Looking for my childs grandparents

Josefina

I wonder if anyone on boards.ie can tell me how to track down my childs grandparents.
Nine years ago I had my first child. His father is Irish, and although we'd been with each other for a while he wasn't exactly thrilled to become a father. He decided he wanted out and hence, I moved back to Sweden where I'm from. We've had contact a few times over the years and he's met his son a few times, but he's showing no real interest at all. However, he's never told his own parents about their first and only grandchild, and I really want them to know they have a fantastic, beautiful and smart little grandchild! Over the years I've tried different ways of getting in contact with them but the problem is that I only know their surname and the name of the village that they are from. As it turns out there is just way too many Hughes is Carrickmacross! Grateful for any help that I can get.

The_Conductor

Lots of potential directions for you to explore.
You have the father's name and where he is from.
A local church will most probably have baptised him- so their register will have his baptismal details (inlcuding his date of birth).
Using this you could get his birth cert which will have his mothers name on it.
Using this- you could get his parents marriage cert- which would have their address on it.
It was a rural enough area (once upon a time) where people tended to live on family homesteads- and seldom move- so they could well still be at the same address.
Failing that- the local post office tends to be a wonderful source of information- but you have to be careful, they love to hear people's stories, and are horrific gossips.

To be honest- having a surname and a general location- is perfectly good information for you to act on- I wouldn't have any serious issues in using it to dig a little further if I were you.

Josefina

Thanks The Conductor
I will definitely try the local post office! However, I'm not so sure about the local church. I actually did contact them once about eight years ago and asked them to put me in contact with my sons grandparents. The person that I spoke to basically told me he could not do so as he knew them very well and also knew how distraught they would be if they found out about a grandson who was born out of wedlock (Sorry, but isn't this the 21st century?!?).
I've also been thinking about posting them a letter with the text on the envelope only being Mr and Mrs Hughes, parents of x, x and x, Carrickmacross. What are the odds of such a letter reaching the right person? I once received a letter like that myself so obvioow it works in Sweden, but howefficient is the Irish postal service?

goat2

it should be very easy to find his parents,
while you were with him, in your conversations about family, you may know the occupation of his parents, their interests, if they own a farm or a business, their christian names, things like this should help to slim down which family they are,
it is not certain that they will be shocked, could give a different reaction altogether, may be delighted,

Josefina

I did find out were his parents lived... I sent them a recommended letter so that I'd know for sure if they actually got it. They received it, two weeks ago, and still no answer... Ah well, what did I expect?

Riesen_Meal

Josefina wrote: »

I did find out were his parents lived... I sent them a recommended letter so that I'd know for sure if they actually got it. They received it, two weeks ago, and still no answer... Ah well, what did I expect?

Give it a chance to sink in with them, I'm sure they were pretty shocked receiving the letter, and have a lot of questions to ask him to answer, and are probably biding their time to speak to him before responding to it....

Best of luck with it, hopefully you get a decent response from them, if they don't respond it is their loss that they won't ever get to see their grandchild at the end of the day, you have done your part, well done...