Some time ago, my aunt, who currently lives in Arizona, sent me a photo of a letter. The letter was sent many, many years ago (in 1980) from Australia to our family. Due to the global lack of time 😉 the matter was put aside for “later”…
A year and a half later, during a conversation with my husband about warmer countries, the letter matter came back to mind… and I was inspired to find relatives. I knew that Ivan’s parents stayed in Ukraine — Ivan was the one who emigrated to Australia with his wife. Nobody could tell me much more than that. The beginning was tough because what can you find with only an address and the first letter of a first name? But step by step, I started piecing the puzzle together.
The first discovery was an advertisement for the sale of the house where they had once lived. This meant that the address from the letter was no longer valid. But thanks to the “old” address, I found a voter register from 1980 listing Elsa Górecki — the mysterious “E” from the letter.
Next, on the National Archives of Australia website, I found records of the ship Elsa and Ivan traveled on. The ship was called the General Heintzelmann and it sailed from Naples on October 24, 1949, arriving in Sydney on November 24, 1949. Now I knew how my relatives got to Australia. From this information, I obtained Elsa and Ivan’s birth details and learned they had two daughters — Valentina and Lora.
But I still hadn’t found any living relatives…
Continuing to search archives and databases, I came across a photo of Elsa and Ivan’s tombstone in a Sydney cemetery. I contacted the cemetery administration to pass my contact details to those maintaining the grave. However, they dismissed me, saying they don’t provide such services.
But my persistence wouldn’t let me sit idle. On the Ancestry website, I found a family tree maintained by someone named Karen. However, her account status showed she hadn’t been active for over a year… So I started searching Facebook for someone with that name. The situation wasn’t any better 😉 The last post was more than 1.5 years old. Still, I sent a message but didn’t get a reply for a month.
In the meantime, I joined many Australian groups and posted a message hoping to find the owner of the Ancestry tree. One of the comments directed me to LinkedIn — and that was a bullseye… 🙂 That account looked active; the last post was just a week earlier. Of course, even though it was already 11:30 PM and I was in bed, I messaged immediately and now I’m waiting for a reply… 😉
That’s the very brief version of my search… 🙂
If you’re curious to see how the story of the letter from Australia continues, follow my Facebook profile 🙂
And if you’re also looking for ancestors or living relatives, feel free to reach out to me…
