Roots and Shoots
This is the story behind me finding my lost maternal relatives, and my entry into the fields of family history and genealogy. Unusually for me, I have omitted formal citations, partly to keep the narrative flavour and partly because most of the connections were made through direct communication. Ironically, it is much easier to find deceased ancestors than it is to find living relatives.
As a child growing up in Nottingham (England), I had one set of grandparents — my father's parents — and I accepted this as normal. Later on, my mother explained that she had been adopted, but I was too young to understand. When old enough, she explained that she had five brothers and sisters somewhere that she had not seen in nearly 60 years. They were all taken away from the Nottingham family home in a black cab in 1947, leaving their mother behind.
I could tell that she was curious about what happened to them, but also apprehensive about meeting them because she might not like what she found. She never kept in touch with her biological or adoptive parents, but I promised her that one day I would find out. In preparation, she wrote down their names and approximate ages at the time of their removal:
· Irene, 9
· Brenda, 8
· Albert, 6
· Margaret, 4
· Christopher, 3
· Dennis, 18 months
My mother was originally Irene Rowland, and her name was later changed through adoption to Ann. She still had her certificate of adoption, dated 11 August 1953, but this only gave the name of her adoptive mother, Lucy, as her adoptive father (Robert) had died just the year before. Her biological parents were Benjamin and Sarah Rowland.
When enough time became available, in about 2004, I first approached a professional with a view to unlocking the mystery of why they were taken away and where they went, but I was told that it was not possible. If any records survived, they would be locked. I thought 'I'm not accepting this. I can do research. I will do it myself', and so I entered the world of family history.
I first searched for their birth references in the quarterly GRO index. At that time, the records had not been computerised, and so I had to look through endless scans to locate them. I then ordered copies of their birth certificates so that I could tell which children were adopted and which weren't — adoptees have "Adopted" retrospectively written in the right margin of their birth certificates before they are exchanged for the adoption certificates — and found that my mother was the only one formally adopted.
Benjamin remarried in 1953, and died in 1982, while Sarah died in 1999. Hence, I was not going to meet them or get information from them. From the death certificate of Sarah, I found that the informant was yet another daughter, Susan Rowland, who it seemed was born in 1951 (i.e. after the other children were taken away). It also gave an address for her. A quick check in the electoral register showed that she was still there, and with her daughter, Kym. I wrote to Susan to explain what I'd found out so far and ask her if she could help. Susan was a great help, despite her mother not speaking much of the other children. By virtue of me being the eldest son of her eldest sister, I was only a few years younger than Susan.
Susan confirmed that her parents, Ben and Sarah, were divorced in 1952, and openly suggested that she might be a half-sister. She had been in touch with Christopher and told me that he died in 2000. A check in the records showed that this was May 2000 in Colchester area; sadly not far from where I was working at the time.
Susan also told me about Brenda living in Scotland, and provided me with part of the address. I filled in the missing bits and saw from the electoral register that she was still there, with children Carol and Stephen, but with no phone number. I wrote a long letter but nothing came back. After a few weeks I wasn't sure whether she had moved and so I send a bunch of flowers in the hope that Interflora would tell me if they couldn't deliver them for some reason. That worked! I got a phone call a couple of days later. We had a long chat, but her health was not great so I promised that I would visit one day.
Scotland made sense because my mother insisted that she got a letter from Brenda, not long after I was born, saying that she had been in the army and married a Scotsman. We were moving house at the time and this letter got lost in the move. My father never actually saw it, and always doubted its existence because how could she have found that rented address. However, this vindicated my mother.
On GenesReunited, I found a tree containing a Margaret Rowland that was owned by a Margaret with a different surname. I suspected that this was her married name, and managed to contact her through the old FriendsReunited website.
Margaret said she stayed with "Peter" (her name for Dennis) when she was very young. She believed he was fostered by the caretaker family of the Glaisdale School, whose surname I found was Knibbs. On the assumption that his name had probably been completely changed to Peter Knibbs, I did a search and found a Peter Knibbs actually went to that school, and his age looked right. However the GRO index showed there was no Peter Knibbs born anywhere in the country during 1946, suggesting that his birth name was something different. I then found someone had the same Peter Knibbs in their family tree on GenesReunited. I contacted the owner (Tina) and got this reply: "Yes, you are quite right, my Uncle Peter was originally Dennis Rowland and he had a sister called Margaret. He was adopted by my Grandparents and I grew up with him until he married and left home". She gave me his phone number and suggested that I speak to him directly.
This is where I get a bit choked. On the phone, I started by asking if the surname Rowland meant anything to him. He started to get a bit emotional and sat himself down. He had been hoping to get a call like this. He knew he had a family somewhere, but only met Margaret. He suggested that we meet and gave me his address, which completely bowled me over. He was living a mere 10-minute walk from my mother, and they had both been there for about 40 years, but as both of their names had been changed then they would never have known. They hadn't met for 60 years and he was just down the road.
