In December 2012 I received the most welcome of emails from Lucy Pienaar née EDWARDS of Canada who had “stumbled” upon information on the web about great-grandfather Francis Lewis EDWARDS”.
Francis is also my great-grandfather and I am of course delighted that my web efforts have returned a result.
The family connection for me is through my grandmother Winifride Annie VINE/KRUSE née EDWARDS who was the sister of Lucy’s grandfather Sidney George EDWARDS.
Until receiving this email the only family lore I had of any substance was the comment of Patricia Mary Drayson VREDENBREGHT nee MURRAY, daughter of Mildred Mary Drayson MURRAY née EDWARDS, another sister of Francis Lewis EDWARDS, contained in a letter mailed to me around 1990. In this letter she remarked that members of the family around 1912 had “scattered within 14 months. Sydney left for Jamaica, Edgar for South Africa, Winifride for New Zealand and Mildred for Australia”.
I am now able to say that following my attendance at the WDYTYA Live Conference in London in February I met Lucy’s father, my new Uncle, Frances Victor Peter, and her sister, my new cousin, Angela, with whom I had a most delightful meeting and lunch in Canterbury, Kent, their current place of residence .
Here we compared notes and added some flesh to the bones we had existed on to date. The “scandal” mentioned in Pat’s letter received some attention, of course, and we seem to have identified the fact that Sydney George had married three times with some question of the legality of the last two. Also to be borne in mind is the fact that this was a strict Roman Catholic family and multiple marriages would not have been accepted with grace. This is now history and one of the inevitable skeletons pulled from cupboards when families reunite generations on – the bread and butter of the genealogy trade, don’t you think?