Success Stories

I joined Genes Reunited in early February this year because having lost contact with my family in 1955 when my father died, I wanted to find out where the family came from and whether me and my siblings had any living relation. I was 5 at the time father died and along with my elder brother and younger sister was brought up in children’s homes and in foster care. I thought it would be a long drawn out affair to trace forwards and backwards from my father to achieve my goals, however I did not reckon on the help I would get from other G R members. With the help of numerous people, but one in particular Elaine Sale, I now have my Parish line traced back to 1812, the point at which Elaine and I share common ancestors. I also have my mother’s side “King” traced back to 1826. I am finding the whole process of tracing my relations fascinating. The strangest things crop up to puzzle you and I would recommend it to anyone who is retired as a way of exercising the brain! I would just like to tell everybody about one thing that cropped up in my search. I had traced my great grandfather David back to Barrow in Suffolk, but Elaine had him in her tree and his spouse was call Sarah Ann K Baker, where as I knew that my great grandfather married a Sarah Ann Ellen Cardy from my fathers birth certificate. The difficulty I had was that the census entries used only Sarah Ann and so I could not tell between the Sarah’s. By chance I had sent for the birth certificate of David from Barrow, and also David’s marriage certificate to S. A. E. before becoming convinced he was not my David. As it turned out the marriage certificate confirmed David father as Walter, the same as the David of Barrow! I was Puzzled for a while, until I noticed the marriage certificate also showed David as a widower. A quick check of death records revealed S A K died in 1902 and David married S A E in 1904, how amazing is that two wives with virtually the same name!! This made the Link to Elaine’s tree and in my view makes this tale worthy of it place on the Success board. Elaine was kind enough to give me a copy of all her research for which I shall be eternally grateful. -- Maurice Parish