The return of the lost: searching for…
Recently a friend of mine mentioned that her book group had been reading the 1975 Anne Tyler novel Searching For Caleb, and after she’d read the copy that she’d found in her bookshelf, she noticed that my name was written on the title page. Evidently I’d lent it to her around 40 years ago and both of us had utterly forgotten that fact.
This made me smile, because the theme of the novel is – among other things – an elderly man’s search for the brother who left the family in young adulthood, never to be heard from again. So it’s about an effort to find someone lost, and the symmetry of the lost-and-found book appealed to me.
I won’t spoil it by telling you anything else about the plot, in case you want to read it. But I will say that, at the time I read it so long ago, I remember thinking it was enjoyable, although I’m not keen on most contemporary novels.
What’s more, the book had come to my mind even before its reappearance in my life, because during the past couple of years I’ve had my own experience – not with a sibling who disappeared, but with a lost great-uncle whose existence I only knew about because of a story my mother told me around 50 years ago. At that time she merely said (to my great surprise because our family is so small) that her father (my maternal grandfather) had had a brother who “disappeared” (her word), and that no one knew a thing about what had happened to him.
I knew he must be dead by now, because if alive he’d clock in at around 140 years of age. When my mother told the story I also assumed that his disappearance had occurred in his early adulthood, which would have been some time during the early years of the 20th Century, the same general time frame as Caleb’s disappearance in the book (which I hadn’t yet read because it hadn’t been written yet when my mother told me the tale of the missing great-uncle).
And since my usually very talkative and non-secretive mother seemed to know nothing more about this person, I assumed she knew nothing more about the story and I didn’t ask her any more questions. I assumed that she’d never met him.
Big mistake, but I didn’t know that at the time.
About two years ago I decided to do some genealogy research, something that had never interested me before. One motive was definitely to attempt to crack the mystery of this disappearing great-uncle of mine. I didn’t really expect to get anywhere, but I was going to try anyway. The story had stuck in my mind all those years.
The research took me a long time, with a lot of work and many twistings and turnings along the way, one problem being that he had a very very common name. I’ll skip the details, but it took a lot of skill and some creativity but finally I found out more about his life, which had included a bunch of marriages and even some illegitimate children or at least suspected illegitimate children, plus one legitimate child (and one legitimate child that actually wasn’t his, but that’s a whole nother story). And that legitimate child who was his also had had a very very common name, and I didn’t even know his birthdate or his mother’s name.
I even hired a genealogist to help me, but she only got so far, too. My big breakthrough was finding the great-uncle’s step-granddaughter (again, I’ll skip the details of the story), and she gave me a bunch of anecdotes about my great uncle (she had known him well), plus a small piece of information about his son: the name of the large city she thought my great-uncle’s son (her mother’s stepbrother) had lived in for at least a little bit.
And that in turn helped me to find his most recent address.
I figured this great-uncle’s son (who was my first cousin once-removed) would have been 94 at the time I found that address for him. What were the chances that he was still alive? And if alive, what were the chances that he was cognitively capable of understanding what I was saying and who I was? I thought they were slim, but I wrote him a letter anyway in which I explained the situation very carefully. I didn’t want to jar him and cause undue alarm or upset, and that’s one of the reasons I didn’t try to phone. I thought a letter would be gentler, plus it might reach someone else who might know something about his story.
I never expected to hear another word.
But – as you may by now have suspected – about a month later I got a letter in the mail. I stared at it in joyful but gobsmacked disbelief. It had a return address sticker with his name on it and the address, and my address was written on the front in the neatest, clearest hand I’ve ever seen. His letter was handwritten, too, and that clarity continued throughout the missive, matched by a clarity of thought.
Astounding.
Since then I’ve not met him; he lives far away. And I’ll skip all the things he told me about what had happened with his father, and how certain tragedies occurred and then after his father’s remarriage he was ripped away from the only family he’d ever known till then – which had happened not at the beginning of the 20th Century (when he wasn’t even born yet), but around 1940.
1940! That meant my mother knew about his existence, and knew him well, and he knew her, which turned out to be true and I received proof of it from him. Why hadn’t she mentioned him to me? He was her first cousin (she only had two others, so it wasn’t as though there were so many).
That’s another mystery and it will almost certainly remain unsolved.
And let me add that no one else in the family – neither my brother nor my own two second cousins on that side – had ever even heard of the existence of this great-uncle and certainly not of his son. They were flabbergasted by the whole story. Of the entire family, only my mother had mentioned it, and only to me.
Maybe she thought I’d figure it out some day, if anyone would. She probably knew what a bulldog I could be. And I’m pretty sure that after the 1940s she really didn’t know much about him or his father – but she obviously knew quite a bit about him prior to that. And afterwards, once I had seen photos of this great-uncle and his new wife and I had learned what they really looked like, I was able to see that they in fact had attended my parents’ wedding in the early 1940s. There they were in the photos, big as life.
My newfound first cousin once-removed is still going strong in his late 90s now – knock wood – and who knows, maybe some day I’ll actually meet him. He lives far away in a part of the country I almost never visit, so it would take a special trip.
But it’s extraordinarily satisfying to me to have located him. I can’t even explain the joy I felt when I got that letter from him, and it still makes me smile when I think of it – a mystery solved, an open circle closed. Not that such things are ever solved – including the grief and isolation he experienced as a child – but I hope there’s some healing there, and for me it’s been very satisfying.
