Separated by War – Orphaned Siblings Reunited After Decades Apart

Family history research is often a journey of twists, turns, and unexpected breakthroughs. But when you’re dealing with a family member who was adopted and separated from the family at a young age, the search can feel even more daunting. In this post, I’ll share with you the unique circumstances that led my friend Rob, to trace his mum’s adopted sister Maureen, through a death certificate and the 1939 Register – a discovery that should have been impossible but, through sheer persistence, became a reality.

The Family History Backstory

To understand the complexity of tracing Maureen, it helps to know a little bit about Rob’s family. Rob’s mum Kay, was the youngest of four siblings, born to parents who never married. Towards the end of the Second World War, when this relationship broke down and the parents separated, all four children were put up for adoption. Eventually, the children were sent their separate ways, each child adopted by a different family in the Staffordshire area.

The family were originally from London, but the children were evacuated to Sussex sometime just before the 1939 Register was taken, which is a key part of the story, as we will discover later. The family eventually moved to North Staffordshire during WWII, because Rob’s grandfather had secured work at the local munitions factory. The four children were Maureen, Peter, Daphne and Kay and Rob’s mum had no contact with her siblings after the adoption.

Of the four children that were adopted, Peter Collinson was the only boy, but he never forgot his sisters and he always dreamt of one day being reunited with them. Peter and Rob’s mum Kay were finally reunited with each other again, after a gap of over 40 years, in the late 1980s, through a small ad placed in a local newspaper by Peter’s family, which, as you can imagine was an emotional and joyous reunion. After the reunion, Kay said:

“It was so special to meet Peter. All I knew was that I had an older brother and I so wanted to meet him. I was so happy when I finally met Peter, there was a connection straight away. We were so alike, in our mannerisms and our interests. We became very close.”

(Kay and Peter Reunited after a lifetime apart)

Sadly Peter and Kay’s time together was short-lived as Peter tragically died in the late 1990s which understandably devastated Rob’s mum. Peter’s widow said: “Peter was heartbroken when he was separated from his sisters. His (adoptive) mother said he cried for three days. He was always trying to trace his sisters. When he met Kay he was over the moon, they were so close.”

But crucially Peter’s passing also meant that his entry on the 1939 Register was unredacted. While Kay and Peter never managed to trace Maureen or Daphne, this is the story of how Rob traced and discovered what happened to Maureen and Daphne, even though it seemed an impossible task.

The 1939 Register

When Rob began his family history research, he didn’t know much about the 1939 Register, but what he learnt along the way, however, turned out to be crucial to his later discoveries. As most of you will already know, the 1939 Register was used initially, before the outbreak of WW2, as a means of identifying the numbers of men available for active service with the Armed forces. It would also later go on to serve a number of other useful purposes including being used for the issue of ration books – which is possibly why some people managed to be recorded more than once – and later it would be used to create the original NHS Register, after it was founded in 1948. Another key part in this story was the fact that the Register was continuously updated. Which meant any changes to surnames, due to marriages or adoption, were added to the original document. This continued until the NHS went over to a computerised system in the early 1990s. There is an excellent detailed explanation of the 1939 Register and how it was taken and recorded in the recent Lost Cousins Newsletter and I have attached the link here:

Lost Cousins 1939 Register

It was back in 2015 that Rob decided to undertake the mammoth task of tracing his mum’s lost siblings. Rob started by searching for Peter in the 1939 register and after some initial frustrations, he eventually found him under his adopted name, in Sussex, where of course we know the children were evacuated to at the start of the War. Also included on the entry were a number of other redacted names and Rob had a hunch that Maureen must be one of them.

The Breakthrough: Tracking Maureen Through a Death Certificate:

After a conversation with members of Peter Collinson’s family, who had been researching his siblings in the late 1970s, Rob learnt that they had found a death record for someone named “Maureen” in the 1990s. So he began searching for that same record in the indexes, but finding the entry in the indexes was only one part of the puzzle, he still had to confirm whether it was the right person. The only way to know for sure would be to order the death certificate. We should note that the birth certificate Rob already had and this death certificate, alone, would not prove that he had the right person, but it would certainly add to the evidence.

Rob ordered the death certificate, and when it arrived, it contained details that seemed to match Maureen—but, crucially, it also listed her maiden name and married surname. He used her maiden name to search for her birth record but found no match under that name. This wasn’t surprising—since, as an adopted child, it was likely that Maureen’s birth name had been changed. That’s when he realised that he could now potentially unlock a closed 1939 Register record by submitting the address where Maureen had been living at the time and providing a death certificate. This was the chance to confirm whether he had found Maureen, and against all odds, the record was unlocked. The person that Rob had found was indeed his mum’s eldest sister, Maureen.

Emotions and Discoveries:

The discovery of Maureen was bittersweet. The 1939 Register confirmed Maureen’s birth name, her adoptive surname, and the surnames she had taken through two marriages. The fact that he had found her after all these years filled him with a strange mixture of elation and sadness. Elation, because he had traced her—finally—after decades of separation, and sadness because Maureen had sadly passed away over 20 years ago.

While this discovery was significant, there was more work to be done. He still had to respect the privacy of Maureen’s family, but he also felt compelled to reach out and make contact with them. Through his growing research skills, Rob found Maureen’s second husband and their grown-up children on Facebook. Fortunately, much to his relief, they responded positively, and after a few meetings, Maureen’s second husband kindly gave Rob’s mum some cherished photos of her sister Maureen.

The Larger Picture: Family, Lost Connections, and Reflection:

There was also one last piece of the puzzle for Rob to solve and that was what happened to his mum’s last missing sister Daphne. Rob discovered that Daphne had changed her name to Doreen, but it was a bittersweet moment as Rob sadly found out that Daphne had also died. However finding out what had happened to Daphne led Rob to also trace her daughter and the discovery of a new “cousin”, who had no idea of the missing links in her own family.

Tracing Maureen was part of a larger journey of reconnecting with lost family members. Rob also managed to trace two of Maureen’s maternal aunts, who had also been separated from the family after the war. When he took his mum to meet them, as you can imagine, it was a very emotional moment. They were also able to share with Rob and his mum the location of the grave of Violet Lily Reed (Kay’s mother), who had tragically passed away at the age of 29 in 1946 and was buried with her own mother Lily Agnes Reed who died in 1953.

While Rob’s research into Maureen’s life led him to trace her family and connect with long-lost relatives, it also brought him face-to-face with the complexities of family dynamics. He discovered that his mum’s father had gone on to have multiple families, and it’s hard to ignore the strange irony of visiting his grave, which stood very near to the grave of his mum’s adoptive parents. These discoveries were emotional and complicated, but they also confirmed how through the closeness of family history, people are connected, yet separated by time, circumstance, and choices.

Tracing Maureen was an emotional rollercoaster, full of surprises, frustrations, and eventual joy. Through a combination of genealogy research, death certificates, and hard work, Rob was able to piece together a missing part of his family’s story and reunite four corners of the same family after a 75-year gap. While the process was at times painful, the connections that he discovered — both through documents and real-life encounters—reminded him of the importance of family.

If you’ve ever wondered about your own family’s past, I encourage you to dive in, even when the journey seems impossible. You might uncover pieces of your story that change the way you see your family and yourself. Genealogy is not just about finding names and dates—it’s about discovering the stories behind them. For me, Rob’s journey of tracing Maureen was a journey not only through records and certificates, but through emotions, family bonds, and the complicated, beautiful tapestry that makes up our own unique family history.

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