My grandmother did not have e-mail in 2010. So the researcher contacted her assisted living complex. "Your cousin is looking for you" he told her. She replied, "I don't have any cousins." She did not yet know Ellen Fripp's secret.
Ellen Fripp
Ellen Fripp had three children from her first husband, Henry W. Bromley: Percy, Ernest and Florence. Later, Ernest was married and had one son named Ernest, Jr. and Florence married and had Charlotte. Charlotte is my grandmother. Ernest, Jr. (Charlotte's cousin) died when he was 12 years old of appendicitis.
Charlotte grew up with her grandmother, Ellen. They were very close.
Ruth Fripp
Ruth grew up in England with her elderly father, Frank. Frank was raised by his Aunt Kate. Ruth's grandparents passed away long ago, but she heard that they had moved to America. She wondered if she had any living relatives there.
Ruth hired Dave the researcher to find out. He found that Kate's sister Ellen married a Bromley. Then he found Ernest Bromley's obituary which mentioned his niece, Mrs. Roger Webber of Duxbury, Massachusetts. When Dave found that Mrs. Roger Webber's full name was Charlotte Ellen, he knew he had found a relative. But the year was 2010, and Charlotte was born in 1915. Could she still be alive? He made the phone call.
The secret: Frank Fripp
Ellen Fripp had a child out of wedlock in 1875 in London. (Today, October 25th, is the anniversary of his birth.) The father's name is lost to time, but she called her son Frank. When Ellen married in 1880 and moved to the United States, she left her son in care of her sister, Kate. My grandma Charlotte never knew about Frank. As an elderly man, Frank married and had a daughter named Ruth.
The secret revealed
Through Dave the researcher, Ruth found her only living cousin, Charlotte, in America. My grandma was 95 at the time. Before my grandma died in 2014, Ruth and her husband flew from London to Boston multiple times over the next couple years to connect with family they never knew and to hear the firsthand account about her own grandmother.
They still keep in touch with us.
