Squirell/Stewart Heir Hunters

Heir hunters specialise in tracing the relatives

of people who have died without leaving a will.

Their work involves painstaking investigation.

I'm hoping we can find someone who knew him

and perhaps knew where he moved to.

They inform family members about relatives they may never have known.

These kids could all be right, all be wrong, or half and half!

And sometimes they give people a whole new perspective on their past.

We've got family we didn't even know we had. Why?

But most of all, they tell people of an unexpected windfall.

Could the heir hunters be knocking at your door?

Coming up: the two-year search for an elusive heir

build to a climax.

He exists! He's alive! He's in Manchester!

A huge family tree

means the search for heirs reaches far and wide.

We either interviewed or sent out over 70 family questionnaires.

Plus how you could be entitled to inherit unclaimed estates held by the Treasury.

Could a fortune be coming your way?

It's a Wednesday morning,

and the team at Celtic Research are desperately trying to complete a case

that's preoccupied them for over two years.

Case manager Saul Marks is on a mission

to track down one final heir who has remained elusive throughout this investigation.

We've now managed to sign up all the heirs

on this estate, bar one.

There's one gentleman left to find.

Having exhausted all other options,

Saul's only hope rests on a visit to the Manchester street

where the heir, David Squirell, lived some time ago.

We don't know when he was living at this address in Manchester.

But it appears that there are actually two addresses

on the same street, where this gentleman may have lived.

And we are now on that street

and hopefully going to try and establish

whether he still lives at either of them or not.

He's probably not here now, so I'm hoping that we can find someone who knew him

and perhaps knew where he moved to.

The case Saul and the team have been working so hard to solve

is that of Harold Squirell.

While Squirell is a name usually associated with Suffolk,

Harold died in Macclesfield, Cheshire, in 2002 without leaving a will.

The case was advertised with a value of £50,000,

and as the team are working for a percentage of the estate,

they need to get the case wrapped up.

Harold died at the relatively young age of 53,

and with no known relatives,

his details were published on the Treasury solicitor's list

of unclaimed estates

where it sat unsolved for eight years.

Harold lived in the village of Gawsworth, near Macclesfield.

No photographs remain of Harold,

but neighbour Joan Massey knew him and his family for many years.

He was always, it seemed to us, a bit of a loner.

I think Harold went working in the butcher's shop when he left school.

But I think Harold would have preferred

to have gone into more technical things.

The passing of Harold's mother, Hilda,

some years after that of his father,

had a profound impact on him.

It was really tragic how Harold went.

He went just like a hermit after his mother died.

He started going into himself

and into a recluse, then.

But the heartbroken Harold developed a passion that took Joan and other locals by surprise.

Harold started keeping these big birds,

these macaws and things.

He equipped the bedroom to have them in.

But he was very happy, Harold was, with these birds, yes.

And then he had his first dog.

I think that was called Bruce.

He loved his dogs.

They were his companions, then. Yes.

Should heirs be found, Harold's £50,000 estate

could make a huge difference to their lives.

But Saul sensed from the outset that tracking down living relatives

would be no easy task.

You'd have thought with an unusual name like Squirell,

that it would be a fairly easy case to solve.

But the fact that the deceased died ten years ago

and it was clearly worth quite a bit of money,

suggested that there were likely to be problems with the research.

It wasn't going to be straightforward from the beginning.

When Saul and the team began working this case in 2010,

they quickly established that Harold was unmarried

and had no children.

As his parents had also passed away,

the team would need to look to the wider family

if they were to find living descendants.

The deceased's mother, Hilda Farrar,

only had one brother, Thomas Farrar.

But he died as a bachelor

so we could immediately rule out the chance of any maternal heirs on this case at all.

This meant that if the team were to find heirs,

they would come from Harold's father's side of the family.

Saul had established that Harold's father was Alfred Harry Squirell.

But then he hit a brick wall.

Although we'd found Alfred Harry Squirell's birth,

we couldn't really go any further than that.

We knew his mother's maiden name was Smith,

but we couldn't find a marriage of a Squirell to a Smith.

That stumped us for quite a while.

What we actually did,

was we got hold of a copy of his birth certificate

and that showed us that his parents

were George Squirell and Nellie Smith.

