My Dad has been searching for Decades - THOMAS

[tssenior]

Thanks everyone, but after viewing the death notice, I already knew the names of Laura's children from her first marriage (it mentions the married names of her daughters too). I would imagine she had all of her children before 1920 so the chances of any of them being alive is very low. I managed to find out that the youngest daughter (J) married a Roy A and they had a son Roy Jnr. I found a Roy A in the white pages in Canberra and I took the bull by the horns and decided to phone last night. I asked him if he was married to a J (I wasn't sure if he was the Roy Snr or the Roy Jnr) and he said "no comment" and hung up in my ear! I phoned again this morning and he said that Joyce was his mother but he can't remember if he has any grandmothers. He sounded very very old, so I'm wondering if it might actually be the Roy snr? I asked him if he had any kids and he said he had hundreds and then started ranting about stuff that I had no idea about, and then hung up on me again. I'm no expert but he was definately very senile. If J and Roy got married in 1943 and J's mother Ruth married Leslie Joseph Thomas in 1942, I would say it will be Laura's grandchildren that would remember Leslie the most. Would you agree? I'm taking my daughter away dancing for 4 days (she has qualified for the nationals here in NZ)  and we going away to prepare for it so I won't be able to do anything else until I come back. If anyone has any ideas on how I may find Laura's grandchildren, I would appreciate any feedback. I will still be checking in while I am gone. This whole journey has been incredible, I really feel like I know everyone involved.

[majm]

I think you should hasten slowly.

I can assure you that there are people born before WWI who are alive and alert and living in Australia.

There are actually some very good not for profit organisations that help reunite family members, and their trained counsellors have professional skills to make the contacts you are seeking.

I think if anyone has details of names of descendants, they should not post these details on the thread.   The PM system is a sensible alternative.

http://www.salvationarmy.org.nz/need-assistance/family-tracing

ADD and gently may I mention that these threads are very easily found at a google search, and can be read without logging on.   

Some of my younger set have been known to give some extremely odd responses when receiving phone calls from strangers.   They do so by choice, particularly if someone is asking about any older rellies.   They give the callers 'the run around' and will not ever disclose any logical info ....  Simply because they know their rellies expect their privacy to be respected. 
   

Cheers,  JM

[tssenior]

Thanks for the info JM, I didn't realise that we weren't allowed to mention people that were still living!  Most of Laura's children would have been born over 100 years ago, so all I meant was that there is only a very slim chance of any of them being alive still, sorry I didn't mean to sound rude. I think in this case, this all happened so long ago, Leslie died 51 years ago, so there may not be too many living relatives that remember him that well. I remember Leslie's first wife (my Gran, she died when I was 5) very vaguely and she died 12 years after Leslie. I think I watch too many tv programmes of families reuniting! They all seem to be happy to find relatives that never knew of haha.