Coates/Slack Heir Hunters

Heir hunters trace the relatives of those who have died without leaving a will.

Their work involves meticulous investigation.

So, these kids could all be right, all be wrong or half and half.

They hand over thousands of pounds to family members who had no

idea there were in line to inherit.

Hi, Mr Fraser. Hi.

They can give family members a whole new perspective on their past.

Knowing my grandma, Edith Holloway, had ten brothers

and sisters is just amazing.

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

Could the heir hunters be knocking at your door?

Today the pressure is on, as heir hunters work on a six figure estate.

Why can't it be a nice easy job on a Monday afternoon?

That would suit me nice. Oh no! It don't work like that!

An international hunt brings long lost relatives

together for the first time.

-This is Tony, my brother.

-Hello.

Plus, how you could be entitled to inherit unclaimed estates

held by the Treasury.

Could a fortune be heading your way?

It's Monday afternoon at the London offices of heir hunting

company Fraser And Fraser.

-Boss Neil has just been tipped off about a new case.

-John David Coates.

He owns his own property. It is worth around about £175,000.

It's a valuable estate and as it's a tip off,

the team should have the case all to themselves.

At least for now.

We've got it certainly a few days before everyone else.

It may be advertised this week or next week.

Once the Treasury Solicitor advertises the case, the team

will face competition from rival firms, so they need to work fast.

Already, things are looking promising.

I assume he didn't get married, did he? I wouldn't have thought.

The team have quickly established that John didn't marry or

have children, so they must now look to his wider family to find heirs.

John David Coates

died on 24 March 2012 in the Worcestershire Royal Hospital.

He was 66 years old.

No photos of John survive and, at the moment,

little is known about him, other than he was a private man who

lived with his parents at this house in Worcestershire.

In the office, case manager David Pacifico

and the team are beavering away and making good progress.

What was the mother's maiden name?

Having obtained John's death certificate, they have been

able to confirm his date of birth and check his birth record.

They know his parents were Margaret Ethel Jackson

and Frederick Harold Coates.

We've then got the parents' marriage

and the parents get married in Birmingham.

As John died a bachelor and never had children, the team are searching

to see if he had any brothers or sisters who could be entitled.

-See if you can identify that. Do a search on that.

-Yeah.

Roger is searching birth records in areas where

they know the family lived.

Coates is not uncommon, and Jackson is very common.

Nothing seems to appear in the right kind of area.

A lot of it is up in the air at the moment, until

we get some definite details back on research, hopefully tomorrow.

With no sign of other siblings,

it's beginning to look like John was an only child.

So, instead, the team must concentrate on tracing John's

aunts and uncles, and their descendants.

What we need to know is did the father have any brothers or sisters?

If so, who are they, did they have children and so forth.

And the same with the mother.

The team have estimated that John's estate is worth around £175,000 and,

as they'll be working for an agreed percentage of the estate, this

could be a lucrative case, but only if they can find and sign up heirs.

Jackson is an awful name to research.

There are thousands of them, hundreds of thousands of them

in the country, so that may be a bit tricky.

It looks like the grand mother's maiden name, on that side as well,

is Green, which means we are dealing with Jackson to marry a Green.

There are going to be thousands of them, as well.

It's going to be tricky working the mother's side.

It looks like we should be concentrating on the father's side,

and that's going to be where we find the first beneficiaries, really.

Unfortunately, though,

it seems things aren't going to be that simple.

Right, what have you got? Have you turned this birth down?

-Harold, Frederick, Henry, anything?

-No Henrys, no.

-Well, just anything.

If that date is right, do it two years either side, at least.

The team are struggling to find a birth record for John's father,

Cedric Harold Coates.

Without this, they won't be able to search for any of John's

paternal aunts and uncles and it's a problem they need to solve fast.

That can wait. This is urgent.

Can you check for a birth on the mother's side,

Scotland, Ireland, anything else, for Frederick Harold Coates?

