers side . when her mother had died a letter in er oossessions was from the birth mother who mentioned that she had a respectable son
so my nother knew that. she had a half uncle
meanwhile my mother had researched the childhood and residence of her mithers adoptive couple down as aged 70 to the 11 year. old maisie
my mother used to visit ' elderly aunty harritit & aunty lucy. cookson
the old couple who informally adopted my gran had 4 grown up children the eldest martha harriet married 3'times was aunt harritit & had lived nect door to the old ciuple for manyyears another daughter had died when maisie was 6
2 brothers had emigrated to south africa
so their children including aunt harritits daughter lucy s few years younger than maisie
were my mums cousins by adoption
i managed to trace a south african descendant who knew very little if this family + had no photos but shared photos of the living family