No matter where you look, who you consult or however many times you try they stubbornly will not reveal anything more about their lives. After discovering I had a great uncle who had been born in Birmingham in 1898, lived briefly in Kent before moving to Derby aged four I lost him.
But following a lead in a letter from his sister written over thirty years ago and the discovery of his name on a passenger list the bits fell into place. He was one of those British Home Children, and through the records in Birmingham and the archives of Canada, and more than a little help from other researchers his life slid out of the shadows.
Here was a young man who at the age of four was placed in institutions, nearly got sent to a naval boot camp but instead went to Canada, where he worked on farms in Nova Scotia and New Brunswick before running away and joining the Canadian army, having lied about his age, changed his name and falsified the records of his relatives.
His years in the army were well documented and I can follow his movements around Europe, his health record, as well as his frequent clash with military discipline and his eventual sea journey home to Canada.
I have more documents about his life and know more about him from his birth to his early twenties than I do about his brother who was my grandfather.
But then it just stops. He had returned in 1918 and was keen for his sister who was four years younger to join him in Canada. In the November of 1925 she took the plunge and sailed planning only a short stay.”When I came to Canada I just took my clothes with me no belongings. I had planned to come back.”
By then he was in British Columbia but she didn’t like the idea of the open west which was still being settled, and instead stayed in the east.
And there as they say the road block stops progress. His sister my great Dolly is dead and any letters and records about him are not available. There is one reference to a James Rogers who died in the 1950s having served in the CEF but this is not him. Then there was the more promising land grant record for the mid 1920s awarded to a James Rogers in the west.
The Canadian Government had followed the policy of the United States in granting land to people who wanted to settle in British Columbia and Alberta.
Family historians well know the excitement of such a discovery. The name, the place and the time all fitted and this is where hope can trounce reason. You tell yourself you have found him, crawl over modern and historic maps of the area, eliminating locations before settling on the correct place by using the grid reference from the land settlement.
And now begins the fun. You write to local newspapers hoping that the name will ring bells. I did this for his time in NB and NS and was overwhelmed with help from residents. People went out of their way to talk to old friends, do their own research and even travel out to photograph the old farm sites. I owe all of them a big thank you.
But the west offers nothing and finally with the help of a researcher in Alberta we have to eliminate the land grant. It is just not him. My friend Lori suggests the street directories for the west which may offer something and there is a marriage record for a James Rogers who married Agnes Isabella M Davidson in Vancouver in 1931
So I have to tell myself that maybe he is just lost, having changed his name again, moved out of Canada or just disappeared.
Still if there is one thing I have learned it is that something will eventually turn up.
Picture; Langley Train Station, British Columbia 1925, located in Vancouver Public Library, and is in the public domain.
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