Finally, it looks like they might have a breakthrough.

What we've just found is a birth for Frederick Harold Coates,

the father of the deceased.

-The birth is in Belfast. It's in 1915.

-But there's a problem.

Those records aren't the best records to research.

They are certainly not available on computers

and the indexes aren't great, either.

As certain records aren't available online,

a lot of the work can only be done in Belfast.

I was going to give it the somebody in Northern Ireland to try

and get that birth for me.

I mean, there's no telling if there were any other siblings born in Northern Ireland.

No, because I did Coates in Belfast ten years either side,

and there were over 100.

I'm going to have a word with somebody in Northern Ireland.

Whilst David gets in touch with their Belfast based researchers,

the London team need to try and keep things moving forward.

-And he's not on any census?

-No.

I'm going to have a look because I did see a birth in West Derby in 1897.

Play with it. We can't afford to wait on these things.

With the threat of competition hanging over them,

the team is under a lot of stress.

I'm feeling pressure, yeah.

Why can't it be a nice easy job on a Monday afternoon?

That would suit me nice. Oh, no! It don't work like that!

But until they get news from Belfast,

there's little more they can do, so they call it a day.

The question is, did he have any aunts and uncles.

Therefore, did he have any cousins?

The answer to that I don't know, but hopefully I will know tomorrow.

The following day, the team are back on the case and, at last, David

has information from Belfast about the paternal side of the family.

The father, who was born in Belfast,

we have managed to obtain details of this birth from the

Registry Office and confirmed the mother's maiden name was Hardesty.

It turns out that the grandparents of the deceased on that

side of the family married in Salford.

This is where the grandmother came from.

At some point left Salford, went to Ireland.

On a 1911 Irish census we found another child that we didn't

know about, Hilda Coates.

And there's another development.

David's sent a researcher to John's last known address

and they've made a sad discovery.

It seems from the enquiry made,

he may have had a sister who committed suicide many years ago,

although we've not been able to identify the sister's birth.

This came from people that knew the deceased.

Also mentioned in the report, that the

mother may have had a twin brother called Archibald.

So, there are possibly some cousins on the maternal side.

But, for now, the team focusing on John's father's family

and have learned that his Aunt Hilda married and had four children.

At the moment I'm trying to obtain details of the children's

births to get full names and dates,

but it looks like there are possible cousins on the father's side.

As John's sister sadly died,

these cousins would be heirs to his £175,000 estate.

The team are working hard to find contact details for the cousins

and Aisha thinks she may have had some success.

I've found a potential address and telephone number.

Let's hope it's right!

It's make or break time.

If they can get hold of this cousin and confirm he's an heir,

the team will be confident of beating the competition.

-Whereabouts is he?

-Yorkshire.

-David gives the heir a call.

But he isn't in, so he speaks to his wife.

Your say your husband spoke last night with this other company

and they just said they were sending paperwork through today?

You don't remember the name, at all?

Can I phone you back about 11.30, 11.45? Thank you. Bye bye.

They've confirmed it's the right family, but there is some worrying news.

There is competition on this. We know there is another company involved.

Contacted the family yesterday. So, we're running neck and neck.

Frustratingly,

it seems that another company has also had the same tipoff.

Worse still, the rival firm are ahead with

the research on this branch of the family,

but David is still hopeful they'll be the ones to sign up the heirs.

They're going to look at our letters.

They're not going to sign with anybody else at this junction,

so I don't know. It's possibly 50/50, I don't know.

And the race is now on to reach heirs on the maternal

side of the family before the competition.

I'm hoping they've got difficulty with the Jackson side.

We need to move fast on it.

But, as their investigation continues,

they struggle to stay ahead.

You got a call. Was it yesterday? Two days ago.

You have signed and returned the agreement.

Not all heir hunting cases are as straightforward as

they initially seem.

When Robert Slack died in 2009, he left a will stating exactly

who he wanted his £610,000 estate to go to.

