Amateur detectives investigate 'Milestone Album' mystery

This girl's photo album discovered was found in a basement. Andy Gilbraith is trying to learn who she is. Photo / Supplied

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An online community of family tree enthusiasts has picked up the Herald Online's mystery of the decades-old baby album - and once they get their teeth into a good story, it's hard to shake them off.

Working through the "Genealogy" message board on Trade Me, this group of amateur detectives are on the hunt for the little girl in the "Milestone Album" found in the attic of a Royal Terrace house.

"We are a bit obsessed about it," says Auckland woman Melanie Middleton, who has been working closely with the Herald on this story.

In less than a week, the community have put us in contact with the step-grandchildren of Frederick Owers, the man who owned the house until the 1960s. No one recognises the little girl so far.

Wellington stay-at-home mum Lisa Duggan is still looking. "We know that if somebody found a photo album of family members from any of our [family tree] branches, we would love to get our hands on them," she said.

The Trade Me community was established nearly two years ago to try to locate the owners of old photographs, army medals and other personal items being auctioned off. There are 10 to 15 regulars on the board, mostly women ranging from age 20 to 80.

Often the items on Trade Me have been picked up in estate sales by antiques dealers, making it difficult to know who they belonged to.

For something like the Milestone Album, the community pools their resources to find out who lived at the address, and whether they had any children.

Some members use subscriptions to online resources like Ancestry.com, while others go to places like the National Library in Wellington to search newspaper obituaries, electoral rolls and post office directories going back a century or more.

"Half the trick is in knowing where to look," said Ms Duggan. She's become quite practiced at tracking a person's address through the electoral rolls: "I can do the entire country in about twenty minutes now."

For Ms Middleton, geneology is about uncovering personal stories. Her main interest is ancestors who emigrated to New Zealand from Europe.

"Why did they get on a ship and spend three, four, five months in a tiny little cramped area to come to New Zealand?" she said.

Last year the community got in touch with a couple from England who wrote to the Marlborough Express asking for information about a relative named Laura Gooch who emigrated to New Zealand in 1912. They successfully traced Ms Gooch's family to descendants currently living in Blenheim.

In another remarkable case, they helped a woman track down information on her birth mother, Betsy Robb Wilkie, who emigrated from Scotland.

Almost a year later, a man named Stuart Robertson searched the web for the same birth mother, found the Trade Me post and realised the woman was his sister. The long-lost siblings were reunited several days later.

"It has been a day of overwhelming emotions," Mr Robertson posted to the board. "I have spoken to a sister I never knew I had."