WARBRIDES-L Archives

Archiver > WARBRIDES > 2005-09 > 1125795705


From: "D Beavis" <>
Subject: RE: [WarBrides] Billy Mitchon found?
Date: Sun, 4 Sep 2005 10:31:45 +0930
In-Reply-To: <BAY105-F3837EC0129597B008C1F2BAA50@phx.gbl>


And of course I have now re-read Annette's obituary 'find' and realised that
it does indeed show that they were from Scotland!

It will make a wonderful story, Melynda! It's great when these things
suddenly start snapping into place. Let's hope we do have the right Alan G
Hitchon lined up - he's going to be pretty surprised when he gets your call!


I'm delighted that it was the Mauretania passenger list that got this
particular ball rolling - the lists are thought by many (including the
archives) to be just boring old lists of names but they can play a very
significant part in tracing all manner of people and without that list I
don't think we'd be where we are now with this enquiry. They are such
valuable documents even when it's one of the few, like this one, that
contains names but no addresses. (Most have addresses).

Just this week I have contacted a lady who was looking for her GI father who
had a relationship with her mother but moved on without ever knowing that
there was a baby on the way. He had a very unusual name - I ran it through
the database and it appears that he may have married another British woman
before the end of the war as I have an entry which - given the unusual name
along with correct initials - makes it seem very likely. There were names,
addresses and other details there. That kind of thing is a very delicate
situation so she's going to need to handle it carefully but it just goes to
show that my 'boring old lists of names' are very valuable and helpful
documents. And I guess it proves that, in case I ever doubted it, my
thousands of hours of transcription work are actually worthwhile!

On that note, I have this week finished checking another 10,000 entries and
am planning to upload them today to the site at www.warbrides.co.uk It will
include this Mauretania list (which includes Eswyn Lyster), several more
Queen Mary sailings, one for the Aquitania, the first sailing of the
Argentina and a few others. That will bring the grand total uploaded thus
far to over 30,000. I hope to have another few thousand checked and ready
for upload by next weekend.

Debbie Beavis
Warbrides

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Melynda Jarratt [mailto:]
> Sent: Sunday, September 04, 2005 9:42 AM
> To:
> Subject: [WarBrides] Billy Mitchon found?
>
>
> As usual, when we put our heads together, we can do wonderful things!
>
> OK, Annette, please write to me off line and I'll try to
> contact Alan and
> either confirm he is our "Billy Mitchon" or not.
>
> Just to let you know, I have been talking with Andreas, whose
> mother was the
> World War Two CWAC photographer. They're both going to be
> very very excited
> to find out that we may have traced little "Billy" from 60 years ago.
>



This thread: