The family tree genie

to begin. Sadly a few years later my father was diagnosed with the start of Alzheimer’s this was the moment that I knew I would be making this my ultimate goal. I began by gathering as much information from my parents as I could, I purchased birth, marriage and death certificates, you name it I got it. My family tree started to grow, and I began to expose information about my father’s early years as a young boy. I shared this information with my parents, and they were able to confirm some, equally some of it they never knew about. My father had made a comment to my mum when he was a young man that “His father was dead at the bottom of the sea” something he had overheard his parents arguing about. The beginning of a new direction in my research took place when my son purchased a DNA testing kit for me at Christmas, I posted my sample on Boxing Day, not that I was super excited or anything. The wait for the results felt like the longest January ever and we all know how long January is. Results Day arrived and the nervous anticipation of viewing the results was overwhelming, would I have an answer straight away, would my father finally find out after all these years. Sadly no, none of these matches names were familiar to me, who were they? How could I share DNA with all these people and not know any of them? I felt despondent and was unsure of my next step, so dug deep in my investigative mind and reviewed the top 20 matches and over a period of a few months worked out which side of the family some of them belonged. The next step was to get my father to take his DNA as this would confirm these DNA matches to us both and confirm another theory I had uncovered. His results came back and it solidly confirmed that the man who raised him was not his biological father as there were no matches to his surname in the DNA results. I began work on my father’s DNA matches and placed all the maternal matches together, and whoever was left over had to be his biological fathers’ side. My main objective now was to locate these people and find how they were related to my father. I reached out to some of them and sadly received no replies, so I began building family trees based solely on these matches. I had read online about how to get started with this and knew this was my only hope in finding the living descendants of my biological grandfather. This was a long arduous task and took many hours, days, and months, but finally, it all started to make sense. It was time to try and contact these people and I found that all social media sites were my route to contact. Amazingly a person I wanted to reach out with had a friend in common with me (what are the chances) I asked if they would contact him and ask if his grandparents were these people. The answer was yes! This started the first of many conversations with him, where he then relayed back to his mother who also agreed to speak with me as she was interested in helping with anything she could. We spoke many times on the phone whilst I started adding more information to my tree that she had been sharing with me. This was great but I needed a more definitive answer, my father’s health slowly deteriorating and the thought that my father would never ask ever again who his father was drove me to ask if this lady would be so kind to take a DNA test. She replied “Of course I will my lovely, I’m just as excited as you are to know if we are related”

We met and her DNA sample was taken and sent the very same day, I couldn’t wait any longer. Six weeks had passed and her results were in, I was so nervous and excited all rolled into one, that I kept my eyes closed until her top DNA match was revealed, and there right in front of my eyes was my father’s name. At last, it was confirmed she was my father’s half 1stcousin on his paternal side and the man who I had a strong belief was his biological father because of the comment “My father’s dead at the bottom of the sea”was a man named William Thomas Fox. Born 1st October 1916 in Sydling St Nicholas, Dorset and served as a Stoker on the HMS Hecla where he Died on the night of the 11th-12th November 1942 when it was torpedoed and sunk off the North Africa coast. A comment that my father had made 65 years previously was the piece of the puzzle that I needed to fulfil this research. I was able to share so much information about his biological father to him and created a book with photos and stories from the survivors of the night the HMS Hecla was torpedoed. So, this is me now, I love genealogy, it stimulates my investigative mind and the enjoyment of research continues to grow daily. So what better way of being able to share my passion and to make other people’s wishes come true. Look forward to granting your wish!