This one is complicated. Rebecca and Bethany have found a distant Burrow relative and I played a small part in it.
Last summer while looking for something else I found the photo above. It was taken by my grandfather’s uncle, J C Burrow, exactly 100 years ago and is of of an ancient church in Cornwall. J C Burrow was an early photographer and was one of the first to take photos in mines.
On the back is some information about the site. I emailed it to Rebecca who was in York with an offer to fund a trip for her down to Cornwall to find the church and whatever else she could about J C Burrow. Before she went my brothers Tom and Matt contributed more information and many more scanned photos. And it turned out that Bethany, Tom’s daughter, had made a previous expedition to Cornwall and had lots of information. Armed with all of this data, a rented car and a few friends she headed to Cornwall. She couldn’t find the site of the church but did visit the Royal Cornish Museum and one of the docents told her about a woman named Rosemary Richards. She is a granddaughter of J C Burrow and sometimes worked as a volunteer at the Museum.
Pretty cool but it gets better. A few weeks later Rosemary showed up in York to visit Rebecca. She wrote down her mailing address on a piece of paper along with a sketch of the family burial plot in Truro. I’m going to send her a postcard and perhaps sponsor another expedition. Any volunteers? You may have to go soon because Rosemary is quite old.
I can’t explain why, but it is very nice to have found a distant relative.