U.K. couple seeking long-lost Niagara family guests for Falls wedding
Robert Peckham and fiancée Gill Moss to marry in May
Long before the creation of the internet, expats who wanted to keep up with what was happening in Niagara Falls would opt for a mail order subscription to The Niagara Falls Review.
“I remember your paper being delivered to our home wrapped in brown paper for all the years of my childhood, all through the 1960s and ’70s,” said Robert Peckham, of Oxfordshire, a county in southeast England.
His father, Edward Charles Peckham, was born and raised in Niagara Falls.
A reservist with the Lincoln and Welland Regiment, Edward was stationed in England during the Second World War.
It was there he met his first wife and founded an engineering company for a U.S.-based metal repair service.
He maintained contact with his native city as an overseas subscriber to The Review.
He died in 1983 at the age of 76.
Flash forward to 2019 and his son has reached out to The Review in hopes of reuniting with any long, lost relatives.
Robert and his fiancée Gill Moss plan on getting married in Niagara Falls aboard Hornblower Niagara Cruises in May — and he’s hoping Review readers can help him find family members to add to his guest list.
“We’re not conventional, so we didn’t want to do a traditional wedding,” he said of the couple’s decision to tie the knot at the base of the Horseshoe Falls.
The 59-year-old has found several family members through social media but says there’s probably quite a few cousins out there that he has yet to find.
“I’ve been trying to track down bits of the family and I’ve found cousins in London, Ont. and Sarnia,” he said.
His father’s sister, Dorothy, married Sydney Mewburn in 1928 and they had two daughters.
In addition to the Mewburn family, he also has ties to the Burley family.
As a child, Robert would accompany his father on frequent return trips home and has fond memories of Niagara.
This will be his fiancée’s first trip across the pond.
“She’s always wanted to go to Canada and she knows of my Canadian heritage,” he said. “We’ve always talked about going on holidays there, but now the holidays have turned into a wedding.”
And, he’s hoping his nuptials will be well attended.
Anyone with information that might assist with his search can email him at robert.peckham@mac.com.