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After years of researching my family tree that I started because I never knew my maternal Grandfathers....
You see both my parents never knew their fathers....
My mother's father left my Nanna not long after my mother was born and was in the RAF and was a POW several times.... He was injured in WWII and fell in love with the nurse that helped him recuperate from his injuries.... He kept up payments to my Nanna until my mother was 16 and that was all we knew his name, RAF number and that he remarried and had 2 children....
My Father's father was a Yank over during the war in the UK and met my Grandmother and she had my father out of wedlock.... He returned several times to visit and we're not sure why they never married... All we knew was his name and he was in the US forces...
After contacting many people via Genesreunited and other websites and the kind help of archives in the US and UK, I eventually tracked down my Fathers Dad to find he had married but unfortunately both are now dead... Still waiting to find out if he had other children so we can at least know what he looked like from a photo....
I never thought I'd find them and when I found out my Fathers Dad was dead it kind of knocks you back and you think you'd never find out about what he was like...
Well giving up on my Fathers side for a while I consider going back to researching my Mothers father, recently I was contacted by someone informing me they had found some information about my mothers father migrating to OZ...
Can you believe it within a few days I had tracked down my mothers half brother and sister.... I plucked up courage to call them, very nervous about it, thinking maybe they're tell us to go away... To my surprise and two very tearful telephone conversations with my mothers half Brother and half sister, I now have made 3 people very very happy and what a christmas present that was, one that can never be topped for my mother and her siblings.... I then contacted my mother after confirming that I actually had the right family... Her half siblings knew nothing of my mother but of the previous marraige and didn't know a child was involved...
They're absolutely over the moon and my Mother is so so happy to eventually now something about someone she thought she'd never now about... So all my hardwork was so worth and now to do the same for my father... It's sites like Genesreunited that have helped me find family members I never knew or even hoped to have found, the community is fantastic.
I have found that others have helped me complete areas of my family tree by simply just viewing their trees and adding information to areas that I simply hadn't got round to researching as they were branches off my tree... With help from these kind people, we've all managed to add snippets to our trees to complete part of the jigsaw... Finding out marriages of Uncles and Aunties of my family members giving me more cousins to talk to which is great...
My family is increasing all the time and it's a lot to do with the Genesreunited community, so thank-you thank-you to all, that have helped me and without Genesreunited I wouldn't be able to find people and information...
As I now live in New Zealand the internet and these types of sites are my only source of information.... So now I know what one of my maternal Grandfathers looks like and hopefully I can try and do the same for my Father....
So all this work I have done recently has inspired me to continue my research, now my mother can try and find out as much as she can find out about her father... What I've found out so far in the past week has been so exciting, finding out he was in the RAF Escape Society and in two books, received medals for his efforts during the War and that he was a Scientist after his service and wrote many an article of his research... I've found out a little bit about his life and my new family members... We're in contact daily now sharing information and photos. Hopefully not so far into the future we'll met which will be fantastic they're jsut over the water from me and we're all keeping our fingers crossed for that to happen.
So please continue to do your research and knowing that your work will reward you eventually but it could take time and wrong routes will be taken now and then but eventually your hardwork will reward you... Good luck to all and hope you'll have success stories to add to this site too....
Yet again thanks Genesreunited your efforts and site are superb and if it wasn't for you I wouldn't have found them and may have never knew anything about them apart from their names....
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