Why I love this hobby....

[MarkCDodd]

I have been spending far more time helping total strangers with thier brick walls than actually doing my tree lately.

Sometimes they are people connected to the 12000 people I have on my Ancestry and Genes Reunited trees but more often than not they have no connection to my tree at all.

One that I got via e-mail earlier this week was from a 90 year old lady from London who wanted to know about her father.

Apparently one of her Great Granddaughters got the Genealogy bug and was stunned to find out who she thought was her G G Grandad was a foster parent to her G Grandma, not her biological father.

The 90 year old knew this but had given up in frustration many decades ago about finding out about her father and it was never really mentioned in the family.

But she was wondering if we would have a better chance nowadays.

What she could provide was

a) A name (First, Middle and last)
b) That he was English born but fought in WWI in the Australian Army and returned to Australia in 1919.
c) That her mother was a nurse at war hospital and was treating her father for war wounds when they had their affair.
d) That her father wrote many letters to her mother begging her to join him in Australia.
e) An address that she was given by her mother in the 1930's that was the last known address of her father in Australia, but dated from 1919.

I immediately jumped onto our excellent online and complete and free WW1 service records and found three gentlemen with names close enough to investigate.

None of them were British born but the 90 year old insisted this was the case so I decided to try the street address she gave me from 1919.

None of the service records had this address in them so I contacted one of the online War Forums to see if they could help.

Some people have been going through the records and writing down every address mentioned for each soldier. (Some of these addresses came from correpsondence up until modern times where people are chasing pension records etc).

Although their ever expanding database is nowhere near completion, it happened to have the 1919 address given by this soldier.

The name given to me by the 90 year old had a different surname than the soldier at that address.

The soldier gave the London address of his father as next of kin.

A quick check of the census showed the surname on the war record was correct and I now had his fathers name and from there, after less than a day, I could provide this lady with.

a) His complete war record and photographs of him in uniform. He was a hero. He was shot twice at Gallipoli in 1915. Both fairly serious wounds. He was shot in the face and lost part of his jaw in late 1918 and that is when he spent a few months in the hospital and met her mother.
b) His family back and forwards a few generations including all the Baptism and wedding parish register entries. His family were bankers for many generations and his mother imported fake furs!!!
c) Some contacts of living decendants of him.
d) His embarkation and debarkation records
e) A letter he wrote to the War Department in 1920 asking them to pay for his repatriation back to England to be with his child and hopefully future wife.

They did pay for his trip back to England and he arrived in November 1920.

Although eligible for a pension he never claimed one.

Apparently the old ladies mother had met somebody else so this brave soldier decided not to complicate her life and that of his daughter.

The old lady was stunned to find her father was living in London, only a short distance from her and her mother, for many years and not in Australia as she had assumed.

At the outbreak of WWII he tried to enlist in the Army (he had risen to the rank of Captain in WW1) but the injuries from WWI made him unfit for service.

So he became one of the senior air wardens in London and was killed in one of the early bombing raids whilst helping a panicked family find and enter a shelter.

They made it, he didn't.

He had married so the old lady was delighted to find she did have half siblings (all of them dead but with living children, grandchildren and G Granchildren).

She is deciding wether or not to contact the families so that is why I have not used any names.

I told her she should be proud of him. Getting wounded three times. Getting promoted through the ranks to Captain. Dying whilst helping a family during the blitz. He was a hero.

I only hope my brain is as agile as hers when I am 90.

I am glad I could help her and the enjoyment I got from that makes this hobby the best in the world.

[Maths girl]

That is an amazing story Mark --- you are a super sleuth.

[peterd]

Well done mark as you say its not all about our own families its also helping others

[grangers14]

Brought tears to my eyes reading that! Well done you
One of my greatest pleasures is being able to help someone and is now my reaon for doing this too!
Jo

[dianel]

What a wonderful story, Mark! It brought tears to my eyes. Great job by you!!!

[mallosa]

Same here Mark, nice story that! Makes you feel good doesn't it?
Going back to when I first started researching, I can remember how helpful people were and it's so rewarding to now be able to do the same.

There are a lot of like minded people on this site and that's why I think it's so successful

[Annie]

Hi Mark just read your story and it is really good you could help the lady, hope I still have interest in it when I'm that age , like many more members on the forum it gives me pleasure to be able to help others find their ancestors.

Annie

[MarkCDodd]

I had another one yesterday when I sent a first cousin on my Ford side a picture of her father.

She had never seen a photograph of him before so it was tears all round.