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Hi all, here's my story...
My mum's dad Bill is the youngest of 2 children from his father's second marriage. He had always known that his dad had several sons from his first marriage, but had never met them, as his father decided to keep both families completely seperate and had ended all contact with them when his first marriage had ended and he had moved from Great Yarmouth to Essex. My grandads sister Peggy had passed away at quite a young age from cancer and today he is not in regular contact with his brother-in-law or their sons.
Always having had a real interest in family history, I joined genes reunited and began adding the relatives that I knew about to my family tree. Due to my grandad having his fathers original birth certificate, I was also able to add a full address for his place of birth. Almost immediately I had an exact match! I upgraded my membership and sent an e-mail to the owner of the tree. The next day I had a reply...and through varifying details independently, I was able to establish that Mike (the gentleman I had contacted) was my grandads nephew (his eldest half brother's son). Mike had no idea that his grandfather had re-married (as his grandmother never spoke of him and why he had left or where he had ended up) and was over joyed that he had found a whole line of family who he never knew existed. I phoned my grandad straight away and told him what had happened! He sounded amazed, shocked and emotional as I read him the emails that had been sent and received. Unfortunately, as my great grandfather was middle aged when he married for the second time, my Grandad's 5 half-brothers were all considerably older than him (the oldest by 21 years). I sadly discovered (in the following e-mails from Mike) that all of my grandads brothers had passed away and had to break the news to him. He was sad that he would never get the chance to meet them, but was still ever so happy that he had so many living nieces and nephews.
Me and Mike have now been in contact for 2 years and have exchanged many photographs and stories. Unfortunately, as he emigrated to Australia many years ago, it has not yet been possible for them to meet...but hopefully one day they will! The nicest thing was for me to be able to send Mike photographs of his grandad in middle/later life, as he only had one of him in his late teens. Also, for my grandad to see pictures of his brothers, nieces and nephews was amazing. All of them bare an uncanny resemblence to each other! We are all so very greatful to genes reunited and the team that work so hard to keep this system running. Without you, none of this would have been possible..so thank you, from the bottom of our hearts!
Best Regards
Gemma, Bill and our newly found family!
xxx
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