Every family has its stories. Some are told openly, others in hushed voices, and a few are wrapped in uncertainty and quiet sadness.
One of those stories in my family concerned my mum’s great-aunt, Martha Parry.
Martha was born in Bronington, Flintshire, where she also spent most of her life. She never married. Family history said that at the end of the First World War she had twin daughters, fathered by an American serviceman stationed nearby. The twins were said to have been adopted.
What stayed with my mum was that relatives sometimes wondered whether, if the twins knew they were adopted, they might one day try to find her. It is clear that after returning to the Wrexham area she never spoke of them again, as no one in the family seemed to be aware that one of the twins had sadly died in infancy.
Martha died by her own hand. Whatever she carried with her through life, it affected her deeply.
When I started trying to trace the twins, I assumed it would be relatively straightforward. I was wrong.
I couldn’t find an obvious pair of twin births in the right place, at the right time, with the right mother. Records conflicted. Names appeared promising and then fell apart. Some looked legitimate when they shouldn’t have been. Others appeared to belong to entirely different families.
Eventually, I did what many family historians now do when they’re stuck — I asked for help.
I posted my problem in the Genealogy Addicts UK & Worldwide Research Group on Facebook.
What followed was a masterclass in collaborative genealogy.
People I had never met took time to think, check, explain, challenge assumptions, and gently steer me away from dead ends.
They reminded me of things it’s easy to forget when you’re too close to a problem:
Others went further — exporting data, checking patterns across years, and questioning whether the “obvious” Welsh births were actually red herrings.
At times it felt like going backwards. Names I had pinned hopes on had to be let go. Possible twins turned out not to be twins at all. But slowly, something else emerged.
Eventually, attention shifted away from Wrexham.
A pair of illegitimate twin girls — Dorothy and Norah, born in Staffordshire in 1917 — began to stand out. Not where I had expected to find them, but suddenly a lot of pieces made sense.
I ordered the birth certificates.
When the PDF arrived, one of the group members replied simply:
“Woo hoo! It’s Martha!!!!”
And it was.
After months of uncertainty, there she was — my mum’s great-aunt, named as the mother of Dorothy and Norah. A woman who had carried this story quietly for more than fifty years was finally visible in the records.
The story didn’t end there.
Sadly, Dorothy died in 1918. I have her death certificate, which confirms she was the daughter of our Martha Parry. The cause of death was marasmus, a severe form of malnutrition. The death was registered by Harriet Mott, at an address close to where Martha herself was in service at the time. Was Dorothy fostered out and not properly cared for? Sadly, we will never know.
Norah, however, lived on.
What finally convinced me that these were the right twins was geography — and family proximity. Martha’s brother John Parry was living in Stone, Staffordshire, and when I later found Norah in the 1939 Register, living as Norah Webb in Alma Street, it stopped me in my tracks. The address was only a few doors away from where John had been living at the time of the twins’ birth.
Norah had almost certainly been adopted by Irton and Ann Webb, neighbours of her maternal uncle.
Four years ago, when the 1921 census became available, I was able to confirm this. Norah was still living with the Webbs in Alma Street, listed as a boarder (adopted daughter) — quiet, understated evidence of a private adoption that had never been formally recorded. She was clearly well thought of within the family, as she later acted as executor when her adoptive father, Irton Webb senior, died.
This experience reminded me that genealogy is no longer a solitary pursuit carried out in silence with a notebook and a magnifying glass.
Facebook groups like Genealogy Addicts UK & Worldwide Research Group work because they bring together:
They don’t just provide answers — they help you ask better questions.
For me, they helped break down a brick wall that had stood for over a century. More importantly, they helped restore Martha Parry to her full story — not just as a tragic footnote, but as a woman, a mother, and a part of my family’s history that deserved to be acknowledged.
Sometimes, the past only reveals itself when enough people are willing to look at it together.
Linda
EYEonthePAST
