David & Steven/Sally James Family Finders

Families can be driven apart for all manner of reasons.

I had no information at all about where my mum went.

And when you do lose touch with your loved ones...

You don't know who you are, where've you come from?

..finding them can take a lifetime.

I might have a brother that's still living here.

Especially when they could be anywhere. At home or abroad.

And that's where the Family Finders come in.

From international organisations...

Hi, it's The Salvation Army Family Tracing Service.

..to genealogy detective agencies...

For someone to say that it's changed their life,

it makes coming to work, you know, really, really special.

..and dedicated one-man bands.

It's a matter of how much effort you really want to put into it.

How badly you want to solve the problem.

They hunt through history to bring families back together again.

Finding new family is wonderful.

In this series, we follow the work of the Family Finders...

Suddenly, you get one spark of breakthrough and there they are.

..learning the tricks they use to track missing relatives through time...

I didn't think I'd ever find my sisters but I have.

..and meeting the people whose lives they change along the way.

I've been waiting to meet John my whole life.

Since we've met, I feel part of a family again.

You've just completed my life for me.

Many family secrets are shrouded in the mists of time.

Tracing a family separated across decades or even centuries

can seem a daunting task.

Today, we meet David, whose search for his birth family was

floundering until he sought out the very latest online resources.

It took me a while to realise...

..that that's the people...

..that's the people I was looking for.

-There he is. My new brother.

-At last. My God!

And we follow the story of Sally, who used cutting-edge DNA techniques

to decipher her family's 80-year-old enigma.

It told you the countries of origin that you came from.

But it also matched you online to other people who had the same DNA.

And he said to me, "I've never had a match this close before."

55-year-old David Stewart grew up in Scotland,

along with two older sisters and his brother, Michael.

When he was still a young boy, and for reasons David never knew,

his older brother, Michael, was placed in care.

I was really young at the time when he went.

I was only three, something like that.

I just... In fact, I don't even remember him going.

I don't remember. One day he was there and the next day he was gone.

I was so young.

I didn't know where he went or why he went.

No idea.

But that wasn't the only family mystery

surrounding David's childhood.

He later discovered that his mother

and older sisters weren't, in fact, his family by birth.

His dad was his real birth father and had brought David

and his brother to live with him and his new family.

I was never told anything about my birth mother.

Or whatever happened to her.

I had no knowledge whatsoever.

A very strange upbringing

when you're living with one lady who you call Mum

and two girls who you call your sisters, but in the back

of your head, you know there's something different there.

There's something...

Then each year that went on, I just got more intrigued by it.

But my dad still never told me anything.

Life carried on for David.

His father died in 1985.

David married and started a family of his own.

But the urge to find out what happened to his older brother,

Michael, and the desire to find out about his own birth relatives

kept on growing.

Everybody I know's got blood relatives.

And I didn't have any.

It's always been a thing, I have to have some blood relatives.

David's case was taken on

by the Salvation Army's Family Tracing Unit.

Within just a few months, they had found a possible match.

The next stage was to get in touch.

They wrote a little letter.

Would he be willing to get in touch with me?

They basically gave him my name and address, my phone number,

and they left it up to him.

All David could do now was wait and see

if his brother would get in touch.

-PHONE RINGS

-He rang me on Christmas Day.

About ten years ago.

Although the brothers reunited briefly, they have since lost touch.

But finding his brother now spurred David on to try

and find any other family he had out there.

However, all he had to go on was a few vaguely remembered tales about

his father, a previous marriage, and possibly other children.

It was then that David turned to the internet for help.

Getting this random phone call out the blue and

the person at the other end saying, "I'm your brother."

It's amazing. It's just amazing.

People can turn family finder for all sorts of reasons.

In the case of Sally James, it was a desire to give her mother Phyllis

the closure she craved about her unknown origins.

I grew up in a suburb just outside of London.

It was myself, my mother, my brother.

But because my mother was an orphan, she didn't know her parents,

we didn't really have any other family.

All Mother knew about her childhood was that she was

born in the Bethney Home, because that was on her birth certificate.

And she grew up in Kirwan House orphanage.

At the age of 16, Phyllis left the orphanage,

moved to England to train as a nurse,

and eventually started her own family.

But she never stopped wondering about her birth mother.

The only thing that she knew was that her mother was called

Margaret Little,

which was her maiden name.

There was no father's name on the birth certificate.