But when Robert's solicitors processed his will, they discovered

a problem that led to something called a partial intestacy.

It was a job for experienced case manager Bob Smith.

Partial intestacies arise where a deceased has made a will,

but persons named in that will have deceased

and there are no provisions for substitution of what should

happen to that money if that person has died.

Two of the people named in Robert's will died before him,

which meant that their share of the estate, a total of £70,000,

would now need to go to any living blood relatives.

The hunt for heirs was on.

Robert Gerald Slack, known to his friends as Gerry,

died on 20 March 2009 in York.

He was 88 years old.

Friend Malcolm Huntington recalls their first

meeting at a tennis tournament in 1956.

He was playing with his wife, Floss, in the mixed doubles

and I was playing men's singles.

We struck up a friendship just by chatting to each other

when we were off the court.

That friendship lasted for, what, 50, 60 years?

One of the very few people that you meet in life who didn't have any enemies.

I suspect because he helped so many people.

These were qualities that shone through on the tennis court.

He was never a star tennis player, but he was a very solid player.

The sort of person you could rely on in a club team.

If you wanted somebody to have a battle for you,

he would be the one to choose because he would be helpful.

I keep using this word helpful, but he was helping his partner to get through a difficult situation.

Gerry and his beloved wife, Floss,

were inseparable for over 60 years, until she sadly died in 2006.

It was a bit like fish and chips, salt and pepper. You never saw one without the other.

They were always together supporting other people.

That is my abiding memory of them, really.

Malcolm was surprised that the administration of Robert's

will had not been straightforward after he died.

J was a very organised character and I would be very surprised

if there were any sort of mistakes in that direction.

I could imagine him doing exactly in his will what he wanted to do

and signing it off and being very organised about it.

I can't think he would do anything different.

Nevertheless, Robert's solicitors referred the case to

Bob Smith in 2011.

His team faced the task of tracking down heirs to

a £70,000 portion of the estate.

From the outset we had virtually no information at all

about Mr Slack's family.

We were aware that he was married and had no children,

but had no information about his parents or aunts and uncles at all.

As Robert's wife, Floss, had also died

and the couple had no children, the team now needed to

look for any siblings that could be heirs to his estate.

Having obtained a copy of the deceased's birth certificate,

we could then find his parents' marriage and carry out

a birth search, which determined that he was an only child.

As his parents had long since passed away, the team knew

they would have to look to the wider family to find heirs.

They began by looking for relatives of Robert's mother, Alice Holloway.

Of the ten maternal branches of the family,

we were quickly able to establish that four had

remained in the Louth area, married and had descendants.

We were also easily able to identify that three further siblings

of the mother of the deceased had died single and without issue.

The maternal aunts and uncles who married

and had children were Mini, Edith, Frederick and Cyril.

With a further three siblings ruled out,

there were now three more left to trace.

Three siblings to the mother of our deceased, Charles, Maria

and Annie, we'd found on the 1901 census, but had

disappeared by the 1911 census, so that obviously indicates that they

had either moved somewhere else in the UK, or possibly gone abroad.

This was a major setback, as unless the team could account

for these siblings, they wouldn't be able to complete the case.

What we don't want is, after a distribution has been made,

family members come forward at a later stage saying,

"Hold on, what about me?" It was therefore really

important that we try to find out what had happened to those

three outstanding siblings to the mother of our deceased.

But as they delved into the family's background,

they got a clue as to why Robert's aunts and uncles had disappeared.

The family were from Louth in Lincolnshire and census records show

that Robert's grandfather, William Holloway, worked as a farm labourer.

Louth was an agricultural market town.

It served a considerable range of villages, way out in one direction,

the south west, for example, northwards and also onto The Wold.

At the turn of the 20th century, Lincolnshire,

like the rest of rural Britain, was in the midst of an agricultural

depression and it would have hit the Holloway household hard.

It meant that the farmers were needing fewer agricultural

labourers because of more machinery, because of the price of corn

not having changed because of the import of foreign corn.

