03-05-2025
Woman discovers mum's huge family secret she hid for 64 years
A Guernsey woman has uncovered two long-lost sisters born during WWII—after a stranger's email unravelled a family secret kept hidden for over 60 years.
A British woman has discovered two long-lost sisters—decades after World War II tore her family apart—thanks to a stranger's message on a genealogy website.
Jag Sherbourne, 69, from Guernsey made the discovery following a message from a stranger on the now-defunct Friends Reunited website in 2009. The email, sent by Charley Miller, claimed she was searching for her grandmother's sister and named Sherbourne's father, Charles Le Bargy — a rare surname on the Channel Islands.
'That's what caught my attention, because it's a very rare Channel Island surname, there are only a handful of people and they are all related,' said Jag.
Initially skeptical, she dismissed the possibility. 'I told her, 'It can't be me. My parents were apart during the war. It's very interesting, but I'm afraid it's all just a coincidence.''
But when Charley referenced a guest house named "Romo" on Guernsey — a name Jag's parents used privately after the war — everything changed. 'No-one could have known what that house was called,' she said.
She had always known her parents had been separated during the Nazi occupation of Guernsey, the only British territory captured by Germany during the war. Her mother Kathleen had evacuated to Somerset in 1940, shortly before the island was bombed and occupied on June 30. Charles remained behind due to his role at the power station, reports the Mirror.
'They lived apart with no communication, other than the occasional Red Cross messages, which were just 25 heavily censored words, a few times a year,' Sherbourne explained.
She recalled: 'I deduced from that that she didn't have anything interesting to say about it, ridiculous as that sounds.'
Her father, by contrast, had often spoken about his time during the occupation. 'He'd tell me how, when he came across Nazis who didn't speak English, he would mock them in a friendly manner, so they wouldn't know.'
But Sherbourne's understanding of her family's past was turned upside down after opening a box of her father's wartime belongings — a box she had ignored since his death in 1995.
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'There was a lot of stuff relating to the war, including all the Red Cross messages. Then I found one sentence in one of the letters from my mum, telling him that if he wanted to tell the family about the baby she couldn't, but it might be better to wait until she got home as there was a lot to explain.'
Further investigation revealed that Kathleen had given birth to two daughters while in England — one in 1942 and another in 1945 — both adopted out during the war.
Jag hired a mediation service to trace one of the women, Pauline, and later confirmed the other sister, Michele, through birth certificates and ancestry websites.
She remembered a childhood incident that now made sense. 'I remember when I was about six this teenage girl came to stay with us, she helped around the house but we also shared a room, it was like having an older sister. But she didn't stay long… I vaguely remembered that there were arguments and she had run away.'
She also recalled a quiet moment with her father: 'I remember sitting with my dad on my bed, telling him how my dream was to have a sister, and my dad saying to me, 'You do have a sister, but she ran away'. And I remember getting really upset at that, and Dad never spoke about it again.'
In 2011, Jag and her husband Peter travelled to England to meet both sisters — Michele, then living in London, and Pauline, in Swindon.
'When I first saw Michele it was like I was looking at my mother. She remembered me from that time she'd come to live with us in Guernsey,' she said. 'She was very loving towards me, she really treated me like a sister.'
Michele, who died in 2017, had three daughters — including one named Jacqueline, after Sherbourne. Pauline, a retired bank worker, and Jag have remained close. 'We phone each other regularly and we take our camper van over to see them at least once a year. They're keen bird watchers, so we park in the Cotswold Water Park and spend time together. We both have the same sense of humour, our mother's.'
Sherbourne continues to uncover pieces of her family's story. 'I found a photo amongst Mum's stuff of a British soldier in the Somerset Light Infantry. I think he's probably the father of one of my sisters, but I don't know.'
Reflecting on the era and her mother's choices, she added: 'We forget how things were back then. No-one knew if the Germans would invade Britain and if they would see their loved ones again… I can't blame my mother for that.'
Despite unanswered questions, Sherbourne says finding her sisters changed her life. 'Throughout my life I always wished I'd had a sister, I somehow felt that was missing. And now I've discovered that all this time I had not one, but two. I'm so pleased I finally found them.'
Her story is detailed in her memoir, Clouds in My Guernsey Sky.