However, there was still no marriage for these people.

This was a blow.

If the team were to find heirs,

the marriage certificate would be crucial in proving their connection to the deceased.

Unbowed, Saul turned to the 1911 census.

I didn't find a George and a Nellie,

but I found a George and an Ellen.

Nellie is an old-fashioned diminutive for Ellen.

Given that these people were the right age,

living in the right place,

and they were the only George and Ellen Squirell together,

I figured they must be the deceased's grandparents.

Discovering Ellen was a breakthrough of sorts,

but there was more bad news in store for Saul and the team.

One thing the census said was that George and Ellen had been married for 11 years.

And yet still we couldn't find any marriage listing for them at all.

At this point, I got a bit desperate,

and I threw the Squirell family into a search engine

to see what might come of it.

Which is always a good last resort, sometimes.

What I found surprised me greatly.

There was a group of people

researching the Squirell family and Squirell surname in Essex and Suffolk

who were, by all accounts, very distantly related to the deceased.

But there were so many of them that had looked into the Squirell ancestry,

they'd formed an online group and forum called The Squirell research group.

Having reached a dead end,

Saul's chance discovery of the Squirell research group

was an extraordinary stroke of luck

that could help kick-start the team's search for Squirell heirs.

One member of this group is Martin York,

who started looking into his family history 30 years ago.

After a family reunion in 1998,

the Squirell research group was born.

He's connected to the Squirells through his maternal family.

The aims of the Squirell research group are to try and document and link

everybody with the name Squirell that's ever lived

that's of English origin.

I was quite surprised but also very pleased to hear from Saul Marks.

We consider ourselves decent amateurs

but none of us have actually done it for a living.

And so it was quite a pleasant surprise to find that you could help somebody in these circumstances.

But would the scope of this amateur genealogy group

live up to the team's heir-hunting requirements?

Saul Marks had found Harold Squirell's grandparents

and they were supposedly George Squirell and Ellen Squirell.

Nee Smith.

But there was no marriage for this couple

and so without a marriage,

he had no idea if any siblings

existed at all.

From our own researches on the Squirell research group,

we knew that there was a couple called George Squirell and Ellen

and they had several children

but the mother's maiden name at birth registrations

was given under various names.

This fresh perspective opened up some intriguing possibilities

for Saul and the team.

If Alfred did have siblings, who would be Harold's aunts and uncles,

then either they or their descendants

would be heir to Harold's £50,000 estate.

But there were still big question marks hanging over the research,

not least why Harold's grandmother Ellen

went by several different surnames.

The problems of researching when people change their names

is always difficult.

And when we were dealing with this family,

we had the same problems that Saul faced,

to a degree, in that we couldn't prove anything categorically.

Martin knew that the deceased's father appeared to have several siblings.

But that their mother Ellen was registering them using different maiden names.

Saul would need a good explanation if any future application to the Treasury solicitor

was to be successful.

As amateur genealogists doing a one name study,

our approach was different to that which Saul would have undertaken

because we were looking at a family name in total.

Which meant that we were comparing birth registrations, marriage registrations, death registrations

and trying to fit these together,

for whole groups of people.

With this unique perspective over the Squirell family,

the Squirell research group could play a key role

in the success of this case.

What was their take on the family?

We believe that the siblings of Alfred Harry

were indeed siblings because having such an overview

of the whole Squirell name,

we had no other candidates

who could possibly be the parents.

So even though the family were using different maiden names

on birth registrations,

we felt that they must be the same couple.

And it was interesting to note that three or four of the children

were registered with the maiden name of the mother as Stowe.

Which, indeed, was actually the maiden name of Ellen's mother.

So that gave a clue as to the real identity of these children.

In the absence of George and Ellen's marriage certificate,

Martin's explanation would hopefully enable Saul and the team

to prove any claim to the Treasury solicitor.

Once we had confirmation that this was the right family as far as we could prove it,

we started working the case as we would do our normal cases.

With Martin's help, the team could now see that Alfred

was, in fact, one of nine.

But six of his siblings died without children.

That meant all hope rested on Alfred's oldest brothers,

James and George.

And fortunately, they were in luck.

Their research showed 12 potential heirs on James's stem

and a further two descended from George.