It had a knock on effect in the village.

In a large family, could they all find work

when they'd left school at 12?

It would affect the market town, the services that were provided.

It affected the whole economy.

Many were forced to leave the countryside altogether

and while the majority migrated to the UK's burgeoning

industrial cities, others were prepared to venture further afield.

If we have a look at the effect of the agricultural depression,

there were actually agents in Louth who organised groups of people

who wished to find a new life in a new country where there was

opportunity to own land, which if you were a young agricultural

labourer, there was no chance that that would happen at all.

So, had Annie, Maria

and Charles Holloway joined this agricultural exodus?

If so, where might they have gone?

Bob and his team needed to find out

and they knew they were facing an uphill struggle.

Things were going to get even trickier

because this heir hunt was about to go international.

Researching Canada can be quite difficult.

Unfortunately, do due to data protection laws,

only blood relations can apply for birth, death, marriage certificates.

Heir hunters use specialist skills to track down thousands

of rightful beneficiaries, but not all cases can be cracked.

Thousands remain on the Treasury Solicitor's unclaimed list.

Cases will stay on the unclaimed list for a period of 12 years

from the date that the administration has been completed.

That is a 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?

Frank Garbutt Sherwood Adams died on 19 December 2008 in Middlesbrough.

So far, the heir hunters have struggled to find out any

more information about Frank or his family, but Adams is

a surname that is most common around Oxford and Northamptonshire.

Did you know Frank or any of his relatives?

Next is the case of Joyce Olive Dare.

Joyce died on 22 December 1999 in Cricklewood, London.

Research suggests she was 70 years old.

Dare is a rare name, mostly found in the West Country.

Could Joyce's family have originally come from this area?

Could you be due a share of her legacy?

The money raised by 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 estates that 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.

Frank Garbutt Sherwood Adams and Joyce Olive Dare.

If you are one of their long lost relatives,

you could have a windfall coming your way.

In London, the team at heir hunting company Fraser And Fraser

are racing against rival firms on the case of John David Coates.

We're working as quickly as possible.

Having already found three heirs on the paternal side,

they are now trying to crack John's mother's side of the tree

ahead of the competition.

I am struggling with Margaret Ethel Jackson.

We've got an approximate age for her.

We put a birth in for her yesterday that we thought was right,

but that's come back wrong.

So, we're back to square one with her again.

John David Coates died in the Worcestershire Royal Hospital

on 24 March 2012.

He was 66 years old.

John was an intelligent man and trained as an architect,

but sadly he suffered from ill health throughout his life,

and frequent hospital visits meant he couldn't work.

He did however have a great passion for cars

and was often seen working away under the bonnet.

No photos of John survive,

but he was a bachelor and lived in Worcestershire with his parents,

Margaret and Harold, until they passed away.

Neighbours remember them as a close, but private family.

As a result, many of the details of John's life remain a mystery.

Back in the office, the team are desperately trying to make

some headway in the search for heirs to John's estimated £175,000 estate.

We still have a lot of work to do on the maternal.

We can't even find a birth.

An inquiry with a neighbour suggested that John's mother,

Margaret Ethel Jackson, had at least one sibling,

and Roger is on the case.

She's supposed to have a twin called Archibald that we can't find at all.

So, I don't think she did have a twin called Archibald.

But, just as the research seems to have stalled,

the team get a vital lead.

David spoke to an heir on the paternal side

and they said they had a feeling that she was born in Malta.

This could be just the clue they need to find John's Uncle Archie

and his descendants, so, with no time to waste,

case manager David gets on to it.

I think it's because the grandfather was in the Army

and was stationed there at the time in Malta when they were born.

At the outbreak of the Boer War in 1900, John's grandfather, Thomas

Jackson, signed up as a soldier in the Royal Warwickshire Regiment.

After the war was over, he returned to England and married,

but shortly after the birth of his first son,

Thomas and his family were posted to Malta.

