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I n August last year I received a message on Ancestry.com. A lady called Rhian, who shared my surname, had sent me a link to a recent BBC news story, which I read with mounting interest.
The head office of the Swansea Building Society, the story said, had recently received a postcard postmarked 1903 and originally sent to a girl called Lydia Davies, who had lived at the address. Having mysteriously received the postcard 121 years after it was posted, staff were hoping to trace one of her descendants.
The picture on the card was of a black-and-white print based on an Edwin Landseer oil painting of a stag in the Scottish Highlands. But the other side interested me more. It said: “Dear L, It was unpossible, I could not get the pair of these. I am so sorry! But I hope you are enjoying yourself at home.”
The message was signed “Ewart”. The news story added that the postcard had been passed on to the West Glamorgan Archive Service, which had established Lydia was 16, the eldest of six children living at the address in 1903. Ewart, her brother, was 13. I had worked on my family tree and knew immediately that Ewart was my grandfather. Though he had died before I was born, I still had one link with him: his last living child, my aunt Rosemary. I called her – she lives in San Francisco – and she was very excited to hear the news.
I then phoned the building society and was put in touch with a BBC producer who wanted to film the postcard being presented to a descendant. The producer said two women related to Lydia had already been in contact – he told me their names, but I’d never heard of them.
The meeting was to be filmed at the archive offices in Swansea, and I drove there with my wife from our home in Sussex the next day. I’d never been on TV before and was very nervous. It was all a whirlwind.
I was filmed talking to Andrew, the chief archivist, who had photographs of Lydia and Ewart laid out on a table. He showed me the postcard itself, with its King Edward VII stamp. It was strange to hold something my grandfather had bought as a boy, and fascinating to see the words on the back, written with a fountain pen. As we were looking at it, two women walked in, and Andrew said: “I think we have a pair of your relatives here … ”
So that’s how I first met my cousins Margaret and Helen. It felt quite surreal as we shook hands and introduced ourselves, knowing this moment was going to be seen by so many people. I’d wondered if they’d seem somehow familiar, but it struck me that I might easily have passed them in the street without ever realising we were related.
Ewart and Lydia’s brother Stanley had been the only sibling to remain in Wales – Margaret and Helen were Stanley’s granddaughters and still lived nearby. Lydia’s great-granddaughter Faith also travelled from Devon to meet us for the first time.
They brought along photos – we went through them, adding missing pieces to our family jigsaws. It was oddly moving seeing pictures of my great-grandparents for the first time. New connections were made, and anonymous names in my family tree suddenly gained faces.
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Afterwards, I contacted Rhian, who was delighted that her detective work had paid off. She had seen the news story and thought she might be a descendant. She wasn’t, but had forwarded the story on to other Davies families on Ancestry.com in the hope that one of them might be. Davies is the fifth most common surname in the UK, with a huge concentration in Wales, so it’s a wonder she found me.
The mystery of how the postcard arrived at its destination 121 years late may never be fully solved. It’s likely that Lydia did receive it in 1903 – we now know she collected postcards, and Ewart probably sent her one of a pair.
It must have passed through the hands of other collectors before someone stuck it back in the post for fun. Little did they know their action would lead to branches of a family being united for the first time. We’ve since heard from a distant relative in Canada – perhaps there will be more. I’d like to imagine Ewart and Lydia would have been astonished but delighted.
As told to Chris Broughton
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