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REUNION: Michael Carrhill was the driving force behind the family reunion
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Good Samaritan helps long-lost family reunite
27/12/2006
A WOMAN'S Christmas wish to find her long-lost family has been granted after a caring stranger stepped in to help.
After her father Wilfred Goodwin's death, Jennifer Davies vowed to find his two sisters, who he had been separated from as a child in Ashton.
Armed with a phone book, she thought she had a result, only to discover it was the wrong number.
But her story struck a chord with Michael Carrhill - the kind-hearted man who picked up the phone - and he decided to help.
Michael, 66, spent a week trawling through records at the family history centre, unearthing birth certificates, visiting graves and eventually writing a letter to the Advertiser in a bid to find Jennifer's family.
Within hours of our paper being delivered, both aunts - May Birchall, who lives in Ashton, and Joyce Eldred, in North Wales -- had phoned him.
Michael, of Birch Lane, said: "I thought it was a really sad story so I said I'd do what I could.
"It took about a week, but by the end of it I felt like I knew them. When I phoned Jennifer to tell her I'd found them she was crying and then I was crying, it was quite emotional."
May and Joyce were separated from their brother in 1940 when, at the ages of nine and 10, they were put up for adoption following their mother's death.
Although they kept in touch with their father, the sisters lost touch with Wilfred when he left Ashton to work on a farm and later joined the army, and they never saw him again.
But thanks to Michael, the pair can now get to know mum-of-two Jennifer, who lives in Wales, and the family they never knew they had.
Joyce, now 76, said: "Michael has gone to so much trouble and none of us can thank him enough. Without him we would never have known our family."
Most recent 2 of 2 user comments
Thank You!
29/12/2006 at 04:42
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