Riggin/Chenery Heir Hunters

Today, the heir hunters discover a family mystery,

stretching back over a century...

We're just trying to figure out who this person was.

He was born in 1911.

-Mr Thandi, nice to meet you.

-Hello.

..while another team investigate the case

of an unusual village character who tragically died in a house fire.

Now, I know at some point when he was younger,

that he didn't live at home and that he lived some of the time

in the woods.

A visit from an heir hunter can change lives.

Hello.

I'm not expecting a million,

it's just going to be exciting to receive it.

The cases that land on the heir hunters' desks

involve people from all walks of life.

One unique case that recently came to the attention of researchers

was that of Stephen Chenery.

Stephen used to paint everything, whatever he saw,

whatever was nature, children, he could paint it just off the cuff.

I've got a drawing of what Steve done of me.

He done that in 1958 and then when I went round there one day,

he gave it to me, which I think is very special.

That artwork is absolutely priceless.

Stephen lived all his life in the village of Shipdham, Norfolk,

and was known for being a colourful chap.

Steve was a small man, wore an old suit jacket

and his trousers were

held up with string,

wore boots, never saw him in shoes.

And he never would go to the doctor.

He used to make his own potions,

he'd have stinging nettle tea,

he made pottery...

Yeah, he was a real character.

Stephen was born in 1927

and reared animals on a smallholding in Shipdham, known as Watery Lane.

The farm became popular with many local children.

I best remember Steve down Watery Lane and meeting him there

and milking the goat and feeding the cats.

And down there is the pond

where we used to get the sticklebacks

and, obviously, put them in jars and take them home

and this is where we used to just get soaking wet

and we were told not to get wet and we did

and then Steve helped us out of the muddle and dried our socks.

Those who knew Steve well saw his eccentric financial management.

I was sat with Steve and he got two biscuit tins out of a tea chest.

I actually said to him, "What have you got in there, Steve, biscuits?"

He said, "I sold some land."

And he took the lid off these two biscuit tins

and I've never seen so much money in my life.

Stephen was remembered as a man who was uniquely at one with nature.

He loved animals.

I think he loved animals more than anything else.

And I've seen a bird land on his shoulder

and he took the bluetit off his shoulder

and put it on the bird table, very few people could do that.

He could name bird songs.

He was somebody special.

In his later life, Stephen Chenery lived alone, rarely venturing out.

Some call him a hermit.

He was restricted to one room

and the rest of the house, you never got to see it.

And it was quite a shame, cos he was not that mobile.

But on the evening of the 11th of January 2015,

there was a dramatic turn of events and his house went up in flames.

It was quite late at night

and all of a sudden I thought I could smell smoke.

It was chaos out here.

I think there were three fire engines, two ambulances,

a couple of police cars, it was absolutely mad.

No-one knows what caused the fire, it's believed it was started

on the ground floor.

Mr Chenery sadly passed away, aged 87.

Everybody was really, really devastated.

You know, especially the people who had been going in

and keeping an eye on him and doing his bits of shop

and his pension, you know, cos people were kind to him.

Without any known next of kin,

the case reached London-based heir hunters Fraser & Fraser.

It was kind of the end of the day, people were packing up

and I kind of noticed something

about a man who passed away at his house

and then we found out that he actually owned the property.

We had to start working immediately.

So, what was the story behind Stephen?

The first port of call for case manager Mike Pow

was to speak to the locals.

The neighbours told us he was a reclusive gentleman,

kept himself to himself and looks like he lived most of his life

under the radar.

Rumours circulated about what was found in his house

at the time of his death.

We discovered through some neighbours and, subsequently,

later on that the deceased had some cash in the house.

They found about £2,500 in his armchair, where he passed away.

However, neighbours couldn't provide any family information.

One of the first records that we look for in a case

is the birth certificate, because that really is going to give us

our starting blocks for the rest of the case.

