A TOUR guide was stunned to find out he was related to a potential client who contacted him from America.

Brian and Karen Bankston, from Michigan, USA, used social media to ask Innerleithen guide Stewart Wilson, who trades as Tweed Vally Blogger, to arrange a personalised Borders tour – and a bonus was finding out they had family ties.

Mr Wilson is no stranger to helping American clients trace their family’s roots and ancestry in Scotland as part of a tour.

But the last thing he expected was to find that the Bankston’s family tree shared a branch or two with his own.

Mr Bankston knew Innerleithen to be the birthplace of his late mother and it was on delving a little deeper, in order to prepare the bespoke tour, that Stewart made the discovery.

Mr Wilson said: “My client Brian told me that his late mother was Janice, daughter of Janet Wilkin and John Wilson, of Innerleithen. 

“I immediately recognised these names as those of my own great-grandparents so it only took a few more questions to confirm that Brian was in fact my dad’s first cousin!

“My late grandfather had three younger sisters, two of whom were adopted to America in the 1930s after their mother died. 

“It must have been a heart-breaking decision to take at the time.

“Although we knew this, we had little information about what happened to them, where they might have settled and if they went on to have any families of their own.

“Social media serendipity has brought our long-lost family together.”

Mr Bankston and his family duly visited Innerleithen last month, where Stewart showed them around the area, including taking them to the birthplace of Brian’s mum and other houses lived in by the family.

This was followed up with a visit to Mr Wilson’s parents’ house for lunch and the cousins met for the first time. Over stories and old photos, they pieced together their shared family history.

Mr Wilson said: “It was a joyful meeting, decades in the making.

“My tour guide business has only been operating for a short time and had the Bankstons reached out a year earlier they would not have been put in contact.

“While they may have still made the trip to Innerleithen, it would not have included getting to meet long-lost family members.

“I knew when I started as a tour guide that I would inevitably discover things, but I never could have imagined it would have led to me discovering members of my own family that I never knew existed, let alone have the opportunity to meet them.

“It is certain to be one tour I will never forget.”