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Inside Out: Who Do You Think You Are? – with a twist
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Normally it's living relatives looking for their dead ancestors, but a group of Sunderland residents got a real shock when one of their long-since dead relatives began to sing to them from beyond the grave.
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The haunting reunion can be seen on Inside Out on Â鶹¹ÙÍøÊ×Ò³Èë¿ÚÌýOne North East & Cumbria tonight.
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The programme has unearthed a vast collection of wax cylinder recordings which have remained silent and almost forgotten since the Twenties.
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American academic James Madison Carpenter toured Britain in the late Twenties documenting folk songs and traditions.
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With his special interest in sea shanties he visited ports along the north-east coast and asked retired mariners who had served on sailing ships to recite their old working songs into his new-fangled contraption – an Ediphone.
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Their tunes were captured on wax cylinder drums but for many decades they lay gathering dust in Carpenter's attic.
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Programme presenter Chris Jackson tracked these musical time capsules down to the US Library of Congress and resolved to see if he could reunite these voices with their living descendants on Wearside.
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After months of detective work, Chris managed to find 11Ìýgreat-great-grandchildren of Mark Page and told them to turn up for a special family reunion where all would be revealed.
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They knew little of the ancient mariner who was born in 1836 and ran away to sea as a boy before eventually making the grade as captain.
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Carpenter had met him and several other seafarers at the old mariners almshouses at Trafalgar Square in Sunderland.
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There, he persuaded them to sing into the Ediphone and, in doing so, he accidentally created the most incredible audio archive and a unique piece of family history.
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Seventy years later, the songs would reduce some of the descendants Mark Page never knew to tears.
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After hearing her great-great grandfather singing, one of the stunned descendants wiped her eyes saying: "It's like history laying a hand on your shoulder."
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But this is an extraordinary experience that many more people might be able to share – there are hundreds of voice recordings in the Carpenter collection.
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He spent several years driving through the UK adding more and more voices to his study.
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British academics are working with the American Folklife Center at the US Library of Congress to catalogue and publish the recordings online.
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Chris Jackson said: "It was an incredible journey tracking down Mark Page's family – not least asking them to turn up to a meeting without divulging what secret I was about to reveal.
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"I did at least let them know there was no inheritance involved, so they didn't get their hopes up too high! What they heard was, in fact, priceless."
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For some of the great-great grandchildren, it was the first time they had ever met.
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One who attended now lives in Australia and others brought along their own grandchildren to witness the event.
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Notes to Editors
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Any use of this material must credit the Â鶹¹ÙÍøÊ×Ò³Èë¿Ú programme and transmission details:
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Inside Out, Â鶹¹ÙÍøÊ×Ò³Èë¿Ú One (North East & Cumbria), 7.30pm, 22ÌýOctober 2008.
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Viewers outside the North East of England and Cumbria can see it live on Sky channel 975 or via the Â鶹¹ÙÍøÊ×Ò³Èë¿Ú iPlayer.
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James Madison Carpenter toured extensively in Britain, so the collection covers many areas of England, Wales and Scotland.
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HH2
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