Alma & Sheila

Long Lost Step Sisters

Alma was born in 1932 and at 91 years young made contact as she wanted to get an answer to a mystery that had been in the back of her mind since the early 60s.

The back story is tragic. In 1954, just weeks before Alma married her mother passed away unexpectedly after a short illness leaving Alma’s father John as a widower. Upon marrying Alma would leave the family home. With her own home to keep and with children of her own coming along shortly after marriage then she saw less of her father John who lived alone before remarrying in the early 1960s.

All that was known of John’s 2nd marriage was that he married a lady named Minnie who had a young daughter Sheila from a previous marriage to a Jewish man. Despite their estimated 20 year age difference, Following on from this marriage Sheila & Alma would become step sisters. Sheila attended the christening of one of Alma’s children when she would have been aged about 9 and a photograph exists of this event.

Sadly after less than 2 years of marriage John suddenly died and Minnie & Sheila disappeared into the midsts of time. Alma wanted to know what became of Sheila and asked for help.

The exact dates of John’s 2nd marriage and death were unknown and unfortunately John’s surname was a common one so this required investigating all weddings matching Johns full name and brides called Minnie in the Lancashire region between 1960 & 1965. This turned up 3 results and those ladies were then fully investigated to see if they were widowers and 1 was.

From that we were able to find the name of Minnie’s first husband which was Hyman which is a common first name in the Jewish faith. Whilst this wasn’t irrefutable proof the pieces of the story were startng to fall into place. Further investigation found a birth for a daughter named Sheila with the age being approximately correct.

Investigating these names led to no other trees on genealogy websites with the same names within it so that was a dead end.

With census records being legally unavailable for another 30 years yet for people in the 1950s then we had to follow a trail of birth certificate, wedding certificates and electoral roll records to find what we believed to be Sheila’s name in 2023. Fortunately this was a fairly uncommon name.

Entering this name into social media websites produced 2 possible matches and when looking at the photograph of 9 year old Sheila and comparing ito to the profile pictures of the 2 matches then 1 of them seemed to resemble whom we were seeking.

Contact was made with whom we considered to be the correct person and within minutes a reply was received stating this WAS the correct person and she was thrilled to have been found as she herself had unsuccessfully looked for her step family some 15 years earlier.

After confirming both parties were happy to share contact details I gave the respective telephone numbers to each lady and they spent an hour on the phone that evening, have been in regular contact since and plan to meet shortly (Nowadays they live 100 miles apart).

At the conclusion of the call Sheila was kind enough to send the below message which she has allowed me to use on this page:

“I have just had the most amazing chat to my long-lost step-sister! I am in a state of shock! Like we had always known each other. So many memories came flooding back, and she told me lots of things that my mother, bless her, had kept from me! Thank you so much for making this possible. We are arranging to meet up in the near future. I will keep you posted.”

Followed by a second message simply stating:

“This has been the most amazing day”

Having spoken to an emotional Alma the next day she expressed deep sorrow for Sheila’s situation in that as a 9 year old she suddenly had this large family (Alma had 4 young children herself by this point) and then almost instantly it was taken away leaving Sheila to grow up as an only child with limited extended family. She stated Sheila had said this in the telephone call to which Alma simply replied “Well you’ve got family now”

This hunt for a long lost step sister was successful for a number of reasons - firstly the amazing 91 year old Alma remembering a few simple facts such as the name Sheila and also remembering that Sheila’s father was of the Jewish faith and her mother was called Minnie.

It was also successful because of our skills in hunting down records and also because of some little strokes of luck which every search does need.

If you have a long lost relative you would like to find please contact us on the form below including as much detail as you have as well as your contact details and we will be in touch to see if we can help you have a similar experience to Alma & Sheila.