Episode 10 Family Finders

Families can be driven apart for all manner of reasons.

Oh, 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 have 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 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.

In the UK, thousands of people embark on searches

for long-lost relatives every year.

No two searches are ever the same.

Sometimes, one new piece of information

can crack a case wide open.

And other times, one single spelling mistake can hamper a hunt forever.

Today, we follow Jeannie and her daughter, Sarah,

whose whole family mystery unravelled with a well-judged hunch.

After 25 years of searching,

the euphoria that I felt is just indescribable.

And we meet Graham, who almost gave up

the convoluted search for his sister.

Perhaps I'd been raising my hopes far too high

and that it turns out that...

somebody somewhere along the line has got it wrong.

Jeannie Taplin was born in the Midlands in 1942,

and was brought up by her mother.

My mother had told me that my father had died during the war.

And I think I accepted that.

When I was about ten,

I think I must have been asking my mother questions

and she eventually decided that it was the right time to tell me

that my father was still alive

and that a gentleman who I'd known as Uncle Steve,

wasn't an uncle at all but was my actual father.

Ten-year-old Jeannie discovered her father, Uncle Steve,

was, in fact, called Alexander and originally from Finland.

He had arrived in England in 1917 and adopted the name Steve.

Jeannie didn't imagine she would ever see him again.

Four years past, then one day,

Jeannie's mother announced that her father was waiting outside.

As I walked out of the house towards the car,

I really didn't want to be doing it.

I didn't...

He was a stranger to me.

I didn't know what we would talk about.

After their first meeting,

Jeannie and her father stayed in touch on and off for many years

until one day she stopped receiving his letters.

I became annoyed with him because I had written and hadn't had a reply

for quite some time, longer than he would usually have left it.

But I got a reply from his third wife

saying that he'd died six months previously.

Life carried on for Jeannie

but something her mother had once told her kept playing on her mind.

She mentioned that some years previously he'd been married

and had a daughter.

Jeannie had an older half-sister but knew absolutely nothing about her.

As the years passed,

she found herself thinking more about this mystery sibling.

Luckily for Jeannie, she had an amateur genealogist on hand to help,

her daughter, Sarah.

My interest in genealogy began when I did a school project

at the age of 13 and we were asked to compile a basic family tree.

My great aunt came to stay with us

and she had heaps of information

on the maternal side.

The hobby very much turned into an obsession.

Sarah started the search by looking for records of her grandfather, Alexander.

Sarah learnt that after arriving in England,

he was naturalised and became a British citizen.

Along with his full name,

that should have left a paper trail Sarah could follow.

I was always told that his name was Alexander Leonard Roden,

which was his naturalised name.

But Sarah's search didn't produce any results.

Her grandfather and his other daughter remained a mystery.

In fact, it took 25 years before Sarah found the key

that unlocked this family puzzle.

I was on the National Archives website, Discovery.

I thought, "I'll give my grandfather's name a go again."

So I put in his name, all three names,

including the middle name and nothing came up.

So I took out the middle name,

and suddenly his naturalisation certificate

and the application for naturalisation came up.

The euphoria that I felt

is just indescribable.

After 25 years of searching,

to finally have that piece of paper in front of me

was just indescribable.

Sarah phoned me and said, "I've found him."

And she said,

"I know what his name is."

I couldn't believe it that,

at last, it was all coming together.

Sarah's searches also confirmed Jeannie's suspicions.

Alexander had had another baby, 18 years before Jeannie,

a daughter called Muriel.

I phoned my mother again and I said, "You did have an older sister.

"She would have been 90 this year."

I never for a minute thought that she was still alive.

Of course, 90 isn't old these days but it never crossed my mind.

But there were more revelations to come

and the journey would take them to the other side of the world.

In Essex, 66-year-old Graham Holloway

also had a long and challenging search for a sibling.

His story began with a difficult and unsettled childhood.

As far as my birth mother and father are concerned,

I have no real recollection of them at all.

It was deemed by Southend Social Services

that it was not a safe place for us to be with them

and consequently, it was determined that we should be taken into care.

In 1951, at the age of two,

Graham and his older sister, Lynda, were sent to live in a children's home in Southend.

