Sunday 28 June 2015

Stranger than fiction

 
My guest, Sue Barnard tells us her story.

 
 
Ten years ago, I received, out of the blue, a letter which went on to change my life. It was to spark off a chain of events which led, a few months later, to my meeting up with the family that I never, in my wildest dreams, imagined that I would ever know.

It is a long and complicated story and would probably fill an entire book, but the piece that follows is just one small part of it. During the past ten years I have shared it with family and a few close friends, but now perhaps the time is right for it to have a wider audience.

Tissues at the ready?

THE PHOTOGRAPH

I’ve always been bizarrely fascinated by the kind of stories in which long-lost relatives are finally reunited, and their relationship is ultimately proved, by means of a pair of long-separated objects. But these stories belong in the realm of fairy tales with unexpected happy endings, not in the real world.  Or so I’d always thought...

As a product of the post-war baby-boom, I was born at a time when money was scarce and luxuries were even scarcer. For much of my childhood the family didn’t even own a camera, so photographs of my early years are very few and far between. Hence, the ones which do exist (mostly taken on borrowed Box Brownies) have become all the more valuable. Which might explain why I’ve kept them all – including one particular picture which, for my whole life, I’ve never really liked.

The photograph is a grainy black-and-white 3” x 2” enprint. It was taken at my first Christmas, when I was four months old, and shows me (dressed in my best but still baby-bald) sitting propped up on cushions on a dark velvet-upholstered sofa. I appear to be waving at the camera and half-smiling. The photo could have been quite pleasing, if it had been a simple above-the-waist shot:


But it isn’t.  It’s a full-frontal. And thanks to the low angle of the camera and a very unfortunate pose, the picture is dominated by a most unflattering expanse of terry-towelling nappy.


Many a time, when I’ve come across my baby photos during a periodic clear-out, I’ve glared at this pre-pubescent knicker-flasher and reached for the waste paper basket. But somehow (by divine intervention?) she has always found her way back into the photo box…

*

For as long as I could remember, one of my favourite childhood bedtime stories was the one about how "we chose you to be our very special little girl." Brought up as an only child, and with little or no knowledge of the facts of life (That Sort Of Thing was just not talked about), I accepted this at face value and had no idea that it was in any way out of the ordinary. It was only during my first year at secondary school, when adoption was being discussed in a biology lesson, that I finally twigged what that bedtime story actually meant.

The rest of that school day passed in a blur, then back at home I plucked up the courage to ask. In a way, I suppose I had always known (my adoptive parents were wonderfully frank; they had never attempted, or intended, to conceal it from me), but the inescapable truth still came as a shock. I was shown the birth and adoption certificates which were issued when my adoption was finalised. They showed the date of my birth (which I already knew), and that I had been born in Wales (which I didn't know), but contained no other information to suggest that I had ever been called by any name other than the one I had always known. And for many years after that, it never crossed my mind that I might have had a different name at birth. Nor did I imagine, at that stage, that being an adoptee might make any significant difference to my life. I was, and had always been, part of the only family I had known – and in any case, adoption was a one-way ticket.

Or at least, it was – until a change in the law in 1975 made it possible to open doors which had previously remained firmly closed.

And so it was that some time after my adoptive parents died, I made a few tentative enquiries – and eventually obtained a copy of my original birth certificate. This was when I discovered, for the first time, that my name had not always been Susan. I had begun life, and had spent the six months before my adoption was legalised, as Edwina.

Further enquiries revealed that my birth parents had subsequently married – and I later discovered that they had even tried, at that point, to get me back. They went on to have two more children, both boys, and had emigrated to Australia in the 1960s, where my father had died in 1982 and where my brothers (both married and with families of their own) and my mother (who has since remarried) are still living.

