Long lost Niste

 I thought I would give you a bit of a glimpse into the detective work i have been doing in my family tree. This last week I have had 2 breakthroughs! 

The first was a lost little girl called Niste. She is the tiny girl on this photo of bridesmaids at my Grandparents wedding. 

Sadly I don't remember my grandfather,Tom, speaking about his family very much. 

 We don't have very many photos from his side of the family. But I did know about 2 sisters - Amy who went to live in Australia and Niste who lived to be in her nineties. Through the census and birth certifictaes I had managed to trace 5 brothers and sisters but no- one who could be called Niste. Thankfully I found my dads old address book and Niste was there married to an Arthur Hankin. Much rejoicing! I could then trace a marriage of Arthur Hankin in Kent to a ................ Lilian Whitehead! Not something you could guess! Along the way I also found 2 more borothers. So I think he was one of 9 children - not 3 as I had originally thought! It looks like their mum died when Niste was only 11 - worn out from all those children!
The first photo is the bridesmaids and the second Grace and Tom's wedding photo - Tom's hands are very similar to my boys hands.

This third photo was Tom's dad Albert.

My second breakthrough was a chap called Frank who had written to my dad on the death of Grace. Again he was lost because of a name. My greatgrandfather was one of 10 children and one of his sisters was Rogina on a census. I thought this was strange and in the process of going back found they had a family name of Rosina. I tried tracing her birth certificate under both names and found it had been mispelt and she was Rosina. On finding her I found Frank as one of her children - not lost but hidden! Sadly she also had a child called Cyril who died when he was 6.

You can see how being a detective is important in family history - so important that this week it helped identify a King!

I so wish my mum and dad were here to tell me their stories - so much is lost because I didn't ask. So many questions that will never be answered but only guessed.