And in those days, you didn't ask questions.

Everything was kept hidden.

Sally took up the challenge to find out the truth

about her mother's family.

The first port of call for Sally was online.

I was searching for a birth,

death or marriage certificate for her mother, who was Margaret Little.

But I couldn't find anything.

Trying a different approach, over the next few years,

Sally got in touch with several charities

who help children who grew up in care

to trace their families.

And finally, she got a result.

One thing the charity were able to give me was a copy

of my mother's orphan certificate.

On the back, there was a very sad note written.

It says, "This is a very needy child.

"The mother now is married but living in very poor circumstances

"and it would be the most undesirable place for this child."

So it explains why she gave my mother up.

The certificate also showed that by the time Phyllis was placed in the

orphanage, her mother, Margaret, had married a man named James Clancy.

But despite all this new information,

it didn't lead to the breakthrough Sally so desperately wanted.

Even though I knew from one of the charities that she'd married

a James Clancy, I still couldn't find -

and nobody else could find - a wedding certificate.

Which seemed most odd,

because you'd think that was the one thing you could find.

But, in fact, it was impossible.

Undeterred, Sally kept looking.

But when a few years later her mother's health deteriorated,

the search became all the more critical.

She was diagnosed in the summer with lung cancer.

It suddenly hit me that, you know, time was not on her side.

In fact, it wasn't on my side either,

because I now had a desperate search to try and find who her mother was.

Even though I had bits of information all over the place,

I just didn't have the things I needed the most,

which were her mother's date of birth and the place she was born.

Another two years went by, Phyllis' health was deteriorating

and she was now living in a nursing home.

It was then that Sally decided to take a gamble on some new

cutting-edge family-finding technology -

DNA testing.

It told you the countries of origin that you came from.

But it also matched you online to other people who had the same DNA.

And I thought, "If only we could find a connection,

"it might lead somewhere."

So I thought, "Now's the time to get the kit, get the test done,

"and see what happens."

After a quest that had lasted years,

little did she know just how quickly she would get an answer

and that it would lead to a totally unexpected discovery.

All these years, all these searches, and there she was.

And there I'd found the family.

-Welcome!

-Oh!

In Scotland, David Stewart had also turned to

technology for help in his search.

David had always yearned for blood siblings of his own.

He was chasing down a family rumour that his father had had other

children before him.

People were telling me that I've got three brothers

and a sister out there.

David took his search online,

where he found a wealth of genealogical resources.

He even made contact with online amateur family finders

willing to take up the search.

Within hours a message popped up from a lady that I didn't know.

She was able to...

tell me that I had three half-brothers and a sister.

Within hours of joining the site, she was able to give me

an address of one of my brothers.

I wrote him a letter pretty much straightaway.

50 miles away, that letter landed in Steven Stewart's hand.

There was one letter on the table for me.

Got the letter and opened it.

Then there was this, "Dear sir."

Which I thought was quite quaint. "My name is Dave Stewart.

"I think you may be my long-lost half-brother."

So I gave him a ring.

I think it was Christmas Eve, actually.

We were just doing our thing, getting ready for Christmas and my phone rang.

PHONE RINGS

I answered it this day and the man on the other end just...

HE SNIFFLES

..said he was my brother.

After looking for so many years and then just...

getting this random phone call out the blue

and the person at the other end...

..saying, "I'm your brother,"

it's, well...

It's amazing. It's just amazing.

Steven is one of four children

all from David's father's first marriage.

I was born in 1948 in Ipswich.

The eldest of four children.

I can't really remember exactly when he left.

He was there, he was there, he wasn't there.

I was aware only via the effect you'd have at school.

Cos I wasn't a particularly nice little kid.

I was always fighting, getting into trouble and scraps,

and it always used to really irritate me in the background

when they'd say I'd been in this trouble

because I'd come from divorced parents.

And that used to really irritate me.

But before he lost contact with his father, there's one

particular meeting that's always stuck in Steven's mind.

I can remember coming out of school one day.

I remember this big car came out and I walked past.

And my dad came out of the car.

And he introduced me to these two little boys, Michael and David.

I can't remember which was which or which was the biggest one.

They got out.

You know, what do you say as a young child to two other kids? You know?

So I never said much.

I was just hoping he might give me ten bob or something, you know?

And then disappeared and I never saw them or heard of them again.

It was only years later, after he was married,

that Steven heard anything of his father.

