Success Stories

After tearing my hair out for quite a few years trying to find my Grandad Charles Edward Thornton , I have at long last at least found a trace of him. After numerous requests for information about adoption, census lookups, Bmd's etc and each and every one of them hitting a brick wall, I finally decided to Hit back at some brickwork. I was told my grandfather came from morecambe but all the census info was empty of him, then through reading here where to look for and get marriage certificates I finally acquired one dated 1919 for him and my grandmother. My grandfather was listed as living at 3 victoria cottages,morecambe and that his father James was deceased. Another dead end? Not quite. I pondered for quite a while what to do. I visited numerous Morecambe sites, I even got talking to a relative on my grandmothers sisters side that i can honestly say i have never spoken to before for more than a few minutes. Im glad I did, for not only did he provide me with a rake of old postcards from the early 1900's which had been sent to and fro but also a lot of old family pictures of relatives i had never heard of. In amongst these postcards though was an unsent postcard to a W.Elkin of morecambe from my grandfather, stating that he wished him well in the football match against Bacup in the coming week and he hoped to see him soon. The morecambe link i think then became a definate and i began to trawl all the morecambe sites i could find that were or seemed relevent. This stories getting long so im going to cut it shorter. In the end i contacted the Editor of the Morecambe Visitor with a letter stating what little bits i knew and would he appeal to his readers as to if anyone knew Charles Thornton. A pretty slim chance i thought given the time difference from 1919 to present. Three weeks later i recieved an e-mail from a Jim Thornton that lived in that exact same house although maybe 10 years later than my grandad. A week later I recieved a letter stating that another gentlemans sister had married Charles Thornton of the same address albeit a different marriage date. Next I recieved a phone call from Jim Thorntons brother where we managed to get a lot of information swapped between us and one of the outcomes was that my uncle must have visited that house whilst these 2 brothers and a sister were still living there. Not many days after I recieved another letter from the Daughter of W.Elkin who played for Morecambe F.C saying that she remembered her father coming in and telling her mother on quite a few occasions that he had been talking to Charlie Thornton. Now i have a lot of information and the coincidence is a little too much not to be the same family name living in the same cottage and being visited in that time by my own relatives when they were knee highs. So from a single Thornton with nowhere else to look i have ended up with another 83 individuals and still looking, albeit its a long way around because im having to work through every realtive I come across till i find the right Charles. I have had masses and masses of help from a lot of you people here and I owe you all a great big thanks because without communities like this I would still be sitting doodling and wondering where to try next. Thanks to those postcards and a chat with an unfamilair relative i gleaned a lot of information from such a small inconsequential item. Thanks to the article that was printed in the paper hopefully i have found a lot more Family that is still living. I still havn't found the exact Charles Thornton that im looking for but im not giving up hope, not whilst there are still people like you to help and guide others