My cousin went travelling and nobody ever heard from him again

[Verity226]

My grandparents were his legal guardians and brought him up. When he was in his 20's (I was around 8 then) he said he wanted to go travelling in America so they helped him with some money and off he went saying he'd be back soon.

He never wrote, never called and never came back. Nobody ever heard from him again. It broke my grandparents hearts and they spent their final years worrying about him and whether he was OK. None of his friends ever heard from him again either. He completely disappeared off the face of the earth and there was no trace of him online (I looked every few years out of curiosity)

It has been 20 years since he vanished now.

Last year I signed up to ancestry and was looking at the family tree. I stumbled across something, I can't remember what exactly it was now, but it showed that he (his name) had an accounts and had recently been on there either researching the family or adding something to the tree.

I sent him a message through the site asking how he was and telling him a bit about my life, how I've had children etc. I gave my email address and said he could contact me if he wanted to be in touch. I didn't hear anything back.

What reasons could somebody have to want to dissappear like that and never speak to their family again? I was only a child when he left but I remember having a lovely relationship with him and seeing him as something of a big brother.

He obviously wants to be left alone which is his right but it's so confusing.

Do you think there's something I don't know?

Doesn't surprise me that someone who clearly had a traumatic childhood would want to make a fresh start. It will be interesting to get to know him again OP if that is what happens next.

he said he has tried to get back in touch with the family but hasn't been able to.
While I'm happy you've heard, OP, and I wish you the best, I think you should proceed with caution. Not being able to get back in touch doesn't seem all that believable to me.

I would send a friendly message saying that you understand if he doesn't want to rake over the past but you just wanted to know he was ok and had always wondered what happened as you were a child at the time and nobody explained anything to you.

It's possible that the grandparents knew he had gone permanently but said it was a trip to save explaining they had asked him to go eg could be a lifestyle situation

My grandparents raised him because they weren't able to.

I think you’ve answered your own question here.

That's a wonderful update.
The way ancestry works you can pinpoint the "owner" of the tree and who you are in the tree if you want to.

Just be a bit careful. There’s a couple of holes in his story already. Why couldn’t he get in touch? Why is he sad not to have the chance to say goodbye when he’s the one who disappeared?

Even if he is your cousin, doesn’t mean he’s a good person.

@DameHelena

he said he has tried to get back in touch with the family but hasn't been able to. While I'm happy you've heard, OP, and I wish you the best, I think you should proceed with caution. Not being able to get back in touch doesn't seem all that believable to me.

Great to hear op, but proceed with caution. 3 siblings with alcohol and mental health issues so bad that a child has to be raised by grandparents and then disappear indicates that there may have been some stuff going on that you weren't aware of. Maybe your parents protected you. Also doesn't sound believable that if you have a distinctive name and some of you haven't moved out of the area that he couldn't get back in touch.

"Sad he didnt have the chance to say goodbye" but not sad to cut them off without another word. Not sad to have no contact, not even the occasional email or Christmas card? And now he'd like picture to remember them by. Cute.

I'd tread very carefully OP because you already know how this guy acts when he has no more use for people.

I have 32 cousins.
I have no idea where any of them live.

I shouldn't feel the need to share this to abate the troll hunters but here we are, a picture of his message sent to my ancestry account.

It has been sitting in there since February 2020 and I had no idea because I never logged back in since I sent him the first message.

Names crossed out for obvious reasons.

@gogohm

I would send a friendly message saying that you understand if he doesn't want to rake over the past but you just wanted to know he was ok and had always wondered what happened as you were a child at the time and nobody explained anything to you.

It's possible that the grandparents knew he had gone permanently but said it was a trip to save explaining they had asked him to go eg could be a lifestyle situation

I would do the same as I'm so nosey I'd be desperate to know!

You can only really speculate

What are you going to do next @Verity226?

If I'd witnessed my grandparents distress for all those years, I'd find it hard to forgive him, to be honest.

Unless they moved house and phone number in the first couple of years that he was away, his 'trying to get in touch with them and failing' sounds weak.

