LIES, COINCIDENCES AND A TANGLED WEB

[Welshlass]

Help please. I am an experienced researcher but through someone who believed he was a DNA match to my husband (since disproved) I have found a challenge that's got me beat! (I'd still like to help him though).
S's grandmother M claims that she was born on 26 Dec 1945 in Reading - no birth reg or baptism found in any of the several names she has used in Reading or elsewhere in England & Wales. S says she has a Welsh accent.
She has been married twice, both in Scotland, but the 2nd probably bigamously, + another relationship that produced a child.
The 1st marriage was 1964 in Thurso to James HIDES (I have the cert) - she recorded her parents as Cliff ROWLES, a scientist, and Doreen ROWLES nee BENNETT.

FACT: Doreen BENNETT is my husband's birth mother, gave him up for adoption, and later married Clifford H. ROWLES in 1954 in Pontypool, Mon (they were both local to that area). They had no children. Clifford was previously married to (May) Florence HAILS - they had no known children.

M had 3 sons with James HIDES in 1964, 1965 and 1967 in Sheffield. My contact S is the son of the youngest son.
In 1972 M. had an illegitimate son C by Edward Frederick BUSH in Stepney, London when she recorded her maiden name as ROSEN and place of birth as Reading. (I have C's b. cert.)

In 1985 she eloped to Luxembourg with a solicitor Michael Thomas McSHERRY and married him in Dec. 1985 in Glasgow. This time she recorded that the given name she used was a variation of a previous similar name, her father again as Cliff ROWLES, a professor of chemistry, but her mother as Florence HALEN.

S and his father became estranged from M after her marriage to McSHERRY.

In searching for M's birth record to find out who her parents really were I have searched freebmd, ancestry and the GRO on known surnames; fishing trips on both known given names only + every combination of both; looked at electoral rolls of supposed parents; googled all names + parents, and am now stumped!

If M isn't the child of Doreen and Cliff (she's certainly NOT Doreen's daughter as DNA shows) how did she get these details? She named both of Cliff's wives but got them in the wrong order and mis spelled Florence's surname. I can find no trace of her in Wales despite the alleged accent.

The only 'near thing' I've found is an illegitimate b. reg. in Sep. 1936 in Croydon (2a 905) in the name of Margaret HAILS. Although much earlier than expected (did M lie yet again?), could this be Florence's child b. immediately before her marriage to Clifford reg. Jun. 1936, but reg in the following qtr? Is it worth getting this cert?

S's residence is in England but mostly works overseas and I am in Australia, so reliant on online resources.

Any suggestions please?

 

[Tim]

Hi,

Is S a DNA match to your husband or not? Does your husband and S share any DNA matches? If you have DNA amounts then we could try a WATO tree.

 

[peter]

Tim's correct - DNA is the key. This is the case whether or not there is a DNA match between S and y0ur husband.

You need to have access to S's DNA matches as a collaborator. The reality is that the identity of M is unknown - she claims this and she claims that, but nothing adds up. So I would treat it like any other situation where a grandparent is unknown, and focus on the thousands of DNA matches that come from M's quarter of S's tree.

 

[Welshlass]

No, no DNA match. Checked manually through ancestry and then did a 1 to 1 comparison on FTDNA, so we know that M isn’t my husband’s half sister. Although not my problem, I’d like To help S so the challenge now is to try to find out who M really is and cut through all the lies. Where the hell did she get these supposed parents names? It can’t be just coincidence. I’ve asked S to get a cheap pdf copy of the 1936 b. cert. to see if this sheds any light. Maybe M is Florence’s illegitimate child reared by someone else which would account for the Welsh accent and knowing the names. I’m sure Cliff would have loved being elevated to a prof. of chemistry!

 

[peter]

I wouldn't spend money on a PDF at this stage. It's a pretty long shot - not only would M have had to knock nearly 10 years off her age, which is not unheard of, and passed as 18 at the time of her first marriage when she was 28, which is more challenging, she would also have changed her birthday, which is much rarer. Perhaps the only explanation for that is that her parents lied to her in order to hide the fact that she was illegitimate, although you have to wonder why she would have been registered as illegitimate after they had married - I'm pretty sure that in 1936 the marriage would have legitimated the child. (The only exception would be if at the time of the birth one of them was married to somebody else.)

And if she was born in 1936, where is she in 1939? There are no hidden entries in the household of Cliff & Florence, and I would have thought that a 3 year-old child would be at home with her parents in Pontypool. Children under school age were usually evacuated with their mothers. Unless Florence gave her up for adoption in order to marry Cliff - although if that is the case it would seem quite a coincidence given his later marriage to Doreen Bennett.

In the early 1960s it was fairly common to elope to Scotland in order to marry without parental consent - remember that the age of consent was 21 until the end of the decade. If she was over 21 why marry in Scotland (unless, perhaps, the groom was under 21)?

As I pointed out yesterday, the answer is in S's DNA matches. If there is any truth at all in what M has claimed at different times in her life then the mystery will be fairly easy to solve since one or other of the surnames will show up - and if there is no truth at all in her story then DNA will be the only answer. Perhaps M was also an adoptee? That would certainly go a long way to explaining the unreliability of the information she imparted.

 

[peter]

The only 'near thing' I've found is an illegitimate b. reg. in Sep. 1936 in Croydon (2a 905) in the name of Margaret HAILS. Although much earlier than expected (did M lie yet again?), could this be Florence's child b. immediately before her marriage to Clifford reg. Jun. 1936, but reg in the following qtr? Is it worth getting this cert?

No - it's a waste of money because:

 

[Welshlass]

Thanks for that. I was hoping I might have been onto something but its not to be . . .