We'll get the date of birth, we'll have the parents' names

and that's what we really need.

He was born around the same town where he'd died.

It's a weird one, cos it was, like,

everyone lived in the exact same place.

We then checked all the marriage indexes from his date of birth

up until when he was 16 and over to see if he was married,

but we couldn't find anything which matched the area he lived in.

So, we were fairly certain that he died

without ever getting married or having any children.

The search began for his next of kin.

Birth records established his father was a carpenter,

Frederick Chenery, born in Mitford in 1886.

His mother, Rosa Agnes Baker, was born in 1890

and worked as a dressmaker.

I don't think they ever went out anywhere,

but his father, he was...

From what I gather, he was a clever carpenter.

When war broke out, he would have been 28 years old.

Records show that Stephen's father Frederick was called up

and served for 300 days.

Frederick Chenery joined

the Norfolk Regiment in about April 1916,

but he was immediately transferred to a labour company.

With the introduction of conscription,

soldiers who were regarded as medically unfit

for front-line service were transferred to labour companies.

In the war, Frederick's duties would have involved

maintaining the roads that brought essential supplies

and food to the front line.

He would be under the control of a sergeant

and his sole life would be to maintain that bit of road.

But they'd probably be living in an old corrugated-iron dugout

in the ground and they'd be under continual shell

and if he's further forward, machine-gun fire,

because, of course, the German interest was to destroy these roads

to stop the supplies getting to the front.

For 30-year-old Frederick,

his time on the front line must've been stressful and frightening.

He will have seen numerous dead, rotting corpses,

parts of bodies and things like that and, whatever they say,

it must affect somebody's long-term mental ability

and some people could cope better than others,

but most First World War veterans would suffer

from post-traumatic stress syndrome.

After the war, Frederick moved back to Shipdham

and married Rosa in 1919.

We did a birth search using the names of the parents,

which were Chenery and the mother's maiden name which was Baker,

through which we discovered

that there were two sisters of the deceased,

an Ivy Monica Chenery, born the 10th of November 1919,

and a Nora Agnes Chenery, born the 21st November 1920.

Once we looked into the background of the house,

we find out immediately he lived there with his family.

When we'd done our enquiries, obviously,

everyone knew that he had two sisters,

one of them actually died a spinster at the house

and the other one did get married and actually came back to the house

to live with her brother.

The research shows that none of Stephen's sisters

had any children either, so no close family

were going to be beneficiaries.

And what was revealing was that with one war over

and another on the horizon,

Stephen decided to make a dramatic decision about his lifestyle.

I know, when he was younger, that he didn't live at home

and that he lived some of the time up near the aerodrome, in the woods.

It was a subject that I don't think he really wanted

to talk about, but for some reason he wasn't allowed to come home.

Across the country, heir hunters are searching

for relatives of people who have died with no family.

Could they be knocking at your door?

HE KNOCKS AT DOOR

Hello.

In Halifax, Christopher David Riggin sadly passed away, aged 70,

on the 6th of August 2015.

He was an educated lad, he finished up an accountant.

Then, when his mother died, he were on his own, same as me.

About three years ago, my wife invited him round for Christmas.

A very intelligent man.

Sat down with him, we spoke for ages about politics, all sorts.

Brought a bottle of drink down with us

and we had a real good time together.

Christopher's friends, however, did not know any of his family,

so his estate was passed to a firm of local solicitors.

From what we've gathered,

he lived with his mother

until she passed away and also he was a recluse in his later years.

His mother, no, she was very nice.

She was always smartly dressed, immaculate.

She used to have the house decorated every 12 months.

She did everything for Christopher, she'd always have his meals ready.

She just adored him. It was a good mum and son relationship.

I went to the property and it was in a state of disrepair.

As no will was found, heir-hunting firm Finders

were called in to search for Mr Riggin's next of kin.

Fortunately, the solicitors passed on personal documents

found at Christopher's home.

