I would like to tell you the story of a great breakthrough in my family history.
My great grandfather James Young, was born in 1835 in Redgorton, Scotland and he had a younger brother called Alexander. James immigrated to Australia in the mid 1800's and Alexander stayed in Scotland, however, they obviously kept in touch, as my grandfather (James Alexander Young) James' son, who was born in 1865 corresponded with one of Alexanders sons, also called Alexander.
My grandfather died in 1932, but my grandmother Priscilla, kept up the correspondence with the family, however, they lost touch sometime during the second world war.
My grandmother passed away in 1978 aged 94 and the photos & letters from Scotland and also America, where two of Alexanders children had moved to, were amongst her possessions.
My Aunt, who took care of these items after Grandma's death, tried in vain to find these missing relatives.
The years passed and we did not even know for sure where these people fitted into the family tree, however, during the past year, I have had a wonderful breakthrough. I found my great grandfather James's brother Alexanders marriage and the marriage of his son Alexander and consequently the births of his children. Being unable to go any further with records over the computer, I hired a gentleman in Scotland to trace the family from there and he was able to put me in touch with living descendants of the original Alexander. These descendants were able to fill in a lot of gaps about what had happened to those relatives we long wondered about.
Can you imagine how thrilled I was about that?
I promptly packed up copies of the photos etc that we had here in Australia and sent them off to to relatives over there and now I am going to visit Scotland, the birthplace of my great grandfather, to meet the descendants of his brother Alexander. What a wonderful world we live in, to be able to have contact with descendants of these two boys, who were born in the 1830's.
The internet has put me in touch with descendants of other siblings of my great grandfather also.
Ellen Pearce
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