New discoveries close to home: three 'new' great aunts

'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'...

My great great granny and the 'shocking' Italian

My granddad Archie never spoke to me about his family - although I did hear that he used to think his grandmother was French.

Only after years of research did I discover that Archie shared a home with his grandmother - Helen - until she died in 1939 when he was 19 years old. She went by the name of Helen Miller and was a nurse; however, she had once been married to and had a child by a man called Arnoldo Scossa.

He wasn't French - we believe he was Swiss, probably Italian Swiss.

If you've read previous posts you'll know that this chap deserted his wife and new baby in the mid 1880s for a new life in New South Wales, where he died alone some twenty years later. Helen described herself as a widow in census returns: either because she genuinely thought she was a widow, or to try and appear 'respectable'. She never remarried but did have my great grandmother, Jeanie, by a John McCaul.

Having coffee with an Italian pal today, our conversation turned to family trees and I mentioned the surname of that errant Italian (father of my great grandmother's brother Archimedes, after whom Archie was named....) and she laughed.

Apparently, Scossa means 'shock'. As in the sort of static electricity shock you get from someone who is wearing too much polyester! So, Helen Miller - you really were married to a shocking Italian!