Ancestry.Com
Our initial contact went as follows:
Jan 22, 2014
I am trying to get info regarding George Hunter who was my great uncle. Born in Hong Kong/Kowloon, lived in Shanghai, possibly interned during the Japanese occupation.
May have lived in Seattle, USA and returned to Shanghai.
I believe this is the correct George Hunter. If you could contact me it would be good to exchange data.
Brian Hunter Beesley
About two weeks later he answered me via the Ancestry.com message function.
chr155
Feb 07, 2014
Hi Brian.
George Hunter was my wife’s natural paternal grandfather (her father was adopted after George’s “disappearance”). I am not in her tree at the moment, so the following is from memory. We are not aware of any internment but review of shipping info using international data did in fact show he went to Canada and then to USA. Maude Amelia heard no more from him and did go once more to China, just before she died in Somerset, perhaps still looking for him. Very sad. “Birth on the China seas” was the key to finding George’s home in Scotland, where his grandmother lived in Benholm. We have not been able to trace his father, William Letts Hunter, who may have lived in China, too. Hope this helps and look forward to hearing from you.
Chris.
Well, to say I was excited would be a serious understatement. There were discrepancies in his information but at last I’d made a live contact with someone who was related, not just someone who’d been “plucked off someone else’s tree” That type of thing is all too common on genealogy sites. I immediately sent off another message in hopes of instigating an exchange that would benefit us both. I hoped it would answer a long list of questions that up until now I’d had little hope of getting answers to.
Sadly this was not to be the case, at least not right away. I did get an answer but Chris was involved in other matters and didn’t have the time to devote to “his wife’s” family tree. He told me he’d get back to me when he had more free time but for now, that was the end of it.