Digging deeper

I have previously commented that the Internet has been a place where genealogists have found great help in their labours. It was through posting family tree details on Ancestry.com that I came across another tree with an error on it. I contacted the tree owner to say that his date for the Death of Nathan Alexander (my great grandfather) was incorrect. His father in law, John Bryan, emailed me to say the error had now been corrected. He is a direct descendant of George Alexander who founded the drapery shop in Luton. This makes him my third cousin. He later sent me some very useful information he had acquired. Firstly, I received a family tree for the Alexanders of Luton which included many names. One name was that of Bruce Alexander, another third cousin, and his photo is the one you see above.

For those who have been keen viewers of the Frost series with David Jason on TV you will, no doubt, recognise "Horn Rimmed Harry" or "Superintendent Mullet". I often wondered if Bruce was a relative and with the receipt of the family tree it was confirmed. Another item (or should I say three) was the report in a local Luton newspaper about a big wedding at a Baptist Church there. The report gave a list of guests and the wedding presents they gave. I also received a photo-copied photo of the wedding. On the back row I recognised my grandfather, John Edgar Alexander, a man in his thirties then. The wedding was between John Bryan's grandmother, Mabel Alexander and an Italian man, Celestino Bagni.

It was not long before I was speaking to John by telephone. Further emails came and we are now in touch and keep each other up to date with any information we glean. He recently emailed me a set of photos of the Alexander graves in a cemetery in Luton. And so the story keeps on growing.

What I like about pursuing this hobby is that I can picture my family from the past going about their daily life and comparing their life with mine. It is also useful to have details of a bygone time when values were different and love was expressed in a different way. It is simply all about the starting lines of a well known book, "The past is a different country. they do things differently there."