Until Christmas last year my sister had been the one who took on the task of researching the family tree. She has been at it for some years and had made good progress on the Dow side of the family, which linked to the Boltons and went back as far as the mid 1500's.
Finding myself with some time on my hands I offered to help with the Smith side. We discovered Genes Reunited and decided to register. From that point on progress has been fantastic, we have managed to find and make contact with close relatives that we hadn't heard from for over 25 years as well as some that we didn't even know we had. In addition to that we have added over 1000 new names to the tree in a matter of a few months.
After many years on the family tree project and hundreds of hours of research my sister and I have just discovered and uncovered a 70 year old deception maintained by my father's "family". I suppose that as you get older and things inevitably begin to slow down a bit, you naturally start to pay more attention to health matters. My sister as a direct consequence of trying to find out more about our family health history has, by ordering official birth and death certificates, inadvertently uncovered a shocking scandal. It turns out that the man whom we had been led to believe, was our grandfather actually died three years before our father was born. Just why and who decided to perpetuate this lie or cover-up or whatever you want to call it, we will probably never know as those who were involved have since left us.
Dad wasn't one to talk about his family much and we didn't visit his side of our family as much as we did our Mum's side when we were growing up. Consequently we were working from limited information and a few scant memories, indeed we are still unsure if Dad himself knew that he was illigitimate. So we are now missing one grandfather and the quest has begun to try and trace just who he might have been. It is more than likely that we will never find out, but the fun is in trying.
We have certainly learnt a good lesson as far as family research goes - you can't trust what you are told, even and sometimes especially from close family members. Check everything twice and then check it again and then get someone else to check it! After all said and done my sister and I have had great fun discovering our "skeleton in the closet". I for one hope that there are more to find.
Thanks to all those who have helped to compile the data on these pages. If you have any news or information regarding the family and you would like to see it published here - just send us an e-mail.
e-mail : derek(at)coachhouse.free-online.co.uk