Imagine, losing track of your one and only sibling for over fifty years! Wouldn’t you wonder whatever happened to your brother, if he was ok, and how his life turned out? Now, thanks to the power of Facebook, two siblings have been reunited after fifty three years apart.
Mary Bolton last saw her younger half-brother when he was only five years old. His name is Peter Grattan, and the two half-siblings have the same father, but different mothers. When Peter was five years old, his parents moved from England to New Zealand. Mary was sixteen years old at the time. Although she was asked if she wanted to move to New Zealand with her father, and her half-brother, Mary instead chose to stay in England with her mother. This is when the two half-siblings lost touch with each other.
Now, fifty three years after the two siblings were separated, they have been reunited with the help of Mary’s daughter-in-law. It turned out that the daughter-in-law was a genealogist, who was very interested in learning about Mary’s family. It was Mary’s daughter-in-law who was able to locate Peter, after tracking him down through Facebook. A quick message through this social networking website confirmed that Peter was, in fact, Mary’s long lost little brother!
Mary, now age 70, recently traveled from England to New Zealand to meet with Peter, who is now age 59. I would think that the two of them would have tons of wonderful stories to share with each other about all the important things that happened since last they met. I’ve heard a lot of stories about long lost family members reuniting after finding each other on Facebook, and I always find it amazing. Every time I get frustrated with Facebook because Farmville is taking too long to load, or because I am having trouble posting a link to something, I think about one of these kinds of stories. It just goes to show how powerful a tool Facebook can be to genealogists.
Image by benstein on Flickr