One of the first things I did when I commenced researching was to send away for some certificates, including the birth certificates of my parents, George Erwood and Valerie Davidson. When I received my father's certificate, at first glance I thought a mistake had been made. Victorian birth certificates are amongst the most comprehensive and provide a lot of information including the full name of the parents, age, occupations etc. This certificate only gave the father's name, (also George Erwood), and stated "father by adoption". No mention of a mother and no other information at all, other than the date and place of birth. I remember feeling very puzzled, trying to make some sense of it. So many thoughts went through my head, not the least being the uncanny resemblance between my father and grandfather. Photos of my grandfather in his younger years were identical to those of my father. It made the implication that my father had been 'adopted' by my grandfather highly improbable.

 

I realised that I had stumbled across what was obviously going to be a sensitive issue and began to try and work out the best way to handle it. By this stage both my grandparents had passed away, so at least I didn't have to worry about how to handle that side of it. I started remembering things from my childhood. From the age of 8, I was brought up by my father and his mother, Kathleen, (who I ultimately found out was born Catherine, a significant point which will become evident later). My grandmother was a wonderful woman who I adored, but she was quite 'different' from anyone I have ever known. In her later years, she was diagnosed with Alzheimer's and I've realised her little idiosyncrasies early in my life were the beginnings of the onset of this insidious disease. I remember as a young teenager finding a Deed Poll, dated 1962, changing her surname from Clarke (which was her maiden name) to Erwood. Of course, I knew her as Erwood and I asked her about it and did not get a favourable response at all, which puzzled me a bit at the time. It is interesting to note here that my grandfather died in 1962. I also had a vague recollection of my father commenting at some stage that he didn't think his parents had ever married, and mentioning something about some legal proceedings that were undertaken at the time of his 21st birthday in 1950, along with a visit from what he called 'Dad's other family' many years ago. All very vague and, at the time, not given much thought to by a young girl.

 

At this stage I realised I had a full blown family mystery on my hands, so I decided it was time to have a talk with my father. Fortunately, he was able to provide me with enough information for me to be able to move forward with my research, even though his memories were sketchy, and I think he may have blocked a bit of it over the years. With his information, I was able to ascertain that it appeared my grandfather was already married when he came over from England by himself in the mid 1920s. It appeared he had left his wife in England, and shortly after his arrival in Australia had met my grandmother, fallen in love with her, and remained with her until his death in 1962. She fell pregnant and when my father was born, and as they were not married, he was registered under the surname of Clarke, my grandmother's maiden name, with his father listed as 'Unknown'. This obviously explains the birth certificate that I received.

 

Even though my father was registered legally as Clarke, he had lived his life as George Erwood, and was never told any different. However, as his 21st birthday approached, my grandparents realised that he would need to register to vote and that he would not be able to register as Erwood as this was not his legal name and there was no official birth registration for him under the name of George Erwood. After what must have been an incredibly difficult time for them, especially given the conservative nature of our society back then, they woke him one morning and told him he was illegitimate, but 'not to worry', they were taking the legal steps required to rectify the problem. At that stage, and as a young man embarking on his adult life, I don't think he really cared as long as it was remedied.

 

I was fortunate that he remembered the name of the law firm who had handled the matter at the time, and who fortunately were still in existence. I had previously had contact with them five years earlier as the daughter of the original owner had handled the probate of my grandmother's will in 1982. I contacted her and was amazed that she actually remembered her father talking about it in earlier years as it had been an unusual case at the time, that of a birth father legally adopting his son. They did not still hold the records, so she advised that the best way to proceed would be to contact the Registry of Births, Deaths & Marriages who she believed would be able to assist. As my grandparents were both deceased, all they required to release the file was a letter from my father authorising the release. He provided me with this and I sent it off, with my address as the return address. Given what was contained in the files, I'm grateful I had the chance to see the contents before my father did. I have fond memories of my grandfather, even though I was only very young when he died a few days before my 8th birthday. He absolutely adored me and used to spoil me rotten! That aside, and given the stories I'd heard and the obvious mystery surrounding his past, I'd reached the conclusion in my adult life that he was probably a bit of a rogue. After all, to my knowledge the man had left a wife in England, met someone else, and from that point on had seemed to neglect his previous life so what else was I to think. However, I was to find out that the true story presented a totally different scenario.

