They spent 80 years apart: family history brought them back together

The First World War upended thousands of families. For one Surrey family, a soldier's disappearance on the battlefield slowly unravelled an entire household, scattering its children across institutions, counties and, eventually, an ocean. 

Nearly a century later, family history records helped stitch those pieces back together. 

An ordinary family 

In 1911, carpenter Albert Edward Bance married Caroline Ratcliff in Surrey. Within a few years they had three children: Frances Elizabeth, Daisy Maud, and Albert Edward. The family of five never appeared on a census together, but we did find one parish baptism that centres the family in Richmond in 1912. 

Frances’ baptism record. View the full record here.

In August 1914, Albert Edward Bance enlisted with the 13th Battalion, East Surrey Regiment. The war wasn’t kind to him. 

While trekking through mud and sleeping in trenches, he survived a bullet wound to the thigh in 1915 and returned to service. But in November 1917, Albert was reported wounded and missing during the Battle of Cambrai. Eventually, military authorities concluded that he had been killed.  

While official records reduce that moment to a few stark lines, the correspondence preserved in his service file reveals the anguish waiting at home. Caroline wrote repeatedly to the war office, desperate for certainty. Not knowing whether her husband was alive or dead left her unable to move forward. In one letter, she described herself as being "at her wits' end". 

Caroline’s desperate letters, in Albert’s war records. View the full file here. 

By the time his medals reached her in 1919, the family she had known was already slipping beyond her grasp.  

War wrenched this family apart 

Left to support three young children alone, Caroline faced the reality confronting many widows and abandoned wives of the period. At some point in the years that followed, the Bance children entered care. Family recollections recorded decades later suggest Caroline hoped the arrangement would be temporary while she found her footing and returned to work. 

Instead, the children were moved between institutions, losing contact not only with their mother but with one another. By 1921, sisters Daisy and Frances were living at St Ethelburga's Home for Girls in Essex. Their records noted that their father had died. Their mother was absent from the story. 

Frances and Daisy on the 1921 Census. View the full record here.

We’re not sure where young Albert was at this time. 

Three children, three different paths 

As the years passed, the lives of the Bance children drifted further apart. 

Albert was sent to Canada in May 1929 on the SS Regina at the age of 14. He became one of the thousands of British Home Children sent across the Atlantic in programmes that promised opportunity and a better future. 

Albert’s Home Children record.

His new life would unfold in Quebec's Eastern Townships, thousands of miles away from the sisters he expected never to see again. 

For Daisy, her journey was marked by instability. Reports published years later revealed that she spent her childhood moving through nine orphanages. She never married and, in 1939, was recorded in an institution in Hampshire.  

Daisy in the 1939 Register. View the full record here.

Meanwhile, the older sister Frances forged a more independent path. By the late 1930s she was working in west London and later married John J Fleming in 1946 – they had two children together. Newspaper coverage from 1938 even captured a fleeting moment in which she helped police identify a wanted man.  

Daily Express, Wednesday, 30 March 1938. 

Separated by circumstance, the three siblings carried the same family story into very different lives. 

The reunion nobody expected 

The breakthrough came more than 80 years after the family had been divided. Todd Goyette, Albert’s grandson, started tracing relatives in Britain. His research eventually led him to Daisy, who was living in Southampton.  

In 1998, brother and sister finally met again. A photograph published at the time shows the pair embracing at Montreal's Dorval Airport. This touching reunion made headlines on both sides of the Atlantic. 

The Scotsman, Wednesday, 30 December 1998. 

Albert was 84. Daisy was 85. Most of their lives had passed between that first separation and their reunion.  

But it wasn’t the end of the story... 

After reading newspaper coverage of the siblings' reunion, members of the Thurbon family in Cambridgeshire recognised the names. They were descendants of Caroline, Albert and Daisy’s mother, who had rebuilt her life after the war. Records show that she married Sidney C Thurbon in 1926 and raised a large family in Cambridgeshire. 

Caroline in the 1939 Register. View the full record here. 

For decades, the two branches of the family had lived completely separate lives, unaware of one another's experiences. 

Cambridge Daily News, Tuesday, 5 January 1999. 

One half-sister, Dorothy, recalled meeting Frances as a child at her grandmother's house in Richmond. At the time, she barely understood who the young woman was. Only years later did that fleeting memory find its place in the family story.  

How family history solved the puzzle 

No single record told the whole story for this family. 

Military records explained the fate of Albert Edward Bance and how desperate Caroline was for closure. Census records revealed where the children had been placed. Marriage records traced Caroline's second family. Newspaper archives preserved the voices and photographs that brought the human story back into focus.  

Together, they formed a picture of a family reshaped by war, poverty, and migration.

Could a missing branch of your family tree be hiding in plain sight? Delve deeper into our newspapers today to uncover the stories that shaped your family.