Mick Le Pelley and his long-standing friend, Francis Quin, discover they are related. (0595187)

GENEALOGIST Terry Dowinton hits a few keys on his laptop and Bob’s your uncle, there it is… the proof.

Mick Le Pelley’s ancestry has linked him with nobody particularly famous. After all, he is as ‘Guern’ as they come.

But the computer result could not have been better and he shakes his head in utter disbelief.

‘He won’t believe it,’ he says.

The ‘he’ is Mick’s best friend, shooting and drinking partner Francis Quin. Deputy ‘Charm’ himself.

And the result is the proof that Mick and Francis are related: fifth cousins, twice removed.

Later in the evening, over a pint at the nearby Captain’s, Mick quietly informs his friend of the news and the popular St Martin’s deputy is reduced to tears of laughter.

The two mates vow to keep their newest secret just that until the day of this Timelines publication, but they are chuffed to bits.

‘That’s just amazing,’ says Mick, who discovers the connection dates back to Thomas Le Poidevin’s marriage to Marie Sauvary in the mid-18th century.

Francis agrees it was a shock, a massive one, and the thought of it induces more laughter.

‘When he told me, I just couldn’t believe it,’ he says.

‘I always thought that if I had any [ancestry] leaning, it would be to London, Cornwall or Jersey, but not to Mick.

‘I think it must been on my father’s side.’

To say Mick is fairly staggered by the finding is an understatement, particularly as it comes at the end of an hour of gentle revelations put to him by our pair of genealogists.

‘They say in Guernsey that if you go back far enough, everybody is related,’ says Terry, who along with Maria van der Tang has traced Mick’s family back to Pierre Le Pelley in the very early 18th century.

Mick’s pedigree chart is as Sarnian as most come but there are several notable findings, particularly on his mother’s side of the family, the Besnards.

Leon Besnard, his great-great-grandfather, was born in Tours, France, in 1821.

By the time Leon was 18 he had arrived in Guernsey and in the early censuses he is described as a carpenter.

But by 1871 he was running a ginger-beer business in Back Street, St Peter Port, which his son, Henry, continued.

By the mid-19th century James Napoleon Besnard, Mick’s great- grandfather, was demonstrating a different set of skills.

He was a model yacht builder, the call for which came from wealthy islanders who had children to amuse.

It’s highly likely that many of James Napoleon’s toy boats were sailed on the model yacht pond at the Castle Emplacement and, perhaps, even his own son, Alfred’s, for it’s known he had similar skills.

Mick still recalls his grandfather, Alfred, who was born in Alderney circa 1881.

‘My grandfather’s hobby was making model yachts. He used to make every body part, including the sails, by hand.

‘I recall he worked for Leale’s, repairing all the hundreds of windmills around the island.

‘He would ride around on his bike with a chip basket on the front full of tools.’

Previously he had been a blacksmith in the army, but his grandson understands he spent most of his working life at Leale’s, ‘so perhaps he learned his forging skills in the army’.

Old Alfred certainly created a fine impression on his little grandson.

‘He was a lovely old man. He had so much time for us kids. Right until he died, he remained a really nice guy.

‘He and my gran also ran the buffet at the Track and while he worked for Leale’s, she ran a sweet shop at 28, Mill Street. They were hard-working people.’

It seems Alfred’s jovial nature was a contrast to Mick’s paternal grandfather, Walter, a ‘rather cantankerous old grower’.

Mick recalls how, at Walter’s funeral, the vicar got around the problem of summing up his awkward character by simply saying: ‘He was an honest man, but didn’t make friends easily.’

Between the generations of James Napoleon (1852 to 1904) and Alfred George (1881 to 1971) came the rather mysterious John Isaac Penwell Druce, another great-great-grandfather, on Mick’s mother’s side.

Born in 1831, the man sometimes known as Drews, probably no more than a pronunciation alternative, married Mary Newton from South Petherton, Somerset, at St Sampson’s on 5 July 1852.

They had four children, including Mick’s great-grandmother, Selina August, who married James Napoleon Besnard.

Druce was a sailor and in the 1861 census is listed as an able seaman on the vessel, Proserpine, in Sunderland Dock in Durham.

He not only worked from home, he played away too.

He was a bigamist.

Whether he simply disappeared from the island scene or was two-timing Mary is unclear, but in late 1863 he married Jane Hardwick in Tynemouth, Northumberland, and had a further seven children with her before dying in the north-eastern village on the River Tyne on 25 January 1910.

Meanwhile, back in the island, his other wife was clearly struggling to bring up a family and added to the headache by having a further child (Reginald) in 1870.

The 1881 census shows Mary as living with her parents in the Pollet and said to be the wife of Charles Saint, described as a lodger, with a son, Reginald Saint.

In the previous census of 1871, Reginald had carried the surname, Druce.

Mick’s 20th-century ancestry has been altogether more normal, the skeleton in the cupboard having disappeared with Druce’s demise.

Our subject recalls a happy early childhood, a highlight being the traditional meeting of the Besnard clans every summer Sunday on the beach.

‘The whole family would go and we’d play cricket and rounders and go shrimping.’

Idyllic days, typical of island family ways of the period.

Mick also fondly recalls his first business enterprise, encouraged by his father.

‘He’d give me a tea chest of spider crabs bought from old ‘Fif’ Mahy, the Cobo fisherman.

‘I divided them up, depending on size, and then sold them for pocket money.

‘And when the crabs weren’t in season, I did it with firewood, carrots and radishes.

‘It was a good way to teach kids the value of money.’