Today, Saul's in Manchester,

trying to track down one of those potential heirs, David Squirell.

He's a grandson of George and Alfred's first cousin once removed.

My name's Saul Marks. I work for a company called Celtic Research.

We trace the next of kin of people who have died without leaving a will.

I'm looking for a gentleman who used to live in Flat 3, David Squirell.

He's not here now.

The new tenant confirms that David no longer lives here.

But will he be able to help Saul further the investigation?

Do you know where he's gone? Have you heard of him?

I haven't heard from him at all, no.

Do you have any forwarding address for him or number?

Do you know anything about him? I'm trying to get hold of him.

Wonderful. You're a star. Thank you so much. Cheers.

He's obtained a phone number for the company who lets out the flat,

and calls straightaway,

hoping they'll have information about David's whereabouts.

I'm trying to trace a gentleman who used to live in two of your properties

up to just a few years ago.

Now, this gentleman, a cousin of his has passed away

and he would stand to inherit a portion of his cousin's estate.

So we're keen to speak to him.

But will they be willing to help Saul trace this long-lost Squirell heir?

As the hunt continues, things are looking up for Saul.

He exists! He's alive! He's in Manchester!

Senior case manager Tony Pledger's illustrious career

at probate research firm Fraser & Fraser

has spanned 42 long years.

But all good things must end.

We're going to miss Tony.

We're all going to miss Tony.

It's very hard when you've had staff who've been around as long as Tony.

Of course we're going to miss him.

There's a new style of cases

and we work now on computers.

Everything seems to fall out very easy.

But when you do get stuck, this is when the old hands really come in.

It's stuff like that which is irreplaceable, really.

One of the last cases Tony was around for

was that of Josephine Stewart.

Her death in 2008 gave little hint of the enormous challenges

the team would face finding heirs to this £77,000 estate.

You're probably looking for four or five different surnames

and someone called Jim, James, Jimmy.

And he could be anywhere. England, Scotland, Wales or America.

Almost an impossible task.

Josephine Stewart, also known as Jo,

died on 21 March 2008

at the Royal Infirmary in Glasgow.

She was 86 years old.

Neighbour of many years Joan Gilfilen

remembers Jo and her husband fondly.

Good neighbours. They're missed.

Good neighbours.

I have good memories of them.

When I first met Josephine, she would be in her 50s.

She was a very slim person.

And Bill was very slim.

Very handsome couple, actually.

Josephine and Bill were particularly keen gardeners

and that's how Joan came to know them better in the early years.

Josephine had a nice plot of roses.

Beautiful roses.

Bill was so particular

about his hedge.

Dead flat.

The hedges were cut perfectly

and they had to go a certain way.

While house proud, this didn't stop them getting away to enjoy exciting holidays together.

They used to love going down to the south coast of England.

And various places in England on holiday.

They had no children, no family,

so they were free to do whatever they wanted.

And that's what they did.

And we used to compare notes

and I used to say, "Where are you going this year?"

"Have you booked up?" "Yes, we've booked up." "Where are you going?"

As Josephine passed away in Scotland,

senior researcher Tony Pledger

discovered the case through a historic Scottish body

created in 1837.

The QLTR is the Queen Lord Treasurer's Remembrancer department

of the Scottish parliament.

They advertise the equivalent of Bona Vacantia matters in Scotland.

Unlike the Treasury's Bona Vacantia list, which is published weekly,

QLTR cases are released quarterly.

There are some benefits to this system for heir hunters like Tony.

The QLTR give much more initial information,

including the home address of the deceased

so you can go straight to enquiring of neighbours

for family information.

As opposed to an English matter where you have to figure out where the person was living.

The advertised value of this case was a lucrative £77,000.

So Tony knew he'd have to move fast to stay ahead of the competition.

We sent somebody to Glasgow to get the initial certificates.

And our researcher in Edinburgh was researching the Scottish records

so we're liaising between the two.

We're receiving information from our Scottish agent

and we're passing it on to our researcher in Glasgow.

So it's a sort of three-way communication.

Josephine's parents were John McLaren and Mary Casey.

The couple had three other children.

This was welcome news, because if these siblings were alive,

They would be heirs to Josephine's estate.

But the team quickly realised they were out of luck.