I like to think my mother would have been pleased.
Go visit him.
When he passes, and if you had never visited him, you will regret it.
Maybe you will even enjoy that part of the country you have never visited.
Interesting story. Having recently lost my mother who was the last of her generation of our family there has been a lot of talk about how many things we will now never know but many of us have made a point the last few years to really interact with her when she would talk about the ‘old days’.
Along the lines of your family my mother had two older half siblings somewhere in Texas as her father was much older than her mother and had apparently had another family in his younger days and my mother who was all about family both near and distant had no interest in finding them and it was an area you didn’t go to with her. May have been because her father died when she was a teenager (20 years before I was even born) and she wanted to remember her father in her own way.
What John Tyler said–
Make the trip to see him while he’s still with us. He sounds like a good man, and maybe you can bring some further healing to him. And he may have some good thoughts to offer you in return.
Wow!
I second Tyler’s motion. If you can at all manage it, and if he would welcome it, I suggest that you try. But then, you don’t want to kill the guy by transmitting a cold or something.LOL
Write some more letters – you probably have – and express some of the sentiments – if you have not already – which you have expressed here.
He will then know for certain that he was not abandoned, but only lost.
As far as genealogy research goes you never know what you will find. It has convinced me of two things:
– that human memory can be pretty damn good, and that oral traditions can pretty well capture “the gist of it” even in cases where there was some exaggeration or omission.
– and that some women in particular – not all by any means – nonchalantly shape the stories they tell in order to establish a narrative. I can think of only one aunt out of 12 and two cousins out of 56 who were/are prone to it. But they were/are the ones most likely to ardently jump into a conversation about the past and relentlessly put their “spin” on it. I don’t think they view it as lying, and just assume that the legend is just as good as the fact; if the fact is almost inaccessible.
Of course the fact of the matter is not inaccessible in many cases. It just takes a ton of conscientious effort to get at it. Some people seem to settle for, or even prefer, a good story.
Makes me so mad I could spit.
DNW; John Tyler; PA Cat:
There have been quite a few letter exchanges and one phone call, and visiting is more complex than I explained in the post. Simply put, I’m not at all sure he would welcome it. He’s somewhat of a loner and some of this talk about old times opens up old wounds. So I’m not at all sure what to do, and since he’s polite, asking him point-blank might yield a false “yes” on a visit that would make him uncomfortable.
Plus of course until fairly recently there’s been the COVID thing.
I have a few other “found” relatives – including descendants of the illegitimate child of the great-uncle – to visit, too. They are my age and more clear about the desire for a meeting, and they also require a long trip to a part of the country I don’t ordinarily visit.
DNW:
I’ve found that both my mother and her mother (my grandmother) were excellent and accurate reporters of stories about relatives, as far as I can determine.
What a wonderful story, and the “lost book” metaphor is powerful. We are each a story —an abundance of stories, forming, jostling each other, overwritten, ongoing, finishing, forgotten. To (re)discover this missing volume in your genealogical library must be a great joy. Thank you for sharing the tale.
I got interested in genealogy, first on a visit to Ireland that was a wild goose chase. We have a family legend that we are related to the Kennedy’s of Boston and my great grandmother used to visit with Joseph Kennedy’s mother. Not true. In Ireland, working on the hypothesis that Teddy met with “cousins” in Waterford where there is a “Kennedy Library,” I spent a lot of time looking for Kennedys in church baptismal registers. I found not one.
Then, in Dublin Castle, I went to the genealogy office and told my story to the clerk. He gave me the file from John F Kennedy’s visit when he was president. It had cables to and from the embassy. They had no idea where their ancestors had come from. It’s all myth.
In later years, I actually found where my great great grandfather had been born and raised before emigration. It was in northern Ireland, nowhere near the Kennedys alleged origin. I have not been able to visit the area but I have seen a photo of the church where he and my great great grandmother were married. It is now a pub. They arrived in upstate New York around 1830. My family tree now has 4500 members. As a sedentary hobby, it is fun.
Touching story, thanks so much for sharing, dear Neo!
I also have a family story of missing loved ones. Covers the period from 1941 to 2006. Tomorrow I will write in detail about that. Now it’s very late time here where I live 🙂
Through 23 and me, my daughter found a second cousin whose grandfather was somehow a full sibling to my mom and uncle. Since everyone from my mom’s generation is now deceased we will never know the mystery about this lost uncle of mine. I have a feeling that my grandmother was with child when my grandfather went off to fight WWI and gave him up for adoption. I really doubt that my mom ever knew about him.
“my address was written on the front in the neatest, clearest hand I’ve ever seen. His letter was handwritten, too, and that clarity continued throughout the missive” neo
This reminded me of a dear friend who passed away a few years ago. She was born in 1936 and I in 1948. She had exceptionally neat and clear handwriting as well.
When I first saw it, I complemented her on it and she mentioned it was a result of the many school years where penmenship was stressed.
I do not remember penmenship being stressed after perhaps the 3-4th grade. I suspect it had started to be phased out in the early to mid 50s.
Geoffrey Britain:
Penmanship used to be emphasized, and that faded out over time. But my amazement at this relative’s clear penmanship is actually because I expected more hand shakiness at that age.
Has to be a short story if not longer with what you found, maybe at least for family record if not to publish
neo on November 13, 2021 at 4:32 pm said:
Well then, just send “Uncle Jack” a fruitcake at Christmas.