I hadn't thought of my father or gotten involved with him,

with anything about him, for ages.

But I then got a call off my sister saying she's got my dad's address

and he was in Scotland.

We drove down one day. Ruth, myself and my eldest daughter, Claire.

I sat outside there for two or three hours

and I couldn't get myself to go in.

Because I didn't really know what I was going to get into.

I was just sort of sceptical about it.

I thought, "Well, all these years he's not bothered.

"Why should I bother?" And that's how I felt about it at the time.

We'd had our first child, Claire had been born.

And I was absolutely besotted with the girls when they were born.

They were fantastic.

Best things in my life, the two daughters, you know?

So I thought, "Well, why couldn't he care like I care for my kids?"

So I wasn't that interested in... I lost interest in seeing him, really.

We just drove back home, back home to Glasgow,

and didn't do anything about it.

And that's the way things stayed until just a few months ago,

when David's letter landed in Steven's hands.

After several weeks speaking on the phone,

and several years unknowingly living just 50 miles apart,

today the two brothers have arranged to meet up for the first time

since their dad introduced them as young boys.

You can't explain this feeling.

There's not many people go through this, I don't think.

It's worse than a first date.

You know, when you're dead nervous and you're meeting someone

and you want to make a good impression.

You know, I'm not trying to impress or anything,

I'm just trying to... You know, I'm just going to meet my brother

and it's like meeting a girlfriend for the first time.

It's a really strange feeling.

I'm looking forward to it, really.

A little bit apprehensive, but absolutely fine.

Looking forward to meeting him.

I've had a couple of conversations with him on the telephone

and I'm really looking forward to meeting him and his wife.

I feel really nervous and I don't know why I should feel so nervous.

I'm really emotional.

I'm really pleased that he's contacted us.

I think it's really nice.

I just think the whole thing that he's bothered is really nice.

I'm too nervous. I don't want to eat or drink.

HE CHUCKLES

There he is.

-Me brother, at last.

-My new brother.

-My God!

How are you, mate? You all right?

-Yep.

-It's really nice to see you, mate. It really is.

-Nice to meet you.

-Really pleased. You all right?

-Yeah, I'm good.

-Hiya, Ruth. Are you all right?

-Nice to meet you. Yes, I'm fine.

-Thank you.

-Oh, my God. This is hard.

-RUTH LAUGHS

-Hey up, Tracy.

-Hi!

-Nice to see you.

-Nice to meet you.

-My new sister-in-law.

-Yeah.

Oh.

Sit down, mate.

Good to see you, mate. I'm really pleased to see you in the flesh.

Yeah. I am. I can't tell you. This is... This is phenomenal for me.

It really is. I've been trying this for years and years.

We were talking about it yesterday.

-How stupid that we're so close.

-I know, yeah.

It's not taken us 30-odd miles to come here.

-That's amazing, isn't it?

-I know. It really, really is.

And you would never have found me. You didn't have, well, I mean...

-I didn't...

-How would you start?

I found my dad lots of times. No problem.

On various lists, I found him. Where he lived at particular times.

But there was no...

I couldn't get any further to find if he had any children.

-I knew he had two children.

-Right.

-A minimum of two.

-I assumed he might have had a couple more.

-Mm. Probably did.

So I never thought much about that.

Every time, I just seemed to get stuck.

We've brought a few pictures. We've got only one of our father.

Wow. Look at that! Wow!

-Gosh, yeah.

-Jenny always says, "Oh, isn't he handsome?

-"Isn't he handsome?"

-STEVEN LAUGHS

Yeah.

I don't see a resemblance there, do you?

-For you?

-No.

-I do for me.

-I'm more my mother's side.

I used to sneak into my dad's bedroom and I used to bring

this out and look at these little old photos of him.

We had a load. We had a load of army photographs.

-That's what these are.

-But my mother burned them all.

Oh, God. That's the earliest one, I think.

THEY TALK OVER EACH OTHER

He looks really young in that.

14, 15, something like that, I'd have thought.

But that's all I've got of my dad.

-That and that ring.

-Really?

He was the same initials. RDS.

-Ah, yes. Yeah.

-Roy David Stewart. Roy Douglas Stewart.

-Yeah, yeah.

So that's all I've got. That and that.

Well, I've got nothing.

I've got nothing at all because he just suddenly disappeared.

You know. He was there, then he was gone.

