'What can you possibly discover after researching your tree for so long?' asked a friend the other day. Quite a lot, it seems. And quite momentous things at that. Such as three 'new' great aunts.
My Scottish granddad's family was complicated: his mother had four sons by three men between 1912 and 1932 - and she used several different forms of her name. To my grandma, my mum and me she was always known - in stories, as she died in 1941 - as Jeanie Miller.
I only spoke with Bob, my granddad's older half-brother, only once. I plucked his number from the phone book in 1992 and called him. During the conversation he described his childhood, his mother, his home - he said he was very fond of Archie, his younger brother (my granddad) even though they hadn't seen each other since the 1960s.
One comment stayed with me for years afterwards. Bob claimed he had a younger sister, Mary, and that 'she went bad'. I enquired with my granddad's younger half-brother Joe (with whom Bob had no relationship) and he denied outright any knowledge of any girls in the family, or any rumours of any girls.
This week I discovered that Mary existed. And that she wasn't the only girl in the family. Suddenly, my granddad had three sisters - and I had three 'new' great aunts.
Thanks to the records offered by ScotlandsPeople I managed to trace three daughters of my great grandmother Jeanie Miller and her partner, Frederick Daly. The first two - Mary and Helen, twins - were born in 1925 and died in 1926. Mary came along in 1927. All three bore the middle name Miller and the surname Daly. Their birth certificates bear the signature of Jeanie Miller and F Daly.
My granddad would have been 4 years old when the twins arrived and just over 6 when Mary was born. He must have remembered her. But, just like everything else in his childhood, he never talked about her.
So now that half of Bob's account has been proved true, I guess I have to try to find out what happened to Mary and what he meant by 'she went bad'...