Make sure it is not a dry one he will choke on though. Come to think of it, doing anything for a person that elderly could wind up killing them. Geez.
DNW:
You don’t seem to get it, from your sarcastic condescending tone here.
Point is, he’s given out signals that indicate discomfort on his part as well as pain about taking up the memories, and has described himself as a loner.
I’ve already sent him several batches of family-recipe homemade pastry. He survived them.
My mother lived to 103, born in 1898 and died in 2001. She was a good source of stories about her history and her family. The Irish branch was my father’s family. She was a treasure of stores about WWI and the 1920s. I took her to see “Titanic” when it came out. She was 14 when it sank. She was 40 when I was born and she had had an interesting life before I came along.
Two fascinating stories.
There’s a mystery I ‘d like to figure out. A recent Brit historical novel has a bad guy being LTC Richard A. Aubrey of the Glamorgan MIlitia. Turns out there really was a Richard A. Aubrey, LTC of the Glamorgan militia. LIke to get hold of the author, if I could find out who. Just to talk, though. Just to talk.
I’ve been doing genealogical research for over about three years now. (The LDS libraries are fantastic for this.)
I reconnected with my second cousins one removed, which was nice. I found another second cousin once removed who had interesting stories about his grandmother.
I found out my grandfather was married before he married my grandmother (and I’m reasonably positive that my father never knew that.) And I found out the my mother had a half brother that I’m sure she never knew about. Unfortunately, he died in the early 1960’s, without getting married or having children.
I’m still searching for far flung relatives. More and more things get added to Family Search and Ancestry all the time.
My oldest sister has (or at least had been working on) on geneology for our family on both sides, but I haven’t really ever looked at it. Been meaning to, but just never got around to it. I did learn from my mother about 5 years ago that she and my uncle have a half sister somewhere. Apparently, after my mother was born, my grandmother left my grandfather and the two children for a while in the late 40s/early 50s, had another child, gave it up for adoption, and returned to my grandfather to whom she remained with until her death in 2007. I never knew this story until I got it from my mother. So, I have an aunt out there somewhere I have never met with, probably, her own family of my first cousins.
Believe it or not, that was not sarcasm. No, I cannot appreciate much less feel his pain, or anyone else’s for that matter.
But I was certainly serious in thinking that a small token gift might make him feel remembered; and in suggesting that all other considerations of psychic trauma or discomfort aside, you would not want to be accidentally responsible for transmitting a fatal infection to him.
You are probably misreading what I meant, because of all the remarks I have made about liberal grannies and soy-boys reaping the firestorm they have sown.
None of that should be interpreted as carrying over into what was a perfectly sincere remark.
I do wish him well, and you in your dealings with him.
Politics, is another matter.
If ever there was a puzzle tailor made for Neo’s fine-grained forensic approach, this was it!
Whereas a few years back your humble correspondent solved a long-standing genealogical mystery by hopping from lily pad to rock to pillar to briar patch in a mad caffeine-driven morning of forking out to download birth/death/marriage records on two continents and much Wikipedia-ing for local contexts and liberal application of the special Zaphod-strength Cherchez la Femme Sauce. Bingo. Case incontrovertibly proven. But damned if I could recreate just how I did it. I suppose that’s why people make notes.
Neo is right. It’s one thing to pull on the string. At 94, it should not be heaved on.
@Richard Aubrey:
Well in 2021, by all measures of official public morality, you’re the Bad Guy, too. Breeding will out! 🙂
@Yancey Ward:
Provided you’re willing to take the risk of giving Moloch your DNA, 23andMe or AncestryDNA will probably help you with some leads.
It get better, you can download your raw data from both these services and upload to other more specifically genealogically-focused sites — and then do the work yourself or hire a professional to do it.
Richard Aubrey, I would imagine you have done an internet search. I just did and found:
Richard Aubrey – thepeerage.com
http://www.thepeerage.com/p12685.htm
Aug 14, 2004 · Richard Aubrey was born circa 1745. 1 He was the son of Sir Thomas Aubrey, 5th Bt. and Martha Carter. 1 He married Frances Digby, daughter of Hon. Wriothesly Digby and Mary Cotes, in 1780. 1,2 He died in April 1808. 1 He gained the rank of Lieutenant-Colonel in the Glamoganshire Militia. 1
@RichardAubrey:
This is who you want in your family tree!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Aubrey
What a great story.
Neo, if you do decide to visit him, ask him if he and an acquaintance would like to go to lunch with you at a restaurant of theirchoice. He may be cautious about letting a stranger into his home. (What if the visitor doesn’t want to leave.) Or he may be embarrassed at the state of his housekeeping.
But I think you are correct about going slowly. Letters and phone calls are a great idea. I don’t know that a face to face visit would be that much more satisfying. And rushing in that direction may make him reticent about letters and phone calls.
Speaking of long-lost relatives and professional genealogists, I’ve sometimes wondered how people react when they find out that their DNA has been used by GEDmatch to identify a serial killer or (in more positive outcomes) a long-unidentified missing person through the DNA Doe Project. More generally, there must be a lot of people who have lost relatives they don’t know about– for one thing, prior to computers, cell phones, and ubiquitous security cameras, it was easier for people to just walk away from unhappy family situations and maybe return later– or not.
DNW:
My apologies for misreading your intent as less benign than it actually was.
