International Genealogical Search

A Bitter Pill to Swallow

Objective: Find two sisters who were estranged from their father

Year: 2005

Overview: We were asked to locate two sisters following the death of their great uncle who had left them an inheritance. The women were estranged from their father and his side of the family after a bitter divorce from their mother. It was thought that the sisters still lived near their mother, Serena.

Challenges: Father destroys all record of his children. The two women would be difficult to track down because:

• Their father had died some years earlier
• He had destroyed every single photograph of his children
• The women had lost complete contact with their grandparents
• The sisters may have moved abroad with their mother

At IGS we can put back the pieces of a broken family tree. Trying to connect the pieces of a broken family tree is challenging but something we are often faced with at IGS. When you have estrangements it makes things harder still. When you add to the mix someone who is living abroad then the task of locating people can seem impossible. Eventually, we managed to find the women’s grandmother who was still alive and now living in a senior’s home. The grandmother told us that she believed the women’s mother had joined the military.

Results: We tracked down the women’s mother, Serena, in Germany and her daughters were living there with her. The women not only received the inheritance but also re-connected with their grandmother who they thought had died.