What's your best 'find' this year?

[old rowley]

Best find of the year? hmmmmmmmmmm.

It could be  when my big sis presented me with a picture of our dad in a mess line up dishing out the rice to other prisioners of war in a Japanese prisioner of war camp in Thailand only to be followed a few months later by her giving me a railway spike from the death railway that he and thousands of others had been forced to build in Thailand. I now have both picture and spike  framed and  on the wall looking down at me as I type and each time I look at it, it reminds me of what could have been and also of those that didn't come home from the Far East.

It could be an exploritory e-mail sent to someone on GR asking if the person that I had fitted with the details of someone that she had posted. This turned out to be a "lost" cousin that I never knew about and she has given me information about her father who died during the 2nd ww two weeks after she had been born. In return I was able to send her a copy of the family tree that I have been doing and from "having one or two relatives" and "feeling that no one was out there that remembered my dad" (her words not mine) she has found that she is part of a very large family network that spreads over the south east in the UK. But best of this was the fact that I was able to give her what she wanted above everything and that was a picture of her dad which was in her hand (via the internet) within twenty-four hours of that first contact e-mail.

or it could be the e-mail that I had only yesterday from another "lost" cousin (a couple of times removed but just as important) on my mum's side who's family I had been searching for since Adam was a lad (oh alright since 1975 when I started to get serious about writing down the family history). All that I knew about this person was that they were female and that was about it and for so long she has remained as an unknown on my tree now I can give her a name!!

old rowley

[Lainys]

My best find was finding out what happened to my Great Grandmother as a child.  She was one of four sisters.  I believe their mother died in childbirth (so far have not been able to confirm when, where or how she died) and their father may have struggled to bring them up on his own.

Anyway, two of them stayed with their father, albeit one boarded with another family when a scholar.  The other stayed with the father.  These two were with their father later in life, and lived near to each other.  The third went into a children's refuge and died aged 13    My Great Grandmother was 'adopted' and ended up in a completely different area with her new family.  It appears that she never saw her sisters again 

Daisypetal helped me to trace my Great Grandmothers family.  Thanks again Daisypetal 

Dolly

[DJFRENCH]

Hi everyone, good health and discovery for the new year 

My grandmother died last year at 96 but kept her life in India very secret for reasons that involved lies and deceit to keep her new life in England in "tact" but it all started in the 40's when life was very different. Any way, my father ,now 77, still wanted answers and knowledge about his origins so i decided to try and find out with the name of my great grandfather and the name of my grandmother's "cousin". I have succeeded back to 1790's (with help from RC) so that is fantastic for my dad.

Discovering RC has been wonderful and it's like having new friends. I love it !

I wish you all that you would wish for yourselves 

DJ

[sallysmum]

Happy New Year to all.

My favourite find was my 2xgt grandmother's marriage cert and discovering her maiden name.  Let me start from the beginning.  I'd always known that gt grandfather's middle name was Sparke - a fantastic name I thought.  I often pondered where it came from, then I got his mother's marriage cert and discovered that it was her maiden name!  I have since learnt that this tradition was quite common, but I can still remember the glee I felt as I read her name!  I couldn't wait to phone my newly found second cousin to tell her (another best find!)

Oh yes, and of course Rootschat is up there in my best finds!

Sallysmum

[julianb]

There's some great stories here - and I am sure a lot of hard work leading up to making them happen.  It's worth it, isn't it?

My big find of the year was the identity of my great great grandmother Amy Agnes Coleman.  All I had known was her marrried name (Langridge).  I got there by a very circuitous route - tracing the person I thought could be her sister and then the sister's parents to find Amy's baptism.

Ironically, if I'd checked the updated BMD more often I might have found her marriage a little quicker - it's easy to forget that this project is not yet complete.

As a result of this discovery I have found lots of other interesting things about Annie Langridge, her daughter/my great grandmother  - not least that she was illegitimate.  This closed a rather bizarre chain of research events which you can read here if you really are interested - http://juliancbaker.rootschat.net/html/tracing_langridge.html.

Of course, this raises a new question - who was Annie's real father?

Best wishes and good luck to you all in your research in 2007.

JULIAN

[KathMc]

Julian,

I just read your link. Wonderful story, although I am a little dizzy. 

Excellent work. I have an illigetimate gg grandmother I am trying to trace. Can I send you on the hunt? 

Kath

[Lydart]

RootsChat definitely my most best find ... having been encouraging friends to join !

Next best find ??  Not quite a find, but having my second cousin from Canada to stay ... I didn't know of her existance a few years back ... and when she was here, realising how much we are alike, not so much in looks, but in how we phrase things; our outlook on life; how her hands and fingers are exactly those of my aunt; how we both like the same sort of fun ... and yet we are separated by 106 years (when our grandmothers parted as teenagers) and about 5000 miles ... it made me realise that those ag lab's and their wives probably had similar looks and habits and ways of speech as us. 

[liverpool annie]

A tiny dark photo of my "Immaculate Conception " Grandmother and Grandfather !! 

I held it in my hands and boohooed for an hour !! 

The feeling I had was something else .... my heart jumped to my throat .... to actually see them and realise that my niece ( who we always thought was different from the rest of the family .....  ) was the SPITTING IMAGE of her !! 

What a feeling !! ..... then I put it on the Photo Restoration board and they brought them to life with colour !

It was wonderful !!  made all the looking .... and frustrations .... worth while !! 

[Granma Anne]

What a great post!

This has been a great year for me, at least in the genealogy Bucket (bouquet)!

After searching for an eon I finally confirmed that my GGG Grandfather was not an alien from andromeda after all. I found him on the 1851 Census, he was gone by the 1861 Census. Then I discovered that I had a copy of his death in an OPR for about five years and never connected it to him because it just had a last name, male and nothing else in the entry which appeared to be an afterthought on the registrar's part at the end of the year. So this mystery man who married in 1822, fathered ten children and died just after the 1851 census became real to me. Not done with him yet, this elusive fellow is having a good time tormenting me. His birth is still a mystery. I think I know who his mother & father are. He is probably just one of those infants baptized without a first name and one of these days someone is going to stumble on him for me. Some of the facts surrounding this family mystery have been brought to light by a couple of RootsChatters and  am dearly indebted to them for their help.  Thank you Margaret and Anne, you know who you are.

Another great RootsChatter on the Derry site literally exploded a major brick when she found the birth of my Great Grandfather in Killynumber. A major upheaval in the family and he was just where I was sure he was going to be. Not only that, she found a whole breadbasket of other relations that are silding into their twigs on the tree and I am delighted. Thank you Linda, you know who you are also.

There is more, much more and I can thank my cousin Jean, who I found through GR, for helping us both to expand another branch of our mutual trees. It's been a good year and I am most grateful to all who helped make it so!

For the New Year, I am sending all of you a virtual sledgehammer to whack at all of those bricks in your way!

Granma Anne