I have mentioned my paternal grandparents Harold and Maude before. When I was about 20 I was stunned to find out that Maude was my father’s step mother. His birth mother abandoned the family when he was about 4. I assumed that he never heard from her again. In 2019, as he lay dying, he told me when he was about 20 his birth mother came to his house and Maude revealed to him who she was after she had left. That was the only time he ever saw her.
PA Cat:
At least so far, people have to purposely post their DNA at GED for the authorities to get at it for that purpose.
A fascinating story and one well told. How people and their stories become part of our lives then fade away slowly or vanish in a blink, only to reappear years later almost as if by magic – especially among family – make passing through this too-brief life quite a show.
I visit this blog daily because its author is so intelligent, grounded, and always interesting. And so wonderfully down to earth for one so well-educated and from her milieu! I even enjoy her obsession with the Bee Gees (a subject on which I have a theory). So thanks again to our gracious, somewhat mysterious hostess.
Zaphod. It appears the name came to North America with Wolfe’s army. Funny how we couldn’t stay away from fancy uniforms and stuff.
I’ve been wondering about Jack Aubrey’s prize money stash. At three percent compounded….
Scott:
Thanks!
But please, now that you’ve sufficiently piqued my curiosity, what is your Bee Gee theory?
Neo–
That’s true– but I’ve heard that so many people in the United States have posted their DNA that almost all those of us who haven’t are related to someone who has donated theirs– not that I expect my cousins’ DNA to link me to a cold case of some kind.
In any event, the general issue of long-lost relatives reminded me of a Canadian documentary about a man who went searching for the true identity of a workplace friend he knew as Michael De Bourcier, who died suddenly in 2002. It became apparent that “Mike” was not the man’s true identity because his cause of death was unclear and the police had to investigate it. The friend searched for years, finally located a photo of “Mike” in a directory of Canadian missing persons under a very different name– of a man who went missing in 1992. The friend worked together with a private investigator to confirm “Mike’s” true identity, contact his family in Ontario, and find out why “Mike” decided to go missing in 1992. It’s more than the usual missing persons story– it’s about friendship and the willingness of a grieving friend to go to extraordinary lengths to honor the friend by finding his true name and notifying his family.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nLQp1c4Ql00&ab_channel=RealStories
Chases Eagles:
Wow.
There are so many stories, and most are lost when the person dies. But some remain. I have found that in my family the oral history is quite accurate, as far as I can determine. DNA can also reveal some, as can genealogy research.
I got a lot of surprises from both. Mostly pleasant surprises, I have to say.
If one doesn’t mind the expense, the Old Gumshoe can find lost relatives too.
My younger sister, half-sister actually, had sisters via my stepfather, and they traced my sister with a good old-fashioned private detective, who probably used new-fangled computer power to get the job done.
They all live in Massachusetts within reasonable driving time. It’s worked out pretty well.
neo,
“Penmanship used to be emphasized, and that faded out over time. But my amazement at this relative’s clear penmanship is actually because I expected more hand shakiness at that age.”
One would expect a certain amount of hand shakiness at that age.
I was reflecting upon the once considered importance of penmanship. I understand the POV that led to its de-emphasis. It’s only now that I can appreciate what has been lost in that abandonment. Thought an unimportant societal affectation by a younger generation, the last generation that embraced the importance of neat, clear penmanship failed to understand its importance.
Perhaps SciFi Grandmaster Heinlein, born in 1907, hinted at its importance best, when he observed that, “A dying culture invariably exhibits personal rudeness. Bad manners. Lack of consideration for others in minor matters. A loss of politeness, of gentle manners, is more significant than is a riot.”
Writing neatly and clearly best requires reflection and thoughtfulness. Barely legible scribbles lack communitive thoughtfulness and reflect a disinterest in clear expression and reactively, diminishes active listening.
A cautionary tale, however.
My uncle’s youngest daughter, accompanied by her mother, located a half-brother, Tim, from an earlier marriage in San Francisco. A roommate answered the door and told them to wait. They did so.
When Tim appeared, he yelled at them to go away. In no uncertain terms. They did so.
No one has any idea why Tim was so upset. The last time my uncle saw Tim was in the 70s and the two had a nice visit.
Of course, as I’ve indiscreetly mentioned, I come from a complicated family. There’s plenty of bad blood. My uncle married four times. Tim’s mother was the second.
huxley,
Same thing happened to my Grandmother who was adopted. She was left in a basket on a Doctors step (he and his childless wife adopted her) She has passed now, but when she was in her 40’s she went looking to find her real parents. Through detective work, and many letters…she found her mothers cousin who gave her a lot of details. She went to her birth mothers house…and her birth mother slammed the door in her face. Not sure of the story. She wasn’t married. It could have been a rape…Sad all around.
“Writing neatly and clearly best requires reflection and thoughtfulness. Barely legible scribbles lack communitive thoughtfulness and reflect a disinterest in clear expression and reactively, diminishes active listening.”
Well, I guess that makes me a muddle brained. Ever since the 4th grade when we made the switch from printing to cursive, I’ve struggled to make my pen-to-paper writing neat and legible. When the first primitive word processor appeared on computers in the mid 80s, it was a boon to me, especially since I learned to touch type by the time I was 12. I could compose, proof read, correct, rewrite until I got what I wanted in the form I wanted. But then I guess that’s not an example of clear expression since I didn’t do it with pen and paper.
