From England to the Hollywood hills a world war 2 romance

This was a lovely success story, tracing 'E + A' and ultimately finding a couple of relatives to reunite the photos with. A distant relative who could tell me about the heritage of the family name and a very close relative who could tell the romantic story of this lovely couple.

I have not published the surname at the request of the family.

My plea to flea markets and junk shops.

Don't you just hate the way that sellers rip and separate the images from the albums? Separating the pages immediately destroys the story of the family. If you have ever created a photo album, you will have carefullly selected the images and set out the photos to tell a story. Often the first page would feature important individuals. These can be key to the research. If I find a photograph which I may be able to identify, I always grab any other pages (similar size and type of paper, matching torn seams, handwriting) and buy the lot. I can't buy them unless I can be sure. Many are lost but I know that at least I have preserved some of the story.

Around the time that I found these photographs there was a beautiful Victorian Leatherbound family album, complete with pages and pages of photographic portraits (no obvious identifying features). I poured over it considering whether I might find some clues, but at £60 I couldn't take the risk. A few weeks later, I was devasted to find it still for sale, but the seller had removed every photo to sell the album as an antiquity...one of my regrets, I probably could have approached one of the museums with it.

Back to the story of Eric and Audrey..

Fortunately the research for 'E + A' (surname witheld) fell into place quite quickly with the help of Ancestry,that certainly is not always the case.

I started my search making assumptions that one of the couple 'E + A' may have been English? Not too much of a stretch given the page of an older couple in Folkestone and the album was found in Brighton.

They looked as if they may have been on honeymoon? I had a date and they were in California. As I can't imagine many people would have afforded a honeymoon in California in 1947 from the UK...They must have lived and worked there perhaps? There may have been a date of death as a clue?

There was always going to be a stroke of luck involved but several matches came up on Ancestry. an Eric born in the UK,married to Audrey in 1947 in the US and then residing in Los Angeles.

Family researchers who don't want to be found..

The next stage was to contact some of the linked trees to find out if they can identify the individuals in the photograph. Quite frequently, those that I contact do not respond. I struggle to understand this as their trees are published. If anyone found a photograph belonging to one of my relatives I would be absolutely delighted!

This is one of the reasons for building this website, I would rather post stories and research and share the photos. Hopefully someone will value and claim them at some point.

There are however many trees on Ancestry (and other sites) which I have doubts about the quality of the research. I am also suspicious of trees with tens of thousands of names. Hints become too tempting and trees grow without substantial research-roots. Perhaps I am just envious that I myself don't have the time to build a tree to that extent, maybe IF I ever get to retire!

So I search for smaller trees, perhaps with the surname in the tree name ,or name of researcher. If the tree is published for public view and there are photographs, maybe there will be a similarity? I have spent many hours pouring over photographs looking for any linking characteristics, from the location, studio background, to facial features.

This was the case for Eric and Audrey. Eric standing by the same beautiful car, evoking the golden age of Hollywood.. EUREKA!

The family were close relatives and I was delighted to hear that some elderly family were still going strong and knew Eric and Audrey. They were able to tell me more about them as a reward for my research.

The photographs have been sent to Canada, returned to the family..CASE CLOSED

It is anecdotes that are particularly rewarding...

"Audrey was born in Canada and was a nurse in WWII. When Eric was wounded in a battle in Italy, Audrey was his nurse for weeks while he recovered and they wrote to each other constantly. Once the war was over they met up in the United States and got married and their naturalization papers together and moved to Los Angeles. Eric became a repairman and later a milkman and delivered to many movie star homes. They were a very sweet couple that never had any children but left lots of memories with me and my family." J.S.

And some fascinating heritage..

"We all stem from a Nicholas (surname withheld) b 1715 in Hastings who became a Privateer and was hung for piracy in1759." M.W.

Which leaves the mystery of the Folkestone page..

Members of the family believe the older couple ,in Folkestone in 1952, to be Audrey's parents. However they couldn't be sure who the little girl is?

And of course we don't know who owned the album and these pages. Sadly mainly of these albums are from house clearances after someone's death.

There is always another thread to pull and lead to follow, but I am going to leave that mystery to Eric and Audrey's family researchers..... END

Rach