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If the person joined the Royal Navy before 1939 you could probably find him by searching on ancestry or findmypast. They both have RN service records.

No idea how old he is or how long he was in the navy before sending that letter.

Could be a cousin with the same surname so from her fathers side. 

Have you researched your great grandparents family?  As you have his name that might be a good place to start with his father and if that person had a brother who fathered your nana making them cousins.

You could post the name of your nana and her parents so people could investigate this possibility.

Hope that made sense 

I know nothing about this person save what he wrote on the letter. Without knowing how old he is or where he's from, I wouldn't even like to guess at who his father might be.

My nana's family is Hetherington (sometimes spelled Heatherington). Her father was born pre-registration in south-east Ireland. I get the impression that my nana was an unexpected child as they'd had kids every couple of years up until the brother closest to her in age, but then a stretch of 5 years before she arrived in 1915. Her mother was in her mid 40s, her father a decade older than that. I've had a lot of trouble finding out info on my Irish side, especially in the timeframe involved. Great-grandfather's name was John Hetherington, christened 12th March 1860 in Castlecomer, Kilkenny and the family resided in nearby Aughamucky.

I have an airmail letter using a foldout format that was in use by naval personnel. It's addressed to my nana under her maiden name, I expect the sender didn't know she'd been married for a few months by then. The sender has the same surname, so I surmised they're family of some sort, the letter certainly has that feel about it and mentions one of her brothers. But it can't be another brother as her brother with that name died in infancy. All I really have to go off is what looks like a service number, the name of a ship and the date (in 1945). Is there any way of finding out exactly who this was and how they were related?

I'm not sure how much direct info to give out here in case the sender is actually still alive (unlikely if the sender was of similar age to my nana, but not impossible).

This thread just caught my eye. I've been researching Ridpeath cousins today in the Wooler and Berwick areas, though the timeframe is more recent - 1920s onward. Any connection?

Wow, a great bit of digging there. I've checked the offered facts and they all look right. Blanche Evelyn Clark's death certificate in Scotland leaves the father's field blank but records the mother as "Eleanora Ord, formerly Duncan (deceased)". It also gives an alternate name for Blanche in the first column - "Margaret Duncan or Ord". I checked back in the GRO Index, and there's a Margaret Ord (MMN Duncan) born in the third quarter of 1872 in Berwick, which would make the 1891 census roughly correct as Blanche would have been 19 later that year.

I've looked into Eleanora's family. Eleanora Duncan married John Ord in Newcastle in 1859. The family is at Marygate, Berwick, on the 1861 census, John a grocer and confectioner, and they have one son, Robert. By 1871, Eleanora is a widow and running a lodging house at Woolmarket, Berwick. She has three more children, Mary P, John D and Eleanora Jr, the last two born in Inglewood, Australia. John Ord appears to have died in Berwick in 1869 (his age in the index, 32, almost lines up with his age in the 1861 census). In 1881, Eleanora is still running a lodging house in Berwick, but this time at Castlegate. Robert, Mary, John and Eleanora Jr are all with her.

Hmm... so if Eleanora's husband died in 1869 and she didn't remarry, then the birth of a child in 1872, quite obviously not her husband's, might have been something of a scandal. It sounds like Eleanora went to her cousin, Isabella, and asked her to bring 'Margaret' up as her own child, upon which she got renamed Blanche. Blanche must have been told of the circumstances though, given she's with some of the Ords on the 1901 census and the info is recorded on her death certificate.

Interesting stuff. Thanks for that, Millmoor

What date was the registration done in November, and what was the cause of death ?

It would be very unusual, although not impossible, for a death registration to be delayed that long at that time, I can't help wondering if there has been a transcription error and she actually died in November ( the GRO image is a copied record, not from the original, so there is scope for an error to creep in).

14th November. Cause of death was "Phthisis pulmonalis, certified by R.T.W. Thomson, MB + CM".

If Margaret Tully died in November, I think it would be very curious for a random transcription error to just happen to land on the same date Isabella died on. Is it okay to post the actual image here?

