Talk about serendipity...

Last weekend I was flicking through some disks that had come with family tree magazines. Old issues of the magazine are included on the disk too. An article about the 1889 dock strike caught my eye and I thought that it might give me a bit more of an insight in to my paternal great grandfather's  life. He was a docker and would have been affected.

Talk about serendipity.
In the article the surnames names of my maternal and paternal families leapt out at me.
Cutting to the chase, maternal grt granddad was aparently active in a union. I posted a question on genes reunited and someone sent me a link to a book, and there on page 88 is a picture of him. Not only that there was an address too. A GR member had already checked that out on a relevant census and sure enough it confirmed him to be great grandfather George.

He emigrated to New Zealand and died there in about 1921. His wife remained in England. Family story had it that he had abandoned her and the children and was living with woman in NZ. Another distant cousin put that right for me. Apparently, as his wife could not read not read, her sister opened the mail. Pocketed the money he sent and never told her that he wanted her and the children to come out to NZ. The sister didn't want her to go. And the woman he was living with, well that was his cousin and her family.

It is really quite sad. They died within the same year, neither knowing that the other had gone. I've visited both their graves.

How about that then

 My original picture is on the left, the one from the book is on the right.