Our family also has a missing relative – my paternal grandfather’s older half-sister. (Great grandfather was a widower who married twice. He had two children by his first wife – a son who died in WWI, and a daughter who was a governess to a diplomatic family, and two children by his second wife, my grandfather and the great-aunt who told us the story. The governess half-sister was named Polly, and she went abroad with her employer, and that’s the last we know of her.
I’ve dabbled in certain records, working out a genealogy, but am stymied at finding the records of my great-grandfathers two marriages. (And he was legitimately married – both he and his second wife were toweringly respectable late Victorians.)
Your story Neo, has similarities to mine. Mrs.X’s father was known to have had a wild youth. This was well known but not much discussed in the family. Last year my son, X-boy received a message via 23 and Me from a man stating they may be related. Could X-boy please upload his DNA to another site. He did. The man responded with a message that he was the half-brother of his mother and Bob’s your Uncle! His father is also the father of Mrs. X. They were born in the same city and the same hospital. Bob was born 6 years prior to Mrs. X. He had been given up for adoption at birth due to the very young age of his parents. Bob is now 78 years old and has finally found his genetic family after many years of searching. Unfortunately he never was able to meet his biological parents as they both died long ago. Mrs. X has difficulty coming to terms with this discovery as it opens old wounds that are painful. I, on the other hand am very pleased that I have a new brother-in-law. He seems to be a very good person and has proved to be a super sleuth. He has put in place many of the pieces of the puzzle that relates to Mrs. X’s ancestry. Like you, he lives far away and it will be difficult to make a visit – but I hope we do meet some day.
Because of some almost unique blood based disease of her grandchildren, my step-sister was asked if she had any Native American ancestry. She thought not … but she asked her still-living Aunt, and found out that her father actually WAS an Indian, and the guy on the birth certificate was not her bio-father.
I read that in the 50s, a huge number of births were certified with a non-bio father (I recall, but don’t quite believe, around 1/3).
.. more ..
For my most formative child years, 5-13, I was raised with my step-sister Suzie, same age as my older sis Karen (+2 younger sisters, Peggy & GG/ Gloria). My Dad was her mother’s 3rd marriage, and it was a rocky, often passionate relationship. After many complications, and both Dad & ex-step mother Pat died (’87 & ’88), I lost touch with Suzie, along with my mother’s family in Chicago.
Facebook helped our family reconnect, so about 5 years ago I visited lots of my almost-unknown cousins as well as meeting Suzie and a couple of her 4 kids & grandkids.
Suzie had found out only the year before about her real father, and was in the process of trying to join the tribe based on DNA. Complicated because of her still-Canadian citizenship and the tribe being mostly in Canada. Don’t know what the resolution is; think it’s still in process (years later).
Facebook helps connections. DNA analysis will help connections, too.
Not all connections are desired — tho often the undesired ones seem to be the most interesting / unique.
I once got tracked down by someone who hoped I was his roommate from the Coast Guard Academy, Class of 1956. Same first name, last name.
He enclosed a photo of himself, my namesake, and other classmates posed in white uniforms with swords drawn. (Are swords part of the Coast Guard or were they the fencing team?)
Anyway. A good-looking bunch of guys. I kinda wished I was one of them.
Genealogy has been a hobby of mine since I was 15, over 40 years ago. When I started, my dad and I went to the county courthouse during a summer visit to my grandmother. We visited my late grandfather’s cousin as part of the quest; my dad hadn’t seen her since he was a kid. She had the family Bible that had belonged to her and my grandfather’s grandparents–and she gave it to me. Tucked in among the pages are baby curls, newspaper notices and obits, scraps of fabric, and handwritten family info of my great-great grandmother’s family. In the back is a tintype album, but none of the photos are labeled.
I recommend Ancestry.com (census records are maddening because so many people went by middle names or nicknames), Find-A-Grave, and looking at the historical record section of the local library of the family you’re searching for.
Caveat: some records will break your heart.
I always say the internet is the best thing and the worst thing ever invented.
Family history fits. A peripheral had a child at 14. Big family secret. Gave it up for adoption to a wonderful, well off family.
She went on to get married, have two more kids, living avg middle class life.
If her first kid ever shows up, gonna cause more than a little problem in her marriage.
Another, older peripheral adopted in the ’50’s. Was asked in ’70’sif she wanted to meet her birth mother. Replied ” I already have a mother, I don’t need another one”.
Fast forward, strangers related by blood, curiously, innocently,contacting peripherals adult children with questions. Upsetting the apple cart, so to speak.
Another young peripheral contacted by Japanese/ Caucasian young person looking for grandfather asking if there was a WW2 soldier stationed in Okinawa in family. Yep, but cannot divulge info, as his Japanese wife is still alive and might be very upset knowing he had fathered a daughter and has grandchildren.
More amusingly, my wife of some Mexican heritage turns out to be Italian instead.
Hello Neo,
Apologies for the delayed response. My theory on the roots of your Bee Gees obsession is that in the days when the brothers were globally ascendant in popular music and you were a young female fan, you took a bit of a shine to the oldest of the boys. Youthful crushes never go away, they just soften with time into wistful appreciation of fond memories. If I am right, you have a good defense. Barry was a great front man: a handsome dawg with flowing locks, an electric smile, and a million dollar voice.
Scott – great theory! (looking forward to Neo’s thoughts, as usual).
Via 23 & Me, my husband found a never-known son. The kids connected, and several have developed a warm friendship with him.
I would like my cousin (descended from my father’s brother) to give his DNA to one of the services. I have a feeling, based on some of his livelier stories about his youth, that there may be more relatives around on my side than supposed.
