09/11/2024
The first of our case studies, literally!
Case #1
Our first case landed on our desk back in 2009, when Mrs A reached out, hoping to find her father.
She knew his name and had a single fond memory of him from when she was about 4 years old but, following her parents’ divorce, hadn’t heard from him in more than 40 years. When her mother remarried, she changed Mrs A’s surname (though not legally – she told us the name was just added to her birth certificate!) to match her stepfather’s.
Could we track her father down?
The first step was to get a copy of Mrs A’s original birth certificate. This gave us her father’s full name and his occupation. A quick search of the UK death index didn’t return any results, so it was possible that he was still alive. We couldn’t find any concrete leads in the electoral register, so we used the newly discovered middle name to pick his birth information from a selection of possible candidates we had lined up. This lead back to his parents. From here it was easy to search for siblings.
Investigating each sibling thoroughly gave us the names of their children – one of which had an unusual name we were able to find in the phone book. I wrote a letter to the gentleman and sat back to wait for a reply…
A week later I received a phone call from a woman I didn’t recognise – it was the gentleman’s wife. She informed me that her husband was aware of the existence of Mrs. A and that they even had photographs of the wedding of her parents, which he had attended. Furthermore, he was keen to meet her!
We arranged a meeting between the parties involved and there were tears all round on that warm summer evening in 2010 as stories were told and hugs were exchanged.
Mrs A discovered that she had 5 half-siblings and 14 new nieces and nephews!
Sadly, her half-siblings didn’t think it a good idea for her to meet her father due to ill health and he passed away shortly after, having never seen his eldest daughter again.
Don't leave it too late. Contact us now for help finding your loved ones.
