Monty Vanovich - Maurice Vaughan

Originally I wanted to find out about my dad Maurice Vaughan

My mum told me "When he first joined the family he told your aunt that his parents had been killed in a road crash in cologne just after his birth (1934) and that his grandparents had adopted him".

So my first goal was to research his family and then it struck me he didn't really talk much about his mums family, many stories about many adventures but no cousin or uncle stories except on his dads side and we had met several of our polish cousins over the years.

He had, over the years told a few stories about his family to different people and as i researched more it became apparent that an event that happened at his barmitzvah helped shape the rest of his life "His cousin told him he was not really a cousin because he was adopted!" It devastated him and caused him to completely disconnect from everyone he had grown up with in his maternal family. 

So that’s where I started back in 2002 I discovered during the process of interviewing dozens of cousins and by writing to and speaking to many older family members, some still remembering meeting him as a new baby back in 36 and that my father was in fact Adopted the data I collected grew into a huge family tree in honour of his mother Dora.

Over the years he spent much time looking to connect with his biological family and looking back I still wonder why we his children didn't even know he was adopted until after he died.

He had been to the authorities in the late 70's, and was able to get a sneaky look at his case file. My mother handed me a piece of paper which my father had kept in his wallet since the 1970's it had two pieces of information Zena Rose and Prebend Street and according to my mum pretend street was bombed out during the war and Rose is a very common surname but we didn't have computers then.

Long story short

My father was born Johnny Christopher Rose to Zena Rose a Milliner of Prebend St, N1 on the 17 Dec 1934. After a few weeks he was put up at norwood for adoption. He had some issue with his feet and was not considered for adoption until 1936. It was said that at the time they were trying to home as many infants as possible due to the expected war which is how a couple in their 50's Isaac Waniewicz/Vanovitch and Dora Szerman/Sherman ended up legality adopting Johnny Christopher Rose and renaming him Monty Vanovitch (Which he later changed to Maurice Vaughan)

He didn't know his biological family but in 2005 we discovered his biological mother had another son also looking for his biological family we used DNA to prove our connection and it turns out my dad had a brother.