Unfortunately, we established that there were no living brothers or sisters

or their descendants.

With Josephine's siblings having passed on,

the team would need to turn their attention to the wider family.

As this involves tracing aunts and uncles,

this is a development that almost always means a lot of work for the team.

But on this case, they faced even greater challenges,

because the name McLaren was not an easy one to research.

The father of the deceased, the name that he had when he was born,

or the name given at birth,

is recorded differently to the spelling on the marriage record

and other members of his family have been variously recorded as different spellings

of McLaren.

McLaren and McLernon,

there are many different ways you can write the name.

He could have used any one of those throughout his life

so we have several possibilities.

Although it seems the spelling of his surname varied,

on Josephine's birth certificate her father is listed as John McLaren.

The certificate also records his profession as a motor car driver.

An intriguing title from an era

when the motor car was still in its infancy.

By the early 20th century,

the age of the motor car had well and truly arrived.

And drivers, or chauffeurs,

were needed to pilot these new-fangled machines.

John, whose father had worked as a coachman,

was one of the men who entered this brave new world.

In one generation,

the careers of this father and son

would reflect just how this transportation would evolve

and eventually rule the road.

The coach had been going for centuries.

Coaches transported people to China

or right across Europe.

And certainly in the Americas, North America,

Wells Fargo, the stage coaches were famous for delivering the mail.

In this country, the path to becoming a coachman

was a more humble journey.

You'd suspect that coachmen started off working for maybe a company delivering something.

Delivering beer, or delivering coal or furniture.

They would have learned the trade then and gained a reputation.

The world was very much a smaller place, I suppose.

Someone's name was very important. That's why they put their name on the coach side.

If you were with a big estate,

you'd probably spend a long period working for a large estate

certainly if your boss,

the lord of the manor, was good to you,

there would be a loyalty there.

But while the McLaren family certificates

might suggest a switch from coach to car,

the reality was rather more haphazard.

The transition from horse-drawn vehicles

where coachmen were in charge

to the motor vehicle took a long time to develop. It didn't happen overnight.

And there was a great confusion on the roads

where there were horse-drawn vehicles, whether it was one person driving a horse and trap,

or a coach delivering items, or people on a journey,

they were on the same road with the early motor vehicles.

And there weren't many rules or regulations.

There wasn't a highway code, for example,

so they had to make it work.

Of course, there wasn't a lot of traffic.

So it was complicated.

By the time our deceased Josephine Stewart was born in 1921,

her father John and other motor car drivers

were well on their way to dominating our roads for good.

Back in London, it was all hands on deck

as the team were looking to the wider family for heirs to Josephine's £77,000 estate.

Various spellings of the McLaren surname were making life difficult for them.

Once you discover that there is a misspelling,

you've got to cover those and any others that might not have been thought of.

It's down to the fact that if it has O or A or E in it,

they can be misread, mis-written and mis-indexed.

However, the team were about to make a surprising discovery

that could have profound implications for the hunt.

It turned out that the mother of the deceased had been married twice

and that the deceased was from her second marriage

and so the children of her first marriage

would be half-brothers of the deceased but therefore entitled.

Having thought that the immediate family were eliminated from the hunt,

the existence of five half-siblings from Josephine's mother's first marriage

changed everything.

If alive, these family members would be heirs,

not relatives from the wider family they were working so hard to trace.

Tony knew only too well

how important it was to trace these potential heirs.

We don't want to carry out a load of research,

find a load of cousins, only to find out that way back in the research,

we'd missed an illegitimate child of the mother

as a half-sibling of the deceased.

You want to try and get all the births, look at the dates,

make sure there's no room for anyone else to fit in there

and to try and cover the whole of the person's life.

This unexpected development may have opened up the possibility

of immediate family after all.

But having wasted valuable time in the hunt for the wider family,

would the competition have got to them first?

Having so far struggled to find any living relatives whatsoever,

there are surprises in store for Tony.

It went along very well, but because of the size of the family,

you can't do everything at once.

Heir hunters use their specialist skills

to track down thousands of rightful beneficiaries every year.

But not all cases can be cracked

and thousands sit unsolved on the Treasury Solicitor's list.

Cases will stay on the unclaimed list

for a period of 12 years from the date the administration has been completed.

