He hadn’t seen his sister’s since he was five years old and he had been searching for them for years but Anthony Smith was determined to be reunited with his two sisters. As he tells me, he was on “a mission for his Dad and his sisters.”
I asked Anthony to tell me his story from the beginning so we all could understand how a simple Facebook posting, a search on an Ancestor site and a misspelling of a name all coming together at just the right moment resulted in this miracle.
Q So Anthony, tell me what happened?
A My Dad was married to someone else before he was married to my Mom and he had two daughters a year apart. Both my Dad and his first wife were very young and they ended up getting a divorce. There were a lot of problems and life got in the way and my Dad became estranged from the girls when I was about five years old. The last time I saw my big sisters is when I was five. The girls were living with their maternal grandmother and we moved and we all lost touch.
Q Awe.
A We had moved around so much and apparently they had moved around as well. On top of that our names were Smith and there are literally millions of them, The fact that I found them was a complete fluke because for literally about eight years I had been looking for them. I hired Detectives and even went through the County Clerk’s Office of Fort Wayne where they were born, which one would think would have all the records needed to find out where they where or if they got married but just another dead end. My Cousin even ran ads in Craigslist for God sake! LOL.
Q So you hired private Detectives?
A Yeah, I spent several hundred dollars and a whole lot of time, all to no avail. I used ancestry.com, and all sorts of other genealogy sites online but I kept coming up empty.
I tried looking for their grandmother because I knew if I could find her or her obituary there might be listing of her daughters or her granddaughters, but that didn't work either. Then one day a friend I hadn't seen in years named Mary Barnes Moffette heard second hand that Anthony Smith was looking for his sisters through Facebook. I used to work with her when I was in High school at a grocery store where I was a bag boy, we would talk on our breaks about every little thing but she was always a real sweetheart. She was slightly older than me maybe late 20's at the time but after all these she still remembered me. Her daughter had told her about me looking for my sisters because she knew that her mom knew me back in the day plus Mary happens to be one of those people who loves genealogy, researching and finding people. That’s just her thing. So one night she gets online and starts searching. I’ve had hundreds of kind thoughtful people through the years who have tried to help me. I'm talking Very accomplished people who have done this kind of thing before and were good at genealogy, but they didn't have any luck either. But Mary, this sweet woman from Oneida Tennessee, gets out there and with no more than the name of my lost sister’s grandmother she found them! Her last name was Carter and you would think if you type in her first and last name that it would simply come up, but it doesn’t. It was so frustrating but I knew she had to exist. Heck I even knew her birth date but still could find nothing. But Mary on the other hand gets in her mind for whatever reason that maybe Carter was spelled differently. So instead of Carter spelled C-A-R-T-E-R she tried spelling it with a D instead of T making it C-A-R-D-E-R and what yah know it pulls right up and there it is.
Q So the misspelling of a name?
A The misspelling of a name was all that it was. But I'll never forget the night I got that phone call from my Mom. My Mom says, do you remember Mary that you used to work with down at the grocery store and I said yeah I remember her. She said well she found your sisters. I was like OH MY GOD!!!
Q Oh my Lord.
A My heart was beating and I was like, really?” I was so excited the next day I called my sister Susie and we talked for an hour and there were tears from both of us. It was very emotional for her because she had missed out knowing her Dad or even having him around.
Q Yeah.
A I had to let them know how much he loved them. There wasn’t a day that went by that Dad wasn’t sad or down over it and everybody knew it in the family. He wouldn’t talk about it but it really hurt him. I think when he looked at his granddaughter I think he saw those girls and that is why he loved her so much. I let Susie know that he thought of them every day. Life just somehow got in the way and from the outside looking in I know it sounds like these were people who didn't care about their kids but that certainly was not the case here. To me just talking to my sister after all these years was so awesome I can't even describe it. And I guess that was pretty much that.
Q Have you made plans to see them in person?
A Yeah. One of them lives in Texas and One lives in Indiana and she is coming down to Nashville sometime in May but I may be going up to Indiana before then. She’s got kids and grandkids and I hope to go visit with them.
Q You’re an Uncle?
A Yeah. Yeah and her husband’s birthday is the same day as mine.
Q So you have only spoken to one sister so far?
A Yes. Susie told me that Sandy was out of town when we talked so I am going to be talking to Sandy later.
Q Did you get butterflies in your belly and all of that?
A Oh yeah, you know after all the disappointment for so long and this real desire to find my sisters and just talk to them, it was always heavy on my mind you know? I was on a mission to find my sisters for my Dad. And to find my sisters so they would know that he always did love them. I wanted to explain to them that they had a Dad that loved them always and missed them every day.
With that we wrapped it up and I wished him love and luck with his physical reunion with his sisters. A story eight years in the making and a simple Facebook post, as well as a sweet lady who did genealogy for a hobby who remembered a teenage bag boy co-worker combined with the random thought of trying to misspell a name to find an answer creates a miracle that occurred right around Easter Sunday, 2013.
Make sure to check out Anthony’s music at www.AnthonySmith.com
And like him on Facebook at: https://www.facebook.com/OFFICIALAnthonySmithFanPage
Be sure to watch his music video for "Bringing Back The Sunshine" embedded in this article.
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