Malta was a very important place as part of the British Empire.

It was a sort of a crossroads in the middle of the Mediterranean

and it was also a springboard.

By having troops garrisoned in Malta,

obviously they were there to protect Malta against enemy attack,

but, just as importantly, there would be a readymade

source of troops that could then be transported from Malta to other

hotspots around the Mediterranean if British interests were threatened.

Despite living with the knowledge that at any time

he could be sent off to fight,

life on the island was perfect for Thomas and his young family.

The weather was usually good.

There were all sorts of entertainments that were

provided for the soldiers and their families.

There would be outings.

In Malta very often there would be outings up to Gozo.

There was a zoo on Malta at the time.

There was a huge interest in amateur dramatics in most regiments

and everybody got involved, not just the soldiers,

but the wives, the children.

So, they could have quite a busy social calendar, which,

to be honest, was needed to alleviate the boredom of being

stuck on a tiny little rock that was only about nine miles long.

Unfortunately for John's grandparents,

peaceful family life on the island was to be short lived.

Britain declares war on Germany at 11 o'clock at night on 4th

August 1914.

Those troops on foreign stations, like Malta,

initially they don't know what is going to happen to them,

whether they are going to be needed.

So, initially, they go about their business,

but very quickly they realise that virtually all the regular

army are going to be needed in France.

For Thomas, whose twins, Archie and Margaret, had been born just

a week earlier, the timing of such news was shattering.

He left his family behind and headed to the battlefields of France.

But worse was to come.

Thomas was captured by the Germans as a prisoner of war,

and with no way of communicating with his family in Malta,

they were left wondering if he was dead alive.

They had almost no means of finding out to begin with

whether these guys had been captured or not.

Sometimes it took months, or even years.

It would have been an incredibly tough time for Thomas'

wife with three very young children stuck in Malta with no

idea at all of what had happened to him.

Thomas Jackson was lucky enough to survive and at the end

of the war he returned home to live with his family in Malta.

Back in the office, the Malta connection is starting to

yield results for David and the research team.

Through their contacts on the island, they have been able

to trace the births of Margaret and her brother, Archibald, in Malta.

We know the mother had a twin brother called William A Jackson.

I think the 'A' stood for Archie or Archibald.

He seems to have been known by that middle name.

Unfortunately, William A Jackson is more common.

As John's Uncle William Archibald Jackson has passed away,

the team now need to look to see if he had any children.

We have identified seven possible

marriages for a William A Jackson from around the Birmingham area.

I'm sending a list of these marriages, hopefully,

to be checked by the Registry Office and see if one of them

comes up as William Archibald Jackson, son of Thomas Jackson.

If it does, then we are in business. I'm hoping one of them is right.

On the other hand, none of them may be right.

Once David has sent information to the Birmingham Register Office,

he faces an anxious wait for the results.

You never know, before the end of the afternoon

I might have some additional information.

Time is of the essence, obviously.

Despite David's optimism,

the Register Office are not able to check all the records that afternoon

and until they hear back from them, the team are at a dead end.

The following morning, the research results are in and,

fortunately, one of the marriages has been proved correct.

It's a great result, but has it come in time to beat the competition?

Using the information from the marriage,

the team are finally able to trace Archibald's daughter,

a cousin of John's, who is now an heir to his estate.

You got a call, was it yesterday or...? Two days ago.

But you have signed and returned the agreement.

Unfortunately, the competition have yet again got to an heir first

and she's already signed a contract with them.

It's very bad news.

The trouble is of course, now they can tell these other people

that they have signed up another heir, so people on the paternal side

might think, well, it's better to go to one company that's got heirs.

Despite the knowledge that they are still behind the competition,

it's onwards and upwards for the team as they search for other

heirs on John's mother's side of the family.

-Is there any other person I can get checked, at all?

-There are loads.

Yeah, John J. Susan M. Beth A. David A. Sarah L. Judith L.

