A Stroke Of Luck

Now that I have my two new twin grandsons, family history seems even more important. I still have not un earthed my boxes of Scottish Family History and the many notes I took from different sources but I have had some amazing luck ….all because I was aimlessly surfing the net when I was worrying about the boys arrival.

The first was with regards to my maternal grand father’s family. I knew, from Mum, that his father was Cornish and from a will and a census return, he was probably from St Stephen in Brannel. I had worked out that his father was probably a John Bullock who was married to an Honor Yelland. The clue for me was that in our family the oldest son of the oldest son had the middle name Yelland. I was left dangling, as I had no real proof that these were his parents or how to go back further. For the hell of it I Googled the two surnames and the place, added the word history, as I was actually wondering about the history of the names, and pressed GO. To my amazement, along with a lot of odds and ends, a ladies web site came up with her Family tree and all the work she had done on the name Yelland. I made contact as she had what looked like my possible great great grandfather and his wife on her tree.It turned out that my Great grandfather was a leaf on one of her wide spread branches and we in fact shared a 9x great grand father. She said I could have all the information I wanted to construct my tree ….. Wow thank you Liz.

Having had this amazing bit of luck and this hoard of information placed in my lap I never expected to have any more luck …… .but I did.

I was pondering over my late husbands grandfather who I have tried to track down before, with little luck as his life was full of tales that seem to contradict each other. (He had a reputation for tall stories!!) Having joined Ancestry .com for a free 2 weeks I thought I would try again to gather some possible leads and see what I could find in Canada and then America as it was over there that he met and married his first wife and had his first four children. I remembered his wife’s maiden name (Blum) and the names of two of her sisters from things my mother- in- law had told me about. I then worked out who the parents might have been and armed with this I decided to look at others searching for the same names as they were unusual ones.
Again I could not believe my eyes …. There was an old post (3 years old) containing the same two names. I read it over and wondered if I should make contact. The writer said these people were her great grand parents and I had worked out that they might be my late husbands great grand parents too. As I looked at the email address I became sure I should make contact as her first name rang a bell from stories about mother in-laws sisters and their children. She had been separated from two of her sisters when a child but had made contact again much later. My husband had had little contact them or their children.

I could not believe it … she made contact and. was indeed my husbands cousin. We have become friends over the net ….determined to unravel her grand father life for future generations. I think it will be great fun. She is also going to fill me in on her grandmother and great grandparents lives. Great grandfather was a soldier in the Civil War ….it so brings history to life.