People   (Re-unions, trace old friends and relatives.)

If it were so simple! Charles Terence was Clara's son, born 1926. Clara would have been far older than 33 in 1947. I don't think she remarried at all. She would have been wary of committing bigamy, I think. But her vanishing act seems to be perfect. At first I thought she would be using another man's surname, living "over the brush" as my mother would have said. So I thought that if I looked up Clara with her birth date in the 1939 register, I would find her. Well, there is a Clara born on May 13th, 1901 in this register, but after some crosschecking, it would seem that she was married to the man she was living with and had been since before 1926 when they had a son. This Clara's maiden name was not Betton.
My next step was just to put the exact birth date into the register. There were apparently over 700 females born on this day in 1901, none of them using the name Clara. That would take some checking!! Who were these women living with? Can a marriage be found? Were there three boys?
I then looked up all the male births between 1928 and 1940 where the maiden name of the mother was given as "Betton". I looked to see if there were possibly three boys with the same surname. There were actually about three separate cases. I looked them up, checked for marriages and could rule all of these out.
I then looked for the photograph of Clara and the boys.
There does not seem to be much of an age gap, if any, between the two older boys. If you think that she may have been pregnant with her husband's child when she left, I think it possible that she later met a widower with a son. The third child is much younger and could be their only common child. Comparing with my own grandchildren, I would say the youngest is no older than three years old. If you are sure that Clara sent the photo in 1939, The boy was probably born in 1936 (+1 or -1). This would reduce the possibilities if he were born in Britain. I have been looking at the birth of a JOHN C PULEY in 1936 in Runcorn. I can find no marriage of a Puley (or other spellings like Pooley) to a Betton, and so I presume the parents weren't married. The maiden name on the birth registration is Betton. This is only one I have looked at so far, and, of course, I can't say that this family is the one you are looking for. I will do some more work.

Actually, David, I think you should get in touch with one of the tabloids like "The Daily Mail". They often have articles about ancestry, and this is such an interesting case. Even if no one recognises the boys, they may recognise the studio on the photograph, which would be a big help. By the way, I noticed Clara's wedding ring, but I don't think it significant. It could be the one from her first husband or a cheap one bought for the sake of appearances. After all, women with children didn't walk about advertising that they weren't married in those days.

Good luck in your search! If anything else occurs to me, I will post again. I don't like giving in!!

Linda