Photo: Alastair Grant - WPA Pool/Getty Images; Adam Simpson-York

Camilla, Queen Consort visits the Lille Barracks; Edrica Faulkner

Queen Camillatraveled back into the past with a little help from a historian — and had something funny to say about it!

The Queen Consort, 75, surprised Adam Simpson-York, who runs the Facebook pageMedals Going Home, with a personal thank-you note. Simpson-York had recently mailed Buckingham Palace a photo he found on eBay of Queen Camilla’s great-great-grandmother Edrica Faulkner, and he was delighted to receive a reply from the royal.

“Many thanks for the photograph of my great, great-grandmother. It is the first time I have ever seen her picture, I must say she looks a bit sad in it!” the Queen Consort wrote. “With best wishes, Camilla,” she signed the note on Clarence House stationery, stamped with hernew royal cypher.

Simpson-York now tells PEOPLE he was thrilled to receive such a genuine reply from the royal after mailing in the picture on Jan. 4.

Adam Simpson-York

Camilla, Queen Consort letter thanking Adam Simpson-York for Edrica Faulkner photo

According toThe Times,Edrica was born in 1822 in Florence, Italy, and her grandson Philip was Camilla’s grandfather. Simpson-York connected her to the Queen Consort after spotting the sepia-toned photo on eBay and typing her name into an online database.

Edrica Faulkner

“I typed Edrica Faulkner into Ancestry, and that gave me a few hits that made me think I was onto something good,” the 37-year-old from Ipswich, Suffolk, tells PEOPLE. “I also had the word ‘Shand’ on the back, so I started to realize the connection was with Camilla,” referring to her birth name.

“There are plenty more items out there for me to research!” he says.

King Charles and Queen Camilla.Andrew Milligan/Getty

King Charles III and Camilla, Queen Consort, waves as they leave Dunfermline Abbey, after a visit to mark its 950th anniversary, and after attending a meeting at the City Chambers in Dunfermline where the King formally marked the conferral of city status on the former town on October 3, 2022 in Dunfermline, Scotland.

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source: people.com