Genes Reunited Blog
Welcome to the new Genes Reunited blog!
- We regularly add blogs covering a variety of topics. You can add your own comments at the bottom.
- The Genes Reunited Team will be writing blogs and keeping you up to date with changes happening on the site.
- In the future we hope to have guest bloggers that will be able to give you tips and advice as to how to trace your family history.
- The blogs will have various privacy settings, so that you can choose who you share your blog with.
Official Blogs
The British Newspaper Archive
Read about historical events at the time they were happening. Perhaps you'll discover your ancestor in their local newspaper?
Long Lost Family – Series 2 Episode 2
The second episode of series proved to be another emotional one. We followed two very different stories this week. First of all we met Brenda. She fell pregnant and moved to a Mother and Baby home when she was 3 months gone. She lived there with her daughter Joanne until she was 6 weeks old. Sadly keeping the baby wasn’t an option for Brenda and so she had no choice but to give her up for adoption.
The Long Lost Family team tried looking for Joanne in public records but their search was in vain. They turned to social networking sites knowing that she had been brought up in Manchester. This search was a success and they found Joanne amazingly living in South Africa, where Brenda had also settled.
Joanne agreed to meet Brenda and flew to Cape Town for an emotional reunion.
The second story focussed on Maureen’s 40 year search for her older brother Michael. One day Maureen came from home school to discover that Michael had left home after a family row. No-one would tell her why he’d gone and she never heard from him again. It was only after her Mum died 5 years ago that Maureen found out the real reason why Michael had left.
The team set about finding Michael using the electoral rolls. Using this and some intuition they found Michael living in Brighton. Michael and Maureen met up in their hometown for a very emotional reunion after such a long time.
If you’d like to find out why Michael left and see the episode in full then you can watch it here.
If you are searching for your own long lost family then have you tried our Find Living Relatives message board? You can post details here of who you are looking for and maybe one of our helpful members will be able to point you in the right direction. Make sure you read the guidelines before you post a message.
And if you are successful and find yourself reunited with a long lost family member then make sure you share the story with our Press Office - [email protected].
Tune in to ITV next Thursday, the 26th April at 9pm for 2 more moving stories.