Well, how many in total?

With a bit more work, the team discover that John's mother,

Margaret, was one of four.

One of her brothers, Thomas, had four children of his own

and they are all heirs to the estate.

It is actually good news for us. Hopefully, we can claim them.

As the team track these cousins down,

it seems they've finally broken into the lead.

This time, none of the heirs David speaks to have been

contacted by any other firm.

I have got two representatives based in Birmingham.

I know one of them is free this afternoon.

If you were around, would be possible for him to call

and see you?

The team are on a winning streak now.

Dave is able to make appointments with the heirs

and sends out travelling researchers to see them and sign them up.

One of the heirs they sign up is Peter Jackson, John's cousin.

Peter knew John as a younger man and is able to shed some

light on the man who has, so far, seemed a bit of a mystery.

I knew of him earlier in my life, when I was growing up.

He was a bit older than me.

He was more of my older brothers' and sister's generation.

We saw him on family occasions and at Christmas,

when we used to have family get togethers.

So, that's how I knew him well.

He seemed a pleasantly affable sort of chap.

When I did meet him, we got on quite well.

It was at one family occasion that John made a lasting impression.

He took to the dance floor at my one brother's wedding.

I distinctly remember him for that.

Bearing in mind this was in the 1970s, the fashions weren't

the greatest, so he was wearing a pretty horrendous outfit.

And he was a pretty awful dancer, to say the least!

That's what I do remember, because I was a teenager at the time

and it's the one distinctive memory I have of him, really.

It was a dance floor debut that made its mark.

He did make an addition to the wedding, let's say that.

I wouldn't say he stole the show,

that would be a bit disrespectful to my brother, I think!

For Peter,

becoming an heir is an opportunity to learn about his roots.

I've always wanted to learn about my family history.

My father never really talked to me much about it.

I think probably because by the time I came around,

he had got fed up of telling everybody about it!

But it's something I was interested in.

I never realised, for instance, my aunt

and uncle Arch were actually born in Malta and that they were twins.

For him, the knowledge he now has is worth far more than any inheritance.

I don't think John was a multimillionaire, quite seriously.

I don't think he had his own private island in the Pacific somewhere, no.

I just think it's been an interesting

sort of excursion into the family history.

There's quite a lot of us

and quite a lot of generations going back with their own little

piece of history, which is interesting to find out about.

For case manager David Pacifico it is a job well done.

It looks as if we've now identified all the family on both sides,

paternal and maternal sides of the family,

and it's not a large family in total.

John's estate, with an estimated value of £175,000,

will now be divided between all nine heirs,

five of whom have chosen to sign with David and the team.

In London, case manager Bob Smith and his team were

struggling in the search for heirs to the estate of Robert Slack.

We could find no record of their death,

nor any children from their marriages.

This sort of suggests that they must have emigrated somewhere.

While Robert had left a will,

two of those set to inherit had died before him.

This meant that their share of the estate,

which amounted to £70,000, needed to go to Robert's blood relatives.

Robert, known to his friends as Jerry,

died in York in March 2009, aged 88.

Friend Malcolm Huntington met him and his wife, Floss,

at the local tennis club and they became firm friends.

I saw Jerry and Floss on many occasions socially.

Many times after tennis matches and dinners and this sort of thing.

We dined together, sometimes in individual homes,

and we struck up a very nice social relationship with them.

Despite Robert's enduring love of tennis,

he and Floss also shared a much more hazardous interest.

His other main hobby was watching rally driving.

A very dangerous pastime on country roads through forests,

people crashing into each other.

He used to love going up to Dalby Forest

when I think it was the British Rally or whatever, various rallies.

This would be, what, 30 years ago?

They were very keen on turning out at the crack of dawn

and spending several hours there.

Sadly, later in life, Robert was diagnosed with cancer, but

Malcolm was struck by his courage in dealing with this illness.

I went to see him in St Leonard's Hospice about a week before he died.