That's the period of time that people still can come forward

and claim the estate.

Today we're focusing on two cases

that have so far eluded the heir hunters.

Could you be the beneficiary they've been looking for?

Sidney Thomas Capel died on 29 April 2003 in Bristol.

So far, the heir hunters have struggled

to find out any more information about Sidney or his family.

Could you be related to Sidney?

Could you be in line to inherit a share of his estate?

Next is the case of Maria Bridget Howling.

She died on 18 September 2000

in the district of Canterbury with Swale, Kent.

Did you know Maria?

Could you be due a share of her legacy?

Both Sidney and Maria's estates remain unclaimed.

If no-one comes forward,

their money will go to the government.

Money raised through Bona Vacantia ultimately goes to the general Exchequer.

To benefit the country as a whole.

But it's important to remember that the Crown

doesn't want to grab all the estates it possibly can.

It wants kin to be found

and that's what we work very hard to do.

Here are those names once again.

If you're one of their long-lost relatives,

you could have a windfall coming your way.

The team at Celtic Research

are looking for heirs to the £50,000 estate of Harold Squirell,

still unclaimed after eight years.

It's hard work. Everything on this case is hard work

but we're going to get this guy if it kills us!

Harold died in 2002 in the village of Gawsworth, Cheshire,

aged just 53.

No photographs remain of Harold,

but villager Joan Massey knew him for many years.

She recalls how Harold reacted to his mother's failing health.

He left his job at the butcher's to be with his mother.

And gradually, Hilda got a bit too... She needed more care.

So eventually, she came into Trinity where I worked.

Despite being deeply affected by the death of his parents,

Joan remembers him as a transformed character later in life.

Harold enjoyed his freedom.

A sense of looking after his parents had gone.

Harold was free to do what he liked.

Harold had a train. He had a track in the garden.

This train set.

And he used to go to the meetings, I believe, sometimes.

With help from amateur genealogists, the Squirell Research Group,

the team discovered 17 potential heirs to Harold's estate.

Today, case manager Saul Marks is in Manchester

in a last-ditch bid to contact one of them, David Squirell.

He's proved difficult to trace,

but finally, Saul's making some progress.

Lovely lady at the property letting company.

She confirmed he's not at either of these two properties any more,

which is what we'd suspected right from the off.

She confirmed that he's not a tenant of theirs any longer.

But they do have a file for him

and she's going to give him a call

and hopefully pass our details on.

All I have to do is sit and wait.

For Saul, this breakthrough has made him ever eager

to sign up this heir, and after just one hour of waiting,

the suspense proves too much.

Right. I'm going to ring this lady back.

Hi. It's Saul Marks. We spoke a little earlier on.

So the number you have for him was accurate

and you were able to...

Wow. That's...

That really is above and beyond the call of duty. Thank you so much.

I'm going to push the boundaries here.

Is it local to Manchester?

OK. Fine. So I won't leave the area, then.

My colleague and I will go for lunch and hope he rings me this afternoon or evening.

She spoke to him! He exists!

He's alive! He's in Manchester!

The man Saul is looking for

is a grandson of Harold's uncle George.

As one of 17 potential heirs,

he would be entitled to a share of Harold's estate

which is estimated at £50,000.

But unless the team can track him down,

there'll be no inheritance and the case won't be finished.

After a long wait in the car in Manchester,

things aren't looking good.

It's been four and a half hours now

since I spoke to the lady at the property letting company

the second time.

I've spent a very rainy afternoon in Manchester.

And so far, Mr Squirell hasn't rung.

Obviously it would have been quite a shock for him to receive a phone call from her,

so who can blame him for taking his time in thinking about how to respond.

But nevertheless I was hoping it would all be sorted out today,

but it's now half past seven at night

and we're probably going to have to call it a day, I think.

I imagine fairly soon.

Let's just hope that he takes his time and when he feels comfortable

he'll pick up the phone and hopefully agree to sign with us.

It's six weeks later

and finally the team's efforts to trace David Squirell

have been rewarded.

Following the involvement of the lady from the Housing Association

David Squirell did finally get in touch with us

and he did sign a contract with us.

So finally we're able to say that we have all the heirs in the Squirell estate.