 

Therein began the wait, and after several weeks my answers finally arrived. The file contained all the usual documents you would expect in a case like this, numerous court documents signing off on the adoption, the 1918 marriage certificate of my grandfather to a Kathleen Foy in London, and my father's original birth certificate, registering him as Clarke and 'Father Unknown'. There were also two other items which had quite an impact on me.

 

The first was my grandfather's lengthy deposition. It told the tale of a man whose heart had been broken by the breakdown of his family, and who had found love and a new life when he thought all hope was lost. Looking forward to the future, George Erwood had arrived in Australia in 1925, not by himself as was originally thought, but accompanied by his wife, Kathleen, and his eight year old daughter, Hilda Cathleen (known as Cathie). I was stunned. It was the first I had heard that my father had a half-sister, and to my knowledge, unless he was keeping it from me, he was unaware of it also. Upon arrival in Australia, George had started looking for work, but it was not easy to find anything close to where they were living in South Melbourne, with Kathleen's sister. An engineer, he was forced to take a job labouring on a farm out of Melbourne where he worked for some time, corresponding with the family, sending money, and returning to Melbourne to visit whenever he could.
 

A couple of years passed and on one of his visits Kathleen asked him to meet her in a park in Albert Park. There she informed him that she couldn't 'handle it anymore' and that 'the marriage is over'. He was devastated and begged her to reconsider, but to no avail. She left and he had no choice but to go back to his job. He wrote regularly, continuing to send money, and asking to see his daughter, Cathie, but never received replies. When he next came to Melbourne, his wife had moved and he was unable to locate her. He was told that she had returned to England.

 

As a result of this, George suffered a 'severe mental breakdown' and was hospitalised for 'several months'. Upon discharge, and after much soul searching and coming to terms with his life, he took a job as a shearer on a sheep station, "Inverleigh", just out of Geelong. On a nearby station there worked a cook by the name of Catherine Ruth Clarke. They met at a dance, and the rest, as they say, is history. She fell pregnant, they moved back to Melbourne 'and cohabited until the child was born in 1929'.
 

George made several efforts over the years to make contact with his ex wife, but again, with no success. The last he heard was in the mid 1940s when he was told, that Cathie, his daughter, had married an American serviceman by the name of Squires and had moved to California in the United States. He also found out at this time that they had not gone back to England after all, but had moved to Geelong, where I discovered Kathleen had died, coincidentally, the same year as George in 1962.

The second document which I found disturbing was a single piece of paper, signed by my grandmother, relinquishing 'all her rights to the said infant hereafter'. Given that the 'said infant' was 21 at the time, it's obviously quite irrelevant. However, I knew my grandmother very well and as irrelevant as it may seem, I know it would have upset her to sign that document, however irrelevant it was. I think the fact that I remembered and recognised her signature on it probably contributed to my feelings there.

 

So, here I was, in possession of this information and not at all sure as to the best way to present it to my father. The last thing in the world that I wanted to do was upset him, but in my heart I believed he had a right to know. I called him, told him I'd received the papers and that I wanted to come and see him. I think he realised then that there was more to the story than we had been aware of. On my way there I made the decision that I would tell him about his sister before he read the papers, so when I arrived, I just asked him outright if he was aware that he had a sister. I will never forget the look on his face and I knew in that moment that he had no idea. I handed him the file and left him alone to read through it. When he was finished, he handed it back to me and said, 'well, there you go, the old bugger wasn't the rogue I thought he was', or words to that effect. He then just looked at me and quietly said, 'I have a sister', and went out to his kitchen to put the kettle on. And that was it, other than asking me to make a copy of the documents for him, which I discovered in his effects when he died some 6 years later.