We didn't have very much contact at all

because boys and girls in those days were very much kept apart anyway.

Especially in an institution such as a children's home.

During their time at the care home,

Graham and his sister Lynda were fostered by several families,

sometimes alone, sometimes together.

Lynda and I, initially,

they tried to foster us out together but ultimately it didn't work

because, A, we didn't always get on together,

brothers and sisters don't always, do they?

And plus they had other children as well, and they, on some occasions,

thought that our behaviour was disruptive to their family.

Eventually, Lynda was permanently fostered

and Graham never saw her again.

I cannot remember how old I was or how old she was,

but all of a sudden she was no longer there.

It really was quite tough.

Finally Graham also found a permanent home.

At the age of ten, he was officially adopted by a young couple

who had been fostering him, Robert and Joan Holloway.

It was a very, very happy home with the Holloways.

Very happy.

I'm sorry they're gone.

Joan, my mother,

had had five miscarriages, so a child to her was everything.

And that's why she was the way she was with me.

She thought, "I'm lucky to have a child."

And I was lucky to have a mother.

And father.

Graham thrived in his new life.

Eventually, he left home, trained as a teacher and started a family.

But he never forgot about his sister, Lynda.

I'd always wondered about Lynda and her circumstances,

what became of her,

but I was not really going to do anything to search for her

whilst Mr and Mrs Holloway were still around,

so I wasn't offending.

It wasn't until six years ago,

almost six decades since he had last seen her,

that Graham finally began the search for his sister.

I spent the best part of two years, possibly even more,

searching for the correct Lynda

and there was always some impediment

or something wrong with the information I was getting

in that the name I had found was incorrectly spelt,

the middle name was incorrect

or the year of birth was incorrect or the place of birth was incorrect.

I was looking at it on a day-to-day basis for a couple of hours per day

but I kept coming up to dead ends.

There would always be something that was not quite right.

There was always something that didn't tie in.

Ready to call it all off, he made one last attempt.

This time he brought in a professional family-finding company.

They discovered that Lynda had changed her surname.

It's quite common to see somebody

taking on the surname of a foster parent or perhaps a step-parent.

That's quite common to see.

For instance, in this case, we found she'd changed her name to Lynda Green.

We then looked for a marriage record.

Now, this was quite interesting because we did find one

but Lynda's name at birth was spelt with a Y in Lynda

but the marriage record we found on the index

has indicated that it was spelt with an I.

But we continued to look at that person and what we found was it was definitely the right person

but it would have been an error on the marriage indexes,

which is quite a common thing that people should look out for

when they're searching because quite often there are errors and mistakes on these records.

And the search didn't get any easier.

Dave discovered Lynda had married twice again,

which meant two more name changes.

I think the breakthrough moment probably came

when we found somebody living in Shoeburyness in Essex,

which is where we'd known Lynda to last be,

and she had the first name Lynda spelt with a Y.

She had the middle name of Jane and the exact same date of birth.

That really... At that point, we were fairly confident

that she was the right person.

When I got the call to say that they had actually located

a last known address, I could not believe it.

I thought, "After all the time I've spent doing it

"and yet they've done it in a couple of weeks."

Without any delay,

I sent a letter off to her and gave her all the details that I had.

But after a search that had already led him down so many dead ends,

Graham was cautious about his chances of success.

I was, obviously, in some sort of trepidation

in that perhaps I've been raising my hopes far too high

and that it turns out that somebody somewhere along the line

has got it wrong.

It's the wrong address or the information is not valid

or that somebody didn't want to know about it.

You know, it's all a long time ago.

So what. It's all over and done with.

Tear it up. Throw it away.

All Graham's years of searching now rested on one letter.

120 miles away in Southampton,

Sarah Walker had succeeded

in her 25-year quest to find her mother's blood relatives.

The culmination of half my life's work is just wonderful.

But Sarah didn't think her mum's 90-year-old half sister, Muriel,

would still be alive.

Until she received a message out of the blue.

I was updating records on Ancestry

and was contacted completely out of the blue

by an ex-relative of my aunt who announced that she was still alive

and that she talked to her on a fairly regular basis.

Jeannie's half-sister, Muriel, was alive and living in Australia.

Sarah couldn't wait to tell her mum.

