Ferreting round the web from NZ, I was pleased to find the Hexham Courant family history forum website and, not expecting much, posted a couple of messages.
I was astounded and totally delighted to see (much later) a couple of totally relevant replies about the families I was seeking.
Getting in touch with the first one took some organising. We each posted messages and then after a few months we both more or less gave up. It was only because I happened to look in six months after giving up that I finally made contact with a lovely person who had much to share. She told me that she had had similar difficulties.
The second contact is causing me enormous frustration. The person who replied to my original message has direct links to (and photographs of) the person I am desperate to hear about, but he seems to have never revisited the site - and I don't blame him.
While ostensibly providing a great service, this site isn't quite keeping up: most of the messages are more than a month old and it appears to be very much one of those 'questions rather than answers' repositories.
I have tried to email the the Hexham Courant direct but, understandably, they won't reveal the identity or email address of my mysterious 'John'. (Actually, they don't even answer my emails.)
I check in every two weeks or so, but 'John' seems to have lost interest ...
I'm hoping that somewhere out there might be a keen Rootschat member from Hexham who could go and shake these people up!
Perhaps they could be persuaded to have a 'contact this person direct' option, such as we have on RootsChat?
Hope someone out there can help.
Ros
