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This is my very last resort - ideas needed to help me find my dad, brothers and sisters

668 replies

MissyMooandherBeaverofSteel · 30/05/2013 20:30

I haven't seen my Dad for over 25 years, my Mum left him and then came in with another bloke one day and informed us that this was our new Dad and that was that.

She won't give me his proper name but I know the name everyone called him and he was well known where he lived, she won't tell me where and when he was born, in fact we no longer speak so I'm never likely to be able to find the information out at all now all I know is he lived in a little Lincolnshire village.

About 16 years ago she did manage to track a phone number down for him (after years of harrassment) and I had a brief conversation with him but she decided she didn't like it and burned the number and his address that I had written down as well as the phone bill.

Back when I spoke to him he was waiting for pretty major surgery on his heart so I'm not even sure if he is alive now and if he is he is in his 70s and when we spoke he did tell me I had brothers and sisters (he said all in all he had 16 children by goodness knows how many women) but I don't know their names apart from a brother I had who died and three older sisters I have whos names are my middle names (although one of them died as well I don't know which one).

I have tried the salvation army, trawled through public records (which is hard because I only know the shortened version of his name not the full name) called local pubs and shops where he used to live some of who knew him but didn't know where he was now and the local police station who couldn't do anything to help, as well as going on missing people and family tree and similar websites.

What else can I do? I feel like there is a huge part of my history I don't know and I would like to even just know if he is alive or not and maybe try to track down his other children. There is also the fact that my sister died from SIDS before I was born (according to my Mother) as did my son and I had a daughter who died from a genetic illness which there is no trace of on my Mothers side of the family and I would like to know my family history from his side to be able to tell my children.

Could someone give me any more ideas of what I can do to try and find out where he is or is it a lost cause? I don't know where to turn anymore its like banging my head off a brick wall and I'm just about ready to give up

Hello everyone,
To retain some RL privacy, we've edited out some names and replaced them with a B. Hope this has no effect on reading this amazing thread.
Thanks.
MNHQ

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FairPhyllis · 01/06/2013 02:35

This is the most amazing thread.

My only suggestion is that if he's not traceable in the Bassingham area anymore you should be able to obtain electoral roll records for Bassingham for the period you know he was there by going to the County Archive for Lincolnshire - details here. That would at least give you his full name, address at the time and probably people at the same address, and then that could help you with other kinds of searches. Bassingham doesn't look very big - depending on how the electoral register is structured you could probably go through all the records for Bassingham's civil parish quite quickly.

It's also very possible that the church in Bassingham would be able to help - church wardens and PCC members etc (less so vicars!) tend to have long memories and strong local connections. Or you never know, OP's dad might have been on the parish register (which is different from the UK voting electoral roll) and that would give another way to get his name and address.