The case of the “Ballarat Bandit” is another instance of the return of the lost, in this case John Doe #39-04, a man who had been hiding from LEOs in Death Valley National Park while stealing food and other supplies from campers and isolated cabins in 2003 and early 2004. He was suspected of being a possible terrorist because he had been spotted on the fringes of Area 51– this was only two years after 9/11, and the Air Force was on high alert. Law enforcement finally closed in on the Bandit in July 2004, but he committed suicide with a rifle as the rangers approached.
The coroner couldn’t identify the man even after a fingerprint search through California and FBI databases. It was not until 2005 that someone responded to the coroner’s online request for help: “Here are my two cents’ worth: Who talks like an American, looks like an American, and acts like an American– but isn’t American. A Canadian; maybe the bandit is a Canadian. They’re all over the desert, especially in the winter.”
So the coroner contacted the RCMP, who eventually identified John Doe #39-04 as George Robert Johnston from Prince Edward Island. Johnston had been sent to prison in 1997 for growing and selling weed; had a mental breakdown there and was paroled in 2000. Johnston left his family and said he wanted to seek help from a faith healer in the United States. His family had no idea where he had gone, why he chose Death Valley, and what happened to him until the RCMP contacted them.
Documentary about Johnston here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KvE5PWelY4s&ab_channel=MostEvilDocumentaries
There must be something in the water in Canada that leads Canadians to go to the U.S. to lose themselves (see earlier post about the case of “Michael De Bourcier”).
A few years back I was perusing genealogy sites and I saw a request from a lady – somebody I had no knowledge about – asking if anyone had information about the ancestral origins of her father; whose last name was the same as mine. (my last name is very uncommon). Her father had passed away years earlier.
She provided other details that convinced me she was somehow related to me. So I sent her an email.
Long story short; her father turned out to be my father’s first cousin and no one in her family nor mine knew of the other’s existence.
As we learned later on, my father’s uncle had gotten married , had children, and then abandoned the family while they were living in Brooklyn (we were living in Queens at the time).
Because he abandoned the family, his son (my father’s first cousin) never knew his father (nor anybody else related to him.).
And the uncle never told anybody about this, so nobody on my side of the family knew about his secret family.
The first cousin, as we learned, was born in 1920 whilst my father was born in 1922.
The lady who originally sought the family information actually visited my father and together they visited the grave site of their great-grandparents .
Coincidentally, my father’s first cousin attended college about one mile away from where I presently live in Pa.
You know, you just never know.
Linda S. Fox:
Why would you need your cousin to do it? If he’s actually your first cousin, any children he had would be your first cousins once removed. If you had your DNA tested, any such children would come up very high on your list of relatives, too.
I also think that Ancestry is a better bet than 23andMe. Ancestry has a larger pool of people, I believe.
Scott:
Nice theory, but no cigar.
In fact, until about a year ago I had next to zero interest in the Bee Gees and never had had any interest before that. In fact, I can’t say that I even could have described what they looked like except in some vague sense. I didn’t know all their first names, although I knew there was a Barry and an Andy and that one of those two had died.
It’s only in the last year that I’ve fallen in love with all of them – the three plus, to a lesser extent, Andy. The word “love” might be hyperbole, but is also somewhat true. I feel tremendous affection for the whole crew; the whole family, in addition to their music. It doesn’t hurt that I find them all good-looking.
But I’m hardly a “young female fan,” although I’m definitely a “female fan.” And I’m not alone in discovering a tremendous liking for the Bee Gees in my more – ahem – mature years.
And Barry was indeed “a great front man: a handsome dawg with flowing locks, an electric smile, and a million dollar voice.” Also tremendous charm, humor, intelligence, and songwriting ability. Robin and Maurice weren’t as conventionally handsome but they were very attractive, charming, intelligent, and gifted as well, and they played off each other wonderfully. Unfortunately they died some years ago. Barry still looks pretty darn good for 75.
JohnTyler:
I have a feeling these stories are more common than we used to think.
My own research has uncovered quite a few of these “surprises.” They’ve all been quite pleasant, including the discovery of a whole branch of another side of the family that broke off but lives not all that far away and is very large and welcoming. We don’t know what caused the feud 100 years ago, but everyone seems very nice now.
Once funny thing is that even though we are fairly closely related to these people, my brother and I look absolutely nothing like them.
I`ll try to summarize our sad family history of lost loved ones. Sorry for my bad English, my native languages are russian and azerbaijani.
My grandfather Mamed and grandmother Adele got married in 1938 in Baku, the oil capital of the USSR. In 1939 their daughter Elmira was born, my future mother. In 1941 Nazi Germany attacked the USSR. Mamed went to fight at the front, and in 1943 he was captured by the Germans, and they sent him to a concentration camp, where death and horror reigned. Elmira and Adele lived with her parents. One day a letter came from the military command that Mamed had gone missing in the war. Adele did not grieve for long, and found herself a new husband. C`est la vie .. Elmira stayed with her grandparents.
Mamed fought for his freedom. An underground resistance committee arranged for him and a group of other Soviet prisoners of war to escape from the concentration camp. They organized a partisan detachment, fought against the Nazis in Yugoslavia, Italy, France. They fought against the Nazis, while retreating to the West of Europe, so as not to collide with Soviet troops. They knew that those who had been in Nazi captivity were considered traitors by the Soviet government. These people were arrested and sent to concentration camps in Siberia. Mamed did not want to change the fascist concentration camp to a communist one, from which he certainly could not escape. He met the end of World War II in Paris. He had multiple injuries to his lungs and gangrene of the foot. The French authorities granted him citizenship, a small pension and a room to live in Paris.