The solicitors

on this case have informed us

that the estate value should be in the region of around £200,000,

so, obviously, it's a high-priority case for us,

we need to try and find some beneficiaries.

The first task - to try and establish

if Christopher was married.

It's a really unusual surname, to the point that there actually is

no Christopher D Riggin within the period that we're looking at,

so straightaway we know that he was a bachelor.

The next step is to try and search records

to trace Christopher's parents,

but immediately there's a complication.

We've been provided with the deceased's birth certificate

and we can see that the mother of Christopher David Riggin

was Maud Riggin, but she was actually formerly Shearn

on the certificate.

She hasn't actually mentioned a father.

It's quite unusual to not have a father.

Usually, when that were to happen,

it would be due to an illegitimate birth

whereby the mother was a spinster when the child was born

and there's no way of really knowing who the father is.

The certificate indicates that the mother was married previously,

but, obviously, she'd separated from the father,

whether they got divorced or not, we don't know,

but she subsequently had a child with another gentleman.

Already with mystery surrounding Christopher's parentage,

the heir hunters will only be able to build half a family tree

and trace heirs on Christopher's mother's side.

Ryan delves further and unearths Maud's marriage certificate

from 1937 to George Riggin, a civil servant.

He was 41 when they married and she was 27,

but she was a domestic servant,

it's a profession where illegitimate births were more prevalent

than some other professions.

Among the papers Ryan has been given

is a letter Christopher wrote to one of his mother's friends.

He's used the electoral registers to find out more

about his mother's life before he came along.

It seems Christopher was also using records to get answers

that he was never given by his family.

He's established that his mum was living with her husband

up until the Second World War.

1938 and 1939 registers,

"They continue living together at the same address,"

meaning his mother and her husband.

Then he says, "Now comes the hiatus caused by the war."

No electoral registers were taken throughout World War II,

so he continued researching his mother's movements after the war,

looking for clues as to who his father could be.

He goes on to mention in 1945 that his mother

was now separated from her husband

and is living near to some of her family.

In one of the last paragraphs, he says,

"Frankly, I consider it extremely unlikely that George Riggin

"was my biological father.

"It would take DNA evidence to convince me otherwise."

I guess he never really got the answers

as to who his father really was.

Ryan is keen to see if his mother Maud had any other children,

as they would be the first in line to inherit from his estate.

Can I just ask you a question?

Cos this is, obviously, one of those situations

where he wasn't born illegitimately, because she was married to him.

I think she was obviously divorced or separated.

-He's a father...

-Yeah.

-..and then you've got whoever his father was...

-Yeah.

-..plus any others.

-Yeah.

When we refer to half-blood, siblings of the deceased,

for example, it means that they only share one common parent.

In the case of Christopher Riggin,

the one common parent was the mother.

It means that everybody else

who would be considered as a sibling,

should be considered as a half-blood,

because we don't know who the father was to that person.

Ryan discovers that Maud did have a second son, Michael Riggin,

but, again, no father is listed on the birth certificate.

He sadly only lived for four days.

With no living brothers or sisters,

the search for Christopher's heirs

has now moved to his aunts and uncles.

Well, this is the bit where it gets interesting, really,

because we can delve a bit further back into the history of the family.

We can go across along the maternal side of the family

and try and hopefully find some beneficiaries.

I've just found the deceased's mother on the 1911 census

with her parents.

The copy of her marriage certificate says her father was William Shearn.

William Shearn, a coal miner, marries Beatrice.

They've been married about seven years, they've had three children.

Obviously, one of those is the deceased's mother.

There's another child mentioned on the census as well,

her name is Annie Shearn,

so she would have been a sister of the deceased's mother.

The Shearn family were living in the coal-mining community

in Wakefield.

During William Shearn's life in the early 1900s,

coal mining was a thriving industry,

but conditions were hazardous.

From 1900 to 1909, nearly 20,000 miners were killed or injured.

