Old Family Mystery

[Lynn Eades]

Tim, You can go into your previous posts, and edit them as you wish. You can also delete a post should you choose to do so.
(from someone who regularly fixes his errors)

[Tim Lovelock]

Originally Posted by Lynn Eades

Tim, You can go into your previous posts, and edit them as you wish. You can also delete a post should you choose to do so.
(from someone who regularly fixes his errors)

Thx Lynn, lol, didn't even think of it!!! I think my surname shoul be 'Luddite!

[David Dunlop]

Thanks for the suggestions. Much appreciated. Mum's youngest sibling (a brother) passed away in Perth a couple of years ago. It would be grand if the fate of their Mum could be discovered before any of the surviving three children pass on. None of them would waste spit on their father but would dearly love to know their Mum did OK.

Best regards,

David

[Tony Wheeler]

David, have you considered seeking professional advice? I imagine there'd be experienced investigators in this field, which strikes me as not unlike family tree research. With all the data stored these days and computer searching and so forth I wonder if they can match things like DOB and narrow the field. Just a thought and you may have explored it already. Anyway good luck in your search, it would certainly be grand to solve the family mystery as you say. Cheers, Tony.

[David Dunlop]

Tony.

We have thought about hiring a researcher, but they do not come cheap. You are right, a lot of information is on line and can be very helpful. I do have concerns, however, about governments giving up control of their own archives to the private sector, for profit. The most recent census release here in Canada, by the Ancestry Group was an absolute mess when I did some research on my grandparents (fathers side of the family) who were living here in Winnipeg in the 1920's. I knew the address but could not search them out to save my soul. Ended up searching page by page for several hours through the district in which they lived and being familiar with the area, began to notice a lot of spelling mistakes for names of streets. It became very evident whoever had been hired to do the transcriptions did not have English as a first language. Very likely Spanish.

When I did finally find the census page with my relatives listed, the original document was very easy to read, but both my grandparents surnames had been misspelled, as had the street name. In fact, I found 67 spelling errors on that one page before I stopped looking. The dark side of documents for profit!

On the bright side, a wonderful MLU member in England, with much more research experience than I have yet obtained, has offered to do some digging for us and I now have some ideas for media assistance in Australia. Gotta love this site.

I am going to hold off telling Mum at the moment. She is 91 now and still hates her Father with a passion. Seems OK with her Mum, but I suspect is a little bothered as to why she just up and left her and her siblings behind. My grandfather was so enraged by his wife leaving, and was convinced her family knew where she was hiding, he put the four kids into two orphanages and refused to tell the family where they were until they handed over his wife. Took four years for the family to discover the kids and two aunts finally took them in. Interesting life!

Cheers for now, Tony.

David