The information I’m providing is based on recounts from family and memories of conversations with my grandparents. I’m certain I’ll be adjusting information as we learn new facts. I’m purposely leaving most names out until we have more information and permissions from people along the way.

If I’m being totally honest, as all of this was unraveling, I had pretty low expectations. Honestly, I still do to some degree. Maybe I’m protecting myself from disappointment? At this point, figuring out the mystery and learning about our family is really the main focus for me. Sadly, most of the people who could answer some of the questions that really plague me have since passed away. I have no stake in any of the family drama and really am more intrigued by the idea that we have family out there we’ve never met. However, it does seem that the more we dig, there are little nuggets that pop up!

This mystery revolves around my maternal grandmothers father, my great-grandpa, James. I never knew either of her parents. Growing up I remember being at my grandmas house a lot. She and I were very close, or as close as you could get to her, she always kind of had a wall up to some degree. I remember one time in college when I called to check in with her. As we were hanging up I said, “I love you grandma” and her reply was “Uh mmm ok, bye bye”. I just laughed because that was grandma. She wasn’t the hugging kind of person. Although the older she got, I think that ice melted some. I provide all this context because it seems those personality traits may provide a glimpse into her childhood.

My grandma is an identical twin and they have a younger brother we were told was 12-15 years younger than the twins. I remember being at my grandmas house when my great aunt, grandma and their cousin (on their mothers side) would get together every few months. Their cousin was really into genealogy and would bring all of her paperwork over to show everyone (I’ve dated myself, back then it was paper because it was before the internet). She had traced that side of the family back several generations and had stories to go along with it. I once asked my grandma about her fathers side. Her response was something along the lines of “there’s nothing to tell”. I would push a little more and then usually get an exasperated “oh I don’t know!”.

At some point before she passed away in 2006, we learned a little more, but it was always shrouded in mystery. What we knew was that sometime in the late 50’s or early 60’s, her mother was killed in a car accident. I was always told it was because there were not seatbelts in cars at that time. After her death, James moved to California with the younger brother and they did not appear to keep in touch. I believe sometime in the 1980’s she and her sister learned from their brother that their father had “died on some island” years earlier. [Full confession, I almost wrote “naturally” at the beginning of the coming sentence and realized that it probably isn’t natural but was a component of a lot of family baggage] This sparked a lot of unanswered questions so began the family tales. The story was that their younger brother had neglected to tell them James died because he had stolen the inherence. For the record, I am using inheritance loosely as there was no indication that they were wealthy. All we know at this time is her brother, now in his 70’s if still alive, lived in California and owned a car repair shop. I’ve tried repeatedly to locate that part of the family but even The Google can’t seem to the them. That’s impressive.

So that takes us to about where I was with everything during my recent attempts to fill in the family tree. I was utilizing some of the hints in Ancestry and was able to link some earlier generation names. However, the gap remained. I had virtually no information on James, not even a date of death or the mysterious island he apparently died on. I decided to take a break from it and figured maybe some other hints will pop up later on.

A few weeks later, I received a DM in the Ancestry app. The message asked if I was related to James and if it is the same James that has twin daughters with the names of my grandma and her sister. She indicated that she is the granddaughter of James brother and lives in Scotland. So a new distant cousin! I was astounded. She mentioned a few items about James and it was clear that she had met him at some point and had also heard stories growing up. I had so many questions I wanted to ask! Being the ever skeptic that I am, I figured the level of risk was slim as it was only a conversation. If it could get me closer to filling the gaps, it was worth it. Not to mention, learning more about family was the purpose of this, right?

So, you’re all caught up to the background as I knew it when I got that first message from Cousin Scotland, who is a lovely person by the way. As the messages continued, the facts that I knew and what people remembered seemed to be become clearer. It’s these facts that I will continue documenting. My hope is that at some point we can paint a picture of who James was, similar to how we can for many of our other family members. In the meantime, this process will serve as that much needed distraction!