He was very composed and calm.

He said he had had a wonderful life and he'd no regrets.

In London, the team's hunt for heirs had focused on Robert's mother,

Alice Holloway.

She had ten siblings, but so far they'd only accounted for seven.

The other three had disappeared from census records and although it

was possible they'd emigrated, the team didn't know for sure.

Their only hope was that someone in the family might

know where the three siblings had gone.

When Bob and the team began speaking to relatives,

they got their breakthrough.

Having established contact with living maternal heirs

here in the UK,

we were told that three branches of the family had emigrated to Canada.

This was a huge result for the team.

Now they knew that Annie, Maria and Charles had emigrated to Canada, they could begin tracing

relatives, but that came with its own set of problems.

We are quite fortunate here in England that we can

apply for birth, death and marriages fairly easily.

The information that those certificates provide make it

fairly straightforward to put family trees together.

In Canada, that's not the case.

You have to be a blood relation to obtain those certificates

and that makes life very, very tricky.

Annie, Maria and Charles Holloway set sail to start their new

lives in July of 1910.

Charles was the youngest at just 16 years old.

The fact the siblings even embarked on this 3,500 mile

journey indicates just how terrible living conditions had become

at the height of Lincolnshire's agricultural depression.

By contrast, life in Canada offered a brighter future.

Migrating to Canada in the early 20th century was a great

opportunity for lots of British people.

Wages were higher, living conditions could be much better.

Whether you want to go to the cities or go to agriculture,

there are great opportunities and you could really

improve your life by moving to Canada in several different ways.

We think about Britain, and particularly England in the

late 19th century and we don't associate it with social mobility.

In Canada, the idea that you could work your way up the ladder

was much stronger than would be back in England.

That would be attractive for many potential migrants.

Annie, Maria and Charles also had skills that were in demand.

One important reason Canada wanted migrants was essentially to

settle the West and populate the country.

There is all of this more or less unclaimed land and Canada would

like to have that settled to lay a stake on the ground, as it were.

Immigrants would be very attractive for doing that.

Coming from a depressed farming region

like Lincolnshire, Canada was a land of opportunity for the Holloways.

If you had farm skills and could deal with farming where

winter is very long, Canada offered these great opportunities

on basically virgin land, after the railway had gone through the West.

Also, if you wanted to have more living space, better housing,

all that sort of thing, Canada would be a much better place.

For immigrants, laying claim to virgin land hadn't always been

so easy.

One change in Canada in the 1890s,

was in previous decades the West had not been open, so the railroad

going across the Prairies from Winnipeg to Vancouver meant

you could settle Western Canada, which wasn't really possible before.

It was this new world that Annie, Maria

and Charles Holloway made their home in 1910.

But finding their relatives was tricky, as Bob

and his team had no access to birth, death and marriage certificates.

You do rely on painstaking research in terms of going through

obituaries, electoral rolls, telephone directories etc.

But while the Canadian research was clearly going to take some time,

the search for heirs in the UK have been far more successful.

The team have established that four of Robert's aunts

and uncles who stayed in the UK had children or grandchildren

who are heirs to the £70,000 estate.

The total number of heirs in the UK was 47.

One of these heirs is Patricia,

whose grandmother Edith was Robert's aunt.

Getting the call from Bob and his team came as a big surprise.

I had absolutely no idea who they were talking about

because it just referred to in the letter as 'someone'

had left an estate with no will.

Patricia didn't know Robert,

but she does have vivid childhood memories of Great Uncle Charles,

one of the three family members who had emigrated to Canada in 1910.

He often return to the UK to visit relatives with wife, Ada.

I remember Charles wearing a trilby hat, always in a suit,

and he was quite a bit taller than Ada.

Aunt Ada was quite well built, but ever so smartly dressed. Loved red.

It was lovely when they visited because they did speak

like Canadians speak and they had the Canadian accent.

While glad that her relatives sought a better life abroad,

Patricia remains a Lincolnshire girl to the core.