Had to share this oddity I found during my research earlier today. Okay, so I'm following the line of a cousin branch on my Barclay side. Isabella Barclay, the only daughter of John Barclay and Margaret Gillie. She marries, age 21, to a guy called James Gibson Clark. They're on the 1871 census (less than a year after their wedding) in North Shields running the Golden Fleece pub. So far, so good.

Fast forward to 1881 though and things start getting squirrely. James Clark (still in North Shields but now running the Pineapple Inn) is described as married but Isabella isn't with him. There's a younger woman named Margaret Tully who's stated to be the housekeeper, but also a 7 month old child called Algernon J. G. Tully Clark, stated to be his son. I found the kid's birth under the name Algernon James Gibson Clark Tully. Isabella at this point is living over the river in South Shields with her mother and 6 year old daughter, Blanche Clark. So I'm thinking they've seperated, Isabella went to live with mum again and James is now living with his housekeeper. Nothing too unusual so far. Except I can't find hide nor hair of Blanche's birth. As far as the GRO's Birth Index is concerned she doesn't exist.

Fast forward a couple of years to 1883. The Newcastle Courant publishes in the death announcements section of its 28th September edition: "Alnham, Northumberland, on the 19th inst., Margaret, the beloved wife of James Gibson Clark of North Shields." Margaret Tully did indeed originally come from Alnham as I traced her backwards to where she's with her parents Andrew and Jane up there. So James married Margaret then? Isabella must have died I'm thinking... or they divorced, but divorce was still fairly uncommon then, so I'm thinking death, and that freed up James to marry Margaret. Sound theory. Problem was I couldn't find any record of a marriage between a James Clark and Margaret Tully.

I also wasn't getting any good matches in the GRO Death Index for an Isabella Clark of the appropriate age. I then checked the National Probate Calendar to see if I could indentify any possible matches there. Success. An Isabella Clark, wife of James Gibson Clark, died at Roman Road, South Shields.... on the 19th September 1883. Wait, what? Both Isabella and Margaret died on the exact same day??? That can't be right, can it? I rechecked the death index and there was an entry in the third quarter of 1883 for an Isabella Clark in South Shields, but the age given was 29 rather than the 34 she would've been. Not an insurmountable issue though as she was fudging her age by then, the 1881 census saying she was 28. Maybe she just didn't want to admit being in her 30s?

At first I thought there could've been a mixup with the newspaper announcement. Maybe Isabella was mistaken for James' new partner? So I check the index again, this time for Margaret (under both Clark and Tully) to make sure. Sure enough, there's entries in 1883 for both a Margaret Clark and Margaret Tully, in Rothbury (the district Alnham was in), same volume and page number. I buy the digital image of the entry in the register. It confirms that "Margaret Clark, formerly Tully" died on 19th September 1883 in Alnham, age 29, "wife of James Gibson Clark, an innkeeper, and daughter of Andrew Tully (deceased)" The informant was her mother, Jane. Curiously, the death wasn't registered until mid November, almost two months later. I'm not sure why that would be as there's no mention of an inquest or anything that might've delayed the registration.

To complete the picture so to speak, I also got Isabella's death record, which confirmed everything said in the probate calendar. The informant in her case was a cousin named E. Ord, living at the address Isabella died at. As an aside, quite the coincidence that she apparently has a cousin with that name given that Isabella grew up in East Ord near Tweedmouth.

So yeah, the woman everyone was treating as James' wife but wasn't, and his actual wife, both died on the same day, 45 miles apart. You have to wonder if the cosmos was pranking him, killing off the woman he presumably would've married, the same day as the woman who was preventing him doing so. At least, you'd think they would've married. There is the slight matter of why Margaret was back in Alnham. She was probably just visiting her mother, but it could also be that she packed up and left him too.

Weird stuff.

Incidentally, Isabella's mysterious daughter Blanche Clark is on the 1891 census, still living with grandma, up in Berwick this time... only she's now 19... from 6 on the previous census... Oh, don't you start