With just pension saving details dating to the era of last Nizam, Scottish national Nicholas Graves embarked on a search for his maternal ancestors at Lallaguda Railway Carriage Workshop.

On Tuesday, Mr. Graves looked for anything that could reveal information about his great grandfather from his maternal side, James Theodre, who worked for the Nizam State Guaranteed Railways (NSGR) as a loco fitter in 1932 at Lallaguda.

Mr. Graves has his ancestor’s pension saving details, couple of photographs of his maternal grandmother and grandfather who were married at a church in Lucknow, along with their marriage certificate.

“It started eight years ago when I developed interest in my ancestry. Researching my paternal ancestry, I have been able to track it back to four centuries. But I know very little about my maternal side,” Mr. Graves said during his tour of the workshop.

His ancestor James Theodre was born in India in 1897. The pension book with Mr. Graves shows that James earned Rs. 52 in 1932. His daughter and Mr. Graves’s maternal grandmother, Phyllis Margret Champion, was also born in India and later married an army man from England in Lucknow.

“After they got married in 1938, there is no record of my maternal grandparents visiting India or any clues about their parents, including James Theodre,” he said, pointing to an incomplete family tree he has put together.

Mr. Graves’s grandparents died when he was a child and there isn’t much he knows of them.

His mother and his aunt could only offer him the artefacts he has with him. But he knows it’s not much to go on.

His resolve to uncover his ancestry was motivated by Londoner Duncan Hart, who posted a video detailing his visit to Hyderabad to learn about his grandfather’s past more than two years ago. Though he did not meet Mr. Hart’s success at the workshop on Tuesday, Mr. Graves is optimistic.

Should he decide to persist with his search, Mr. Graves’s next stop would be St. Joseph’s Catholic Church in Lucknow, where he hopes to get details about his grandfather and grandmother, which would later help build a bigger picture of his maternal ancestry.

Nicholas Graves, a Scottish national, is in the city in search of his maternal ancestor who worked for the Nizam State Guaranteed Railways in 1932 at Lallaguda

source: http://www.thehindu.com / The Hindu / Home> News> Cities> Hyderabad / by Rohit P S / Hyderabad – February 18th, 2015