Another of these 17 heirs is Irene Squirell,

whose husband Donald was a cousin of Harold, the deceased.

Before he died,

I knew nothing whatsoever, and neither did my husband,

about Harold Squirell.

But now I want to know more about him.

I will be doing some research

and finding out as much as I possibly can about him.

And it's great that I've got a little bit of money to do it with.

I'd have loved to have met him.

He was part of the Squirell clan.

And yes, I love each and every one of them.

Irene is another Squirell genealogist

who has faced her own frustrations while looking into the family tree.

I've had a lot of people helping me,

even a gentleman from Australia.

Helping me get this tree together.

It's a very, very difficult tree.

The Squirells are difficult to pin down.

Irene suspects Harold's estrangement from other Squirells

is related to his father's move to Macclesfield,

away from the rest of the family.

The Squirell family have been farming within the Essex and Suffolk border

for generations.

So why he moved up to Macclesfield, I have no idea.

I think that the father of Harold Squirell was very unusual

to have moved away.

Especially as far as he did, in those days.

Because people just didn't move too far away.

For Saul, it's incredibly satisfying to know that after two years' hard graft,

the team have finally been able to put this case to bed.

It really was great to have a very satisfactory conclusion to this case.

It really was a rarity to come across the Squirell Research Group.

Groups like that aren't necessarily rare in themselves,

but the detail and quality of their work

was very useful.

For Martin of the Squirell Research Group,

aiding an heir hunter has brought its own perks.

We're all very pleased. Our researchers benefitted not just Saul,

to solve his genealogical questions, as it were,

but also obviously it will be of great benefit

to any recipients of Harold's estate.

So it's nice to have had a part in that,

and to also presumably have put members of the family back in touch with each other.

Having now submitted a claim to the Treasury,

there's even more good news for the firm and the heirs.

The Treasury admitted the claim

and when they did so, they gave us an idea of the approximate value of the estate.

We were expecting it to come back at about 50,000.

What they actually said is that the estate is worth about £129,000.

Which was a very pleasant surprise, to say the least.

We'd done a lot of work on this

and it turns out that the heirs and ourselves

will all make a lot more money than we were expecting.

At the offices of heir hunting firm Fraser & Fraser in London,

the team's research into the case of Josephine Stewart

had initially eliminated immediate family.

But the discovery of five half siblings looked set to change all that.

The marriage records, the mother was married before.

She married the father of the deceased. There were children from that marriage.

Josephine and her husband Bill

lived in a quite suburb of Glasgow for over 30 years

where they were well-known members of the community.

Neighbour Joan Gilfilen recalls warmly their priorities in life.

Their home. Their garden.

And travel.

That just typifies what they were.

And they enjoyed their life.

They were very happy together.

But in later years,

Josephine was left housebound by her failing health

and relied on ever-dutiful Bill all the more.

He was always hurrying.

Because he had to get back for Jo.

That's how close they were together.

In London, the team's initial research into Josephine's family

had ruled out immediate family

and their hunt for heirs to her £77,000 estate

had focused instead on the wider family.

This was proving a huge challenge

due to various spellings of the surname McLaren.

But the discovery of five half siblings

meant that should living relatives be found,

they would be entitled heirs

and the research into the wider family would no longer be relevant.

It was vital Tony and the team traced these half siblings as soon as possible.

You want to get all of the births, look at all the dates,

make sure there's no room for anyone else to fit in there.

Frustratingly for the team,

all five half siblings had died

and had no children.

So the search for heirs from the wider family was back on.

But with the spelling of Josephine's father's surname McLaren

varying on records,

finding his siblings was proving extremely difficult.

The variations in the name can cause problems.

Because the mis-spelling of the name

would be recorded in a different position in national indexes

as to the correct spelling.

You've got to try and cover all those mis-spellings.

However, after hours of painstaking searches through records,

the team had finally made some progress.

The father of the deceased had seven siblings.

They were all born in Glasgow from about 1876 through to the mid 1880s.

I know that when one of the brothers of the father died,

the mother was the informant, and she was illiterate at the time.

The discovery of seven paternal aunts and uncles

was a major breakthrough in the research.

But the team were then faced with a new hurdle to overcome.

