A KEEN researcher is hoping that Journal readers can help shed more light on her quest to document her family history.Sue Graves, of Sheffield, has spent years looking into her heritage and is intrigued about a Lowestoft branch of her family tree.

A KEEN researcher is hoping that Journal readers can help shed more light on her quest to document her family history.

Sue Graves, of Sheffield, has spent years looking into her heritage and is intrigued about a Lowestoft branch of her family tree. In particular she is keen to discover what brought a Grantham-based family to the east coast.

Her great-great-grandfather James Reece was born in Brampton, Huntingdonshire in March 1827. He served in the army and fought in the 1855 Siege of Sebastopol, as part of the Crimean War.

He returned to Brampton when discharged in 1962, but later moved to Birmingham and then Grantham, where his daughter Ann Ellen Reece married Alfred Allan in 1894.

Later that decade, the couple moved to Lowestoft, where they had at least seven children. In the 1901 census, James Reece was reported to be living with them at 240 Raglan Street.

He died in 1911 and on March 10 was buried in Lowestoft cemetery. His coffin was draped with the Union Flag and the Last Post was sounded by Drum Major Blundell of the Royal Norfolk Veterans' Association.

His son-in-law Alfred Allan is thought to have played for Lowestoft Football Club and worked as an engineer and iron turner.

Miss Graves said: 'My grandmother (Mary Jane Reece) gave me this photograph which I believe shows Alfred with his wife, and three eldest children - Agnes Allan Reece, Elizabeth Ellen Allan and possibly baby Alfred James Allan, who was born and died in 1899. It was taken at Augustus Young, of Wellington Road, south Lowestoft.

'My grandmother was brought up in Newark by her paternal grandmother and so had little contact with the Lowestoft family. I really have no idea why they went to Lowestoft. There was no family connection there.'

Miss Graves is now hoping to learn more about this branch of her family and is appealing for any descendants of Alfred and Ann Ellen Allan to contact her.

Amongst their children were Agnes Allan Reece, who married George Balls in Mutford in 1912, Elizabeth Ellen Allan, Ralph William Allan, who married Edith Eliza Neave in Mutford in 1923, Reginald John Donald Allan, Harold William Allan, who married Lily Breach in Mutford in 1930, and Henrietta Allan.

If you can help Miss Graves in her search, write to her at 118a Hartley Brook Road, Sheffield, S5 0JE.