For the past two days I have been knee deep in genealogy researching my family tree. This has not been an easy task particularly as my Mum was given away in a pub at 3 weeks old!
My Mum was born in January 1943 during World War 2. She was born in Priory Mount Hospital, Haverfordwest on 8th January (however records at the public records office state she was born on 7th January). She was abandoned by her mother and left with a lady she had befriended, the landlady at the Horse & Jockey pub in Steynton. When the landlady shared her plight with one of her regulars he returned home and told his wife. He was promptly sent him back to retrieve the small baby. She remained with this kind elderly couple for the rest of her childhood oblivious to the fact that she wasn’t their real daughter, that is until she was about seven and a spiteful child in school told her that the woman she believed was her mother was not her real mother at all.
It is hard to comprehend how it must feel to not know where you come from. I would imagine that adopted children face similar challenges but as nothing was formally legalised her foster mother faced the insecurity that my Mum maybe collected by her birth mother at any time. This never happened, but my mum recalls her foster mother crying when a box of expensive clothes was left on their doorstep when she was about 7 years old. She believes these clothes may have come from her real mother but that has never been proven.
We had very little to go on but we did have her birth certificate.
Her mothers name is given as Margaret Clark and her fathers as John Clark with an army number which doesn’t seem to exist. So we had very little to go on.
Some years ago we did some research into Margaret Clark, believing her to be from this area but drew a blank and the search was aborted. However, yesterday I came across my mothers birth certificate again and decided to start from another angle. We assumed that John Clark was probably not my mothers birth father but as he was married to Margaret I started to research him using the address in Penarth that appeared on the birth certificate.
I found an obituary on Google for a man named Alfred George Hedley Clark who lived in Westbourne Road, Penarth in 1935. He had a son named Alfred George Clark who I discovered married a Sybil M Rees in 1935. Parts of the jigsaw started to piece together. It now seems that John Clark was in fact Alfred and Margaret’s first name was Sybil. Further research into Sybil’s background gave the names of her parents Eleazer and Catherine Rees from Llansamlet. Suddenly I had quite possibly discovered a grandmother, and great grandparents, a great aunt and quite possibly cousins I had never heard of.
We now think Mum may have a sister who was born 3 years before her called Patricia and next week we are travelling to Penarth to mooch around graveyards, call at the house in Westbourne Avenue. There are still some important questions left to answer and we’re not sure if anyone has them. Why was she abandoned at 3 weeks old? Why was she born in Haverfordwest? Is Alfred her real father? Does she have any siblings?
Or, have I opened a can of worms?????
allaboutninathomas 