William Shearn's early working life in the Wakefield district

would have been very hand-to-mouth.

He would've been working in a coal mine

where there would've been no machinery,

he would've been working with hand tools.

It was a very exhausting job.

They would've had a very poor diet.

Housing itself - two-up, two-down terraced if they were lucky.

There wouldn't have been an indoor toilet, that would've been outside

and shared with a number of other people.

It's not a very brilliant life, to be honest.

Ryan and the team now need to check the 1911 census

and see if any more children were born after it was compiled.

We can do a birth search from 1911 onwards until roughly

when the deceased's maternal grandmother, in this case,

was about aged 45.

It looks as though there's properly five more siblings

of the deceased's mother.

So, we're looking at maybe, so far,

seven aunts and uncles on the maternal side.

Ryan now needs more manpower and for his team to focus

on the aunts and uncles one by one.

The census is there.

Can I just give you a line of this?

This is the main tree, so you can have a copy of that.

There's a daughter called Annie, there's a mystery one.

So, if you want to do John and Lucy and Suzanne,

if you can do Renee...

And there's a complication surrounding one of the aunts

listed on the census.

Mysteriously, her birth certificate is missing from the records.

I'm hoping that I can find who this missing person is,

that had been born prior to 1911.

While they're working in the office,

the heir hunters' travelling researcher is out on the road,

to give them on-the-ground support when they need it.

There are a lot of interesting characters that we do meet.

Our biggest problem when we go to some villages

is trying to find the house itself.

Every year in Britain,

thousands of people get a surprise knock on the door

from the heir hunters.

It just seems a big miracle,

so, you know, nobody ever thinks this sort of thing happens.

Today, we've got details of two estates

on the Treasury Solicitor's bona vacantia list

that are yet to be claimed.

The first case is Gerald Barber, who died in Oxford

on the 14th of August 2004, aged 72.

He was born on the 13th of May 1932, also in Oxford.

The name Barber is of French origin

and surnames originally reflected occupations,

so one of his ancestors may have been a barber.

Could there still be family links to Gerald in Oxford?

Does his name mean anything to you?

Could you be the beneficiary they're looking for?

Next, the case of Margaret Mary Addis,

who was born in Mitchelstown, Cork, in Ireland

on the 5th of May 1893.

She died in Slough, Berkshire, aged 92, on the 10th of February 1986.

Margaret's husband was Harold Stephen Addis,

who died in Eton, Berkshire, in 1951, aged 62.

Her maiden name was O'Keeffe

and it's believed she had brothers and sisters.

Could there be a connection to Margaret in either Ireland,

Slough or Eton?

If you think you might be related to either of these people,

you would need to make a claim on their estate through

the Government Legal Department.

If so, you could have thousands of pounds coming your way.

In the small village of Shipdham, in Norfolk,

the heir hunters are trying to find out more

about the life of mysterious Stephen Chenery,

who grew up in the 1930s and '40s.

Well, Steve, he was one in a million, I mean,

you don't meet people like him every day, do you?

He was just a one-off.

He was a very kind man, there is no doubt about that.

A man that time forgot.

Time had passed him by.

I can remember sitting with him in front of his fire

in the light of a paraffin lamp and, I mean,

who uses paraffin lamps now?

Not many people, but that was Steve.

The heir hunters search for his family has discovered

that Stephen lived on the village green all his life

with his parents and two sisters.

His parents, I think they were very close, very close, yeah, yeah.

His mother especially.

All I know is...ever knew was his sister Nora

and the other sister Ivy.

One was a very...seemed a very posh lady

and the other one was very down-to-earth.

Oh, they adored him.

I think, how my mum talked, they all adored him and he was spoilt.

In 1939, when Stephen was 12, World War II broke out.

Conscription came in and all men and boys over the age of 18

were expected to register,

but for many families this was a terrifying prospect.