I'm going to send him an email today, to the email he wrote in his message, and answer some of the questions he asked about our grandparents passing.

I do have some pictures of gran and grandad that I'm happy to send him too.

There's also something he might be able to shed some light on for my benefit, a question ive had for years that whilst not concerning him personally he might know the answer to given how he was alot older than me.

My mum shares the same POV as those here who say it was cruel to do that to our grandparents, she doesn't know I have that message yet but I know she'll be very pleased to know he's alive and well.

@zafferana

Twenty years ago was 2002 and I can assure you @CollyFleur that both email and mobile phones existed by then! I had an email account from 1993 onwards and my first mobile in 1997.

But many/most people didn't. I had my first mobile phone in 2009 and was by no means unusual in that.

Fantastic news OP. I do hope you are able to piece together some of the missing years and move forward from this.

"Even if he is your cousin, doesn’t mean he’s a good person"

Or he might be and just wanted to reinvent himself away from a family that has addiction issues etc. His vague explanation might be because he doesn't want to rake up the past and criticise the GP. They had two children with addiction issues and one with MH issues.

Grandparents stayed in the same house for many years after he left so he could have got a letter to them, or got them on the phone, before grandad died. Grandma moved a few hundred miles away to a sheltered community for OAP's 18 months after grandad died but he could have reached our aunt who lived in the same house all of her life.

I have so many questions but don't want to spook him by bombarding him so it's going to be tricky to navigate I think.

Great news that you have heard from him!! I'd follow up and see how he's doing maybe send some photos - what have you got to lose?

We had a relative completely vanish and was never traced (1950s so no computer searches). His wife recruited a PI but they found nothing and his son spent his whole life feeling abandoned and never stopped wondering what happened to him

@zafferana

Remember it was rather easier to to lose contact with people before email and mobile phones.

Twenty years ago was 2002 and I can assure you @CollyFleur that both email and mobile phones existed by then! I had an email account from 1993 onwards and my first mobile in 1997.

You were an early adopter in that case - five years ahead of me on both. But the story I was telling about my friend's son - not the OP's relative - happened in the 1980s - and neither really existed then. People were only contactable at a place, not as an individual. So if they moved and didn't tell you where, you lost touch with them.

Did you say his friend found you on Facebook with your unusual surname? And he’s claiming the only way he could track anyone down is via ancestry.com? So there’s at least two people he could have found via much easier means. Are any of your other family on Facebook?

But February 2020 was two years ago! I didn't catch that you'd tried to contact him that long ago, and hadn't looked back at the site until now.

@Pumperthepumper

Did you say his friend found you on Facebook with your unusual surname? And he’s claiming the only way he could track anyone down is via ancestry.com? So there’s at least two people he could have found via much easier means. Are any of your other family on Facebook?

His friend found me on Facebook very easily with our surname yes, I'm not difficult to find at all.

Cousin hasn't elaborated on why he was unable to track anybody down yet, just that he lost touch and wasn't able to find anybody.

If he had typed our surname into Facebook he would have found me straight away though.

It feels more likely that he didn't want to find anybody, or be found, until 2020 at the earliest.

My mum and aunt's aren't on Facebook so he couldn't have found them that way, but I would have been an easy first port of call if he did want to make contact.

How on earth would he have tried but failed to get in touch with his family?

That makes no sense. It is a very obvious and awkward lie.

But still, he may have his reasons for choosing not to contact his grandparents, and then may have avoided everyone else because he felt there was no other way to truly cut out his grandparents.

I agree with the PP that I would feel hurt about this, but still keep in mind that there could well be something big that went on that you don't know about. It's not normal for someone to completely disappear like that. They usually have one hell of a story.

So he sent a message in 2020 and you only saw it at midnight, and he still hasn’t tried to get contact via any other means? I guess that’s your answer then.

You only have second hand accounts of your great uncles relationship with his family;just because he was raised by your grandparents doesn't mean he had a good relationship with them/other family members.

I'm a survivor of childhood abuse at the hands of a parent;my two siblings have no idea of the things that happened during my childhood as they were sheltered from it (which I'm forever grateful for).