Finding Fred
-By Catherine Wilcox-Sparling

Equipped with only his name, my search for my paternal grandfather, who effectively deserted his family when my father was three, had come to a halt because both my parents were dead and my cousins knew as little about the man and his background as I did. The one story that had been passed down to all of us was that Fred had lived for some years as a teenager with his aunt in Bermuda. Abandoning this genealogical problem as hopeless, I worked on other, more promising branches of my family tree for the next couple of years. Then one day I realized that I had overlooked the most obvious source of information available to me -- the reason why he had left his wife and young family. Fred had left the farm in Wynyard Saskatchewan for the adventure and perhaps the patriotism of World War I. Suddenly I realized that there would be war records of his enlistment and service.

Accessing these documents took many months but finally, with the help of my brother Allan, several hurdreds of pages of extremely poor photocopies arrived. Many were reverse image (white lettering on black pages) and others had faded into oblivion. However, I was overjoyed to get them. Towards the bottom of the stack, there was a reverse image copy of the flyleaf of the family bible and sure enough, Bermuda was the country of marriage of Fred's parents. Obtaining a copy of the marriage license from the Bermuda government was straightforward enabling me to search my paternal family backward in time. What I still needed was help filling the gap from 1916 until he died and the whereabouts of the remains of my newly discovered great-grandparents.

So I spent weeks going through the photocopies until finally, in very small typing, at the bottom of a totally unrelated medical report written in 1933 were the words that if it was necessary to verify Fred's age, a family bible was in the possession of a brother in Fairdale, North Dakota. Sixty years had passed -- what to do next as everyone was long dead. I tried the telephone operator. No one in the community of, as it turned out, 92, had my last name. Then summoning up all my courage I decided to try a cold call to the person I thought might know most in a small town -- the postmaster.

Success. Not only did the postmaster know where everyone was buried, he also gave me the name and telephone number of the farmer who cut grass in the cemetery. Given the time difference between Toronto and North Dakota, I decided to wait until the next day to phone the farmer. By the time I called, the farmer had been in touch with a cousin and her family who still farmed in the area and wanted to talk. And talk we did as we had 65 years of family gossip to catch up on. Several weeks later, in the mail, without my asking, came pictures of the gravestones kindly taken by the farmer who tended the cemetery.

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