I must have found this when I was really, really small.

This here is three letters from the courts saying,

"You've got to pay maintenance."

-No! Really?

-Yeah. To be honest, I'd forgotten all about them.

-Up until a couple of weeks ago when we were talking.

-Yeah.

And all your names and dates of birth and everything are on there.

-Really?

-So if I'd have found that 20 or 30 years ago...

-But I must have not, you know, it just didn't...

-Can I have a look?

-Yeah, yeah.

-I know that was a big thing in our house,

not getting any money from our father. I remember that.

Well, if you look at them, that's exactly what they say.

Again, I should have looked at it. I don't know why...

All your dates of birth and all your names are on one of these.

I looked at the pictures but probably didn't take these in.

When you try as hard as I've done over the years to find blood

relatives or to find people I could call my own, you get expectations.

And I've been rejected a few times over the years.

So I didn't know what to expect, really.

But now that I've met him and now that I've shaken his hand,

I'm very happy. I'm really happy with how it went.

He's very easygoing.

'You know, it's...'

It couldn't have been better, really.

They're really nice. Really nice. He's a nice guy.

Easy guy to talk to.

And I'm really looking forward to meeting the family

and doing other stuff with him.

-That's been amazing.

-Yes.

-It's been amazing.

-Lovely to meet you.

-Nice to see you.

-Hope to see you again.

-Hopefully see you soon.

-Yeah.

-All right, brother.

-OK.

-Nice to meet you, mate.

-And you. Take care.

-Fantastic.

We'll work something out and see you again.

-Yeah.

-All right?

-Soon. Soon.

'The future's looking good now, really. Not that it wasn't.'

I've got a great family, my own children and all my Scottish family.

But it's just...

This completes it now, doesn't it?

In Sussex, Sally James had been searching for her grandmother,

Margaret Little, on behalf of her mum, Phyllis.

After hitting a dead end with traditional tracing techniques,

Sally had decided to use the latest DNA technology.

She added her results to an online database.

It wasn't long before she got a match.

Within three weeks, I had the results back.

Which were amazing.

And the next thing I knew, I had three e-mails ping in my e-mail box.

Two from the same person.

A guy called Matthew.

On the other side of the Irish Sea,

Matthew Stewart had also been researching his family history.

He has also added his DNA to the online database.

The e-mail came through saying,

"You have a new match on your DNA matches list."

So I sent an e-mail off through that website.

Through the DNA test, Sally and Matthew knew they were related.

Now they just had to work out how.

Sally logged on to look at Matthew's family tree

to see if she could find any trace of her grandmother, Margaret Little.

And, my God, I couldn't believe it.

There she was.

Margaret Armstrong had married a James Clancy.

And it was then that the penny dropped,

because I realised that she'd lied about her name all this time.

Sally now knew why she hadn't been able to find

her grandmother, Margaret.

The name she had given on the birth certificate of the daughter

she gave up was Margaret Little.

Her real name was Margaret Armstrong.

It's likely she used her mother's maiden name because of the stigma

of having a baby born out of wedlock at that time.

Sally was soon on the phone to Matthew

and they quickly ascertained that they shared great-grandparents.

But Matthew had some even bigger news.

So he said...

.."Your mother has got three brothers still alive.

"And an aunt in Australia, of 92."

I said, "What?!" He said, "Yeah.

"And this isn't the first time that Peggy has done this

"because your mother's got a brother called Jim

"and he was also born out of wedlock the year after her.

"And we only found him last year."

So I was absolutely amazed.

I just wanted to shout from the rooftops.

You know, I was... The first thing I wanted to do was tell Mother.

"Mother, I've found your family!"

When I told Mother, she couldn't believe it. She was astounded.

The next member of her new-found family to make contact was

Phyllis' brother and Sally's uncle, Jim.

And he said to me, "I understand I have a sister called Phyllis.

"Can I speak to Phyllis?"

And I said, "Well, Jim, she's actually in a nursing home."

"Oh, I've got a sister! I've got a sister!

"When can I speak to her? When can I speak to her?"

He was so excited. He was beside himself.

Sally discovered that her new uncle, Jim, was born in Dublin

to Margaret in 1938.

A year younger than Phyllis, he too was given away as a baby.

It wasn't until over 70 years later,

when Matthew was researching the family tree and found him,

that Jim was reunited with his birth family.

That's how the ball started rolling.

I discovered I had all these relations. I had two brothers.

