To mother... letters from America

My Dear Mother, I know how anxious you will be to hear from me and so I take the earliest opportunity of writing to you. We arrived in New York on Friday night after a passage of forty five days... We have had a splendid passage...

THESE were Tom Parker's first words to his mother Sarah after completing the long Atlantic voyage to a new life in America. Aged just 13, he travelled alone, and while many in his position would no doubt have been terrified, he seems to have coped admirably. "I was friends with everyone in the ship before we got fairly to sea. The Captain is a very nice man and a good seaman and so is his first mate, Mr Harvard," he writes.

Tom's correspondence may be cheerful and upbeat, going into detail about the weather and the ship's progress, but it masks the family tragedy that necessitated his departure in the spring of 1859.

Born the second child in Stockton, in 1843, his father, lured by the gold rush, had embarked on a trip to Australia but died at sea, leaving his mother and Tom and his three siblings destitute. Desperate to make ends meet, Sarah Parker tried to make a life in America, taking her daughter and three boys to join relatives there, but the little girls' deaths, and her homesickness, prompted the family's return.

With the two youngest, James and Willie, at Sir William Turner's school, in Kirkleatham, there was only Tom to worry about. It was with a heavy heart that Sarah arranged for him to rejoin his aunt and uncle in Williamsburg, New York.

Far from bearing his mother any resentment for sending him away, Tom's first letter to her, before he had even left England, paints the picture of a young man heading out on a great adventure, full of hope and high spirits. "I daresay you will be wondering where we are, but you need be under no apprehensions for our safety. We have had a pretty good passage up, rather stormy the first night. I was sick but soon got over it. We had a beautiful view in London River. Land on both sides. I feel quite at home now," he writes from Deptford Green Wharf, on March 12. With his open nature and capacity for making friends, Tom soon settled in with his relatives. Despite the excitement of his new surroundings, he still wrote faithfully to his mother, filling her in on all his news. He got a job with the merchant navy, sailing the famous New York to San Francisco route. Then, during his second voyage, civil war broke out.

On August 18, 1861, Sarah received a letter from her niece Isabella that filled her with despair. It seemed that Tom was determined to enlist. Tossing the letter aside, she wept bitter tears, convinced that having already lost a husband, she was now to lose a son. This letter, along with those written by Tom, remained in the family for more than a century as the treasured testimonies of its ancestors. But it was not until Theo Howells' aunt, Theo Granger, by then well into her 90s, came to live with her in Darlington, that the 78-year-old even knew of their existence.

"A cousin of hers in America died and his wife found a parcel of letters in his wallet. She didn't know what to do with them, so she sent them to my aunt. When she came to live with me, she brought the letters and gave them to me to read," says Theo, who is named after her relative. Then immersed in researching a book about her local church, Grange Road Baptist, with fellow congregation member Peter King, she was amazed to find this leading her back to the family documents. "I found that one of our family, William Heron, was the first pastor of the church, which tied in with the letters. The whole thing set me going to research a bit more," says Theo, a former home economics teacher at The Avenue comprehensive, in Newton Aycliffe.

Encouraged by her aunt, who shared snippets of her own knowledge and memories, Theo began painstakingly to flesh out the story of Tom and his family. Her research took several years and involved a trip to America, as well as many hours of trawling through local archives. Helped by the Cleveland Family History Society and others, notably Ethel Howell, a distant relative who came forward with information after hearing of Theo's project, she gradually formed a picture of what happened to the Parkers. Inspired by what she considered to be their "fascinating" story, she laid it down in a book, Your Affectionate Son.

Although the speech and commentary are imagined, she says it's more or less an accurate representation. "It's as true as I can make it - all the facts, as far as I can research them, are true," says Theo.

So what happened to Tom? She discovered that he survived the American Civil War, in the event having "a bit of a boring time". Then James, the elder of his two brothers, came to join him, rising to prominence as a grain merchant in the New York stock exchange. He was finally reunited with his beloved mother when she crossed the Atlantic for the second time, bringing his brother Willie with her, in 1867. This time she settled, marrying her American cousin Jim four years later.

But mystery still surrounds the ultimate fate of the young scribe who was Theo's muse. "The only thing I've not been able to find out is where, when and how Tom died. I've written what I think was the nearest scenario and I have put a note to that effect," she says. Her theory is that stationed near a river with the navy, he caught typhoid, which eventually claimed his life. "In the last letter his brother mentions that he's had one of his dos again, then he's not mentioned again," says Theo with resignation.

While she would like to document the next phase in the saga, which has so far come as close to her as her great, great grandmother, Theo says now that she no longer lives in the region (she moved to Witney, near Oxford, to be closer to relatives in 2001) the research would prove too difficult. But she is proud of what she has already achieved - and believes her aunt would be, too. "When I came home from my research she always used to say, 'What have you found out today?' I read her the first chapter but she was 99 when she died and I don't really think she took much in. Previously, though, she'd been very, very interested," she says.

So is she glad to have shed light on a story that, without her efforts, might have disappeared into obscurity? "I felt right from the beginning that it was something I had to do," she says.

l Your Affectionate Son, by Theo Howells, is available at £11.95 including postage and packing from Brewin Books Ltd, Doric House, 56 Alcester Road, Studley, Warwickshire B80 7LG, or direct from the author at 7 Riverside Gardens, Mill Street, Witney, Oxfordshire OX28 6DD