The social implications of not registering for conscription

would have been quite extreme

because you'd have been outlawed by your own community.

Other people - your neighbours' children - are listed.

"Why aren't you going?"

And after the war, it would have got even worse

because he didn't do his bit.

So I would suggest that anybody who actively avoided conscription

after the war was not popular.

Despite the severe penalties, Frederick Chenery didn't want

to risk his own son enduring similar frightening experiences to his own.

So he made a remarkable decision.

The theory is that something possibly could've happened

to his father during the Great War.

And it was so horrific that I don't think he wanted the same

happening to Steve.

And I although Steve would've only been able to serve

in the end of the Second World War, I think whatever old Mr Chenery saw,

that it was enough to stop him letting Steve be called up.

So he just sent him away from the house

and he was told he had to live in the woods.

No-one knows at what age Stephen lived in the woods from or until,

but perhaps his father believed he was taking every precaution

to try and save his life and his sanity.

There was a big fear in the villages that you might get called up

from the age of 16 and I think that old Mr Chenery's fear

of having him sent off was enough to make them say no.

"You don't exist. Go and live in the woods.

"That way you can't be called up."

Stephen's friends believed he lived in the woods for more than two years

and wasn't seen at all during this time.

I think you'll find that this is the area.

This is where he said that he used to live.

Probably it's all right on a summer's day

but on a winter's day or a cold day, I wouldn't want to live out here.

For Stephen, as a young lad, it must've been very, very hard

because he would've had to have probably shot what he ate.

He wasn't supposed to be seen but I think it was more to keep

the authorities from knowing he existed rather than from neighbours.

Stephen eventually moved back home,

but in some way his father's eccentric plan worked.

He never went to war. No-one did seem to be bothered about

him not going to war.

I never did hear any reason why he didn't, you know, from other people

why he didn't go to war

and I never did hear of anybody talk about it much.

Back in the offices of Fraser & Fraser and the team have

been researching Stephen's mother - Rosa Baker's side of the family.

Out of three siblings, only one had any children.

Rosa's sister Ellen, she married a Stephen Bradshaw

and went on to have three children.

All of those three children had passed away before the deceased

so we then had to look into their children.

On that stem we actually found a total of five heirs

so it was relatively small but we got in very quickly

and I think we spoke to them before every other company.

Next, the heir hunters had to try

and track down Stephen's father's family line

but this proved much more difficult.

Just because the deceased was born 1927.

He was born relatively late to be having uncles born 1866

so the likelihood of us getting a first cousin of the deceased on

this job was probably very unlikely, which is harder work for us.

It's a lot harder work because we're

not going to be able to phone someone up and them

to be able to give an account of who the deceased was or who his

parents were because the likelihood of them knowing him is very slim.

In the end, the team tracked down 34 heirs on the father's side,

making it 39 in total.

Probably the best reward of a case is locating the heir.

Essentially, that's what the job is.

If we don't find heirs,

then we're not going to be in business for very long.

One of them - a first cousin once removed - lives in

Barton, in Cambridgeshire.

The first approach, the gentleman walked up the path

and he was very relaxed, very chatty and very friendly

and came in and sat down.

And it very quickly became apparent he knew an awful lot about the

Chenery side of the family and he knew more than I did.

I think it was my mother's first cousin,

but I didn't know Stephen existed.

John was particularly intrigued to find a part of the family

he wasn't aware of.

It was incredibly interesting

because I've done research on my own family.

I've gone back four generations and written a book

and had it published, mainly for my two children.

Because if I hadn't had done it,

all that history would have been gone when I died.

So the Chenery line only came

into my line when my father married a Chenery.

The heir hunters don't know

when John will receive his windfall or how much it will be.

And John hasn't considered how he will spend this

out-of-the-blue inheritance.

I have no idea.

It's like counting your chickens before they're hatched.

No, I have no idea what I'm going to spend it on.

At the same time, Stephen was an old boy who lived in Norfolk and we're

not expecting any large amount of money from the inheritance.

