A needle in a haystack found

From a previous post, my adoring readers know that I am putting together the family tree. I really thought it would be a needle in a haystack, trying to find out where Himself's great great grandfather originally came from in the USA.

When MIL first asked about the possibility of finding his birthplace, we didn't even know what date and year he was born. At one point I thought of telling her not to get her hopes up, The Net isn't the all powerful sentient programme that many think it can be. Then I "met" someone online who offered her help. She did a few searchers on ancestry.com based on the information we had, which wasn't much.

While she was helping us search for this needle, I started digging around on our own archive online database and found a letter written by auther Lawrence Green, requesting information on Himself's great great grandfather for his book In the Land of the Afternoon. Still, it yielded no new information.

Then a couple of weeks ago I treid searching our national archive again. I received a copy of the document yesterday, with everything in it I need to find out if Himself's great great grandfather had any siblings, and if any of those had children who had children. It would be fun to find some relatives still living in the US don't you think?

And all because a government official did not believe the old man when he said he was old eough to receive a pension after working as a teacher for 25 years.

When family reconnects

A good few years ago, Himself's extended family was very close. So close that they hollidayed together, basically grew up in each other's back pockets.


Then the cousins grew up, got married, moved out of the country (some of them). We still saw them whenever they came back here to visit which was very often but as time passed so did contact and after a few years and a visit from us to them, we just never heard from them again.


Except for bumping into each other on home visits unexpectedly. It was always fascinating to see their reactions, how the first thing they said was I don't have time to chat, before actually saying hello.


This year it's as if they've finally realised that family is precious, they want to reconnect. They make the effort to contact us. Let's hope it's a lasting phase in their lives and not a fly by night visit.