Old Family Mystery

[David Dunlop]

Hello Gentlemen and Fair Ladies.

I need some input and brainstorming ideas from our Australian and American members.

My Maternal Grandmother lived in Wigan, Lancashire England as a young girl, married there and started a family in the 1920's. Long story short, it was a tough married life. Her hubby was a very abusive drunk and in 1929 and with four little ones all under the age of five, she could not take it anymore and disappeared on the family to start another life somewhere else in England.

In the late 1930's, one of my grandmothers older sisters received an anonymous postcard style photo of my grandmother, taken at a professional studio somewhere. In the photo, she is seated with three young boys, none of whom the family recognizes. The information on the back of the photo related to the photographer had all been rubbed away.

In the early 1950's, her former husband died of brain cancer and Grandmums sisters formally asked the authorities if they could trace her. They could find nothing and suspected she had changed her name via a Deed Poll, which makes it very tough to trace her, not knowing her new name.

The family had been able to run articles in the local Wigan paper and I have done similar ones in the Daily Mail and a national British magazine! complete with the photo of Grandmum and the three boys, in hopes somebody might recognize one of them. No luck.

One last possibility is that my Grandmother may have emigrated to Australia or the United States after the war and I am wanting to find out what, if any national newspapers in those two counties would be the best candidates to contact to see if they would run the photo and story in these two countries. It's a long shot but at least we will have covered all the possibilities we can think of at this point.

David