Mourning a "lost" opportunity....

[Britjan]

Having taken advantage of the opportunity to buy a short term subscription to Ancestry UK (thanks Peter for the heads up ) I've been looking back at some of my earliest research. I've been comparing what I had garnered from various sources ( including guest memberships, shared trees etc. etc. ) and going back to check sources principally at FMP and Ancestry UK. Now I am taking a closer look at electoral registers, probate records etc.

I share the story because I hope to learn from it in the "legacy" I leave my children. What they choose to do with it will be up to them and I'm sure there are some great missed ops stories out there.

Two of my lost opportunities wouldn't be possible without time travel but I'd love to know why my maternal grandfather's brother and his wife chose to live apart for almost their entire married life, ( thank you 1901, 1911 census and electoral records c 1921 -1935) I've also just learned that the same brother had obviously chosen to stay in contact with another sister who I had originally been unable to track. He is named in the probate records ( another good source) and since his occupation is noted I have a fair degree of confidence that I've tracked this missing sister down. It came as a complete shock to learn that she probably came to Canada in 1910 and died less than a year later. I hope to track down and visit her final resting place.

The third I regret the most because it turns out that my mother's step brother's only child died in 1998 about five years before I got serious about my family research. I knew that my step uncle (from my maternal grandmother's first marriage) was almost a generation older than my mother and a naval man so they were never in close contact. My cousin, again about a generation older than me appears to have never married and had a long career "aboard" a shore based ship so I'm hoping I can at least trace some colleagues of his. (Thank you electoral registers , BMD , phone books, long service medal records, and Forces reunion websites). When next in the UK I will at the very least hope to visit his final resting place as well.

 

[Bazza43]

We all have lost opportunities, I suspect. My most sad ones are due to the fact that when I first became interested (My age was in single figures over 60 years ago) I couldn't write letters myself, and didn't know quite what questions to ask. Yes, I had three great-grandmothers still living. Unfortunately, within 10 years, not only they, but my three surviving grandparents had also passed on, and the single request I made (through my parents to my paternal grandfather) from what I now know, resulted in a very brief tree, containing only surnames, and the second generation back was garbage!

Unfortunately, my parents have now also passed away, but you may be sure I picked their memories to pieces! Also a surviving Uncle and Aunt on my dad's side. There were still bits that slipped through the cracks, like no-one I talked to could tell me much about our American cousins, at least, not enough to find them. At least I had names for two of them, but there turned out to be four, and I've contacted descendants of two of those.

One that nearly slipped through the cracks was when my mum related that her mum had said that some of her Sedgwick rellies had emigrated to Australia. But mum had no idea who. I spent ages trying to find them, and as far as I can see, none of the Sedgwicks ever did, however, my grandma's grandmother, Sedgwick by marriage, her sister and husband ended up in New South Wales. This is a work in progress, but I now think I've solved that one.

Another was that my dad remembered two cousins of his on his mother's side, he thought their names were Lois and Doris. His sister remembered that one was in Eastbourne (Lois) and the other somewhere else on the south coast (Bournmouth springs to mind). It turns out that Doris was in fact, Dorothy (thanks to the 1911 census for that) and to the best of my knowledge, she lived and died in Coventry. And I have talked to both of Lois's granddaughters, and neither seemed to know about Dorothy, but they both remembered another sister (half-sister) named Win, who is perhaps still living, and in Scotland. Unfortunately, the younger sister couldn't remember her married name. If she is alive and compos mentis then perhaps I can find out about Dorothy from her.

I think the message is: learn what questions to ask, ask them and enter all your rellies onto lost cousins!