She then called me and said,

"Wait for this, I've found your sister."

And, erm...

And she said that she lives in Australia

and she's been married three times

and has seven children.

It was a lot to take in.

You know, it's incredible.

Sarah e-mailed Muriel immediately.

To finally make contact

after so many years of searching for information on her father,

my mother's father, and knowing that she finally existed...

just wonderful.

Just a day later and Sarah received a phone call

from one of Muriel's sons, Franz.

Franz and his brother Ricky are two of Muriel's seven children.

They stayed in the UK when their mother moved to Australia.

Mother was like...

-a mother hen. She...

-Mother was very protective.

Very protective.

Their mother, Muriel, had been abandoned by her own mother

as a child.

Her mother walked out one day and said goodbye to her.

She told her to go next door to a neighbour

and that is the last time that she ever saw or heard from her mother.

Shortly afterwards, her father placed her in foster care.

Nobody sort of wanting her, not a lot of love given to her.

I think Mother's past shaped her future

of how she dealt with everything in her life.

Out of her hard times,

she's tried to give us good times and she's done a good job.

Muriel grew up in the UK with her foster family.

She emigrated to Australia in 1978 where she has lived ever since.

She wasn't aware she had a younger half-sister

until Sarah got in touch out of the blue.

She was so excited.

She was like a child.

She was bubbling with excitement...

..to find her sister at her age - I mean, she was then 90, I think -

to have lived that long and not known.

We even lived a few miles apart at one time in Birmingham

and not known about each other.

As Muriel was halfway round the world in Australia,

Sarah and Jeannie didn't think

they would ever meet her face-to-face.

But, then, Muriel got back in touch to say she was visiting the UK

and wanted to meet her new-found family.

When I heard my aunt arrive,

I went straight out and gave her a big hug.

-Oh, dear.

-It's wonderful, isn't it?

-I know - absolutely wonderful.

-And amazing.

-'I felt such a huge bond with her.'

Somebody was filming us

and then I brought her through and they met for the first time

and there were tears all round.

It was as though we'd known each other for a long time.

I hadn't thought that meeting a sister could be...

..quite so emotional.

I couldn't believe the similarities visually

and I think the fact that

they developed a sisterly bond now is amazing.

In the end, I had to ask them to stop hugging each other

because it made me cry every time.

That day when Jeannie and Mum met

must have been one of the most memorable days of her life.

It was wonderful and we talked nonstop.

That made me even...wish even more that I'd known her.

You know, when I was about 19 or so.

We would have had some fun, I'm sure we would.

Now the two sisters have found each other,

both have discovered a family they never knew they had

and they stay in regular contact via the internet.

Today, the two UK sides of the family are reuniting again.

Muriel's sons Franz and Ricky

are meeting their new-found aunt and cousin

to find out more about the grandfather

they never knew, Alexander.

-Well!

-Hello.

-Welcome.

-Thank you.

-Oh, it's good to see you.

-And you, darling, are you all right?

-Oh, yes.

-Sarah, hello.

-Hello.

Oh, yes, I'm fine.

Sarah's research has uncovered a wealth of information

about her, Franz and Ricky's grandfather,

including his request to become a British citizen.

So, this is the application for a naturalisation certificate

and we've got information here about exactly where he was born.

He sailed from Murmansk, North Russia.

He was an Ordinary Seaman.

And if only I'd realised

exactly what information this would have given me,

I would have found you all a lot sooner.

-FRANZ:

-A lot earlier. Well, it's fascinating.

It's things we never knew about.

Mainly because we didn't know we had a grandad at all.

There's one other family member keen to join in today's reunion.

-MURIEL:

-Lovely to see you, Jeannie.

Oh, it's great to see you, Muriel.

We should have known each other years ago.

-Oh, 30 years ago at least.

-Yes.

-That's right.

-Yes. Yes. It should have been a long time ago.

We're making up for lost time, though, meeting up.

-Yes.

-It wonderful that we're able to talk to each other like this.

For me to have my two nephews here when five years ago,

I didn't know they existed.

This has been beyond my widest dreams.

To be able to reunite my mother and her sister

has just been unbelievable.

I am very thankful to Sarah for doing the work she's done

and finding out as much as she has done and uniting us all.

