Last updated at 15:55, Thursday, 11 February 2010

I am back to get this blog going on a full time basis for 2010. Hopefully, I can help encourage you to research your own family history and give you some helpful pointers.

Last week I was in New York where I met a long lost cousin for the first time. You may remember me mentioning in my first blog posting a while back that my grandmother had said her grandfather, who she never knew, had emigrated to the USA. But other than that not a lot was known.

The story starts in 1911 when my great grandmother (my nana) was born in Jesmond, Newcastle. Her mother passed away a few days later due to a difficult birth and she was left to be raised by her father. My grandmother tells me he eventually walked out and left my nana with her grandparents only to come back two years later and take her from the front garden of the farm where they lived at Whickham. My grandmother told me they always thought my nana was taken to the US. However, I have never been able to verify this through shipping records. My nana's father then sold her back to her grandparents for a few hundred pounds, which in 1914 would have been a nice amount of money. She then was brought up by her grandparents and aunties and never spoke of her father.

My grandma asked if I could find anything out with the records that were available online and I set to work on researching what I could. Using Ancestry.co.uk, I quickly found my nana's father, as a child, and his parents listed in census returns. His father was policeman and had been born and brought up in Hexham in middle 1800s, now (late 1800s) living in Marley Hill. But anything after the birth of my nana was proving difficult. After some time and frustration, I decided to search US census returns as we have access to them up until 1930. The family figured that is where he went, so it was worth a shot. I found several matches and one near identical match living in Passaic, New Jersey, with a wife and two children all born in England. But I had no way of making the link just yet. Had my nana been alive at this point I think I would have went in to hiding as I am sure she would not be happy I was researching this.

After again being frustrated by being unable to prove the link, I forgot about it and left it a while (sometimes you have to take a break from things or you get nowhere). A few month later I revisited the link and thought I would give it another go. This time I researched my great great grandfather’s name and the first name of the lady mentioned on the US census return using UK birth, marriage and deaths records. I searched the whole of the UK and pulled up a match and sent off for a marriage certificate. A few days passed and the copy of the certificate arrived. The marriage took place in Manchester. The father of my great great grandfather was listed on the certificate. I had a match. I quickly rang my grandma to tell her the news.

I was still uncertain about this match. Had I gone wrong somewhere? Could there be other possibilities? I set out to find this link and now I was second guessing myself. Back on ancestry, I researched ship manifestos for the name of my great great grandfather and nothing was matching. Once again I was frustrated. Giving it another go, I searched for one of the children on the manifestos and I found the family on a ship from Liverpool to New York in 1923. My great great grandfather had changed his first name and, as I was told subsequently, he was possibly on the run.

To be continued

First published at 10:07, Monday, 18 January 2010
Published by http://www.hexhamcourant.co.uk