Mamed did not know if his wife and daughter were alive. He suffered immensely, but did not seek them out, did not write letters to them. If the KGB found out that he lives in Paris, Adele and Elmira could be sent to Siberia. He didn’t want to put them at risk.
Several years have passed. Mamed was still young and fell in love with his neighbor Maria. They lived happily in a civil marriage, and in 1952 their son Alain was born. But in 1955, a family disaster struck! From her first marriage, Maria had a daughter, Denise, she was 15 years old, and she became pregnant. She falsely stated that Mamed is the father of her child. Mamed denied everything, but could not prove anything. DNA tests did not exist then. Maria broke up with him. She forbade Mamed to meet with Alain, and sent the child to live in the village with her parents for several years. Denis gave birth to a boy named Benoit and she sent him to an orphanage.
It took a long time. Stalin died, the USSR became a softer country, but the Iron Curtain still existed. In the 1960s, Mamed increasingly thought about Elmira, now he wanted to find her. Mamed did not know that Elmira received a good education, got married, and had children. All his letters remained unanswered because they got to the KGB, Elmira did not receive them. Once in 1966, he learned that the conductor from Baku, Maestro Niyazi, would give a concert in Paris. Mamed wrote a note where he asked Niyazi to find his daughter and indicated a phone number. He hid the note in a bouquet of flowers, and gave the bouquet to Niyazi at the concert. Niyazi was an influential person in the USSR, he was not afraid of the KGB. He made an appointment for Mamed, found out the addresses, promised to help. He really did it! He found Elmira in Baku, told her about her father, and obtained permission for her to correspond with Mamed. I was 5 years old when it happened, but I remember very well my mother’s joy when she found out that her father was alive.
They corresponded for several years, Elmira told her father about her life, sent photographs. He also wrote to her a lot, but did not say anything about Alain and Maria, he hid this page of his life from her. Mamed often saw Alain in the neighborhood, but could not tell him that he was his father. Maria was still threatening. Mamed was afraid to come to the USSR, Elmira could not get permission to travel to France. Only in 1972 the Soviet authorities allow her to visit her father. It was an unforgettable meeting in Paris! She stayed with him for 1 month, for the first and last time she saw her father, who disappeared in the war. Mamed continued to hide the existence of Alain from her, she will not know about Alain until the end of her life!
My grandfather Mamed died in 1975. He bequeathed his small apartment to Elmira. The Soviet government encouraged any receipt of foreign currency into the treasury. Elmira was allowed to go to Paris, to sell her father’s apartment, which was bought by one of his neighbors. She transferred the received French francs to the Bank of the USSR, receiving in return a small fee in rubles. It was forbidden for a Soviet citizen to have foreign currency, that was a crime.
In 1991, the USSR ceased to exist. In 1993, my mother Elmira contracted cancer and died. That was a heavy loss for me ..
Remember Benoit? The boy who was sent to the orphanage? All that time he wanted to find his mother, but the law forbade divulging the secret of the mother who had abandoned the child. In 2002, the situation changed, all abandoned children gained access to information about their parents. Benoit found Denise, Maria and Alain. Denise continued to insist that Benoit’s father is Mamed. She stated that Alain and Benoit are half-brothers! Alain was shocked, Maria all that time told him that his father died before he was born. He remembered their neighbor Mamed, but never suspected that it could be his father. He started asking his neighbors what they knew about Mamed, he wanted to know more about his father. The neighbor who bought an apartment from Elmira said that Mamed had a daughter in the USSR in the city of Baku, and she sold him the apartment. He even had her address!
The USSR no longer existed, instead there were 15 new states. Baku became the capital of the Azerbaijan Republic. In 2003, Alain went to the Azerbaijani embassy in France, he asked for help in finding his sister in Baku. An embassy employee immediately sent a message with Elmira’s address to his friend in Baku and asked to find her. He came to our house that evening, said that a brother from Paris was looking for Elmira. Can you imagine what I experienced? Mom has not been alive for 10 years, and suddenly such stunning news!
The USSR did not exist, the KGB did not exist, but there was the Internet! I wrote a long letter to Alain, told everything about our family. He was upset that Elmira was not alive, was glad that there were nephews, wrote that he accidentally found out who his father was, not a word about Benoit, not a word about the secret of Benoit`s birth. He wanted to get to know us better, his new family, because before he felt lonely, he had no wife and children, and his mother and sister were cold with him.
Of course, I invited him to come to Baku. In July 2003, Alain came to visit us. We became very good friends. My uncle turned out to be an intelligent, kind, interesting person. Outwardly, he looked like my mother and her cousins. While in Baku, Alain told the whole story about Benoit, Denise and Mamed. I told that Elmira said that Mamed was a decent and honest person. I don’t believe he seduced a 15 year old girl. Alain said that he did not believe either, since Benoit did not look at all like Elmira, her children and her cousins. I said that Benoit and I can take a DNA test and check our relationship, is he my uncle? Alain said that he was sure that Benoit was not my uncle. It seemed to me that Alain was scared that this might be true, Denis’s story about Mamed. He didn’t want to know such a truth. But I had no doubts, I was sure that my grandfather was not guilty of anything. Mamed was a victim of slander.