Josephine's aunts and uncles had all been born over a century earlier,

which meant any living descendants

would be once or twice removed.

Veteran Tony knew a quirk in the Scottish record system

which might help them trace heirs on the mother's side of the family.

Usually difficult as women get married and change surnames.

It's easier to research women's names in Scotland

because they are recorded males and females, two separate books,

and so you don't have to worry about the women getting married and changing their surname.

Provided the name's good initially,

you go straight for their death under the name they were born with

and when you get the certificate,

you then find all the people she was married to.

Thanks to Tony's experience,

the team made swift progress on the maternal side.

They established that the deceased's mother, Mary Casey,

had one brother and two sisters

all of whom had long since died.

All three had children,

but again, all had passed away.

We were then able to see that as there were no first cousins of the deceased

it would be first cousins once removed, of which there were 60.

Having identified the cousins once removed,

the team set about contacting the potential heirs

and confirming that all of their research was correct.

Once we'd established kin, after that it went along very well.

But because of the size of the family,

you can't do everything at once.

With such a big family it does take proportionately longer.

On the father's side of the family,

the team's meticulous searching of birth, death and marriage indexes

had finally paid off in the hunt for living relatives.

Of the seven siblings that the father had,

a couple of them died as infants because of the high mortality rate,

a couple of them had two or three children and those children died out

and then two more only produced living descendants

and one of those upped and went off to America

and had children in America.

Of the four siblings who got married,

it's the 20 grandchildren and great-grandchildren

of just two - Mary McLernon and Rosina McLaren,

who survive today.

Patricia Benson is a paternal cousin twice removed,

one of 20 heirs on the paternal side.

She was shocked to get the call from the team.

I'd be fibbing if I said

it wasn't at first thinking, "My God, this has never happened to anybody I know

"or any of the family."

My sisters, probably middle sister was the same as me, thinking,

"Oh, my goodness! We're going to come into some money."

But the more it sunk in, it was more like, we could get some money, we didn't know how much it would be,

anything like that, but then it was,

"We've got family we didn't even know we had. Why?"

It's through her father that Patricia is related to Josephine.

There's a good reason for her lack of knowledge about this side of her family.

I think the reason we lost touch with my father's side of the family and extended family

was because I moved away with my mum when my mum and dad divorced.

So I didn't have much contact, well didn't have any contact with

my dad's side of the family after me and my mum moved away.

This estrangement from her father's family

meant she had mixed feelings accepting the inheritance money.

I felt a bit of a fraud taking that money

due to the fact that I left Scotland a long time ago

and didn't see my dad again.

So to inherit some money when I hadn't been in touch with my dad

for years - I hadn't seen my dad over 30 years.

You know, I felt a bit of a fraud,

getting that money.

It's been an epic hunt for heirs.

Overall, Tony's pleased with the outcome.

In total we ended up with something like 88 heirs entitled in this matter.

They were descended from the 60 first cousins once removed

that the deceased had.

The only spoiler on it really

was the number of heirs and the amount of processing we had to do

to get all those together.

After 42 years of loyal service,

it's finally time for Tony to bow out.

CHEERING

Tony, you're leaving us.

-The day you've been looking forward to for 32 years.

-42!

But not before boss Neil offers a few kind words of appreciation.

We are very grateful for the time you've put in here.

They guys here are also very pleased and very grateful

for how much you've been able to help them and trained them up.

Certainly no-one else in the firm

who've been able to train Dominic and Joe and Aysha and Mike.

I know that they are very grateful and so was I when I joined 14 years ago and started learning.

You are one of the best people to actually learn from.

By delegation, obviously.

I think a lot of us are very grateful.

We'd like to wish you luck in your future.

Thank you very much.

I think we can all have a toast to Mr Pledger.

Thank you very much for your service with us.

Good luck in the future. Cheers.

I'll certainly miss him.

But my aim's getting better!

I've worked with him for over 30 years,

so I am going to miss him.

Well, I'm pleased to be going.

Pleased that I got this far.

But things move on and you reach a stage where you're too old for all this running about.

This business is not like it used to be.

It's changed a great deal.

It's going to change a great deal more.

And so I think I'm leaving at a good time.

If you would like advice about building a family tree or making a will,

go to:

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