Published: Wednesday, 24th June, 2009 1:52pm

Cousins reunited after 40 years apart

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A LOT of phone calls and a few internet searches was all it took for a Tullibody woman to be reunited with her long lost cousins.

Over 40 years had passed since Chris Calder last saw the family members from her father"s side after they went their separate ways following the deaths of their respective fathers.

Chris (65) had traced generations of her family tree over a period of years but it was family members she could remember from her childhood who proved elusive after they lost touch.

She told the Advertiser, 'We all lost our dads at quite a young age – I was 16. After that the mothers never kept in touch and we drifted apart.

'All these years later we didn"t know what had happened to our cousins – even whether they were alive or dead.'

After deciding to find out what happened to her family, Chris – who is originally from Cheshire – found it fairly straightforward to track down two of her cousins, brother and sister Brian Ashbrooke and Sylvia Buckle.

Luckily, Brian hadn"t moved too far from where he grew up and still had the same name, so after trying a few numbers in the phone book Chris found him and he was still in contact with Sylvia.

Chris said finding the third cousin, Margaret Hutchinson (formerly Ashbrooke), was far more difficult.

She said, 'I had no information about her except where she grew up almost 50 years ago.

'I started by searching the Birth, Marriage and Death register for the Cheshire area and found a marriage registered that could have fitted the bill. The name of the husband was registered as Hutchinson so I searched for all Hutchinsons in the Cheshire area.

'After phoning everyone I found listed, I spoke to some interesting people but still drew a blank.

'Then I widened the search to all Hutchinsons in Britain and started phoning them - again with no results. My next move was to look at D Hutchinson deaths but nothing came to light on that either.'

After appearing to hit a brick wall in her search Chris thought Margaret may have been divorced. She then tried looking on the electoral roll at www.192.com.

Chris said, 'On the third phone number I tried, I found her. She was so excited she kept saying 'that"s me" when I said I was looking for a Margaret Ashbrooke.

'The funny thing is she used to live just round the corner for 15 years from where I had a friend living. Margaret had also been up to Stirling so she hadn"t been far from Tullibody either.'

Chris and her sister, Maureen, who was over from Canada, drove down to Cheshire to meet the family.

She said, 'We got on really well and there is definitely a family resemblance.

'Sylvia had a photo of our grandfather, Samuel Ashbrooke, who we had never seen even in a photo before as he died in the 1919 influenza epidemic – that was the icing on the cake. I am really glad we found them and they are delighted to have found us.'

Chris, who is heavily involved with Tullibody History Group and the Meet Your Ancestors programme being run in the county as part of the Homecoming year, added, 'With genealogy being such a popular leisure pursuit it has been great to do this. It has really been quite interesting.'