I had been tracing my family history since 1979 (Ten years) and taken our Durrant family name back to the 1730's, still finding them all in Hertfordshire. By 1990 I had exhausted my search backwards in the Durrant name. The next descendant could have been one of three `William' Durrants. and thought I would it was time to `put meat on the bones' so to speak and try to find living families that are related to me through distant great great uncles etc.

I knew that our family originated from Bovingdon, Hertfordshire, so I started by looking up people with the 'Durrant' name in nearby villages to Bovingdon. I telephoned a guy, George Durrant, who lived in Chipperfield, about 3 miles from Bovingdon. I started our conversation by saying how I was tracing my family history and seeing if there was a link between him and myself. I asked George, who was in his late 70's, if he could name his father and his grandfather, which he did. From this information I could see that his grandfather was a cousin of my great grandfather, BINGO! I had scored with my first hit!! I told George that I had quite a lot of information about the family and he was interested enough to invite me over to meet him and his family.

I gave George copies of birth certificates, census returns etc and a family tree, showing him how we were related. He in turn gave me a copy of a photograph of his grandfather and his family taken as a group. I told George that the photo had been taken in 1912, as it was taken at the christening of their youngest child. During the evening George told me that over about 5 years he had received letters from America from a lady called Donna Sorensen. He said that he always replied to her letters, as she asked him questions about the Durrant family, asking him about auntie so-an-so and uncle Tom etc. He also said that in one of Donnas letters she had told him that she was related to the Durrant family, but George didn't know how she was related, but as he said, she always writes such nice letters. George gave me Donnas address and I wrote her a letter, saying how I was interested in how she was related to me. I sent her a pedigree chart going back to the 1700's.

Donna replied saying how her grandfather emigrated to America in 1861 and set up home in Utah. She also said that her grandfather had written his life's story about his life in England and that she had a copy. Donna also sent me her pedigree chart, but when she had looked at mine, she could not see a connection with me. Donna also said the her father Lorenzo Durrant had visited Bovingdon in 1903 while serving his mission in England. I know now that Donna had also visited Bovingdon in the 1950's.

When I looked at her pedigree chart, past John Durrant, all of her descendants matched mine! I could not believe that she could not see it! So, I wrote her another letter, but she replied in a very strange way. How could I get her to see that we were related? In those days we could only communicate by writing letters, the internet was a thing of the future.

Through a geneology magazine I managed to find a researcher in Salt Lake City and I wrote her a very pleading letter asking her if she would mind getting in contact with Donna to see if she could explain to Donna that I was a member of her Durrant family and ask her to send me a copy of John Durrants history. After about 5 weeks I received a letter from the researcher saying that she had contacted Donna and made her realize that Donna was related to me and that Donna promised to send me a copy of the history. My researcher also took it upon herself to dig into John Durrants history for me, and sent me family group sheets of the John Durrant Family written by family members in the 1960's. About a week after this I received the copy of Johns History from Donna. I then took 3 years researching the contents of Johns history, looking into the farms, people, places, expressions that John mentioned.

A little later that year I received a letter from my researcher saying that Donna Sorensen had passed away, she was 85 years old. My researcher also said that she would be coming to England later that year, and we arranged to meet up at London Gatwick Airport and I drove her into London. She bought with her many LDS family group sheets of the Durrant family of America, and it is from them I put the family tree together and made contact with many of my new found family, my first find being Catherine Durrant Tenney.

In 1993 our family, myself, my wife Sharon, our daughter Julie and sons Carl & Michael came to Utah for a trip of a lifetime. For three and a half weeks we drove a total of 4,500 miles visiting family members and sight seeing.

When I met George Durrant in Chipperfield in 1990, John Durrant was only a baptism on my family tree, I had John mentioned on the 1861 Census, but I could not find a marriage or his death in England. I thought that he had just moved away from the area..... Little did I know that he had changed his religion from Church of England to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints and saved money for him and his younger brother Edward to emigrate to America.