52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks: Week 5/February - Branching out.

BRANCHING OUT.

This week/month I am writing about how branching out, helped me obtain an image of 2x Great Grandfather.

My father was an only child and his parents seperated early in his life, leaving his mother embittered throughout her life. I am sorry to repeat myself here, if you have read my other blog posts where I have mentioned this, but my father really didn't talk about his family and childhood very much. I can hear him now, brushing away any queries, describing them as 'a rum lot.' Talking and meeting with various cousins over the years has helped me understand more about the dynamics within the family. Discovering these cousins, I had obtained images of my grandfather, his parents and of course the wider family. Amongst family photo's I discovered pictures of my father as a child with his mother, his grandmother (my 2x Great Grandmother) on the occassion of her second marriage,but there was a gap - my 2x Great Grandfather: WILLIAM RICHARD PITTS.

I have previously written about William Richard and his first wife Eliza nee Deaney and how of 7 children, only 3 survived to adult and alluded to the breakdown of their marriage, in the Week 12 2021 theme, Loss.

52 Ancestors 52 Weeks: Week 12. Loss. WILLIAM & ELIZA PITTS (mypynthdev.blogspot.com)

My father did talk about childhood holidays spent with his grandmother and her second husband, Bob, in Bognor and recalled 'bumping into' his grandfather when leaving work and crossing Waterloo Bridge, to get his train home. His grandfather William, introduced Dad to his young daughter Pamela.

With this information, I set about finding Pamela Pitts, but having researched her marriage/s and descendants, there did not appear to be any family tree matches on Ancestry. It was several years later that I found a tree match. Coming from one of Pamela husband's side of the family, the owner put me in touch with a closer to Pamela, family member.

Then came the difficult bit. I get irritated when I receive an Ancestry message with such and such name,will I share my tree?- well maybe if you gave me a bit more to work on.  Because of this, I always take time to try and explain who I am and who the person I am querying and the relationship. Initially I received a rather curt response, I think possibly because I had arrived to them via a third party. So I left it. But that is not the end of the story as a few weeks later I received a further response.

The recipient stated that they were somewhat shocked to discover that the Grandfather they had spent much of their time living with, had been married previously but more surprising to them, was that there had been the previous 7 children. They new the family history related to their grandmother, William's second wife but not William's family. Kindly this new (half) relative, spent time describing their memories of their Grandparents, whereby William became a man, rather than a name, alongside a couple of photo's for me to be able to put a face to the man.

Having stated that I would keep the information that was given to me, out of the public domain, I am afraid I cannot share the latter days of my Great  Great Grandfather's life, nor the image. But it was the process of 'branching out' that bought him to me.