My parents always received a card at Christmas from "your dad's cousin" Nancy. A few years ago I wrote to Nancy asking for help with my Family History but having no reply assumed she must have died. Try as I did I could find no Nancy on any of the birth records of any of my Dad's Aunts or Uncles.

This Saturday I received a letter from Nancy telling me about her forthcoming 90th birthday and would I send her some photos of my Dad! "oh by the way" she wrote "my proper name is Edith Annie"

Moral of the story:
never assume the info you are given is any where near the whole truth


after telling my niece this tale this morning she reminded me that she only found out my real name 2 years ago

90 is a great age! I am glad you have had the chance to find out a few things about your family.

A few things? I've got a 20 page questionaire to put in with her birthday card!

She'll probably think "nosy bugger" only kidding Max

You must visit her Daff, that's the best way and take a tape recorder too, she will remember stuff from way back which might be useful in the family search, also for a bit of how things used to be too. I wish I'd done that!!

It's not only our grandparents that 'changed their names'. All Dave's family did it one way or another. Dave himself is Keith David, his cousin known as Mike is really George William, his Auntie Nell was Helena and my great granny was always known as Kitty but I discovered her real name was Eliza at her funeral. If only they'd known the problems they cause us.

Update:
I sent a letter and some photos to Nancy for her birthday, received a reply from her daughter Glynis on Saturday.
Her mum was able to identify some of the unknowns in the photos and add lots of stories about my dad as a child.
All being well, I am invited for lunch at the beginning of July.
I am really excited

Excellent Daff, mind - we will be lookingto know how you got on.

I've been researching our family history for the last three years, and for two of them I couldn't find my gt.uncle Joe, not even when visiting the churchyard where I know he's buried. It wasn't until I wrote to the Vicar of that Parish and asked if he could help me locate the grave, that I found out my gt. uncle's name wasn't Joseph, but Edward Josiah and he'd also tagged on an extra surname as well....it's no wonder I couldn't find him in the records.

I've found by writing to the Priest in charge of a parish....or to the church warden, I've obtained lots of information regarding various ancestors of ours, with regards to their births, marriages and deaths.

That's great news Daff

And it doesn't help one bit when you get three birth certificates and two death certificates with slightly different enough spellings of a name to send you all round the houses trying to marry up people and parents (and that's just the ones I've found!). In my line.........Fubister, Foubister, Phimster, Phimpster and Fibister are all the same person's surname.

I know just what you mean Oddquine
I spent ages trawling through GRO indexes looking for a marriage for Richard O Lovett
tried all the variants of Lovett that I've already got, shouted his name out in frustration and hubby laughed and said that sounds Irish...
5mins later I found him Richard O'Lovett

Daff wrote:All being well, I am invited for lunch at the beginning of July.
I am really excited

I decided that I couldn't wait till July so went over to Coventry yesterday to visit Nancy.
I want to be like her when I grow up!!
We had a wonderful few hours, it was just as if I had known her all my life. My dad and her brother were apparently little scamps always getting into mischief. The gossip she told me... well no wonder dad never told us much about his family
I will definitely be going again

I'm glad it all turned out so well Daff. It makes it all worthwhile when they turn out to be someone you wish you had known about sooner!

Glad you had a good time Daff - and got all the gossip too!!