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Chapter One
Who do I think I am?

I am standing by the telephone, listening to the ringing tone. I have dialled the number carefully, apprehensively. When the phone is answered - if the phone is answered - I shall be speaking to the half-sister I have never spoken to before; the half-sister I have never met.

I can't believe this is actually happening. Ever since I was a child I had known there was a half-sister somewhere, but that I should ever be able to speak to her or to meet her was way beyond probability, or so I thought. I had been adopted when I was a few weeks old and my adoptive parents were very open about the facts of my adoption. They told me that I was born as a result of a love affair between my widowed mother and a married man during the Second World War and they told me that my mother had a daughter from her marriage.

I was always curious about my natural family but I had a very good home and out of loyalty to the parents who had brought me up I did nothing to try to trace my mother. I did however obtain my original birth certificate when I was nearly fifty. So there was my mother's name, Hetty, with her married name and what was relevant to me, her maiden name, Voyce. As I was an illegitimate baby there was, of course, no entry under the name of father.

Ten years or so went by and from time to time I wondered if my mother was still alive and how one went about trying to trace a mother who possibly did not want to be traced. I had also been told that my adoptive mother and my natural mother were a very similar age. As my adoptive mother, born in 1903 had died by then, I knew it was quite possible that my natural mother had also died. But still I was curious to know more about her.

And then the wonders of the internet opened up and I discovered that there was easy access to birth, marriage and death records and so the search began.
I started by trying to trace my mother's marriage. Assuming she was married when she was in her twenties, armed with her maiden name and her married name I started looking in the 1920s and found her marriage in 1926. I sent for her marriage certificate and when it arrived I found out that she was born in 1904 and I also found that her father was called Evan Charles Voyce and that he had been a jeweller.

The next thing to discover was her exact date of birth. As she had been born in January 1904 I soon found her record and sent off for her birth certificate. She had been born on 17th January. This gave me the name of her mother, Susannah, whose maiden name was Hall. And so the search for my ancestors was well under way and I was so excited to be able to start to build up my family tree.
It was 2004 when I was making these discoveries so unless Hetty was very long lived, it was unlikely that I would find her still alive. Finding her death took quite a while but eventually I discovered that she had died on the 21st March 1981. It was quite a coincidence that my adoptive mother had died in October the same year.

I sent for her death certificate and this is when my search began to get even more interesting for I discovered that it was Hetty's daughter who had been present at her death and whose signature was there on the death certificate.

So the mysterious half-sister now had a name, and furthermore her address in a pleasant area in the Midlands was also on the certificate. It occurred to me that she could very possibly still be alive. The electoral roll for that area was consulted and it seemed that the search was already at an end when I discovered that she no longer lived at the address on Hetty's death certificate. However my husband, who was helping me with this search, saw her name in the list of addresses further down the same road. At last there she was and it seemed that she was still alive.

That was amazing. To think that I had spent my entire life not knowing anyone who was related to me except my two sons and now here was a half-sister. This was getting very exciting.

But a big quandary presented itself. Did she know anything about me? Did she know that her mother had given birth to an illegitimate baby or had Hetty gone away and had her baby secretly? I wanted to contact her but I spent a long time wondering if it was the right thing to do.

Eventually I wrote to her including a copy of my birth certificate to prove who I was. Now the ball was in her court. Would she even reply I wondered?
I have to use the word 'amazing' again because yes, she did reply and it was by return of post. She seemed to be as excited as I was that I had contacted her and asked me to phone her as soon as possible.

Hence, there I was on that early March day, waiting for her to answer the phone and to set in motion a chain of events that has changed my life.
And of course she did answer the phone and there was great excitement shown by both of us.
"Did you know about me?" I asked her.
"Oh yes," she said, "I held you when you were just a few hours old." Well that was a bit tear jerking!

She told me that despite my birth being nearly sixty-two years ago she had never forgotten me and always particularly remembered me on my birthday in August.
We knew we wanted to meet so a few weeks later my husband and I made the journey north from where we lived in the south of England. It was so exciting but I was also apprehensive. Would we like each other? What would she look like?

I need have had no worries. Immediately we took to each other and spent a lovely and happy few hours together. She was a very similar height to me and had a very warm personality. It may seem weird but we also found out that we had both inherited Hetty's bunions which I believe are carried down the female line.

What was particularly interesting was that she was able to tell me my father's name. She well remembered the love affair between him and our mother. She was still a school girl at the time and told me how she would come home from school and he would be there and, feeling unwanted and in the way, she used to take the dog out for a walk.

By now I had begun to build up my family tree and was delighted that my half sister was able to lend me some family photos which we were able to copy before returning them to her. It was so interesting to see a picture of my mother and my grandparents and their other children. Now I had a family. And here is that word again. It truly was 'amazing'.

I said to her, "I'm wondering if our grandfather's name, Evan, being a Welsh name means we have Welsh blood in us?"

"Oh yes," she said, "there was talk of a Welsh grandmother living next door."

In recent years the television programme 'Who Do You Think You Are?' has been very popular. Back then in 2004, I was able to start finding out who I was and this is what this book is about.

Part of the Watkin family from Montgomeryshire is in me as is part of the Howells family from the Long Mynd in Shropshire and the Saints from Hereford whose ancestors had come across the sea from America. Part of the Voyce family from Warwickshire is in me; the family that variously spelled their name as Voice, Voyce, Vise, Vice and Voce.

I was able to place these people in history; there among the Drovers who brought cattle from Wales through Shropshire to England; and the Watkin family, millers in Kerry in Wales; William Saint, the shoemaker in Hereford; Mary Saint who grew up in Hereford Workhouse, and her marriage to William Hall, the rogue policeman born in Northamptonshire; and also the agricultural labourers from what was then the tiny village of Castle Bromwich in Warwickshire.
I was able to trace how all these family lines converged on the growing town of Birmingham in the time of Queen Victoria and what happened to them next.