We are definitely from Louth and we are Lincolnshire through and through.

We wouldn't have gone anywhere else.

My sister has moved away from Lincolnshire, but, no,

we love Louth, the quaint place it is.

Patricia's fondness for Louth makes sense as her family have

lived there for many generations and becoming an heir has made her

eager to find out more about her family history.

I am curious to find out more about Robert's life,

but, to be perfectly honest, I am just as curious to find out about all the other family members.

And knowing my grandma Edith Holloway had ten brothers

and sisters is just amazing.

I'd really love to research it all now and in all directions

of all the members, not just Robert, but the others, as well.

Fortunately, being contacted by Bob and his team has given

Patricia the perfect opportunity to find out more.

She's been able to get in touch with two of Robert's other heirs,

Tony and Janice,

whose grandfather Frederick was Patricia's great uncle.

I'm very excited, yes.

It will be nice to see Janice again because I've only seen her once

and spoken to her a few times on the phone.

-And Tony, this will be the first time.

-Patricia!

-Hello, Patricia!

-How are you?

-It's lovely to see you again, Janice. It's lovely.

I've missed you!

-This is Tony, my brother.

-Hello!

The gathering is a chance to talk about the Holloway's

emigration to Canada and what they might have done once they got there.

Do you know why they went to Canada?

I've only been told by my auntie that they bought a one way

ticket and I think they went for a better life and to see what the

life was out there because Charles, Annie and Marie went out

there first and they were the three oldest brothers and sisters.

As far as I know, they went out working in the forestry, lumberjacks.

-Right.

-The only one that went to Canada that regularly came back was

Charles and Ada.

I think they must have been having a pretty good living in Canada.

They always seemed like they did.

I always admired the clothes that they wore.

They stood out from ordinary people that you'd meet on the street.

They did, that's right.

Patricia discovers that Canada isn't the only country that the

Holloways have emigrated to.

We moved to North Africa when Tony and I were young.

And that's my dad with Tony in North Africa.

-So, that's Alec.

-Alec, yeah.

-And that's Tony.

-Me!

-That's when we lived in North Africa.

We lived in Tobruk in Libya.

This explains why Tony and Janice's immediate family became

disconnected from the Holloways remaining in the UK.

You've got so much information about my family and, Tony,

you and I haven't.

-I wonder why?

-Yeah, and so do I.

-There seems to be a big gap.

Were we the black sheeps of the family?

Do you know if anything happened?

I think it was just a case of a large family

and just not keeping in touch.

-Yeah.

-To be honest, there were no telephones then.

-That's right.

-No mobile telephones.

-You find that happens with families anyway.

I can understand how families do break away a bit

because we know it with myself and Janice

when our family went to live in Tobruk in North Africa.

We found that we had not been in contact with anybody and,

obviously, it's a long, long way away,

that families do make a break and the only way of contacting

you could have had then was to write to somebody.

-You don't always write letters, do you?

-No, that's right.

There is a break, isn't there?

Yes, and especially with there being 11 children!

For Patricia, becoming an heir is all about reconnecting with

long lost family and her meeting with Janice

and Tony is just the start of this journey.

When I heard the name Robert Slack, I am grateful that

I heard that name because I wouldn't have been in touch with Janice

and Tony otherwise.

I didn't realise that my grandma had ten brothers and sisters.

It's not going to stop here. I'm going to carry on researching into the family tree

and the history.

For Bob and his team in London,

the case of Robert Slack was now almost complete.

After weeks of painstaking Canadian research,

they have been able to identify all of the living heirs who

descended from Annie, Maria and Charles.

In total, there are now 72 heirs to the estate.

For Bob, it was a tricky, but rewarding case.

I'm very happy with the way things have turned out.

Quite a complicated case, in terms of research and what have you.

So, yes, really, really happy that we resolved it

and we found everyone.

If you would like advice about building a family tree

or making a will, go to:

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