Lost airman has no Cape Breton family left
But descendants of Reginald Bertram Smith may be living in Ontario
The search for descendants of a Cape Breton airman who died in a plane crash in Germany during the Second World War may likely shift to Ontario after a local search for relatives came up short.
The last Cape Breton descendants of Reginald Bertram Smith, a Sydney native, appear to have died off over 20 years ago, according to a wide variety of information received after a public plea for help.
He may very well have cousins in the Hamilton, Ont., area, though, after genealogical information surfaced that his uncles settled there.
Erik Wieman, a representative of a German historical group leading the charge to find ancestors, greeted that news as positive after almost losing hope upon word that Cape Breton ancestors could not be found.
“I hope to contact the other descendants soon,” Wieman told the Post, prior to receiving the latest genealogical update. “Unfortunately, one family, the Smiths, will be missing in the end.”
Wieman has reached out to media around the world in search of the descendants of the crew of the Halifax heavy bomber NP711 that went down in February of 1945.
He came across the remote crash site in Germany years ago and is now part of a group that’s working to erect a monument at the site. As part of that work, the group hopes to locate as many descendants of the airmen as possible so that they can be made aware of all memorial plans.
The most recent information sent Wieman’s way came from Maureen McNeil, a genealogist, who outlined the Smith family from their start in Halifax, to their migration to George Street in Sydney.
She originally wrote to Wieman and the Post that it appears the Smith family ended with the children of Thomas B. and his wife Catherine Monica ‘Aka Maud,’ and that none of the children married or had children.
More searching, though, led her to discover that the brothers of Smith’s father had settled in the Hamilton area, meaning many of his first cousins could be there.
As for the Cape Breton portion of the search, a very personal note was sent Wieman’s way from a woman who noted that her late aunt looked after ‘Momma Smith’ and her daughters, Grace and Beatrice, during the Second World War.
“They got to love her and treated her as their own (and) often heard them speak of Bert, but only that he was killed in the war,” she wrote.
The writer also noted that Momma Smith, the airman’s two brothers Will and Earn, Grace and Beatrice are all buried as a family at Holy Cross Cemetery on Alexandra Street.
The boys did not marry, nor did Grace or Beatrice, so there were no children or grandchildren as descendants.
Go online to www.ig-heimatforschung.de for more information or email erik.wieman@gmail.com to learn more.