The Chenerys are scattered all over Norfolk.

There must be at least 40 of us, but I'm not expecting a million.

It's just going to be exciting to receive it.

The bulk of any inheritance will come from the sale of any property.

When we're dealing with an estate where there's a property,

we often sell them either on the open market or in auction.

A lot of the properties that we have are, you know, unfortunately,

in not the best of conditions so that's something that a developer

would want to buy and auctions are the best place to find out.

Today, Andrew Fraser is overseeing the sale of Stephen's

burned-out house at auction.

We've gone with a very low guide price in order to track

the maximum amount of interest.

Although there is no planning permission in there's no guarantee

that you'll be able to build

anything other than what's already there.

The house is being sold at the Landmark Hotel in London.

The burnt out property that

we've got, which is lot number 83,

is one of the most interesting lots

in the whole catalogue.

As with all auction lots, the more roughed up they are, the better.

Buyers love to be able to add value.

That particular property has had a ton of interest.

I think we're guiding it around 50,000 and I thoroughly expect it

to go for at least twice that.

I'd like to save face and make sure

it sells for over and above the 75,000.

Anything over 100,000,

someone's paying a true premium for this site.

83. Lot 83 is Quarry View. I'm going to start the bidding at 75.

You want to come in at 80? 90. I'm doing 95. You want to say 100?

-It's gone up very quickly.

-Now give me 126 if you will, sir.

126 is bid. Give me 130 on the phone. 130. 131, yeah? 134 now.

Back to the telephone.

-MAN:

-135.

-135, even better. That's more than I was asking for.

For the first time, £135,000.

Second time £135,000. This is it.

It is going to go then for the third and final time for £135,000.

-Well done. On the phone at 135.

-It's been an excellent result.

That's significantly above where we would consider any developer

would want to be, given it has no planning permission and therefore

there's an awful lot of hope value now assigned to that purchase price.

The money from the sale will now be split between his 39 heirs.

As Stephen Chenery's legacy moves on, his friends and neighbours

will always cherish the memories they have of him.

My happy days were gone with all the children down the watery lane

watching him paint, watching him draw.

He was a really clever artist.

He was just a good friend of mine, really.

I really was probably as good a friend with him as anybody,

to be quite honest.

He was just could company, really, and everything we did together

and all the things he taught me.

He did teach me a lot, really, cos he was a clever man.

Steve was one of a kind.

He was a man that possibly that years ago there were quite a few

because they were village characters

but Stephen was one of the last of the few, I'm sure.

In London, heir hunting firm Finders are looking for beneficiaries for

Christopher David Riggin's estate.

And case manager Ryan Gregory's team have a mammoth task ahead

trying to track down his seven aunts and uncles in line to inherit.

This estate of Christopher David Riggin

has come into us by a firm of solicitors so they were able

to give us a good indication of how much it's worth.

We think it should be in the region of around £200,000.

After searches of birth, death and marriage records, they think their

search for two of Christopher's mother's family has paid off.

It's good news. We've managed to find a couple of beneficiaries,

I think.

These heirs appear to be aunts of the deceased.

We're looking at the sisters of the deceased's mother.

On standby on the road is travelling researcher Parmjit Thandi.

He goes all around the country meeting potential heirs

and has been doing the job for over two years.

What I enjoy most about this job is actually meeting

the people that we have to go and see.

And also I do get to see a lot of the country as well.

In the office, Ryan is calling one of the heirs -

Christopher's aunt, 85-year-old June.

Hello, is June Brown there, please? Hello there.

We're looking at the Shearn family tree.

Does that name ring a bell with you at all? It does.

Right, so your father was William Shearn and your mother

was Beatrice Allen.

Is your sister "Rene" still alive?

Renee. OK.

Just the two of you left, OK.

Yeah, sure.

Would you want me to call you back or is it OK to hang on?

