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Just thought that this would be inspirational to people who come up against stumbling blocks and brick walls. Keep digging folks!
Thought you would like to know that thanks to Genes, I have finally after a 16 year search, found my family.
My father was born in November 1914, two months after his father was killed in Sept 1914; he was a reservist with the Army and, as part of the British Expeditionary Force, was sent to France at the outbreak of WWI. Dad's mother died when he was eight years old and although he had been taken to his paternal relatives in York, he went to live with his mother's parents on the Isle of Wight. For some reason he was sent to an orphanage on the mainland and after that, the Yorkshire relatives did not know what had happened to him. He joined the Merchant Navy at 15 and was torpedoed in 1942, being only one of a handful of survivors. My dad died in 1977 and in 1992 I began what has been a long and difficult journey in a bid to find any relatives that he might have had. As you can imagine, with nothing much to go on except a medal box that contained his father's campaign medals from WWI, it was very difficult.
On Friday last, I have finally contaced my second cousin, Shona de Martino, who I traced having obtained her grandfather's death certificate and found out who registered the death. Luckily for me, my family went in for strange names and there was only one Coral Russell Hutchinson on Genes. I spoke to Shona and then to another second cousin Jane, and incredibly my father's Auntie Lottie is still alive at 104 years old and remembers him. I am hot footing it to Humberside from mid-Wales at the end of August to have a big family reunion. The cousins are as thrilled as I am as the relatives always wondered what happened to Freddie, my dad.
I thought you would like to know how valuable this site has been to me and how fabulous it is to have made this connection.
Fliss Hughes-Ellis
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