Contact

Several years ago I tried to go to the Ellis Island website to find out the date of my grandparents arrival but I kept hitting dead ends and gave up. My computer was slow and the website was not complete for research as of that time.
In discussing this with my son a couple of years ago he said he would give the research a try……

Here is my wording as to how my son reacted as he researched our family history..........

It was near midnight, his wife and young son were sound asleep, when he sat down at his computer to do the family research for his dad. His task was to try to find the ship manifest where his great-grandparents arrived at Ellis Island in 1909. His dad had got as far as that a few years earlier but never found which of the arrivals in 1909 they were on. He knew that this could be a fairly quick task but he had no idea what else he would discover.
As he assumed the task of finding the information - which was as simple for him as a few well worded Google searches.
Shortly, he found that they had arrived at Ellis Island on the Lusitiana, April 23, 1909. He thought how his young son would enjoy reading of his ancestors when he got older. At five years of age his son was the youngest of the Brodioi’s in America. As he built a file of information for his dad he copied the ships manifest for the page that they were listed on. Something odd caught his eye as he worked with the files. The name on the manifest was spelled differently but he knew that he had the right “Brodioi” because the first names of his great-grandparents were Hyppoliet and Leonie as listed on the manifest. As he studied the spelling of the name “B-R-O-I-D-I-O-I” on the manifest he notices that it had an extra “I” before the “D.” He had heard his dad say that Grandma Brodioi had indicated that the name was spelled differently in the old country but no one had ever pursued how the name was spelled in Belgium. His mind was working overtime as he got an idea. He decided to do a Google search on the last name by placing the “I” before the “D” to see what might happen.
This was a very important decision because it would open doors that had been closed for nearly one hundred years. As the search results came on screen he noticed a website that had an odd "French twist" to the name listed besides the new spelling of our surname. He made the decision to open this site and that is where things changed. He was so excited that he could hardly sleep that night as he waited for morning to tell his dad that we were about to make “contact.”

July 3, 2006 – The early morning after late night research……

As we read through the information on the website we noted that we had relatives in Belgium, France, Canada, and New Zealand. Talk about an international family!
We noted that many questions were posed regarding whatever happened to the USA family?
I noticed an email address soliciting information. I excitedly sent a simple two line email stating that, “I believe that I am the one you seek.” I went on to state that Hyppoliet and Leonie were my grandparents.
The following morning, July 4, 2006, I excitably saw that I had a reply to my short email sent across the pond. It was from a previously unknown cousin living in Paris, France who is about the same age as my son. The feeling I had at that time was indescribable!
I had often wondered what it was like to have an extended family. I would read of large families having family reunions and I never really understood what that involved?
I now understand how people who were adopted feel when they make contact with their blood relatives. In a sense that is what happened to the American branch of the Broidioi family. America adopted us from Belgium and France. I plan to go into this more when I describe growing up with a rather uncommon name. Sometimes I felt like I did not belong here?
Anyway, we then went through a series of emails swapping information to help fill in gaps regarding the US branch of the Broidioi’s.
Since then we have got to know each other better and regardless of our national differences we have established a bond.
We are, after all, family!