I didn't find out about Phyllis, my sister in Sussex,

for a few months after that.

So I was thrilled.

Absolutely thrilling.

Shortly afterwards, Jim flew to England to meet his sister, Phyllis.

By this time, Mother, her mobility had more or less gone

and she was in a wheelchair.

And the cancer was getting progressively worse.

It was a touching moment. And we had a lovely lunch together.

We spoke about everything, really.

Her life, Sally's life.

It was phenomenal. I can't tell you. Phenomenal. You know?

To think that she had brothers still alive who could meet her,

and she was still alive. You know, wow.

I was trying to hold back the tears, I was, seriously.

Even talking about it now upsets me, you know?

What a lovely woman.

The only thing I regret is that we didn't do it earlier.

Sally had fulfilled her mission.

Just four months later, her mother died.

But before she did, Phyllis got to hear all about her birth family,

and even met Jim, her newly discovered brother.

But that's not the end of Sally's journey.

Today she's heading to Dublin

as her research had thrown up another exciting lead.

But first, she's meeting her mum's brother Jim and her cousin Matthew.

-Hi!

-Great to see you.

-And you. Yeah, great.

-Jim, how are you doing?

-You're looking good.

-Yeah, thank you.

-Long time no see.

Mwah! It's lovely to see you again.

It's been eight months since their first reunion

and there's still lots of family history to catch up on.

You had no inkling that your mother had any siblings at all?

-You had nothing to go on?

-Nothing.

No. And all her life, she longed to know who her mother was.

And she would have loved having a big Irish family.

Tell us the DNA, we have some strange relations, haven't we?

There's 1% Melanesian, which is Papua New Guinea and Fiji.

THEY LAUGH

How did they get there?

-I don't know.

-That's amazing.

We've still to find those cousins, dig them out.

-I couldn't imagine you in a grass skirt.

-Do you not think so?

THEY LAUGH

Now it's time for Sally to reveal her new information

and the reason for her trip today.

Through her research into her mother's childhood, Sally has found

someone who grew up with Phyllis in the orphanage 70 years ago.

Eileen remembers Sally's mother well,

but lost touch with her once they left the orphanage.

-Hello!

-Hello!

-Eileen.

-Sally.

-Welcome. How are you?

-Oh!

It's the first time Sally has ever met someone

from her mum's childhood.

You're the link with her past.

You're the only link I have now with the past.

You have now to look to the future. And at least you had a good mum.

That's all that matters.

-Isn't that true?

-Yeah.

-JIM:

-OK.

-Lovely to meet you. I'm Matthew.

-How do you do?

Eileen has a special surprise to show Sally.

The story of one of the happier times at the orphanage.

Every year we put on this display.

-It's a nice photo.

-Is it?

-It's lovely.

-That's Mother.

-Yeah.

I hardly recognise her.

There's me.

Can you remember what Mother was like growing up together?

You know, when you were in the orphanage together,

what personality did she have?

She had a lovely personality. And was very well-liked.

Her bed was beside mine.

And I always remember she got a doll with one eye and one leg.

She was thrilled with it. She said she'd look after it, she'd nurse it.

I'm going to show you now a video of Mum and me as a baby.

-Yeah.

-This was taken about 1963.

That's Mum. And that's me as a baby. In the red. Look at her.

-She was beautiful.

-She's gorgeous.

-That's just as I know her.

-Yeah?

-Yeah.

-She would've been about 27 there.

-Yeah.

-She was a lovely child anyway, so.

-Do you recognise her face?

I do indeed. Yeah.

Did you find out that you had relations?

-No.

-Did you ever?

-I have been searching for 50 years.

-Good Lord.

-And every door in Dublin, Ireland,

has been closed.

I've tried everybody to help. Nobody can help me.

And my daughters, they've gone to the ends of the earth

to try and help.

But I don't think it's going to be, somehow or other.

But anyway...

May I say that you can consider us part of your family?

-Thanks very much, Jim.

-That's sweet, isn't it?

That's lovely. You'll have me crying.

I am already!

It's wonderful to meet you.

To think that you were in the orphanage and you were a friend of

my mother, I mean, I never thought I'd find anybody that she knew.

-Mm-hm.

-That means an awful lot.

-I'm delighted you've come.

I appreciate it. I really do.

It's fantastic.

I'm thrilled that they've come

and somehow, it has given me a great boost.