-HE WHISPERS:

-She's gone to put her lunch in the oven.

Hello. Annie was the eldest, OK.

And then Maud would have been after that.

And there was Elizabeth as well. OK.

I think it was Elizabeth that we didn't have.

Right, OK, so that would kind of makes sense, then.

OK. Fantastic, OK.

Thanks so much, June. Cheers. Bye-bye.

The beneficiary I just spoke to was really helpful, really friendly.

I had a really nice chat with her.

She was able to give me some more details on the family.

We're kind of struggling to get any quick leads

on one of the maternal aunts

and she said that this maternal aunt called Aida M Shearn,

known as Margaret, may have been adopted out of the family.

When a blood relative is adopted out of the family

and into someone else's family,

that basically cuts off their inheritance from the birth family,

but it does also mean that they can

inherit from the family that they've been adopted into.

That means one less stem to research but the mysterious aunt Elizabeth

could still be a beneficiary and June had news on her too.

One of those she was able to clarify who the mystery person was

who was missing from the 1911 census.

The lady I spoke to did say that that person was called Elizabeth.

I just spoke with one of the aunts on the maternal side, so we're just

trying to figure out who this person was who was born in 1911.

-This one right here.

-They left a gap for him or her.

The lady I spoke to did mention an Elizabeth. Now, I've got the Shearn

births between 1903,

when they married in 1911, when this took place.

None of them were Elizabeth.

I did find one Elizabeth, but born pre-1903. Maybe that's her?

Can you print that off for me and I'll order that as well?

The team need to dig from before 1911 and look at Christopher's

grandparents William and Beatrice's life at this time for more clues.

Back in 1905, records show that Christopher's grandfather William

was already a miner in Wakefield.

He and Beatrice had married

two years earlier and had a child, Annie, but life was tough

and William, then 26,

was determined to do well for his family.

Around this time, Pennsylvania, in the USA, was

advertising for experienced miners to work in its new mines.

William Shearn would have been looking for new opportunities

to increase his wage packet and his quality of life.

And Pennsylvania and the anthracite coalfields there

could well have been one of them.

They would have been building new housing

so living standards should have been, hopefully,

a lot better at the time.

It looks like William upped sticks

and headed to Pennsylvania for a new job.

His young family followed shortly afterwards.

This is the shipping records which show the maternal grandmother,

Beatrice Shearn, going over with her baby daughter Annie.

That was in 1905, so not long after William settled over in America.

But life in the New World was not all the family had hoped for

and three years later, records finally shed light on

Christopher's missing aunt.

Now we've got another record of an incoming passenger list this time.

This is in 1908, so a few years later.

And this is the most interesting one for us.

It was actually Beatrice, William, along with the baby Annie

that they had and now this Elizabeth Shearn,

daughter that had been born in the States.

The life that they'd hoped for in Pennsylvania didn't quite

work out the way they'd hoped

and they missed the old life so coming back to West Yorkshire,

getting back in with wider family and also with colleagues

and other friends as well was probably something of a comfort.

I don't think that emigrating is the right thing for everybody.

Having now found birth records for Christopher's aunt Elizabeth in the

USA, if she was alive, she would be an heir to Christopher's estate.

We had no reason to suspect that the person missing

from the 1911 census was in fact born in the United States.

Birth records show William and Beatrice

went on to have six more children in the UK

and William carried on as a miner.

Working practices did improve

but life in the pits was still hazardous.

Sadly, we know 50 years later, after returning to West Yorkshire,

William actually died of pneumoconiosis,

or what we call miner's black lung.

It's a terminal condition and it was a very common one as well

and a very big killer of miners.

With the Shearn family tree now complete, the team have found

eight heirs to Christopher's estate.

The next day, Parmjit is sent to Yorkshire to meet some of the heirs

and explain the case to them.

Our biggest problem when we go to some villages is trying to find

the house itself because some of them tend to just have the name

and not any numbers on.