 

Personally, I wanted to start looking for Cathie, I wanted to know if she was still alive. After all, she was my aunt, and as both my parents were only children, I was quite excited about the prospect of discovering close relatives. I was unsure how Dad felt about it as, at first, he wasn't keen on talking about it and I think we both feared rejection, given the obvious acrimony that had been there. However, not long before I lost Dad, he asked if I'd ever done anything about it. I replied I hadn't because I was unsure how he felt about it. He asked me to do what I could, whether he was still alive when I found out or not. So at that point, I started in earnest to try and find Cathie. It was like looking for a needle in a haystack, even with my knowledge of genealogical research, and for some time I came up with nothing.
 

A few years after Dad passed away, I was doing some browsing on genealogical websites and thought I'd try looking for the Squires connection ... again. I remember it was late at night, I had done the usual search on George Erwood and, all of a sudden, there on the screen in front of me, was my grandfather. And not only my grandfather, but my grandmother and father as well, although Dad was listed as an Unknown Male. This was good, but not spectacular in itself. I looked further and saw that there was a first marriage for my grandfather to a Kathleen Foy and that they had a daughter, Hilda Cathleen. That certainly got my attention! The clincher was the submitter's email address which contained his or her name, Squires. I sat there and stared, and wondered what to do. After all these years I'd finally found a link. I was unsure if it was Cathie, her husband, son, or whatever. Given the family history, do I email and risk rejection, not knowing what their version of the story was? I honestly didn't know if I could handle rejection after all this time and the devastation of losing my father.

 

I decided that I had to do it, Dad had wanted me to do what I could to find her so I needed to do this for him. Unsure of exactly how much to say, I spent ages compiling the email, but finally pressed the 'send' button at 2 a.m. and steeled myself for the worst. I checked my email when I got home from work the following night and there was an email from a Don Squires sitting in my Inbox. I looked at the Inbox for a good ten minutes before, nervously, opening the email. I read the first line and tears fell. He had written 'I cannot see to type for the tears rolling down my face.'

 

Don Squires (now my Uncle Don) is Cathie's husband, the American serviceman she married in Melbourne in the 1940s. He was aware of the 'other family', as they called us, but Cathie never spoke much about it until her later life. Sadly, Cathie had passed away less than 2 years after Dad, an irony which didn't escape Uncle Don and myself. Between the two of us we were able to fill in the gaps, and I am grateful that I was able to let him know the truth about my grandfather. I will forever rue the fact that Dad and his sister died without being given the opportunity to know each other - I only wish I had made more of a concerted effort to find Cathie while there was still time. On the bright side, I have discovered an uncle and cousins living in Washington State that I never knew I had. When we first made contact, Uncle Don was 80 years old and I will be eternally grateful to him for his love of genealogy. Without it, I doubt I would ever have been able to complete the story.

 

I think I would find this a very moving story, even if I was not personally connected. It is a story of a man who made the journey to Australia, looking for a new beginning for his family. A man who lost everyone who meant anything to him, whose heart was broken but managed to pick up the pieces and move on to embark upon a life filled with love and happiness. It is a story of a couple who, because of the conventions of society at the time, were unable to acknowledge the true state of their relationship.

 

My grandmother's secrecy and paranoia about her relationship with my grandfather is now also painfully clear. She was brought up in a strong Irish Catholic environment, and I discovered that her family had ostracised her for a period of time when she had my father. It also possibly explains the Deed Poll document I found changing her name from Catherine Clarke to Kathleen Erwood at the time of my grandfather's death. I believe the surname change may have had something to do with his Will and Probate. Knowing my grandmother's quirkiness, I also believe the change from Catherine to Kathleen was some sort of reference to his first wife. The one thing I do wish is that I had been aware of at least some of this, along with the fact that she had Alzheimer's, earlier. I realise now her Catholic upbringing and faith, while she denied it, never really left her and that she believed she had committed a dreadful sin. I may have been able to help her, and I certainly would have had more patience with her.

 

I made a vow years ago that I would put all this down in writing one day. It's taken me longer than I thought to get around to it, but the timing had to be right. And I believe now that my father and his sister have finally met ...