My father never knew his grandmother, Fanny Featherstone (1884-1943), had a brother William James Featherstone, who died in 1917 in WWI (and was buried in Belgium).
That’s why she named her son, William James Mac Kay who was born in 1920. He ended up dying in World War II, in 1942, which is why Donald Mac Kay (his younger brother, my grandfather, who died of colon cancer in 1968), named my father William James in his memory.
I’ve been trying to research Fanny Featherstone’s siblings, to see if there was any chance that any of her siblings or their descendants have/had this immune deficiency as well, and I was surprised when I stumbled upon this…
It’s looking more and more like Fanny Featherstone (who died of Leukemia) was the first one who had this mutation. I believe her family were railroaders, who knows what chemicals they were exposed to…
Hope for Answers 