So you do spend a lot of time trying to locate the exact address.

June Brown is Christopher's youngest aunt,

born in 1930 and living in Leeds.

KNOCKING ON DOOR

-Hello, June. I'm Mr Thandi. Can I come in?

-Yes, dear.

-Thank you.

I want to explain to you why we're here.

-Yeah, it's about my nephew Christopher.

-Yes.

-Christopher David Riggin, who passed away on the 6th August.

-This year?

-This year.

-This year?

-This year.

Oh, has he been off for a long time?

I honestly don't know what he died of, but the office will do.

We can always ring the office later and they'll tell you

what he passed away.

I can just remember a little bit when he was small,

but for the past few years,

we haven't seen much of him, really, at all.

When he was young, he wasn't interested in lots of storybooks.

He preferred to look through an encyclopaedia.

He was intelligent.

Can I have your signature there, please, June?

With him being a lot younger than me, you don't think that

you're going to outlive somebody like that, do you?

-You will hear from us, yep.

-OK.

-Thank you.

'OK, I've just seen my first beneficiary who signed up with us'

and agreed for us to look after this matter for her behalf.

And she's also given us further information which helped us fill the

blanks in our family tree for this matter, so it's been really useful.

Parmjit is now on his way to see June's older sister -

the seventh child of William and Beatrice.

This one I believe has come through solicitors to us today.

So there hopefully should be no competition

as this came directly to us.

She was born in 1927 and lives in West Yorkshire.

Eileen Lawrence - Christopher's cousin -

and the daughter of the American aunt Elizabeth and her husband

have both travelled from Nottingham to be here for Parmjit's visit.

-Christopher was quite shy.

-Yes, he was a very private person, actually.

-So he never really...

-Didn't have many friends.

-He didn't have much to do.

-No, never married, of course.

And lived all his life in that little house in Halifax.

He's died alone, hasn't he?

I mean, I've had a lot in my lifetime, deaths, anyway.

49 years next week since my husband died. Well, what do I want?

I mean, I'm 88. I mean, 88 and a half.

So, I didn't know what to think. I don't know what to think.

Eileen has firm memories of Christopher as a child.

He used to come on holiday with us with his mum.

His mum really spoiled him because he was her only child.

But after that, as he grew up,

he just sort of disappeared out of our life.

-Thank you.

-All right, love, thanks ever so much.

That was very successful and luckily there was another beneficiary.

Her niece also turned up at the same address, which remains to sign, so

it's virtually two birds with one stone, it's brilliant.

But Parmjit's work still isn't done. Now he has to head to York.

The time now, it's just gone 7.10.

We have to see the last two beneficiaries on our list for today.

They are maternal cousins of the deceased - brother and sister.

Hello, Mark. It's Mr Thandi. Nice to meet you.

I couldn't believe it when they rang up and said that they got in touch

with us about some inheritance, they wanted to get in touch

about the family tree.

So just one of them things. I never expected it coming to us.

If we do inherit a bit of money, I'm sure my partner and kids

will be wanting a holiday.

Mortgage is due to be paid off

so hopefully get a bit of that paid off.

I have two horses and I need a new horsebox

so some of it will probably go towards that.

And then... I don't know, really, just other little things.

Might be worth going through the family tree to see what else

we can find out.

We've had a fantastic day.

We've signed up two more

beneficiaries that we've seen at this house.

I'm starving now, it's been a long day and I'm looking forward

to having a bite now when I get somewhere close enough to eat.

Overall, the team are happy they've been able to find

eight beneficiaries for Christopher Riggin's estate,

which is estimated to be worth £200,000.

We're just preparing a report to go over to the solicitors

and a good job from everybody involved.

Christopher's legacy lives on through the memories

of his family and neighbours.

I just think is sad when you...

another member of your family has gone.

It...

..puts everything in perspective.

Yeah, he's going to be missed. He will be missed.