Alain returned to Paris, told Maria and Denis about his new relatives. Denis continued to insist on her version of events.
3 years have passed. In 2006, a misfortune happened. Denis died suddenly of a heart attack. But she did NOT take the mystery of Benoit’s birth to her grave. She wrote down her son’s father’s name in her will. That was NOT Mamed, but a completely different person! What prompted her to deceive everyone all her life? Maybe she didn’t want to share her mother’s love with another person? We won’t know. I think this secret of hers made not only her loved ones unhappy, but also herself ..
Alain was very pleased that all charges were dropped from his father. He got married, left Paris to live in Brittany, and he is quite happy now. He is my best friend 🙂
Zara A:
That is an extraordinary story, worthy of a novel and a movie. I’m glad you and Alain were able to become friends, too.
Thank you very much, dear Neo! Hope someday I will meet a kind person who will write a novel or play about this story.
Here`s the photo of my Mom at her father`s grave in Paris
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1xkiS3dD5a63CTCRDbVRHMi7oDkhCVFnQ/view?usp=sharing
Grandpa Mamed
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Tl-oNrTN7q5fgX4w77z9FXPImi2_Cxq4/view?usp=sharing
Alain and me
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1j4DVklxOeLfzNYZqP5rPTsIEfyvGYXlt/view?usp=sharing
Zara A:
A very moving story. Didn’t end well for everyone concerned, but at least things finally came right for your generation.
Difficult to consider all the angles given how complex we humans are and the multiplicity of ways in which we can go off the reservation, but I’d guess that the advent of cheap and ubiquitous DNA testing is neither a net plus or a net negative: things must cancel out on the scale of populations.
Having said that, the recreational misogynist in me quite enjoys seeing at least one corner of the playing field leveled out.
Zaphod:
Thank you very much
Zara A:
Great photos. Your grandfather was very dashing and debonair. And that’s a nice photo of you and Alain, too.
Neo:
Thank you very much <3
Zara A,
Thank you for sharing your very interesting and well-written story, and the photos!
Wesson:
Thank you very much
PA Cat —
There must be something in the water in Canada that leads Canadians to go to the U.S. to lose themselves
Well, Americans often go to Mexico to lose themselves, so maybe it’s just a “fly south” sort of thing. Besides, if you’re already in Canada, you can’t really go north.
@BryanLovely:
On my one visit there I got the impression that Olympia had attracted lost souls from all points of the compass. That was before Portland went full-on feral, though.
More fun to be had in Mexico for sure if one can hang onto one’s head.
Quite a few tales of interest here! Indeed, Zara, yours is very interesting. (My neighbor’s cat upstairs is named Zara, incidentally.)
I’ve got nothing so spectacular as that, though I’ve been engaged in my own genealogy project for a few years now, and it’s turned up much of interest to me. At one point, I thought I had discovered that my mother had a sister who died barely out of infancy, but I later concluded that was a false lead.
Just lately, I came across some interesting indications of my father’s doings during WWII, of which I had known absolutely nothing before. That all put a rather different cast on what I thought I had known before. (He passed away many years ago, so I haven’t been able to ask directly.) And last August, I took a trip to Michigan to do some field research into my mother’s side, going back to her grandfather and earlier. That was a rich vein. Funnily enough, when I say ‘field’ research, it sometimes turned into exactly that – I was driving around one afternoon looking at the landscape and trying to figure out from the ancient plat maps which farms had once been owned by certain ancestors of mine.
I learned some years ago that my grandmother had a son out of wedlock a couple of years before marrying my grandfather. I understand that while pregnant she stayed at a Catholic home for wayward girls in Philadelphia, where apparently there were many such, and the baby was adopted out. And that’s all I know. My mother and her sister ain’t talking.
I lived in the Philadelphia area for over a decade, but didn’t learn of this uncle of mine until a couple of years before we moved, and I didn’t pursue it. It’s likely that he has passed on – he’d be in his mid-80s – but this story makes me wonder whether I should talk the whole thing over with my siblings when I see them for Thanksgiving and see if we can get anywhere, while our mother and her sister are still living.
Jamie. I get the curiosity. But there’s a reason you haven’t heard and maybe it would be better to honor that.
Philip Sells:
Thank you very much. I like about that cat ))
Brian Lovely–
About Americans going south of the border to lose themselves, Ambrose Bierce is probably the best-known of the lot. He disappeared some time in December 1913 or early 1914 after going to Mexico to join Pancho Villa’s army as an observer. His ultimate fate is anyone’s guess. Bierce was 71 when he crossed the Texas border at El Paso– he obviously wasn’t one to take an easy retirement and rest on his literary reputation.
Zara A– You have a royal name! Zara Phillips Tindall is the oldest granddaughter of Queen Elizabeth II. Her mother is Princess Anne. Tindall won a silver medal as part of the British equestrian team at the 2012 Summer Olympics.
I too found your family story and photographs interesting– I’m like Philip Sells in that there is nothing anywhere nearly as dramatic about my family on either my mother’s or my father’s side. I hope you will keep posting here on Neo’s blog.
PA Cat —
Ambrose Bierce was who I was thinking of, yes.
PA+Cat:
Thank you very much.
Zara Phillips Tindall is a beautiful Lady!
I`m an amateur videographer. Here`s my Youtube channel, hope you will find something interesting for yourself there
https://www.youtube.com/user/zara2255/videos