QA Forum

Question & Answer

We are discussing Tracing family history
With Antoinette Buchanan, Stephanie Ryan and Jennifer Higgins

Question:
At 76years old am trying to find any living siblings. Have relatively recently discovered my natural family;Mother,Margaret Lillian Shaw of Birmingham England , married to Eginald Arthur Lingard of Forsbrook (date unknown) I was born in Bristol on Nov 6th. 1929 and despite much time and money can't find a living relative. Can you help ?

Answer:
Jenny - As you have already discovered, the task of finding your siblings and/or relatives is not an easy one. I’m presuming that you are living in Australian and don’t have immediate access to English records. You are fortunate that Lingard is not a common name.

You may also use these indexes to find out more about your parents. For example, there are a number of Reginald Arthur Lingards born around the time your father might be. It would be good to establish how old he was at the time of marriage and so choose the right birth registration for your father. If you can find the marriage entry and obtain the certificate, you may find that information and also his father’s name. There are now a number of on-line genealogical services which provide search facilities or digitised images of these indexes. The Ancestory.co.uk website offers free viewing of digitised pages of the GRO indexes.

Looking at the 1901 census on Ancestry.com, I see that there is a Lingard couple and child at Forsbrook who may well be the parents of Reginald Arthur Lingard - George Arthur Lingard, a pottery tile decorator, and Edith his wife. THAT Reginald Lingard was born in the September quarter of 1901, Cheadle Registration District (To add to the intrigue there’s an interesting article about a George Arthur Lingard at the Derby City website - this man may or may not be your ancestor.)

You might then take your search to the death indexes to try to discover when/where your father and mother died. Once you have established a time and place then a search of the local newspapers might give you a death notice for one or both and help you with place of burial, names of descendants and friends. You may need to employ a private researcher in England for the newspaper search if you can’t find the papers in the National or State libraries.

Once you have those names you could use the online telephone directory ukphonebook or search through the electoral rolls for Britain. UK electoral rolls can be accessed through a UK directory service called 192.com - this service allows searches on a name in a particular area (a small fee is required for these sites). Although it’s unlikely your parents are still alive, some of your siblings may still be living and their grandchildren will almost certainly be.

Another approach is to advertise on websites and newspapers for contact in the last place you know of their residence. Forsbrook, for instance, has a great community village website called Forsbrook Village where you can advertise family history interests. Someone in the village may know what became of the Lingards.

You may also get some success in advertising your family interests on genealogical forums such as Genforum or Rootsweb or specific websites for missing relatives such as Missing you or Look up United Kingdom - this site also contains some good information about searching for lost parents and siblings.

In all of your research you should keep in mind the lives of your parents may not have run smoothly. They may not have been married, they may have divorced or they might have been living in a defacto relationship. Good luck!

View answer to: prev question | next question