An exciting contact

I've just found a cousin I never knew I had. Actually, she is my third cousin on my father's side. My aunt and I have been collaborating with our family tree research for several years. I use the ancestry.com site to store my tree and it is easy through that site to link up with other people who are researching the same people. Out of the blue yesterday I got an email from a lady, Y, who is also a direct descendant of my great great grandparents, sitting at the front in the picture.

Thomas Bye South (1830-1907) and Esther Martin (1841-1911)  lived in Kent. Thomas is recorded for most of his life in censuses as an agricultural labourer, but at some time in the 1890s he bought a greengrocer's business. He and Esther had 6 children, including my great grandmother Ruth Naomi South and Y's great grandfather, James Joseph, (1874-1936) shown above in uniform.

I always scrap my ancestral photos at A4 as they are stored in a rng binder with all the historial documents and print-outs from Ancestry.com. I quite like the variety from 12x12 and it allows me to use up some of those smaller leftovers, which you know is one of my 'things'.