Brenda Brashier didn’t know that when she came to a family reunion in Mississippi in 2015, she would learn she had a brother she never knew existed.

    Brashier, who lives in Utah, started working on her family history in 2010  after her father, Benjamin Thomas Brashier Jr., died. After learning there would be a family reunion in Mississippi, she decided to attend.

    “While we were in Mississippi for the reunion we were visiting a cemetery in Quitman where a lot of my dad’s relatives are buried,” Brashier recalled. “While we were standing in the cemetery this man stopped his car, got out, looked at my brother, and said ‘you have to be Ben Brashier’s son, because you look just like him.'”

    As it turned out, the passerby was the son of her father’s brother Emmett, a cousin they had never met.

    “We went to the reunion and I told my relatives about the man at  the cemetery, and none of them knew about him,” Brashier said. “My uncle Emmett had been married a couple of times, and I knew he had a child from a previous marriage, but we didn’t know him.”

    “This is where the story gets really interesting,” Brashier said.

    “I went back home, called my mother and told her we found out while we were in Mississippi at the reunion we had a cousin that we never knew about,” she  said. “I guess that got her to thinking that it was time she told me I also had a half brother, a child my father had before he met her. It was a big shock, to say the least.”

    Brashier said her mother, who now has Alzheimer’s disease, has trouble with her memory, but she was able to tell her what she could remember.

    “In the late 1940s my dad met a woman who lived in or near Meridian,” Brashier said. “They hung out at a place named Happy’s Cafe. My dad was good friends with the owner, Happy. My dad and the woman had a child together, but marriage was not an option. The woman kept the child, who was a male.”

    Brashier said her mother started working at the cafe around late 1950 or 1951. While working, there she met her dad, and they started dating, then got  married on May 6, 1951.

    “Before they married my mother said the woman brought my dad’s son to Happy’s Cafe, and at the time the child was about 15 to 18 months old,” Brashier said. “We believe he was born some time during 1949, but it could have possibly been 1948 or even as late as 1950.”

    During those years, her uncle Emmett, kept in contact with the woman, and her dad sent money to her for the child through him.

    “My dad and all his siblings are now passed on, and I haven’t found anyone else in the family who knows more,” Brashier said.

    Brashier said her mother told her by the time she and her dad were married, the woman had another boyfriend, and was no longer interested in her father.

    “My family moved from Shubuta in January of 1966, and I never knew I had a brother until I attended the reunion in 2015,” she said.

    Brashier hopes to learn more when she returns to Meridian in April for the next family reunion.

    “I just feel like I am supposed to find my brother,” she said. “This may sound a little strange, but before I went home to the family reunion, I felt my dad’s presence. He has been gone for five years, and I told my sister in a text before I went home that I felt my daddy’s presence and I didn’t know why. I know now that was the reason I was supposed to go to the family reunion, to find out I had a brother.”

    “I feel like my dad wants me to find my brother, I don’t know if I ever will, but I feel like there is some purpose in looking, because I have found some other cousins,” Brashier said.

    Brashier is asking for anyone who might help find her brother to email her at findmymeridianbrother@gmail.com.