Ancestors: A Tale of Two Worlds

From his home in Australia, Rob Collinge spent four years using genealogical tools to research the mysterious background of his long-deceased father, an English immigrant who had brought his family to Australia when Rob was a child. Rob's grandmother, the former Ella Theodora Koerner, proved to have been a descendant of early German pioneers in Texas whose history included ancestors with anti-slavery views fleeing to Mexico during the Civil War. Rob's grandfather, Wharton Rye Collinge, was born to a family of wealthy Lancashire cotton mill owners in the time of the Industrial Revolution. Rob uncovered the circumstances of his grandparents' meeting and marriage in Texas and followed their lives through to Wharton's death in World War I. Further investigation unearthed British and American families abandoned by Rob's father before marriage to Rob's mother and subsequent emigration to Australia. Unknown to her, Rob's mother proved to have been married bigamously for forty years to a man with three families on three continents. Genealogy, the search for one's ancestors, has become in recent years a hugely popular pastime, enjoyed by millions. Rob Collinge has used a range of available investigative tools to construct a story that spans 1830s Germany, pioneer Texas, the Civil War, Lancashire cotton mills and World War I, as well as a father with dark secrets, giving voice to the old cliche that "Truth is stranger than fiction."