How we finally made contact – and why my parents had not been able to keep me – is another story entirely. But during the early email exchanges which frequently flew between Manchester and Melbourne, one of my brothers told me that when our mother learned that I had been found, she had shown him a photograph of me as a baby.  I was very moved to learn that she had wanted to keep some small memento of the daughter she had been forced to give away – and even more moved to think that she should still have it, almost half a century later. He borrowed it from her, scanned it and emailed it to me. The attachment was labelled “edwina_baby.jpeg”:


Any doubts which I might have had about having finally found my birth family vanished the moment I opened the attachment. The very photograph which I had always hated had been the very one that my mother had always loved…
 
The Adoption, Search & Reunion site may be of help for those searching for adoption records.
.

Friday 19 June 2015

I wanted Trace your Roots to be...





Another kind writer friend, Susan Jones, has agree to place a 'Launch Day' article her wonderful blog.





When I sat down to write Trace your Roots I had great plans. I wanted the book to be packed with loads of useful genealogical tips. More than that, I wanted to help those who found they’d reached an impasse – as so many do when drawing up their family tree.

Find the full post HERE
.

Broad Thoughts From A Home: TRACE YOUR ROOTS - a guest post by Maureen Vincent...



Hosted by Sue Barnard - fellow Crooked Cat author, and editor of TYR.


Broad Thoughts From A Home: TRACE YOUR ROOTS - a guest post by Maureen Vincent...: Today I'm delighted to welcome fellow Crooked Cat author Maureen Vincent-Northam, whose book Trace your Roots is published today by Cro...

The Writer's ABC Checklist: Trace Your Roots with @mvnortham




Thanks to Lorraine Mace for hosting me on her wonderful, and very useful, blog.




The Writer's ABC Checklist: Trace Your Roots with @mvnortham:   Today I am thrilled to host my old friend, Maureen Vincent-Northam, who is here to tell us about her excellent genealogy book,...

Sunday 14 June 2015

Talking to Family and War Letters

Another story of Nicola Robinson’s came about from talking to family members.

 

I discovered I had a great uncle who lived locally and I met him for the first time in his home. He was a lovely chap. He showed me some photos of himself, his mother, his brothers etc.




He was one of four brothers who fought in the Second World War. Sadly the youngest died on Dec 5th 1944 and is buried in Forli, Italy.

My Great Uncle Sid had kept the letters, which had been sent to my Great Grandmother. The official letter stated that her son been killed in action. Then there was a letter sent by the squadron leader and later another that told the family the lads had done a collection and had sent some money.

This was followed by a short note explaining that some additional monies had been collected and would be sent on later and that he also had his medals in his possession. It was very poignant and touching reading through these.

Cemetery at Forli
Photo courtesy of New Zealand War Graves Project

There was a lovely photo of two of the brothers, meeting up abroad because one had swapped sections to surprise his brother! Being war heroes was in their blood as their father was a staff sergeant and when he died in 1927 he had a ceremonious funeral where the guard rode their horses backwards and the bugler played the last post. This was detailed in the Oldham Chronicle.

A very useful site to reseach those who died during the two world wars is The Commonwealth War Graves Commission.

.

Tuesday 9 June 2015

Google and Genes Reunited

What can you uncover when digging into your family history? My guest, Nicola Robinson tells us what she found while researching one afternoon.

My favourite story comes from using Google. My grandma was born Norah Kenworthy Hilton. Kenworthy was her mother’s maiden name (Rebecca Kenworthy).



Rebecca was born in Oldham but her parents had moved from Rishworth.

I was fortunate to have a wealth of information about them already; they'd been farmers for a long time and up until the early 1900s had occupied many farms including ‘Stott Hall Farm’ - the one that sits within the M62.
Nora and her father Thomas

So one afternoon, a bit bored of census checking, I googled ‘Kenworthy Stott Hall Farm’ and found a terrible tragedy. On this website I scrolled down the page and discovered a transcript of an old diary  which also records their deaths. Read it HERE


I've visited the graves in the churchyard and showed them to one of their great,   great grandchildren, who I met through Genes Reunited another great resource for anyone trying to find out more about their past.

Sunday 7 June 2015

Book Launch Party



Excited much! Trace your Roots now has a new publisher




And to launch the new, fully revised and updated book, we are having an online party on Facebook.

Join me on 19th June 2015 where there'll be virtual food, music, gossip, fun and give-aways!

Full details HERE