Well its been a very hectic 10 days, a week last Saturday I went into Google to find the answers to the last two crossword questions in the Telegraph and as you know Google tends to pick up almost all references to any word in the search box and so I start scrolling down the pages and while not finding an answer to the crossword I found Valmay's Page and the answers about our remaining "lost" Rogers. These being the children of my Grandfather's brothers, the name of the "unknown" Gt.Aunt(Alice) and even the name of the brother and sister of Gt.Grandfather Rogers in Ireland (Joseph and Kate).

A friend, Valmay Young, maintains a web site about India and people who are interested in tracing their families out there. After having a quick browse down the pages I decided to see if my Rogers entry was still up to date and so click on "R" and scroll down to find an entry -Joseph Richard Denzil Rogers & George Joseph Rogers, contact Richard Hewitt on a Hot Mail address....I think what's he up to as immediately below this entry is my own with much fuller details!

So I dash off an e-mail to see what its about as Hewitt is not a name that I have ever found in among our relations.

Next evening back comes a reply and he proves that he has all the Rogers ingenuity<GGG> as he tried to use my address as shown on Valmay's page twice and it bounced....so he made an entry of his own. Now the Luck of the Irish comes in - I don't suppose that would bother to look at Valmay's page more than once a year !! Thinking back I did get 2 messages in about October time from someone with a subject line "Rogers Family" but they were all garbled, as so often the hotmail ones are; I did try to reply but to no avail.

But all's well that ends well. We have now exchanged more details and some photographs, but from my point of view the 3 things that make this contact so great are that he has loads of family papers, wills, letters etc. and his Father is still alive, all be it at 90 years old and finally he has, I hope, provide the link to Ireland and Gt. Grandfathers name and position.

I always knew that my Father was a gentleman - but without the income to sustain that sort of life - but he never would talk about his family and as you are only to well aware it has taken years of digging and the help of some very good friends (With another minor miracle in Jo'burg one August day!!!!!) and family to trace out my relations and until now limited ancestry.

You may remember the tale of GT.Gs death bed speech "My real name is......" and off he went to wherever. Now the SA Rogers know this part of the story + that he came from an aristocratic family and was sent off to the Colonies for some unknown misdemeanour. The "new" Rogers tell me that Leslie Rogers, who was Grandfather's eldest son was told by a Army friend called O'Callaghan that he was a cousin and that we related to the branch of the family that had Viscount Lismore as its head. He told Leslie that he had the family pedigree and that he would bring over on his next visit --and its here where fate takes a hand, but in the wrong direction, and O'Callaghan was killed in some skirmish.

Now Peter gets interested !!!

Not for the title as that died out in 1898 , but I wouldn't mind having a bit of the 35,000 acres,(55 sq.miles on my calculator!!) and these are probably Irish Acres which are almost twice the English ones and a large country house designed by John Nash called Shanbally Castle. The whole lot has gone now, the Irish Govt made a compulsory purchase order on it in the 1950's and quite literally blew up the house as they didn't have a use for it. Caused a stink though and the various Georgian Societies began to put their feet down firmly and almost stopped the random demolition of the Ascendancy Houses because Shanbally was the only house built in Ireland to a Nash design.

I did some more Googling and found that some of the O'Callaghans are know as Lisses or Leslie and this might just be a pointer to why Leslie James Beckford Rogers was so named... now if I could find a connection for the Beckford (William Beckford) name then I would be delighted, (Gt.Grandfather named his last son, by his second wife, William), and a connection to William Beckford would be great. He was an eccentric but was also supposed to be richest commoner of his age!!! But he went broke after doing too much entertaining and building-- I'M beginning to see where my expensive tastes come from <GGG>

Now I'm awaiting the answers to several questions and hopefully to actually meet Richard and some others of the family.

It will help to do further research as Richard and his Father as live in the UK in Camberley and Bristol.

I've found a roll of wallpaper on which to extend the Family Tree, mind you

Elona would rather it was stuck up on the wall<GGGGG>> So anything else that anyone can add to our growing Tree will be appreciated, its a big roll!!

Cheers and Best Wishes from a very happy researcher,

Peter & Elona