I type this as I'm enjoying a nice glass of red wine. So why's that relevent? You may well ask....

Thanks to the lovely people here I learned who my G G Grandmother was. I'd started off not even knowing her name, just that she must have been in Ireland in 1838 as that was where and when G G Grandad, Thomas, was born and from where he emigrated to England. Further research told me that Amelia Kohler had emigrated to the US and died in her 90s. I even found a drawing of her in an online newspaper report of the day.

At around the same time I'd become aware of a book, "The Memoirs Of Kohler Of The KWV". Yeah, yeah, I muttered, KWV must be the initials of some military regiment, nothing to do with MY Kohler family. Or so I thought!

Googling G G G Grandma took me to Google Books. The man of the memoirs was one Charles William Henry Kohler, a South African resident and son of a William Kohler. William had arrived in South Africa from England but left his family to go to the USA. The book snippet (why oh why must they tease me with just a snippet?) said that Charles W H Kohler's Grandmother was Amelia Kohler, who had emigrated to the USA.... hang on a moment! MY Amelia, I'd not long before discovered, had a son called William. I hadn't been able to find anything about him, just one mention in a court case and then he'd disappeared. No birth, no death, no residence, zilch.

A feverish attempt at inputting keywords into the snippet view ensued. Sure enough, there was more about Amelia Kohler, and the stories told of her life in those memoirs matched those in MY Amelia's death notice. Hey! The man who wrote those memoirs was my Great Great Uncle! From Prussia to Dublin, to England, the USA and South Africa... those Kohlers got around!

So who WAS Charles W H Kohler?

Well, he wasn't a military man! He founded the KWV, a wine merchants and company of vineyard owners, back in the early 1900s, when the S African wine trade was in dire straits and he changed the fortunes of the country's wine industry as a result. He died in 1952 and the company is no longer owned by the Kohler family but the road in which the business is situated bears his surname.

I had to find out more, but here's the beggar. The book isn't online in full but there WAS a copy, signed by Charles himself and believed to have been his own, on a popular old books website. Hmmm.... £26.... I'm saving like mad because I'm moving house, so I bookmarked it. My birthday arrived, I got a gift of a cheque and I thought, well, this isn't housekeeping, I'll buy that book.

Nope. I won't. Some beggar had got there first! And can I find another copy? Can I heck!

Nonetheless, this evening when I went shopping and saw a bottle of red made by the company my ancestor founded I was smiling. Later on as I settled on my sofa, the children in bed, I raised a glass to Charles William Henry Kohler and thanked him for writing his story. I hope that if there's something out there beyond our own world he'll look down on me and guide me to where I can find the full tale.