This is how a letter in the Grantham Journal reunited family members from the UK and beyond
A letter written to the Journal in 2022 has helped to reunite more long-lost relatives on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean.
Cousins Alan Shepherd, Ann Duffy (nee Shepherd), Mick Rollings, Ron and Joyce Caunt have reconnected with each other after years apart.
Despite living across the UK and the USA, the family members are back in touch after a letter from Alan about his search for cousin Irene Caunt was published in the Journal back in September 2022.
Within two months of the letter being published, Alan, who lives in Southampton, had contact from three different relatives that he has not seen or heard from since the 1960s.
One response was from the son of Irene, who is not very well, the second was from Mick, another of Alan’s cousins, who lives in Bourne, and the third was through an “amazing” stroke of luck.
Irene's older brother Ron, who left Grantham for America over half a century ago, was the third to respond to Alan's letter, thanks to a bizarre stroke of luck and good timing.
Alan explained: "As fortune would have it Ron’s wife, Joyce, was visiting Grantham in the week the letter was published. She is well into her 80s.
"She saw a copy of the Journal, with the letter, and as she told me, it shook her to her core.
"When she returned home to Waterford, which is a town about 40 miles north of Detroit, she showed Ron, who [was 87 at the time], the letter, and he contacted me by telephone and we have also communicated by email."
Ron sent Alan a photograph of his grandfather, Thomas Shepherd, which meant a lot to Alan.
A year on from this, a fourth cousin, Ann, got in touch with Alan from St Ives in Cornwall after seeing the previous article about the letter bringing the cousins together.
Alan lived in Leicester back in the 1950s and '60s and said that he saw his cousins "occasionally" but "many years had passed" since they last spoke to one another.
Their shared grandparents, Thomas and Ethel Shepherd, lived in Grantley Street, Grantham.
Alan said: “What brought us together, as first cousins, is our fond memories of Grantham of many years ago and particularly of our dear grandparents, Ethel and Thomas Shepherd, who lived in Grantley Street.
“We were able to renew our relationship through the remarkable intervention of the Journal which, in the autumn of 2022, published a letter of mine seeking contact with my cousins.
“Bearing in mind the different locations we live in, the 'reach' of the Journal is, as I say, remarkable.”