We've had nothing but positive things come to us

over the past four years.

Every single member of their family

has embraced us as their family.

And it's been wonderful.

See you soon.

-Bye.

-Nice to see you.

Graham Holloway was trying to solve his own family conundrum.

He hadn't seen his older sister, Lynda,

since they were children living in care.

A family-finding company had tracked down an address for Lynda,

and Graham had written a letter.

Little did he know the address was out of date.

But this time, luck was on Graham's side.

Out of the blue, I got a message from my daughter

to say that a letter had arrived at her father's house,

addressed to me,

"Dear Lynda, Following several years of trying to locate you,

"I believe I may at last have done so.

"Do you recall being taken into care as was I in 1951.

"Can you confirm that these details ring a bell?

"I apologise if I imposed but earnestly believe

"that I may finally have made contact with the right person.

"Please confirm this ASAP.

"Regards for the time being, Graham."

And I thought, "What shall I do here?

And I just took the bull by the horns and just dialled the number.

And he answered.

And I just said,

"Graham, this is Lynda."

It was incredible.

Absolutely incredible.

That after 63 years or thereabouts,

we actually caught up with each other.

I hadn't spoken to Graham for 60 years.

At least 60 years.

He did say that he wanted to see me

and what was the best way to do it.

I said, "Great."

I said, "I'll be down to Southend in a shake of a lamb's tail."

And she said, "That won't do you any good." I said, "Why not?"

She said, "I don't live in Southend.

"I don't live in Shoeburyness."

I said, "Where do you live?" She said, "Cyprus."

Graham had finally tracked down his big sister,

60 years on and 2,000 miles away from where they last saw each other.

Having discovered that I had the right person,

having discovered that she lived in Cyprus,

I told her that I'd be over there as soon as possible

in order to visit her and which I did

because I was there within a week.

As we walked through the baggage collection

and through to the arrivals lounge, as it were,

we saw each other.

Lyn was already on her feet

cos she'd spotted me from, you know, yards away.

And I just ran to him...

..and threw my arms round him.

He was crying, I was crying.

-Very emotional.

-Floods of tears.

All over the place.

60 years is a long time

but you never forget that there is another member of your family.

And it was so emotional.

I've never known anything like it before. It's incredible.

And still is.

It's been two and a half years since Lynda and Graham were first reunited.

But with Lynda in Cyprus,

they can't get together as often as they'd like.

So they've planned a special trip to the hometown where they lost touch

over 60 years ago.

I do feel really nervous today.

A bit like the first time I saw him, to be honest.

Quite emotional.

And we've still got a lot of catching up to do.

I can't believe it.

I cannot believe it.

-What are we going to find to talk about then?

-Oh, everything.

Remarkably, these two siblings both lived in Southend

for many years of their lives, not knowing the other was still there.

So today brings a chance to make up for lost time

and share their memories of the town.

I used to think that was France over there when I was a little girl.

Yeah, so did I.

I'd go, "Oh, let's go to France."

Here you are, Graham. This is where I used to work.

-You're joking.

-No. I used to work here.

For heaven's sake, I used to drink in the pub down there.

We must have walked passed each other dozens of times.

Dozens.

Lynda's been tracking down their records

and it's the first time Graham has seen their fostering paperwork.

There's a few little things in here that are quite interesting.

The fact that the two of us being together...

-Yeah.

-..wasn't working out very well.

-Hmm.

And, basically, that I was stopping your chance of having a good home.

-Huh.

-So, they decided to leave you there and take me back to the home.

Did they, indeed?

At which time you were quite happily playing in the garden

with your toys.

Had you been you aware of any of this proposal at all?

No. It would appear that I was...

..the main culprit in our being separated

from what I've read from these notes.

See, it says here that I have outbreaks of temper,

which apparently I still do.

SHE LAUGHS

I got through. I got by.

You got through. You got by.

And at the end of the day, that's the important thing.

Having my sister back in my life after a long, long time

has just been one of the most fantastic experiences of my life.

I feel like I now have the brother that I've not had for 60 years

and there's still lots we can talk about and lots of memories

and lots for the future.

I'm really proud to have you as a sister.

Oh, thank you.