Enid Hall meeting her mother's cousin Jean Hutton

LAUGHING for hours after a warm hug, these relatives look like lifelong friends ... but they have never met each other before.

Enid Hall thought she had lost her relations, the Hutton family in Gateshead, forever after her mum died of throat cancer when she was seven.

But this was the moment the 65-year-old met her mum’s cousin, Gene Reeve, for the first time – thanks to the Chronicle.

Enid asked us to help her find her relatives after she was given a 1930 clipping from the Evening World newspaper, which later merged with the Chronicle.

The tantalising clue showed the stern-faced members of the “Hutton Family Quartet”, made up of Enid’s ancestors.

They sang in the Addison and District Male Voice Choir based around the pit near Ryton.

Her great-grandfather, Wilfred Hutton, and his relatives helped the choir scoop a nomination to compete in the North Of England Musical Festival

Reading the story in the paper, Gene recognised the family and we put them in touch.

Gene greeted her new-found relative in her Ryton home, treating her to lunch and a whisky and lemonade.

Enid immediately spotted a family resemblance in her 80-year-old cousin once removed.

She is the spitting image of her grandmother, Isabel.

“Gene looks so much like my grandma,” she said. “You can definitely see the likeness. She is certainly a Hutton.” They gossiped for four hours about Isabel, Gene’s aunt, and swapped photos.

“I was really pleased because the aunt that was Edith’s grandmother was one of my favourite aunties,” Gene said. “We called her Issa but I think she was Isabel.

“She was a Salvation Army lady and we had a really good laugh about the things she would come out with.”

She also had more news about the singing Huttons.

“We have got a big picture of the choir in 1936 – I passed it on to my son-in-law because he is in the Gleemen at Prudhoe.” The musical tradition still runs in the family, she added. We have all sung in choirs. We have sung in chapel choirs and choral society choirs – we’ve always been singers.

“We took my daughter to the chapel choir when she was nine-years-old. She sang a cantata in the choir and she was in the chapel choir until it closed.”

Enid was delighted to finally be reunited with the Hutton wing of the family.

“It was brilliant,” she said. “We had a really good time with them. She told me about a few relations and we are going to keep in touch.

“I spoke to her daughter and I have given her all the information to log on to our family tree. She is going to have a look at it and put on what I don’t know.”

Gene summed up the instant connection the two felt when they met: “It was not even a handshake ... it was a hug.”

By Tom Rowley, Evening Chronicle

Source: chroniclelive.co.uk