In 1982, Christopher made a hero's appearance in the local paper. On his way home from his job as a car mechanic, he gave chase for nearly a mile — over fences and through gardens — before he caught two burglars and detained them until the police arrived. He received the Nottinghamshire Constabulary/Evening Post Citizen of the Month Award, but shrugged off the incident as being his “duty as a member of the public”. I contacted both the Nottinghamshire Constabulary and the Evening Post to see if they retained copies of photographs appearing in the paper, or of his award, but neither did.
Susan thought Christopher had a much older girlfriend in Nottingham, and the records confirmed that he actually married a lady (Kathy) 20 years his senior, in 1993. Brenda gave me the phone number of a later girlfriend from Clacton-on-sea, Joyce. When Kathy died in 1997, Christopher apparently moved south to Clacton. I contacted Joyce and found out a lot about his last days. She also sent me some of his photographs and we arranged to meet to view his grave. She not only had copies of his army service record, but his old army uniform, the actual award he received, and tiny contact prints (about 1cm x 1cm) of him. Scanning the contact prints on a very high resolution and inverting the black-and-white allowed me to reprint the photographs I had been trying so hard to find.
Christopher (centre), receiving award in 1982.
This was very emotional for me because it felt like I was bringing Christopher back to life.
Margaret recalled meeting Albert at the Nottingham Goose Fair when she was a teenager, and thinks he was around Bradford at the time. A later conversation with George Rowland (my mother's last remaining uncle) confirmed he was once living around Bradford. Out of desperation, I wrote a letter to every Albert Rowland in the electoral register who had no middle initial, but got no bites. I then ordered a copy of every marriage certificate for an Albert Rowland between about 1960 and that present time. Luckily there were only eight, and out of those two were his (1963 in Bradford, and 1974 in Lincoln), which was a very nice result. Given this, I started to look for the birth records of his children, and possibly grandchildren, in the hope of locating one of them on social media. I then found a different source for the electoral register and identified some entries that were not in the source I had used previously. One of these (in Lincoln) had a match for his second wife's name at the same address, but with no phone number. I therefore wrote a letter — I was now getting good at cold calling and writing letters — and arranged to meet them both.
My mother's adoptive mother (Lucy) died in 1971, and I was told they had a falling out because she did not like my father when they were dating, commenting that he was "deep". However, I managed to contact her son, Kenneth, who at that time was in a care home. He was thrilled to hear how things had worked out, and provided some previously unseen pictures of my mother as a child.
Irene/Ann and Lucy, about 1950.
In the May of 2008, my mother was coming up to her 70th birthday and so I decided that all the brothers and sisters should meet up. I arranged a get-together up in Scotland, not far from her sister, Brenda, and everyone made the effort to come. In the bar that evening, it was like they had never been separated — wonderful to watch. In a little speech, over dinner, I started to say that they had not all been in the same room for 60 years, and then realised that when including Susan they had never been in the same room together. The event was a great success, and was repeated the following year, a little after Brenda's 70th birthday.
Dennis/Peter, Irene/Ann, Margaret, me, Susan, Brenda, Albert, 2008.
As for the reason why the Rowland children were removed, this took a while longer to resolve. After multiple tries, I finally managed to contact the right department of the Nottingham Council, but they just confirmed that records were only kept for 25 years. A chance find in the newspaper changed things. It was about her mother in 1947, but the surname was misreported as Rowlands, with an extra 's'. I knew from another newspaper article that she had been fined £15 in 1946 for the illegal possession of two ration books (remember, food had been rationed since the War), but the latest article showed that she was prosecuted for child neglect by the NSPCC, and served two months in prison.
I had already got my new aunts and uncles to sign letters of authority granting me access to whatever I might find. The court records revealed more detail, such as she having defaulted on some of the initial fine, and the Council deciding to perform a house inspection because of her circumstances. Her husband (Ben) was in Lincoln prison between the May and August of that year for other offences, and she had to work in a bar at night, sometimes leaving my nine-year-old mother in charge at home. Times were tough back then, and it is unlikely that the same steps would have been taken in more recent times.
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Following this research, and meeting many of my lost relatives, several have sadly passed away: Christopher, 2000; Sheila (Peter's wife), 2011; Kenneth (my mother's adoptive brother), 2011; Brenda, 2012; Peter (aka Dennis), 2015; Steven (Margaret's son), 2016; Carol (Brenda's daughter), 2016; Albert, 2017; George (my mother's uncle), 2025; RIP.
Looking back, I am so proud to have found them all, reunited them, and given them all closure while there was still time.
